{"id":182951,"date":"2015-04-29T00:13:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T05:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/04\/29\/joan-fing-walsh-is-calling-obama-a-liar\/"},"modified":"2015-04-29T00:13:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T05:13:00","slug":"joan-fing-walsh-is-calling-obama-a-liar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/04\/29\/joan-fing-walsh-is-calling-obama-a-liar\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan F%$#ing Walsh is Calling Obama a Liar?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Joan Walsh, former editor-in-chief for Salon<\/i> magazine, has been a long time, and vehement supporter of Barack Obama.<\/div>\n

Well, she just called the President a liar on the Trans Pacific Partnership<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on record declaring that the \u201csplit\u201d in the Democratic Party over economic populism has been over-hyped<\/a> by the media, the GOP and conservative Democrats. Democrats have way more in common, when it comes to addressing growing income inequality and declining social mobility, than differences.<\/p>\n

But the divisions over the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) are real, and they\u2019re getting ugly. President Obama has apparently decided reasoning and lobbying isn\u2019t going to be enough to win over skeptics; he\u2019s lately resorted to personal insults. Telling Chris Matthews Tuesday that \u201cI love Elizabeth [Warren]\u2026but she\u2019s wrong on this\u201d was a big wet kiss, compared to what came later.<\/p>\n

On Thursday Obama compared critics of the deal to Sarah Palin and other wingnuts who peddled \u201cdeath panel\u201d lies about the Affordable Care Act, in a speech to supporters at Organizing For America, the offshoot of his campaign juggernaut Obama For America. He escalated his attacks<\/a> when he jumped on a conference call with reporters on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one that gets on my nerves the most is the notion that this is a \u2018secret\u2019 deal,\u201d Obama said. \u201cEvery single one of the critics who I hear saying, \u2018this is a secret deal,\u2019 or send out emails to their fundraising base saying they\u2019re working to prevent this secret deal, can walk over today and read the text of the agreement. There\u2019s nothing secret about it.\u201d He singled out \u201cunions\u201d among the wrongheaded critics of his TPP plans.<\/p>\n

I confess: I haven\u2019t paid close enough attention to the TPP controversy. But when the president started attacking Warren and unions so personally, I got interested. He\u2019s saying they\u2019re either stupid, or lying, or both. It reminded me of the dark days before the 2010 midterm \u201cshellacking,\u201d when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs attacked \u201cthe professional left,\u201d and Vice President Joe Biden told progressives to \u201cstop whining.\u201d That didn\u2019t work; the election was a disaster.<\/p>\n

The anti-progressive rhetoric is getting uglier \u2013 and this time, some of it\u2019s coming from the president. The AFL-CIO\u2019s Thea Lee has worked on global trade issues for 25 years, and \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen it quite as bad as this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Sure, both sides are using strong rhetoric, but the president\u2019s attack on his critics as \u201cdishonest\u201d would imply that he\u2019s the one telling the truth. In fact, here are three big ways the president is lamentably shading the truth when it comes to TPP. <\/p>\n

Secrecy<\/b>: It\u2019s true that members of Congress can personally \u201cwalk over\u201d and \u201cread the text\u201d of the agreement. Alone, without staff, and without taking notes. And they\u2019re prohibited by law from discussing the details with the media or their constituents.  The administration has deemed the negotiations \u201cclassified.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s what Warren means by a \u201csecret deal.\u201d She and Sen. Sherrod Brown wrote to the president <\/a>this weekend asking that he declassify the latest negotiated text and release it, before demanding a \u201cfast track\u201d vote on the agreement.<\/p>\n

Marginalizing opposition as Warren and \u201cthe unions.\u201d Warren is joined by Democrats ranging from frequent ally Brown to pro-business voices like Sen. Chuck Schumer to moderate Sen. Bob Casey. While the president hoped to win support from the Congressional Black Caucus, skeptics remain. And yes, labor has been a loud voice against the deal \u2013 along with the rest of the Democratic base, and then some.<\/p>\n

The coalition opposing TPP includes the National Resources Defense Council, Doctors without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation; critics of certain aspects of the likely deal include New York Times food writer Mark Bittman<\/a> and the AARP. They are concerned about the way TPP could affect not only manufacturing jobs, but drug prices, intellectual property, environmental regulation and food safety. Obama is facing a remarkably broad-based pushback to his plans, and his effort to isolate Warren and unions is disingenuous.<\/p>\n

Denying the vast, pro-corporate power of the \u201cInvestor State Dispute Settlement\u201d panel. The wrangling between Warren and the White House over TPP isn\u2019t new. Ever since her March 4 op-ed<\/a> denouncing the \u201cInvestor State Dispute Settlement\u201d provisions of the trade deal, frankly, administration officials have been trying to make Warren look a little batty.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if you could get my colleagues to be honest, on the Democratic side,\u201d Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Huffington Post<\/a>, \u201cthey will say they\u2019ve been talked to, approached, lobbied and maybe cajoled by more cabinet members on this issue than any issue since Barack Obama\u2019s been president\u2026I wish they put the same effort into minimum wage. I wish they put the same effort into Medicare at 55. I wish they put the same effort into some consumer strengthening on Dodd-Frank.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, though, the pressure hasn\u2019t worked \u2013 and now the administration is distorting the truth. The president can do better than this \u2013 and he\u2019s likely going to have to. Hillary Clinton shouldn\u2019t take bad advice from the media about arbitrarily \u201cdistancing\u201d herself from the Obama administration. But this is a real conflict for the 2016 frontrunner. And on this one, she might have to choose between the president and much of the party base.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The statements are remarkable primarily because of its source.<\/p>\n

Joan Walsh is someone I would describe as an Obamabot, and if he’s lost her on this issue, this is an indication of a significant shift in attitude among Obama supporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Walsh, former editor-in-chief for Salon magazine, has been a long time, and vehement supporter of Barack Obama. Well, she just called the President a liar on the Trans Pacific Partnership: I\u2019m on record declaring that the \u201csplit\u201d in the Democratic Party over economic populism has been over-hyped by the media, the GOP and conservative …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,1016,1020,978,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-international-commerce","category-legislation","category-politics","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}