Let’s Just Get Along

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The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that Iran appears to be trying to back out of the nuke deal already by denying that the White House version of the framework is what they agreed to. However, as of this writing no other media source is saying any such thing.

I was struck by this passage in the New York Times:

The streets of Tehran, a city of 12 million, crowded on any regular evening, were largely empty late Thursday night, save for some gatherings at a central square where people honked their car horns in approval.

But that may have been partly because many Iranians were glued to state television, watching President Obama in Washington talking about the details of a framework nuclear accord with Iran. It appeared to be the first time in Iran’s revolutionary history that the official news media broadcast the speech of an American president live and in full.

“This is unbelievable,” said Mohammad Javad Mehreghan, a financial expert. “Soon we will have direct flights between Tehran and New York.”

According to reports in the MSM, Iranians were happy with President Obama’s speech and the deal as he described it is being welcomed. This causes me to suspect the Free Beacon scoop was pulled out of Matthew Continetti’s ass.

Anyway, the quote — it struck me that it would be a really good thing for Americans and Iranians to get to know each other as people, because when people know that those Others really are just people too it’s harder to get them whipped up into a war frenzy. We should have direct flights between Tehran and New York. We should have access to each other’s teevee shows. We should bump into each other at Disney World or shopping in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. This is my idea of a better world.

Blowing Up the Deal

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I haven’t had time to look into specifics, but Iran and several world powers have agreed on a framework for a nuclear deal. Greg Sargent writes,

The preliminary deal would limit continued operation of centrifuges to one site, while converting a second one — which had been the subject of controversy — to a research facility. The Arak nuclear reactor could no longer be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

In exchange, sanctions against Iran will be lifted by the U.S. and European countries, after the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies Iran has taken those steps.

Naturally, congressional Republicans already are against it, because Obama. Blowing up any deal the President makes, no matter what it is, is a key litmus test among the 2016 presidential hopefuls. Because Obama.

Scott Walker told an interviewer that if he is elected POTUS he would not only blow up any deal with Iran on his first day as president, he would do so even if all of our allies want the deal to continue.

I asked Peter Juul, a Mideast analyst for the Center for American Progress, to explain what the consequences of that might be. He told me:

“The big questions would be, How would Europeans and Iranians react? It’s hard to believe that the Iranians would stick to their end of the deal. That would leave Iran open to take their nuclear program as far as they want.

“The Europeans would probably try to keep their portion of the deal in place and try to salvage it. This would place the burden of having blown up the deal on us. This would be particularly ironic, considering that a major Republican and conservative talking point is that the Obama administration is breaking faith with our allies. We would be alienating and breaking faith with our European allies right out of the gate. You’d be irreparably damaging our transatlantic relationships for however long Scott Walker were in office.

“Putin is not going to leave power anytime soon, unless he keels over. For all the talk about the Russian threat, it would be odd to throw our European allies under the bus on Iran at the same time they are facing down a Russia that is not particularly friendly.

“There would be a lot of ripple effects around wherever the U.S. and Europe have security cooperation. This is a reckless, irresponsible, shoot first, don’t-ask-questions-ever approach. It’s just not a viable strategy if your goal is to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.”

But for the idiot children like Walker who hope to be on the GOP ticket, the goal is not to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. The goal is to stick it to Obama.  It’s a bit like what the incoming Bush Administration did in 2001 when it assumed Clinton people like Richard Clarke, who were yammering about that dangerous al Qaeda thing, were just being hysterical.

All of this should theoretically lead to at least some kind of pressure on members of Congress who are looking to kill a deal — not to mention the 2016 GOP hopefuls — to say what they support doing instead beyond thwarting Obama. “The bottom line is that it’s unclear what Walker and others who think like him want out of this process,” Juul says. “If no deal could possibly satisfy them, they should say so.”

It’s a bit like Obamacare. Republicans keep saying they have a better way, but the better way really is to just go back to the way things were before.  And then make that even worse.

Salon has a roundup of reactions to the proposed Iran deal. The Right thinks the proposed deal with either bring back the Third Reich or usher the Apocalypse.

Paul Waldman:

I can make that prediction with certainty as well, because we’ve already heard plenty of them. But as I discuss at the Plum Line today, we should be absolutely clear what those who talk about Munich are saying:

Many of us roll our eyes and poke fun at endless Hitler analogies, but in this case their use is extremely revealing. If you believe that the negotiations with Iran are the equivalent of those in Munich in 1938, what you’re basically saying is that war with Iran is inevitable, so we might as well get started on it right away. After all, it isn’t as though, had Chamberlain left Munich without an agreement, Hitler would have retired and gone back to painting. The whole point of the “appeasement” argument is that the enemy cannot be appeased from his expansionist aims, and the only choice is to wage war.

That’s what Iran hawks are arguing: We shouldn’t pussyfoot around trying to find a diplomatic solution to this problem when there’s going to be a war no matter what.

You can call this clear-eyed realism, or you can call it terrifying lunacy. But it would be nice if they would admit that war is indeed what they’re advocating. Up until now, only a few conservatives have been willing to say so. I’d like to hear their argument, and not a bunch of “all options should be on the table” hedging, but a real case for why launching a war on Iran really is the best of the available options.

The idiot children really must be pushed hard to be explicit about what they actually intend. Over and over and over. I’m really certain the American people just want the Middle East to simmer down and stay out of the headlines, not more war.

Stuff to Read

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Ah, life in a Zen center. I spent much of the morning cleaning incense bowls. And yesterday I failed to note the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Five Forks, but Professor Krugman remembered.

A small family-owned pizzeria in Walkerton, Indiana, gained national attention when its owners announced they would not be delivering pizzas to gay weddings. This led to a blizzard of tweets and other commentary wondering what self-respecting gay couple would serve pizza at a wedding. See also Religious Freedom and Political Lies in Indiana and Want Some Cheese With That Whine, Conservatives?

For something a little meatier, see Thomas Edsall, Has American Business Lost Its Mojo? Since the financial disaster of 2008 more businesses have closed in the U.S. than have opened. Before 2008, there had consistently been far more start-ups than closures. The gap is closing but has not closed all the way. Edsall explores several reasons why this has been so.

Update: Here’s another one —  “Kansas continues to bleed revenue”: News keeps getting worse in conservatives’ anti-tax utopia

Two weeks after the utterly delusional Gov. Sam Brownback proclaimed in a radio interview that Kansas’ experiment in supply-side economics was “working,” the latest batch of numbers from the Sunflower State further put the lie to the utterly delusional governor’s assertion.

State figures released Tuesday showed that tax revenue came in $11.2 million below expectations in March, the latest in a string of lower-than-expected tax receipts.

Lawmakers must fill a $344 million revenue shortfall by June, and Brownback has moved to plug Kansas’ fiscal hole by slashing education funding, gutting the state’s pension fund, and cutting infrastructure. Additionally, the governor has proposed new sales taxes, which disproportionately impact the poor, in order to proceed full steam ahead with his income tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

The GOP Bubble

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I can’t help but think of Mike Huckabee’s recent tour for his book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, in which he explained that the coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington were “bubble-ville” while the real Americans lived elsewhere, in “Bubba-ville.”

But the Real World doesn’t sort itself into the neat enclaves that Huckabee imagines. And the reaction to Indiana’s “religious freedom restoration” law ought to be making the Right question just who lives in a bubble.

However, many of them — see Ben Domenech — are telling themselves that the opposition is all coming from “the left.” Note that this afternoon NASCAR issued a statement expressing disappointment with the law, although it won’t be boycotting Indiana.

“We will not embrace nor participate in exclusion or intolerance,” said NASCAR, which is based in Florida and North Carolina. “We are committed to diversity and inclusion within our sport and therefore will continue to welcome all competitors and fans at our events in the state of Indiana and anywhere else we race.”

NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever  — some “left.” Plus Starbucks and Apple and some other groups. Here’s a complete list.

Domenech whines,

… this goal is motivated not just by the political aims of the left, but by a broad rejection of tolerance as a virtue. It was all well and good when tolerance was about conservatives and religious types swallowing their objections and going along with things – but now that the left is being asked to do the same thing? Forget about it.

I’m not sure what “things” we were asked to go along with, other than homophobia, and that one had a long enough run, I think.

As I’ve been writing in recent years about the renewal of the culture wars, I’ve received some steady pushback from many readers on both sides of the marriage issue who believe that such talk is overblown. The lesson of Indiana’s RFRA controversy is that if anything, we have underestimated the commitment of the secular left to enforce fealty within a naked public square, where tolerance is no longer a virtue and the power of government must be used to stamp out dissent. For all their complaints over the years about social conservatives’ use of government to enforce morality, the secular left is more eager than ever to engineer the society they seek, no matter the cost.

To which I say – NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever … Sweetums, it ain’t the “secular left” that is lighting your fuse.

The other howler is that this controversy is about “religion” versus “secularism.” The Episcopal Diocese of Indiana believes the law, not the opposition to it, is anti-Christian.

That this is terrible for business is already being made exquisitely plain. That it is an embarrassment to ‘Hoosier Hospitality’ is undeniable. It is also an affront to faithful people across the religious landscape. Provision of a legal way for some among us to choose to treat others with disdain and contempt is the worst possible use of the rule of law.

For Episcopalians, whose lives are ordered in the Gospel of Christ and the promises of our Baptismal Covenant, it is unthinkable. We are enjoined to love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love others as Christ loves us. We promise, every time we reaffirm our baptismal vows, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” We promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

See also Julian Bond, ‘Religious Discrimination’ Laws Have Nothing to Do With Religion.

I believe all of the likely GOP presidential candidates have come out in support of the law, which may be a lovely example of a once-reliable wedge issue coming back to bite them. Jill Lawrence writes,

If there’s one takeaway from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s “religious freedom restoration” debacle, it’s that Republicans ignore today’s cultural environment at their peril.

Conservatives can continue to live in a bubble if they want to, but they should expect blowback, because outside that bubble is a far different reality.

Right-wing reactionary movements can seem very compelling when their message resonates with popular culture, but when it doesn’t they just look ridiculous.

The Fallout Continues

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The newest excuse for Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is that other states and even the federal government have the same law, so why is everyone picking on Indiana? Garrett Epps explains,

…even my old employer, The Washington Post, seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. “Indiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,” the Post’s Hunter Schwarz wrote, linking to this map created by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes.  If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage.

Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, Elane Photography v. Willock. In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonetheless barred the suit; but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”

Remarkably enough, soon after, language found its way into the Indiana statute to make sure that no Indiana court could ever make a similar decision.  Democrats also offered the Republican legislative majority a chance to amend the new act to say that it did not permit businesses to discriminate; they voted that amendment down.

And it seems to me that a lot of people are awfully frantic to defend the Indiana law if it doesn’t actually do anything or allow anything that isn’t already allowed.

See also Indiana’s Mike Pence is starting to look like Lester Maddox — without the spine.

Fallout

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Indiana has been slammed with quite a backlash — much of it from the business community — because of the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Apparently poor Mike Pence had to go on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and try to pretend the RFRA is not really about LGBT discrimination. Instead it’s about big government, or something. See also No More Mr. Nice Blog.

Booman sums it up:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence seems sincerely surprised that so many people think he’s a terrible person for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. At the same time, he appears to be kind of lost at sea because he thought acting like an intolerant anti-gay religious fundamentalist would be popular. This is probably partly because Governor Pence is a genuine jerk, but it’s also because he runs in almost exclusively right-wing circles and consumes almost exclusively right-wing media.

So, he’s kind of an asshole and he surrounds himself with assholes and he gets all his information and most of his feedback from assholes. It’s like he’s living in a giant colon.

That kind of describes the entire American Right. I’ve said many times that one of the fundamental attributes of righties is that no matter how radical and fringe-y their ideas get, they believe deep in their bones that they represent mainstream America and majority opinion. And in those rare moments when reality slaps them hard enough for them to notice that maybe that’s not so, it always comes as a shock.

Sorry I’ve been busy with Zen stuff and end-of-the-month deadlines to write much, but do also note Eric Foner’s Why Reconstruction Matters. Foner is the leading scholar of the Reconstruction era and argues that much of today’s turmoil can be traced back to the failure of Reconstruction to actually reconstruct. Instead, by a few years after the Civil War the white plantation class was back on top in the southern states, and the people freed from slavery still worked for them under oppressive conditions. Today in many schools Reconstruction is still being taught as a time when southern whites were “punished” for the Civil War, or the Lincoln Assassination, or some such, but the reality is that southern whites weren’t punished. After a very brief and failed attempt to enforce some measures of racial equality, southern whites were pretty much allowed to put the South back the way it was before, except that instead of slaves there were sharecroppers.

Rushing to Judgment

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The Dumbest Man on the Internet reports that Andreas Lubitz — the man accused of flying a Germanwing plane into a mountain, killing himself and 149 other people — was a recent Muslim convert. He got this from a “German news website,” he says. The sit is a right-wing blog with the name “news” in its title, but hey, whatever works. Pam Geller and the rest of the Usual Shriekers are repeating this revelation uncritically.

Meantime, it’s slowly coming to light that Lubitz suffered a yet-unspecified illness. Reports that he suffered “depression” or “mental illness” appear to be unsupported. Something was wrong with him, however, and he had been advised by a doctor to take the day off.

The fact is, we don’t really know that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane.  A French prosecutor concluded that’s what Lubitz did, based on the cockpit voice recorder. Leonid Bershidsky of Bloomberg News says that the same evidence is consistent with Lubitz’s being unconscious, however. Maybe his unspecified illness made him pass out, and the pilot was unable to re-enter the cockpit because of “safety” devises that required a response from Lubitz. See also Don’t be so quick to believe that Andreas Lubitz committed suicide by Jeff Wise.

Elsewhere — yes, I saw that Harry Reid is retiring. I am of mixed feelings about that. Your thoughts?

Karma in Indiana

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Today Indiana governor Mike Pence signed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” into law that allows “any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.” It’s understood that the purpose of this is to give homophobe business owners license to discriminate against LGBT customers.

The Indianapolis-based Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had already told Pence that if he signed the bill, the Disciples would cancel their next convention in Indianapolis and find another city.

“Our perspective is that hate and bigotry wrapped in religious freedom is still hate and bigotry,” Todd Adams, the associate general minister and vice president of the Indianapolis-based denomination, told The Indianapolis Star.

Adams said the Disciples of Christ would instead seek a host city that is “hospitable and welcome to all of our attendees.”

And that’s not all.

The law’s passing comes as the N.C.A.A., the Indianapolis-based governing body of college sports, prepares to hold one of the most visible events on the college sports calendar, the Final Four, next week in the Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium.

Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, signed the bill Thursday. Soon after, N.C.A.A. President Mark Emmert said in astatement that the association was “deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees.”

Who Wants to Vote for “Electable” Jeb?

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The GOP establishment has settled on Jeb Bush as the “electable” candidate to carry the Republican banner in 2016. The problem with this theory is that it’s hard to find people who want to vote for him.

Josh Kraushaar of National Journal writes that the Republican elite and the Republican base are not exactly on the same page.

But there are signs that a worst-case, crash-and-burn scenario for Bush is more realistic than even his skeptics recognize. He’s underperforming in early public polls and is receiving a frosty reception from Republican focus groups. His entitled biography is at odds with the Republican Party’s increasing energy from working-class voters, who relate best with candidates who have struggled to make ends meet. The Bush name is a reminder of the past at a time when GOP voters are desperate for new faces. And after losing two straight presidential elections, Republican voters are thinking much more strategically—and aren’t nearly as convinced as the political press that Bush is the strongest contender against Hillary Clinton.

It would be foolish to over-read the results of focus groups, but it’s equally egregious to ignore their findings—especially given that they’re paired with polls that show Bush’s candidacy a tough sell among voters. Last week, Bloomberg and Purple Strategies cosponsored a New Hampshire panel of 10 Republicans, most of whom were hostile to a Bush presidential bid. “I know enough to know I don’t need to keep voting for a Bush over and over again,” one participant said. Several laughed at the notion that he’s the front-runner. Not a single one said they’d support him for president.

The article goes on in this vein for a while. The Bush campaign people have decided that the public just doesn’t know enough about their boy yet. Somehow I don’t think that’s their problem.

Jeb’s entire sales pitch is that he’s the most electable candidate in a general election. Ed Kilgore writes,

The line about voters not buying Bush’s electability argument is especially important, and one I’m not sure anybody’s adequately made before Kraushaar’s column. Electability is supposed to be the Republican Establishment’s ace-in-the-hole, the argument carefully conveyed over time that wears down “the base’s” natural desire for a True Conservative fire-breather. In your head you know he’s right is the not-so-subtle message. But Jeb’s electability credentials are as baffling to regular GOP voters as they are obvious and unimpeachable to elites. …

… Looking at it more generally, the jury is out as to whether the appropriate precedent for Jeb is somebody like Mitt Romney, who gradually won over intraparty skeptics by dint of money, opportunism, and a ruthless ability to exploit rivals’ vulnerability, or somebody like Rudy Giuliani, a guy who looked great until actual voters weighed in. And even that contrast may not capture Jeb’s problem: Rudy did well in early polls.

And then there’s this:

Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment presidential candidate like Jeb Bush, leaders of the nation’s Christian right have mounted an ambitious effort to coalesce their support behind a single social-conservative contender months before the first primary votes are cast.

In secret straw polls and exclusive meetings from Iowa to California, the leaders are weighing the relative appeal and liabilities of potential standard-bearers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and the former governors Rick Perry, of Texas, and Mike Huckabee, of Arkansas.

“There’s a shared desire to come behind a candidate,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a national lobbying group that opposes abortion and equal rights for gays.

There was a time that the Christian right would dutifully support whatever the Republicans told them to support, including Jeb’s little brother. I take it those days are gone.

And Jeb can’t even count on his brother’s friends, the neocons.

Aren’t GOP presidential politics just great? You wake up one morning and suddenly Jeb Bush is the “anti-Israel candidate” in the Republican presidential primary field.

And this is because Jeb occasionally talks to James Baker, and James Baker is no fan of Benjamin Netanyahu. And of course it’s blasphemy on the Right these days to declare anything less than total unquestioning loyalty to Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is not to say Jeb can’t pull it off. His competition doesn’t even rise to the level of clowns; they’re more like punch lines in a lame stand-up act. A lot of insiders will still back him. He will have an endless pool of money. The media will treat him very kindly.

And then there’s this — while declaring that he is “his own man” he’s already holding fundraisers with his former President brother.  Oh, wait …

Calling Out the Press

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I’m ignoring Ted Cruz’s presidential bid announcement and instead will focus on something actually important. Jay Rosen analyzes how the press might cover candidates who are climate change denialists (like Cruz). Some news media (such as the New York Times) now have stated policies saying that climate change denial cannot be taken seriously and are brushing aside their usual position of not taking sides on an issue.

However, that’s not necessarily going to mean they will publicly declare that politicians like Cruz are being ridiculous. In real-world political reporting, much of the press is still falling back on treating climate change denial as a normal campaign position. Others, more cynically, treat it as a strategy — will it help or hurt them on election day? Never mind if it’s true or false.

The earth itself may have something to say here. California is drying up, you know. It’s groundwater supply is shrinking. To a large extent California feeds the rest of the nation; we depend on that one state for a whopping large percentage of our fruits and vegetables. If California becomes the next dust bowl, what will we eat? How will that affect the rest of the economy? And how quickly will Republicans blame Obama?