blue meme

Hearts and Minds

2009-10-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

I just watched the 1974 documentary "Hearts and Minds." It is a pretty powerful piece.

By the end, I had realized that there used to be a pretty good working definition of liberal: someone who had learned the lessons of Vietnam. That definition largely fell out of fashion at some point. (To be fair, so did liberalism itself.) In the 1980s, the favored terminology became "Vietnam Syndrome," Reagan's revisionist fiction that the U.S. would have won but for the treason of the DFHs.

As I watch Barack Obama prepare to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan to support a corrupt and unpopular government, in support of vague and unconvincing strategic goals, eight years into a conflict with no end in sight, I feel forced to admit that he is not a liberal.

The key to a bipartisan healthcare solution: adopt the Nixon plan!

2009-09-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

When I was a freshman in high school, I joined the debating team. I have no idea if it still works this way, but back then all debate competitions nationally were based on a single question, and teams had to be able to take either side of the issue. And so the issues chosen tended to be live issues in society, and that were likely to find significant numbers of people in real life who would either support or oppose.

The issue that year was, as best as I can recall: resolved, that there should be a guaranteed annual income for every American. In other words, during the last year of the Nixon Administration, people were entertaining the idea of a huge expansion of the welfare state, in a way that seems impossibly socialist by today's standards. And do you know who proposed this idea in real life? Richard Nixon.

(I can't find where I related this story before, though I vaguely remember writing about it.)

If that anecdote doesn't convince you of how dramatically the "center" has shifted in the 3+ decades since, then perhaps this will: Richard Nixon (who, after all, created the EPA, normalized relations with China, and pursued detente with the USSR), also proposed health care reform that we should be thrilled to have now.

Here's how Tricky Dick pitched his plan himself back in 1974:

One of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life.

In the last quarter century, we have made remarkable progress toward that goal, opening the doors to millions of our fellow countrymen who were seeking equal opportunities in education, jobs and voting.

Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care.
...
Early last year, I directed the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to prepare a new and improved plan for comprehensive health insurance. That plan, as I indicated in my State of the Union message, has been developed and I am presenting it to the Congress today. I urge its enactment as soon as possible.

The plan is organized around seven principles:

First, it offers every American an opportunity to obtain a balanced, comprehensive range of health insurance benefits;

Second, it will cost no American more than he can afford to pay;
Third, it builds on the strength and diversity of our existing public and private systems of health financing and harmonizes them into an overall system;

Fourth, it uses public funds only where needed and requires no new Federal taxes;

Fifth, it would maintain freedom of choice by patients and ensure that doctors work for their patient, not for the Federal Government.

Sixth, it encourages more effective use of our health care resources;

...
Upon adoption of appropriate Federal and State legislation, the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan would offer to every American the same broad and balanced health protection through one of three major programs:

--Employee Health Insurance, covering most Americans and offered at their place of employment, with the cost to be shared by the employer and employee on a basis which would prevent excessive burdens on either;

--Assisted Health Insurance, covering low-income persons, and persons who would be ineligible for the other two programs, with Federal and State government paying those costs beyond the means of the individual who is insured; and,

--An improved Medicare Plan, covering those 65 and over and offered through a Medicare system that is modified to include additional, needed benefits.
One of these three plans would be available to every American, but for everyone, participation in the program would be voluntary.

The benefits offered by the three plans would be identical for all Americans, regardless of age or income. Benefits would be provided for:
--hospital care;
--physicians' care in and out of the hospital;
--prescription and life-saving drugs;
--laboratory tests and X-rays;
--medical devices;
--ambulance services; and,
--other ancillary health care.

There would be no exclusions of coverage based on the nature of the illness. For example, a person with heart disease would qualify for benefits as would a person with kidney disease.

What Nixon proposed isn't just better than what we have now. It is better than anything today's Republicans have proposed. It is far better than what "Democrat" Max Baucus is now offering. And, if Obama wimps out on Wednesday, it is arguably better than what our "progressive" President will settle for.

Bloggers have been talking about the massive shift of the Overton window since the demonization of the DFHs began decades ago. It is hard to imagine a more effective example of that shift.

The way this story has been touched upon recently has been in connection with the passing of Ted Kennedy, and in the revisionist claim that Teddy's failure to agree to this plan because he was holding out for single payor was his his greatest regret.

My first thought upon seeing Nixon's plan was that it was yet another amusing but useless trivia point. But then I realized how useful it could be to our cause.

When President Obama leans in to the microphone before the Joint Session on Wednesday, he should say something like this:

Ted Kennedy devoted his life to the cause of delivering decent health care to every American regardless of income. The need was there long before he entered Congress in 1962; it is even greater after his passing.

In 1974, Republican Richard Nixon proposed a health care plan that Democrats thought was not good enough. They pushed for a single payor system. In the end, they got nothing.

I want to correct that mistake, and deliver what Ted Kennedy devoted his life to achieving. And so, I propose that we all -- Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate, President and Congress -- do what a Republican President proposed 35 years ago.

I challenge my fellow Democrats -- stand not just with me, but with the Republican President the House nearly impeached in 1974. I challenge Republicans -- do you really want to call what Nixon proposed "communism"?

Here, then, is bi-partisanship: the Nixon-Obama plan.

Would it work? My crystal ball is murky. One downside is that the wingnuts will use this move as an excuse to donate Tricky Dick to us lie-bruls. But c'mon, kids. They've already tried to rebrand another notorious right wing nutjob as one of ours:

If they've turned Hitler into a liberal, how much more damage can they do?

And no less a figure than Noam Chomsky has called Nixon "in many respects the last liberal president." And, of course, there is the fact that while half the wingnutosphere is ready to make Hitler one of us, the other half is busy trying to rehabilitate him.

Back on the debate team, we had a name for a left-field proposal that was calculated to surprise the opposition: a squirrel. Squirrels don't always work, but they can totally disarm a team that can't think on its feet.

So there you go, Mr. President -- your very own squirrel.

The return of Blue Meme's Law

2009-08-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

FEMA death camps.

Obama was born in Kenya.

Steven Hawking would be dead if he was British.

The death panels.

Keep the government's grubby hands off of Medicare.

This nonsense has completely taken over -- no one is talking about anything else. And I told you about this kind of thing almost 4 years ago.

A University of Kansas professor who drew criticism for e-mails he wrote deriding Christian fundamentalists over creationism resigned Wednesday as chairman of the Department of Religious Studies.

Paul Mirecki stepped aside on the recommendation of his colleagues, according to Barbara Romzek, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
...
Mirecki had planned to teach a course in the spring that examined creationism and intelligent design after the State Board of Education adopted science standards treating evolution as a flawed theory. Originally called 'Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies,' the course was canceled last week at Mirecki's request.
...
On Monday, Mirecki was treated at a Lawrence hospital for head injuries after he said he was beaten by two men on a country road. He said the men referred to the creationism course.

A few years back, while mired in some ugly, painful litigation, I formulated a sort of corollary to Murphy's law: In any situation, the craziest person in the room controls the agenda. Since then, I've seen this rule validated in a wide variety of contexts. Reasonable people tend to try to accommodate, find common ground and compromise. Those with limited capacity for reason tend to take harder and more extreme positions, and take more extreme actions to defend those positions. And, sadly, the dynamics of such a conflict tend to favor the crazy.

Until I read this story, I had not thought about applying the rule to our political situation. But it fits rather well. I sincerely doubt we will ever read reports of Darwinist thugs going after Creationists with tire irons. Anti-war activists are unlikely to gun down even the most flagrant chicken hawks. And the most violence lefties are likely to let loose on the far right is the pie thrown at assclown Ann Coulter.

But the right wing is consistently the craziest person in the room. So we talk about what they want to talk about, we compromise in hopes of bringing the discussion back to the realm of civility. But it never works, because our very approach rewards their misbehavior. Concessions merely move the midpoint, and lead to new and more extreme positions on the right, and further escalations of rhetoric and, cf. Professor Mirecki's hospital bill, actions.

Mirecki's politics provoked a physical response from the crazies. Their thuggery produced the results they wanted. The voice of reason in Kansas is now thoroughly cowed. I am not questioning his decision, but we need to understand that they must see this outcome as a victory, and are likely to be emboldened by it.

The Brownshirts had little trouble controlling the agenda 70 years ago. Their spiritual heirs are well on their way to such control again.

I saw many things back then. But I did not see that electing Obama would be the tipping point, the signal event that sends us the rest of the way to the place Bush and Cheney and Yoo wanted to go, but never quite reached. Read.

Birther defects

2009-07-31T09:42:00.001-07:00

One of my ongoing themes has been the oft-supported hypothesis that conservatives tend to have a long distance relationship with reality. How else do you explain this:

Poll: 28% Of Republican Base Are Birthers

A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll finds that 77% of Americans believe President Obama was Indeed Born in the United States, with only 11% saying he was not -- but there's no clear verdict among Republicans.

Among Republicans, it's a much weaker plurality of only 42% who say Obama was born in the U.S., with 28% saying he was not, with a very high undecided number of 30%. Among Democrats, the number is 93%-4%, and among independents it's 83%-8%.

There really isn't room for on-the-other-hand-ism on this one. Birthers are manifestly several cards short of a full deck.

I have been critical of the level of press coverage this nonsense has gotten, but the poll suggests that there is some justification for it. And the fact that the coverage has not put out the fire (if I had to bet, I'd say it has actually pushed the birther numbers UP), confirms that we are not dealing with a rational process: at best, evidence and logic are to these folks as a bicycle is to a fish. At worst, efforts to correct simply hardens their resolve to remain bonkers.

On the one hand, the fact that the numbers are well short of the Bush era insanity is encouraging. On the other:

Birtherism is heavily concentrated in the South. Only 47% of Southerners say Obama was born in the United States, 23% say he was not, and 30% aren't sure.

Which means that Congress will continue to enjoy the contributions of the Inhofe/Shelby variety....

WaPo: Haggling over the price

2009-07-03T20:22:00.001-07:00

I have a pretty good idea of how this happened. Suits with MBAs have some pretty standard questions when trying to generate revenue for a mature company:

(a) can we find new customers for our existing products?

(b) can we sell new products to our existing customers?

and

(c) are there underexploited assets we can monetize?

Finding new customers for their existing product? Hah. They moved online, but (a) the money generated has been minimal, and (b), as the Froomkin saga shows, there are some real incompatibilities between old and new.

Selling new products to existing customers? Well, that depends on how you define "customer." If you define it as "subscribers," well, good luck with that. But I strongly suspect that subscribers are merely tolerated lubricants of the real market -- the Beltway glitterati. They seem to actually like what the WaPo does. And by the twisted internal logic we are talking about here, it would make sense to find new ways to do business with them.

But what to sell them? Some very senior people at the Post obviously agreed that their biggest underexploited asset was access.

What is most instructive about this is that they saw nothing objectionable in auctioning off that access in such a direct and explicit way.

And you can look at that as part of another classic MBA move: redefine the market. A high-priced management consultant would challenge them to stop thinking of themselves as being in the newspaper business -- a dying industry. Some brainiac probably asked, "you have easy access to powerful government officials. That access is very valuable. Who makes money selling it?"

Duh. Lobbyists. So acting like lobbyists, and monetizing the very thing the WaPo has spent decades hording, must have made perfect sense.

Somerby has a slightly different take. He knows his stuff, but -- if the goal of the evening was to impose the establishment line on the WaPo's own reporters, why take the risky step of charging corporations to "Sponsor" (and print up flyers)?

And so, in a more dramatic fashion than I would have ever imagined, they have confirmed every bad thing bloggers believe about them. Most impressive.

Turd in a Guilded Cage

2009-06-25T14:57:00.002-07:00

So HuffPo guy Nico Pitney, who has been jacked into events in Iran while the Washington Press Corpse has been doing its usual fluff, was tabbed to convey a question from Iran at a presser.

Here's Dana Milbank defending his turf:

Newspapermen used to belong to guilds. And the primary purpose of these guilds, which date back more than 1000 years, was to keep competition out. Via wikipedia:

The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society. They often depended on grants of letters patent by an authority or monarch to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials.

And the journamalistic version:

The Newspaper Guild is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933 who noticed that unionized printers and truck drivers were making more money than they did. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practices.

See much honesty in journalism in Milbank's pique?

As Milbank's furious tantrum demonstrates, the quality of the work is irrelevant. The fact that Pitney asked a much better question than 90+% of the drones around him dared to ask is irrelevant. And the fact that Obama wouldn't answer his question (which completely undermines any claim of substantive collusion) is irrelevant. Jeff Gannon is irrelevant, as is the complete indifference of Milbank & Friends to his extended stay in the pressroom. What matters to the Guild is that their ability to protect their turf has suffered another blow.

The end really can't come soon enough for these guys.

Man of Guantanamo

2009-06-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

I am a pretty picky consumer of culture these days. One of the forms of entertainment I no longer much care for is musical theater. Andrew Lloyd Webber makes me barf; almost everything else is a revival or otherwise recycled. There are perhaps two shows that I consider worthy of such resurrection: West Side Story and Man of La Mancha. The former is so insanely difficult and demanding that it is virtually never staged (I've only seen the 1961 film); the latter is much easier to find (I've seen at least four stage productions).

One thing they have in common is their centuries-old source material -- Shakespeare and Cervantes are almost perfect contemporaries. (The two Broadway shows launched only a few years apart as well.) Another similarity is the importance of that material: Don Quixote is widely considered the first modern novel. And of course they are both tragedies in which optimism collides with a dark, hostile reality.

An interesting diffference between the works of the two authors is that Shakespeare's plays are often staged in updated contexts (the whole point of West Side Story); La Mancha is almost always staged in its original context. The whole play-within-a-play takes place in a prison where the protagonist awaits his turn before the Spanish Inquisition. That context has seemed sui generis for most of the 40+ years since its first run.

Until now.

And that's why I'm prattling on about Broadway -- I just realized that Man of La Mancha ought to be staged in a new prison with a Spanish name: Gitmo.

(It turns out I am not the first to think of this, and there have been small productions that are explicit, and a more mainstream one that drew explicit parallels in the program without changing the setting. But I think this is a textbook case in which familiar art could make an uncomfortable but needed point to people who might not otherwise hear it. Were I to stage it now, the play would start conventionally during the Inquisition, but when the play-within ends, the scene would be Guantanamo.)

More on La Mancha in context here. If you don't know the show and are tempted, skip the movie and find a stage production.

Free John Demjanjuk

2009-05-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Deported by the United States, retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at a Nazi death camp in World War II.

Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demjanjuk was on the plane and that its destination is Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk's request to block deportation and about 3 1/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) is wanted on a Munich arrest warrant that accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The legal case spans three decades.

I really don't see how we can allow Demjanjuk's prosecution to go forward.

Would it not be unfair to "prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect (their country) for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by (their government)"?

Surely we can agree that Demjanjuk was "pressured by (his) fear, by (his) sense of duty to a fearful nation, led by a (government) awash in fear—all of this swimming in (his) head and clouding that moral compass—acted in good faith, from (his) perceptions." Under such circumstances, “no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the (Ministry) of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished.”

WWII was, of course, a "dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

Indeed, "the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now ... to excoriate those who kept (their country) safe ..."

Torture in three grafs

2009-05-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

As awful as The New Republic can be, this is brilliant in its economy:

First, there's no such thing as a government policy of "torturing terrorists. " There's only a policy of torturing people the government thinks are terrorists. Many of the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, subjected to agonizing stress positions, turned out not to be terrorists--not because the soldiers who captured them were venal, but because they were human.
Second, torture is designed to force prisoners to provide an answer the interrogator already knows. The torturer relents when his subject provides the "correct" answer. Intelligence gathering, by contrast, is designed to garner answers the interrogator does not already know.
Finally, yes, we can imagine ticking-time-bomb situations where regular interrogation methods work too slowly and extreme measures might prove helpful. But this premise bears the same relationship to the question of legalizing torture as the morality of stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family does to the question of legalizing theft.

Pass the popcorn

2009-05-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.
The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.
The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.
Some of the guards who were convicted of abuse want to return to court and argue that the previous administration sanctioned the abuse but withheld its role from their trials.

In other words, the patsies want another go at the "only following orders" defense -- the same one folks who set up the patsies now want to use themselves.

2009-04-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

Josh Marshall, April 2009:

Being bold means taking responsibility for being bold. As I've argued before, I think the answer to the ticking time bomb rationale for torture is this: that in the extremely unlikely circumstance that government officials ever found themselves in that position of having a ticking time bomb ticking away, they might have to make the decision to break the law. Not fudge it or keep their actions hidden, but take the decision on their own responsibility that it was the best thing to do in the situation -- despite it being wrong as a general matter -- and then bring their decision to attention of the people and law enforcement authorities and throw themselves on the mercy of the public. Thomas Jefferson explored a similar question and argument for the position a president could find himself in when faced with extra-constitutional or even unconstitutional actions.

In any case, if your patriotism is such that in an extreme situation you'd risk your own liberty to defend the lives of Americans, that's courage. But nothing else really cuts it.

Me, December 2005:

If you really believe in some higher law, then you should be willing to pay a temporal price for your willingness to torture in its service. Then when the time comes, perhaps you can explain to your higher authority why you think making it safe for heathens like me to torture with impunity makes ours a better world.

I feel there is a strong categorical imperative against torture. I am also in at least some contexts a utilitarian. I honestly don't know what I would do if faced with this situation. But I do know that if I honestly believed that by doing something I considered wrong I would certainly prevent the suffering of millions, the illegality of my actions would not be a major factor in my decision. I would much prefer that my government declare torture illegal and risk jail in your hypothetical situation than sleep in my own bed in a country that condones such barbarity.

Moral decisions involve costs. What personal price would you pay to prevent the Holocaust? I would like to believe I am strong and noble enough not just to commit a personal wrong, but to pay the price for that transgression, to benefit the many. And I would hope that, when compared to the millions of deaths and countless other horrors prevented, my own punishment for murder would have only trifling weight in my personal calculus.

Doing the right thing often means paying a price. Ask Joseph Wilson. Ask Sibel Edmonds. Ask Bunnatine Greenhouse. Torture is, at the very least, almost always the wrong thing. I want my country to make sure that torturers pay a price, and I’d rather punish the one-in-a-million person whose actions are justified than encourage others with motives less pure to sin with impunity.

And that's a big part of why I don't post so much nowadays.

Clarity

2009-04-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

A simple answer to a simple question:

It has been known for years that torture is useless as a technique for intelligence gathering. Subjects will say anything to make it stop. All it is good for is extracting false confessions. So why would the Bush Administration engage in torture?

Because false confessions were not just an unfortunate side effect of the torture; they were the point of the torture.

Update: Frank Rich goes there:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Monsters

2009-04-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

Obama released the memos.

I have quickly skimmed the first one, available here. It is notable for the casual, detached manner with which it treats unequivocal torture techniques. (It is also notable for the obscene way in which Bybee blindered himself in order to reach the desired outcome. (You handed me carefully selected and misleading "facts;" I will accept each of them as gospel and make no effort to put them in the context the rest of the world takes for granted in order to bless what you do).

My first, naive thought was that now, at long last, the dead-enders will finally have to admit how wrong they have been. That lasted about ten seconds. I quickly remembered that the Bush crowd remains as immune to facts as they were before; these memos will change nothing. Bush was part of their "us;" he shared with the wingnuts their hatred of the same "them;" and no revelation, no matter how horrible, will change that.

My next, less naive thought was about the recent brouhaha about the Homeland Security report warning us against right-wing extremists, and how the Malkins and Boehners are asking, in their best faux outrage voices, if we mean them.

Well, Michelle, if you read these memos and continue to stand with the thuggery of the Bush Administration... then yes, we mean you. If you can look upon such unequivocoal, grotesque criminality and still defend those who enabled and perpetrated it... then yes, we mean you. If, now that the power to eavesdrop without warrant, detain without evidence, and imprison without trial is held by those with whom you disagree, you would still justify the widespread abuse of those very powers... then you should not be heard to complain if the bell tolls for thee.

Update: Sully nails it:

This is what Hannah Arendt wrote of when she talked of the banality of evil.

Twice:

No mention of the torture memos appears right now on the Drudge Report (which provides news of a prank at Dominos pizza), Instapundit (which mentions the new DVD for the Lord of The Rings trilogy), Pajamas Media, or Michelle Malkin. They are reacting to the evidence of war crimes committed by the president of the United States the way they did at the time the crimes were committed.

No surprise.

Update #2: I don't always agree with Sully, but the man can write. This is just dead on, at least until he gets to this part:

But my view is also that the president has acted wisely in ... (declining prosecution). As president in wartime, he knows how wounding it would be to engage in this kind of activity right now.

The "wartime" dodge is a familiar one, especially to Sully. But even if you buy into that paradigm, ours is not a war for territory or resources. You may believe, as Victor Davis Hanson nonsensically argued, that they hate us for who we are, or you may be capable of grasping that they hate us for what we do. Here the distinction is without a difference. Both paradigms are reinforced by letting the perps walk. Both are undercut if they are punished. Indeed, our enemies bomb us in order to punish them, because they know we won't. The way to stop fueling the fires is to stop acting like beasts, and to punish our own monsters.

Nostalgia

2009-04-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

Remember when the Republican machine was an overwhelming juggernaut, dominating news cycles, playing public sentiment like a fiddle, and utterly dominating our national discourse?

What the hell happened? Now they can't tie their shoes without tying left and right together and triggering domino-like pratfalls among their colleagues. They still get attention from the press, of course, but that only seems to drive them further off into the deep brush as they lurch from gaffe to embarrassment.

I know they were never as good even we gave them credit for. But the fall is still remarkable.

At the rate they are going they will lose still more seats in Congress in 2010, which will make it 3 in a row. Has that ever been done before?

GD II

2009-03-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

Did you know that for a couple of decades after it ended, the conflagration that started in 1914 and ended in 1918 was called the "Great War"? It was only when another, even more deadly and encompassing war came along that it was called World War I.

For the seven decades after it ended, we have referred to the economic meltdown that lasted from 1929 through the late 1930s as the "Great Depression." How long before we start calling it Great Depression I?

I can has talk show appearancez?

2009-03-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

Top Dems Planning Amped Up Efforts To Elevate Rush As GOP’s Public Face

Top Democratic operatives are planning a stepped up campaign to promote Rush Limbaugh as the public face of the GOP — an effort that will include recruiting Dem governors to make this case on talk shows, getting elected officials to pen Op eds arguing it, and running more ads pushing it, a senior Democratic operative says.

Key leadership staff in the House and Senate, and in all the political committees, have been encouraged by senior Dem operatives to push this message wherever possible, the operative says.

“I’m encouraging everybody to go out and say this,” Paul Begala, the well-known Dem strategist, just told me by phone. “I’m hot for this. Let’s get this out every way we can.”

...

“I’m encouraging every Democrat, every progressive, to be pointing out this powerful but painful truth: The party of Lincoln is now the Party of Limbaugh,” Begala continued. “We should make every Republican answer this: Why do they want our president to fail?”

Your friendly neighborhood Blue Meme, June 2006:

The question, "Are you an Ann Coulter Republican?" should confront every Republican running for every office in the land, from President to dog catcher. Every Democratic candidate should accuse his or her opponent of being in favor of poisoning Supreme Court Justices and killing Congressmen. At every opportunity, every Republican should be made to answer: "Do you agree with Ann Coulter that the 9/11 widows are witches and harpies?" And George W. Bush, Tony Snow, Dick Cheney, Laura Bush and Barney (the only lapdog with a good excuse) should be confronted with these questions as well.

Republicans have been able to maintain a Kabuki symbiosis with all manner of cave-dwellers by speaking in an elaborate, dog whistle-like code. They hold racists, homophobes and rapture acolytes close enough to keep their votes without ever having to either publicly embrace or disavow such extreme viewpoints. That relationship with white-sheet America has been essential to their electoral strategy for decades.

But Ann Coulter has furnished us with a turn-key solution. We can now easily put them in the logical fork they should have been forced into years ago: disavow Coulter's vile, sub-human ravings, or embrace them. If they distance themselves from her, they risk alienating the mouth-breathers who demand such red meat as the price of their loyalty. If they embrace her, they lose significant swaths of the middle - the decent folks who are the reason Republicans talk about Dred Scott and "state's rights" rather than criminalizing abortion and gutting civil rights laws.

Update:

I can has seenyur advizor post?

Updatez:

I is in yr televishun.

Updatezz:

And the fratricide begins. Kinda fun to watch leaderless authoritarians all goose-stepping in different directions...

UpdateUpdate: via:

Letter to the President

2009-02-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

Hon. Barack Obama
POTUS
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington DC

February 7, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

You can't compromise with crazy.

Sincerely,

Blue Meme

How to dismantle an atomic wingut

2009-01-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

I've taken a long ~~haitus~~ hiatus from blogging here, but I have not been able to keep my yap shut. I've been commenting a lot at Glennzilla's place, and occasionally elsewhere.

But the most fun has been a recent string at Balkinization. Brian Tamanaha posted about a ridiculous WSJ column penned by Mr. Torture himself, John Yoo. The post explored, among other things, the ways in which Yoo seemed to be trying to shift the blame for his own criminality.

It is generally immpossible to pick up a comment thread in midstream, but here is the exchange between myself and a particular trollish conservative there.

My open:

First, there is a subtle shell game being played by those who seek to defend both Bush and Yoo. Yoo is blameless because he was just writing memos; Bush is blameless because he just relied on those memos. If what Bush did was, but for the memos, illegal, then there should be consequences for SOMEBODY. It makes a mockery of the advice of counsel defense to allow it to be used this way.

Second, I think those defending Yoo ignore the fact that the role of an attorney is dependent on context. At one extreme, a criminal defense attorney can and should be aggressive in offering any colorable claim on behalf of the accused -- about an event that is obviously in the past. An attorney in private practice advising a client about a possible future action is and should be somewhat more constrained, and should fairly represent the current state of the law. The opposite extreme is a lawyer representing The People and asked by the executive about future actions. In that circumstance, the highest duty is to see that justice is done. The first is an advocate; the third is supposed to be neutral; the second is somewhere in between.

Yoo and Bybee should have been neutral. Instead they were advocates.

If there are no consequences for bad advocacy, I fear for the future of the legal profession, and for our legal system.

Conservative "Charles" takes the bait:

OLC is an advocate, certainly not neutral.

And the trap is sprung:

Care to back your assertion up, Charles?

Because I can back up mine:

"OLC’s core function is to help the President fulfill his constitutional duty to uphold the Constitution and “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” in all of the varied work of the executive branch. OLC provides the legal expertise necessary to ensure the lawfulness of presidential and executive branch action, including contemplated action that raises close and difficult questions of law. To fulfill this function appropriately, OLC must provide advice based on its best understanding of what the law requires. OLC should not simply provide an advocate’s best defense of contemplated action that OLC actually believes is best viewed as unlawful. To do so would deprive the President and other executive branch decisionmakers of
critical information and, worse, mislead them regarding the legality of contemplated action.

OLC’s tradition of principled legal analysis and adherence to the rule of law thus is constitutionally grounded and also best serves the interests of both the public and the presidency, even though OLC at times will determine that the law precludes an action that a President strongly desires to take."

Says who?

Says them:

Walter E. Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General 1993-96
Dawn Johnsen, Acting Assistant Attorney General 1997-98; Deputy AAG 1993-97
Randolph Moss, Assistant Attorney General 2000-01, Acting 1998-2000; Deputy AAG 1996-98
Christopher Schroeder, Acting Assistant Attorney General 1997; Deputy AAG 1994-96
Joseph R. Guerra, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1999-2001
Beth Nolan, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1996-99; Attorney Advisor 1981-85
Todd Peterson, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1997-99; Attorney Advisor 1982-85
Cornelia T.L. Pillard, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1998-2000
H. Jefferson Powell, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Consultant 1993-2000
Teresa Wynn Roseborough, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1994-1996
Richard Shiffrin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 1993-97
William Michael Treanor, Deputy Assistant Attorney General 1998-2001
David Barron, Attorney Advisor 1996-99
Stuart Benjamin, Attorney Advisor 1992-1995
Lisa Brown, Attorney Advisor 1996-97
Pamela Harris, Attorney Advisor 1993-96
Neil Kinkopf, Attorney Advisor 1993-97
Martin Lederman, Attorney Advisor 1994-2002
Michael Small, Attorney Advisor 1993-96

http://www.acslaw.org/files/2004%20programs_OLC%20principles_white%20paper.pdf

Charles then brings a different paper clip to a different gunfight:

Mark:

As I already pointed out to you, the primary task of a wartime President is protecting U.S. citizens. He doesn't need the AUMF (or even the Supreme Court) for that.

I really do have better things to do. But when they set the table for me so beautifuilly:

Charles asserts (without citation, to be sure) that "the primary task of a wartime President is protecting U.S. citizens."

But the Presidential oath of office (the very one he perhaps feels was improperly administered?) provides:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Seems the founders thought our common good would perforce follow if our highest laws are but upheld. And they strictly circumscribed the ability of any president to "protect the people" in a way that violates the law. I am unaware of any alternative oath for times of war, declared or otherwise.

Charles assumes the conclusion -- Circulus in Probando.

At that point, the vital signs became faint:

bluememe:

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

I must admit feeling a bit guilty, but that's how it is with guilty pleasures:

I don't normally waste my time with trolls, but I don't mind offering feedback to the author of the trollbot program posting responses under the name "Charles."

Your bot responded to my comment pointing out that the previous trollbot comment was factually wrong by commenting:

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

The phrase comes from a dissent in Terminiello v. Chicago, a case in which the Supreme Court overturned the disorderly conduct conviction of a priest whose anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rantings at a rally had incited a riot. The Court held that Chicago's breach of the peace ordinance violated the First Amendment.

It was also used, in slightly different form, in the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, a case in which the Supremes determined that laws permitting stripping draft evaders of their citizenship are unconstitutional. And the full quote refers repeatedly to the powers of Congress to enact laws, rather than the right of the executive to ignore them.

There is no support in any of these opinions for the proposition that the Constitution is merely aspirational.

While a random number generator paired to a list of incoherent talking points may fairly simulate the conversation of the average conservative, the Turing test remains beyond your grasp, alas.

To which Charles replied:

I am not a program.

Do wingnuts blog of electric sheep?

The whole string is here.

Blogiversary bookends

2008-11-07T18:39:00.000-08:00

The first entry in this blog was posted on November 7, 2004:

angry
pissed. frustrated. perplexed. but mostly pissed.

What a difference fours years make, eh? On November 10, 2004, I linked to the Sorry Everybody website, where liberals apologized for our country to the rest of the world; now we see pictures of ecstatic reactions from all around the world. Then, cartoons looked like this:

And this:

Ah, those were the days....

In many ways it makes sense to stop here.

In a micro sense, readership has, after growing to a reasonable level, retreated to numbers not much larger than when we first started. And growing is harder now than it was then; the blogosphereic firmament is pretty static at this point, and this blog's impact on it rounds to zero.

More importantly, in a macro sense, the distance from Kerry's loss to Obama's win has been traversed. I think the blogosphere has had a major role. And I have been willing to be one of countless minions in the army of ants swarming the stupid. I think the blogosphere has a real role going forward as well, but is there sufficient return on investment from this one small platform? I will have to ponder that one. I am sometimes pleased by the sound of my own voice here, but self-indulgence is a luxury, and these are tough times. It is nice having a place to vent, but there comes a time when blogs must be beaten into ploughshares.

Anyway, much has been said and (collectively) accomplished. So:

Proud.

Cautiously hopeful. Relieved. Strangely wistful. But mostly proud.

The solution to the Lieberman problem

2008-11-07T11:43:00.000-08:00

Joe Lieberman is simply amazing in his burning need and undeniable ability to make himself important in the face of overwhelming evidence of irrelevance.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has reached out to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) about the prospect of joining the Republican conference, but Lieberman is still bargaining with Democratic leaders to keep his chairmanship, according to Senate aides in both parties.
"Senator Lieberman's preference is to stay in the caucus, but he's going to keep all his options open," a Lieberman aide said. "McConnell has reached out to him and at this stage his position is he wants to remain in the caucus but losing the chairmanship is unacceptable."

The solution is so obvious: Obama should offer Loserman a senior administration position. A real Dem will take his Senate seat; Obama looks magnanimous; and Joe gets canned the minute he (inevitably) goes off script.

And continuing the "echoes of "West Wing" parallels," the Obama team should announce that Lieberman has accepted even before he is asked, and effusively praise his patriotism, bipartisanship and willingness to put country before personal interest.

Heh.

Song without words

2008-11-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

Not "Not my President" any more

2008-11-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

I have never felt what I feel tonight.

Words fail.

The closest thing I can compare it to was watching Neil Armstrong step off the ladder and into immortality. I was only 10 years old, but I grasped the magnitude and improbability of the accomplishment.

Almost 40 years later, the next giant leap.

Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, the give and take and the gap between promise and fulfillment will surely return. Tonight, I exalt in my country.

He got game

2008-11-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

I put in a couple of hours volunteering on the phone bank at the local Obama office today. I did the same thing 4 years ago, and the difference was striking.

In 2004, the office was small, the volunteers sparse and low-energy, and the targets of the calls not too happy to receive them.

This time, there were at least 50 people jamming the office, and probably more than 75. The place hummed with enthusiasm, and we overflowed the available space (I made my calls from the parking lot). And out of perhaps 100 calls, I only had one or two hangups -- I suspect the list was better, and the country was more receptive to the message.

I'd guess that in just the two hours I was there, more than 5000 calls were lobbed into Pennsylvania from just one office in suburban California. Extrapolate that by perhaps 25 California offices (I don't know the number, but that is probably conservative) and maybe 12 hours and you get more than a half million calls just on election day.

Yeah, he got game.

More of that irony stuff

2008-10-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

The wingnuts keep insisting that the Democratic nominee for the top slot is not a natural born citizen.

Their preferred candidate keeps proving she must be one, because she sure as hell couldn't pass a citizenship test.

The irony, the irony...

2008-10-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens can no longer vote FOR a Senator, but he is still free to vote AS a Senator.

How strange.

More economics

2008-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I dismantled an argument from an elite econ prof from Harvard. I now see that I had some company:

Like Economists For Obama. Which I take as evidence that (a) I was right and (b) that there are more reality-based economists than I thought.

I was also interested (though not surprised) to read what a Bush tool Mankiw is.

Governor Epimenides

2008-10-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

It's a little jarring to hear John McCain and Sarah Palin complain about "elites." We are, after all, talking about two wealthy and powerful Republican politicians. And yet, complain they do.
In the second part of his interview with the members of the Republican ticket, NBC's Brian Williams inquired about exactly who the "elite" are.

"Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else.... So anyone who thinks that they are -- I guess -- better than anyone else, that's -- that's my definition of elitism," Palin replied. [...]

Ms. Palin obviously disdains those who think they are "better than anyone else." Which is another way of saying she thinks they are inferior -- that she is therefore better than these elitists are. But then ... she fits the definition of an elitist... so then....

Reminds me of the infamous self-referential Epimenides paradox*:

Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars."

Of course, if pre-Socratic Epimenides had been prescient enough to say "all Republicans are liars," the world of philosophy would have had to evolve with one less paradox to ponder.

*More accurately, the Liar Paradox.

The return of the Friedman Unit

2008-10-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

If you were put in charge of meting out justice -- not under our system of law, but just plain karmic righteousness, but you had to pick only one of the following ways to put the ledger back in balance -- which would you pick?

(A) Put Cheney, Bush, Rummy, Feith, Wolfowitz in glass boxes on public view in the Hague for a little Eichmann-in-Jerusalem action; or

(B) Force every pundit, columnist and TV meat puppet who helped put and keep (i)Bush in office and (ii)our military in Iraq to be silenced forevermore.

On the moral culpability scale, (A) is the winner. But if you think in terms of minimizing future evil, I think you have to go with (B), because the A-list folks will be neutered come January; but our idiotic pundit class will live on to poison all attempts to move to a rational plane. To wit: Tom Friedman is unrepentant, will have his bully pulpit for years to come, and is just as stupid as ever.

Update: Speaking of unrepentant asshattery, and about culpable media pressing on regardless, Judith Miller is going to Fox News.

You can't make this stuff up.

Going for the sympathy vote?

2008-10-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

When I saw this still I assumed it was Photoshopped:

Apparently it wasn't:

I think we are about to find out if there is a point at which schadenfreude becomes too guilty a pleasure.

Update: Just realized what McCain now reminds me of:

After 8 wonderful years of President Chance the Gardener, the Republicans now offer us Ruprecht.

Those wacky cosmic tumblers

2008-10-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

Me, 10/7:

The McCainiacs have to be kicking themselves -- they thought that the "success" of the surge would turn their biggest liability into a decisive plus. In fact, all the surge has done is demote the Iraq issue in the minds of voters.

George Will, 10/9:

The success of the surge in Iraq, for which McCain justly claims much credit, is one reason why foreign policy has receded to the margins of the electorate's mind, thereby diminishing the subject with which McCain is most comfortable and which is Obama's largest vulnerability.

I stand by my scare quotes, and would argue with Will's gloss, but on the whole we are in some strange times when George Will and I agree on anything.

Why it won't work

2008-10-06T18:22:00.001-07:00

Because it is simply too late to make going negative effective.

The fundamental requirement for a negative campaign to work is that you have to define your opponent before he or she does it. Obama has already effectively defined himself -- the first debate really sealed that deal. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression and all that.

The McCainiacs have to be kicking themselves -- they thought that the "success" of the surge would turn their biggest liability into a decisive plus. In fact, all the surge has done is demote the Iraq issue. People have already made up their minds that McCain's worst issue is the one that is most important to them. Had they seen it coming, they would likely have run a very different campaign. But their inability to see things coming is what the election is really about, isn't it?

Unless bin Laden gives McCain a helluva present in the form of an October Surprise, I don't see how anything McCain can do now will erase this lead.

Say Anything

2008-10-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

There was the good kind:

And then there is the bad kind:

Old flame cited as part of McCain's Latin experience

Sen. John McCain's senior foreign policy advisor cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate's decades-long interest in Latin America.
Speaking at an Americas Conference panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president's Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain's, who recently emerged in the press.

If looking out your window at Russia makes you a Kremlinologist....

Flunking the professor

2008-09-25T14:32:00.001-07:00

Long ago, I was an economics major. I was good enough at it to be asked to participate in the departmental honors program. But I turned away from it for several reasons. One of them came back to me with a vengeance when I read, via Sully, how Harvard econ Prof Greg Mankiw argues against the push for warrants in the bailout:

This is essentially the assertion made in David Leonhart's column in the NY Times on Wednesday. And it again illustrates that we would all be better off if high schools taught the Modigliani-Miller theorem. MM implies that the price of the asset (again,assuming the auction gets it right) will adjust to offset the value of any warrants Treasury receives. In this case of a reverse auction, imagine that the price is set at $10. If Treasury instead demands a warrant for future gains of some sort, then the price will rise in the expected amount of the warrant -- say that's $2. Then the price Treasury pays for the asset will be $12. Some people might prefer to get $12 in cash and give up a warrant worth $2 in expected value. Fine, that's a choice to be made. But the assertion that somehow warrants are needed is simply wrong.

Now I didn't study the Modigliani-Miller theorem. But I knew, as soon as I read that passage, that Mankiw was wrong, and I knew why. And what I knew I can teach you in two minutes, after which you too can slam 90% of "markets are magic" economic claptrap.

So what is the Modigliani-Miller theorem? I wandered over to Wikipedia, and read the following.

The basic theorem states that, in the absence of taxes, bankruptcy costs, and asymmetric information, and in an efficient market, the value of a firm is unaffected by how that firm is financed.^[1] It does not matter if the firm's capital is raised by issuing stock or selling debt. It does not matter what the firm's dividend policy is. Therefore, the Modigliani-Miller theorem is also often called the capital structure irrelevance principle.

Everything you need is in the first sentence, and you don't need to even understand what follows. This theory, like 99% of economic theory, assumes a state of the world that, in the immortal words of one of my economics profs, "is a special case." This magic theory assumes:

1. No taxes
2. No bankruptcy
3. No information asymmetries
4. An efficient market

See the problem yet?

Krugman:

So now the whole rationale for the plan is “price discovery”: we’re going to throw lots of taxpayer funds into the pot because that will let us find the true values of troubled assets, which are higher than the fire sale prices out there, and so balance sheet will improve, confidence will return, etc, etc..

Does that sound to you like information symmetry?

Krugman:

...mortgage-related assets are currently being sold at “fire-sale” prices, which don’t reflect their true, “hold to maturity” value; we’re going to pay true value — and that will make everyone’s balance sheet look better and restore confidence to the markets.
As I said, this is really a giant version of the slap-in-the-face theory: markets are getting hysterical, and the feds can calm them down by buying when everyone else is selling.

Does that sound to you like an efficient market?

Anbody seen a business deal lately that didn't have tax implications (most are DRIVEN by the tax impacts)? And don't get me started on the bankruptcy aspect, which is what got us here in the first place.

So, lessee.... that's at least two, and potentially four, out of four logical predicates violated. The whole reason we are in this mess is that the market failed. The government is stepping in because there are no other buyers -- a textbook non-efficient market situation. And our good professor wants to point to a theory that imposes very strict requirements for market dynamics in order to apply.

And THAT'S why I didn't become an economist. Because everyone carefully states those assumptions, but then ignores them in practice -- because if economists limit themselves to applying these theories to contexts where the assumptions are not violated, well, they don't get to talk so much.

What oughta be taught in high school, Professor, is that textbook economics tends not to map onto the real world so well.

Ooh yeah, I like...

2008-09-24T16:46:00.001-07:00

John Cole susses out the real reason McSame is heading to DC:

The real reason is probably twofold. First, he is getting pummeled in the polls.

Second, McCain’s entire campaign is composed of lobbyists, and they need to be in Washington to get their cut of the $700 billion. They can’t miss this shot at the trough.

This is the Haley's Comet of Congressional spending -- I could retire on the rounding errors to a single day's interest on $700,000,000,000. No lobbyist with a pulse wants to miss out on catching a few crumbs now.

Is it too late to register?

The Joy of Misanthropy

2008-09-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Taibbi:

"Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

"And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – and this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation."

Hey, Nineteen

2008-09-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Among Republicans, 46% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 48% disapprove. Among Democrats, 97% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy and 2% approve. Among independents, 8% approve and 87% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy.

Bush’s overall approval rating fell to 19 percent, from 30 percent last month, with 76 percent disapproving.

Sent to my elected representatives

2008-09-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

No.

Way.

No way to a $700B blank check to this Administration. The taxpayers may in fact have to pick up the tab for the looting of the financial system. But not for free. Not without punishing the perps. Not without accountability for the funds. And not without reinstating the regulatory framework that effectively prevented such outrages for 50 years until the "Reagan Revolution" put us so far off course.

Even more important than shoring up the "financial system" is putting a stake through the heart of laissez fare.

More like this, please...

2008-09-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

And perhaps with a side of:

Math, Alaska style

2008-09-14T13:39:00.001-07:00

A few facts worth keeping in mind when the McSame campaign talks about Sarah Palin's awesomnety as governor:

With no statewide income or sales tax, Alaska funds about 90 percent of the state budget from royalties and taxes on oil producers. Soaring oil prices and a higher windfall oil profits tax - an increase pushed through by Palin, now the Republican vice presidential nominee - have state coffers overflowing with petrodollars. The Alaska oil industry calculates that its annual payments to the state doubled in a single year to $10.2 billion.

$10.2B may not sound like much compared to the $2.7 trillion national budget, or even California's $100 billion, but Alaska has fewer than 700,000 people -- roughly the population of San Francisco.

So here is how that math plays out: oil revenues alone translate into more than $14,000 per Alaskan. Now add to that the net inflow of federal spending in Alaska (for the last seven years with data, Alaska has been #1 in per capita federal largesse) of more than $8000. (Alaskans pay on average $5000 into Washington, but get back $13,000.) So that's a net of 22 large for every man, woman and child flowing into the state -- money they get for (a) having a pulse and (b) pulling the lever for "Series of Tubes" Stevens every six years.

Remember the saying about how Dubya was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple? How hard is it to govern when nearly half of the median US per capita income appears from outside the state as if by magic every year?

Winning hearts and minds (hearts on that pile; brains over here)

2008-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

How we commemorate 9/11: by committing atrocities on innocents, and using Oliver North as a character witness in our defense.

via Greenwald.

Sully

2008-09-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

When the human pretzel finally untwists away from his crushes (or at least toward a less insane crush), he can be impressively eloquent.

They think we're stupid. They're right.

2008-09-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

'Lies' may not matter in U.S. election

"The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," John Feehery, a Republican strategist, told the newspaper. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

Colbert's "truthiness" bit isn't looking so funny about now.

Small town, indeed

2008-09-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”
“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

Thus the Blue Meme Dictionary defines "elitist" as "being so uppity as to avoid the use of racist epithets."

Meet the new boss

2008-09-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Coghill charged that the senator, Hollis French, had "politicized" the probe by making a number of public comments in recent days, including telling ABC News that Palin had a "credibility problem" and that the investigation into the firing of public safety commissioner Walter Monegan was "likely to be damaging to the administration" and could be an "October surprise." Wrote Coghill: "The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process."

Because the Republicans would NEVER pursue politically motivated investigations...

Call me lazy, but I am just going to point to what I wrote almost 4 years ago:

One of the basic questions about how we make our way through the world is, “What do you do when belief and data collide?” A core tenet of post-Enlightenment Western society is that a rational person will drop a hypothesis that is contradicted by good empirical evidence. It is the scientific method enshrined by Descartes and Bacon, and, for good or ill, it has given us every scrap of technology and science. But we see evidence in every corner that this is not how people live their lives.

Bizarre hybrids like “Creation Science” notwithstanding, fundamentalist religion rejects reason. Reason embraces the possibility of error; absolutist religion must deny it. By definition, Fundamentalists maintain belief by rejecting the data.

For the hard core, no amount of corruption or immoral behavior will change votes -- they will reject all engative data about their new sweetheart/savior. (Think about the type of mental gymnastics required for adults to ecstatically embrace a leader they had not heard of a week before.) But every drip of bad news slices off a few wavering souls who have not completely abandoned reason. So of course McCain will seek to shut off the bad news at the source.

I hope Obama wins anyway. But I do not envy him the messes he will inherit, or the hornet's nest of ignorance that will stand in the way of every effort to repair the damage they have done.

The genius of the Palin pick

2008-09-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not talking about the winger political angle. I'm talking about the less obvious advantages of putting a Pandora's Box of a candidate on the ticket.

Maybe they didn't vet her because they were lazy or stupid or desperate. But think about the situation from the perspective of the mouth-breathing base -- the folks who actually believe that the press has an overwhelming liberal bias. By picking someone completely off the radar, McCain has set up a very useful game:

1) Press finds abundance of dirt on Palin;

2) Republican noise machine cranks up the liberal media charges;

3) Obedient sheeple repeat liberal media shibboleth and tune out even the most egregious revelations about their new sweetheart.

Pretty creative, actually.

Update: Oh, and of course there is step 4: use the hostility of the media as an excuse to hide her behind stagecraft and teleprompters and prohibit all unscripted press availability.

America's Next Top Vice President!

2008-09-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

I think that one of the more insightful pieces I wrote for Raw Story was the one called Unreality TV. The thesis:

I believe the primary reason Joe Sixpack watches [reality TV] is that he thereby vicariously lives his own fantasies of emerging as a butterfly from the chrysalis of his own glamourless life. Where past generations understood that such transformation required hard work (or, as in the case of slackers like our President, considerable skill in the choosing of one’s parents), today’s Americans are bombarded with evidence that the media deux ex machina can obviate the need for such inconvenience.

This new, passive myth has filled the vacuum left by the death of the old: the Horatio Alger story. Americans have always believed, in a way Europeans have not, in class mobility. The world’s tired, poor, huddled masses head for Lady Liberty, work hard, and rise into the middle class or even higher. As a result, America has thought itself to be a less class-based society, and its social policies have done less to favor the poor than those of most European nations. In the American mythos, poverty was largely a consequence of personal failure.
...
And so a populace trained by its religion to believe in miracles, magic and divine intervention has welcomed the morphing of the Horatio Alger story into something far more injurious to society: rather than look to their own efforts and resources to better their lives, the proles hope against passive hope that they will be chosen to play the television lottery that transforms ugly ducklings into swans, poor into rich, and obscure into famous. The result is arguably more effective in inoculating Joe Sixpack against economic class consciousness than a lifetime of hypocritical scoldings from Pat Robertson and James Dobson could ever be.

The hallmark of this new crop of gentry-in-waiting is an unprecedented dissociation of preferences from realistic self-interest. To an unprecedented degree, these tele-sheep tend to favor not the interests of the economic class to which they really belong (and which the odds are overwhelmingly that they will never leave), but the interests of the class living in the style to which they expect to become accustomed. The world thus no longer consists of rich and poor: there is a third category, which should perhaps be known as the “rich-any-day-now.”

I hadn't thought about it much in a while, so I missed the implications of Dr. Bloor's comment yesterday. But then I saw this at Mother Jones (via Digby) online:

...Palin's omnipresence isn't about John McCain or Barack Obama, or even this week's RNC. It's not about her experience or stance on issues. It's about the "Pop" American Dream.
The old American Dream is dying. Rampant economic inequality makes the cost of working hard to achieve prohibitive. In a culture where more people vote for the next American Idol than for the next president, no wonder Sarah Palin is the top story: She defines the new American Dream, where leaping to the top against all odds is the end goal in itself. Of course there are voters appalled that someone 'like her' can be a 'heartbeat away from the presidency.' But there are also plenty of voters delighted that someone 'like her' has a shot at the ultimate American Dream—a spot in the White House.

Exactly. What Sarah Palin signifies is that some significant slice of the population has so internalized this unreality that they don't just want to live it, they want to use it to choose a Vice President.

If McCain's numbers bump significantly in the next few days, I have a feeling I am going to start losing sleep.

Karma overload

2008-09-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

Remember how, almost exactly a month ago, the conservo-punditocracy was so anxious to show us how credible and mainstream the National Enquirer is (when it happened to be exposing the John Edwards affair).

Heh.

And remember how, a month or so before that we were told that Obama's pastor's sermons were relevant?

Double heh.

Ready, fire. aim

2008-09-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

Or, in this case, select, nominate, vet.

At this rate, Sarah Palin is going to offer up more laughs than Michael ever did, and give Obama a month of Christmases.

Heh.

Update: The immortal Billmon goes there, too. And a dKos poll asks whether Palin will last as the nominee until election day. I think that, barring an Edwin Edwards-class blowup, she is there for the duration. In Rove World, mistakes are not mistakes if you don't admit them. I think they will conitnue to pretend all is well right up to November 5th, when the long knives will finally come out in earnest. (Remember 2006, when they insisted they thought they would retain control of Congress?)

Questions I'd ask the Maverick

2008-09-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

1. Can you explain why Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President than Mitt Romney?

2. Can you explain why Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President than Rudy Guiliani?

3. Can you explain why Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President than Mike Huckabee?

4. Can you explain why Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President than Joe Lieberman?

5. Is Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President than George W. Bush was 2000? Why?

6. How many hours did you personally spend meeting with Palin prior to her selection?

7. How many hours did you personally spend talking on the telephone with Palin prior to her selection?

8. Did you personally know that her unwed teenage daughter was pregnant prior to the selection?

9. Do you think that abstinence-only sex ed is appropriate? Effective?

10. Do you think the government should have any role in scolding or punishing teens who have pre-marital sex, or their parents for not preventing it?

11. Do you think it is helpful for a Senator from a landlocked state to visit Louisiana during a hurricane?

12. Do you think creationism should be taught in public schools?

(more later)

Palindrama

2008-08-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

1. The Republicans seem to relish the comparison of Palin's inexperience to Obama's. But there is a huge distinction that no one seems to be talking about.

Aside from their tenure as elected officials, keep in mind that Obama announced his candidacy in January of 2007. he has spent more than 18 months under a microscope. And he convinced millions of voters nationwide that he was the best candidate. In short, he has the experience of earning the nomination.

Palin, in contrast has lived her whole life far from the klieg lights. And she now has the experience of having the brass ring handed to her.

2. The key here is indeed as others have noted, the appalling lack of judgement McCain has shown. Part of the reason VP candidates tend not to come as such a left-field surprise is that publicity tends to surface defects that can and should disqualify a candidate. Those defects may be old scandals, or they may be about a lack of grace in handling the pressure. But that process can save (and I'm sure has saved) nominees considerable embarassment.

None of that has happened here. When the dirt is exposed, and it will be, McCain's campaign will detonate. I think the reason Obama's campaign quickly backed off their criticism is that they know that Palin is a house of cards, and they won't need to do more than breathe to knock it over.

3. The Rebublicans will insist that Palin is Obama's mirror image. But I think Palin's democratic equivalent would be Gavin Newsom (or would if Palin were better known). San Francisco is actually slightly larger in population than the state of Alaska. Newsom is a hero to the left, just as Palin will be to the right. Neither has any national or foreign policy cred. And just as Newsom is tainted by minor scandal that mixes the official with the personal, so is Palin.

Think about how the talking heads would have reacted if Obama had picked Newsom.

McCain picks Palin as VP!

2008-08-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, at least we know his VP pick is, like McCain, a supporter of torture:

And long, long, LONG ago served with distinction:

And shares McCain's lofty intellectual standards:

What?

Nevermind.

Fashion-forward

2008-08-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Give McCain credit for being rather innovative in his choice of VP -- most Republicans would pick someone whose scandals were still under wraps, and who did not completely undermine the central theme of their campaign.

Wow.

2008-08-28T21:27:00.001-07:00

Just wow.

Where the hell is everybody?

2008-08-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

When I saw this story, I assumed the leftosphere would go in to full-on outrage mode:

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

IOW, the tin foil hat brigade has now had its core premise validated by the worst presumed offender. IOW, the basic premise of our political system has been revealed to be a lie -- not by a wide-eyed conspiracy theorist, but by the key conspirator.

Yet with a few exceptions, the story seems to have sunk beneath the waves of convention and McMansion fervor.

Oh, and our election watchdogs tasked with preventing such outrages? They want to solve the manifold problems with these systems -- by lowering the bar electronic voting machines have to clear. And that would be the Democrats I am talking about.

I used to be amused. But now I'm just disgusted.

Aesop's Foibles

2008-08-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. (If not, you may remember the movie "A Bug's Life," loosely based thereon.)

The fable concerns a grasshopper who has spent the warm months singing away while the ant (or ants in some editions) worked to store up food for winter. After the winter has come, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness. The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of:

Idleness brings want
To work today is to eat tomorrow
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity

In a rational world, this story would be inscribed in parchment and hand-delivered to the CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler in response to this:

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and U.S. auto-parts makers are seeking $50 billion in government-backed loans, double their initial request, to develop and build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The U.S. automakers and the suppliers want Congress to appropriate $3.75 billion needed to back $25 billion in U.S. loans approved in last year's energy bill and add $25 billion in new loans over subsequent years, according to people familiar with the strategy. The industry is also seeking fewer restrictions on how the funding is used, the people said today.

GM and Ford lost $24.1 billion in the second quarter as consumers, battered by record gasoline prices, abandoned the trucks that provide most of U.S. companies' profit and embraced cars that benefit overseas competitors such as Honda Motor Co. U.S. auto sales may drop to a 15-year low this year and fall even more in 2009, analysts have said.

I will feel tremendous sympathy for the line workers who get shafted when these titans of industry finally sink beneath the waves in the (near) future. But I have zero sympathy for the folks making decisions at the grasshopper factory.

It takes some serious chutzpah to ask for government help now. It is long past time to let them die the death they have worked so hard to bring about, and let the ants inherit the earth.

Grasshoppers:

I could go on. But there is obviously nothing here that would convince a rational investor to put a damned cent into these companies, let alone tens of billions. The money these grasshoppers would fritter away yet again could do infinitely more good in the hands of a few enterprising ants.

I smell a meme building...

2008-08-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Remember?

This week's nutshell moment

2008-08-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Everything that is wrong with the commentariat, and by extension the larger population, is on display in this pathetic column in the WaPo from Sally Quinn, It follows the Richard Cohen model of proudly admitting one's own disqualifying character flaws because the (un)penitent is so blind that s/he does not realize how pathetic the admission really is.

The details are all on display @ No More Mister Nice Blog. In short, Quinn reveals her own infantilized view of the role of our Daddy-in-Chief.

When I was little, I had a recurrent dream that there was a terrible earthquake. My father, his body a horse with wings, swooped down from the sky, kneeled so I could jump on his back and flew away just as the earth cracked open beneath me. It was my most comforting dream. I want to live in that world again. I want to live in John McCain's world.

It goes on and on like that.

This jaw-dropping piece raises two questions for me. First, do enough American voters operate from this kind of logic-free, magical world view to put John McCain in the White House? And I am increasingly afraid the answer will be yes.

The second question is whether this sad state of affairs is hardwired, or if the confluence of organized religion and dumb as dirt media have made it so (or at least worse). I don't know the answer there, but I am damned sure that those two factors ain't helping any.

I think Obama is running a good, though certainly not great campaign that appeals to our better angels. A month or two ago, I was confident that his personal gifts, combined with the perfect storm of a disastrous incumbent, would be enough to overcome the troglodyte contingent. Now I'm not so sure.

We may be fresh out of angels.

Georgia on My Mind

2008-08-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

Frankly, the escalating conflict in the former (and future?) Soviet Union is far more important than any of the things I'm reading about in other blogs or seeing on my teevee. It has the potential to be a Cuban Missile Crisis-level event. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, where the right things to do at the outset was stunningly obvious, this one seems genuinely difficult. it is especially so because our options are limited by all of the Bush Adminstration's past screwups.

It is borderline silly to view our apparent abandonment of our real walk-the-walk ally in terms of domestic politics. But I was reminded of this from Dubya's greatest hits:

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (CNN) -- Almost four years ago, when U.S. President George W. Bush first met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia, it seemed he'd found a kindred spirit when it came to democratic values.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country," Bush declared after their 2001 visit.

And so he did. Putin is indeed a kindred soul, a monster just like our own Maximum Leader.

Should we risk WWIII by intervening now? I don't kow. But by the lights of realpolitik, we might never been in this position had we not (a) gotten ourselves so tied down thoroughly in Iraq and Afghanistan and (b) enthusiastically ceded the moral high ground by ginning up bullshit casus belli for the larger of those two quagmires.

From 2005:

"It is important that Russia make clear to the world that it is intent on strengthening the rule of law, strengthening the role of an independent judiciary, permitting a free and independent press to flourish," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this month.

There is indeed no daylight between Putin and Bush on those matters, to our everlasting shame and horror.

Update: Or not. This thing is a bit convoluted, and being steeped in domestic politics is not really good training for understanding it based on MSM reports.

But whether or not the Georgians turn out to be people we should be backing, Dubya's empty promises may well turn out to be echo of Daddy's exhortations for a democratic uprising in Iraq almost 20 years ago.

Et tu, Kruge

2008-08-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Maureen Dowd is as immature and petty a writer as we have on the national stage today. She has done incredible damage to our political discourse, and should have been put out to pasture long ago.

But there was that one moment, back in October 2005 when she shanked Judy Miller. That moment almost, but not quite, made up for her transgressions to that point (though she has committed many more sins since).

Paul Krugman has few sins to atone for, but he somehow got carte blanche to give another loathsome Times colleague or two the same well-deserved treatment. From his latest:

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

Take that, Mr. Suck.On.This.

Deep thought for the day

2008-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

While we are all hyperventilating about how a former candidate for President had an adulterous affair prior to launching his campaign and lied about it, perhaps we should remember the current candidate for President who had an adulterous affair prior to launching his campaign and lied about it.

It isn't LIKE that...

2008-08-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

Obama on the inflate-your-tires fuss:

Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

It isn't like that -- it IS that. It is exactly that. Ignorance is a badge of honor.

There is a trend here -- a trend that has been building for more than a decade.

I first noticed it more than a decade ago in some of the magazines I used to read about, believe it or not, bicycles. (Yes, there are more than a handful.) One that I had a subscription to back in the early 90s was well-written and sought to truly understand the technology behind the products they reviewed. Another, which plainly targeted the younger mountain bike crowd, quoted manufacturers discussing their creations (some of which made sense, and some of which was rubbish), then effectively shrugged and said, "Duh... this technical stuff makes my brain hurt, but it sounds, like, totally rad, dude!" Expertise in the subject matter they were hired to write was not merely optional, it was actively disclaimed and mocked.

So, two magazines -- one smart and literate, one wearing its ignorance as a badge of honor. Guess which one went belly up almost a decade ago, and which one still has the largest circulation in the business?

Now the same glorification of ignorance is spreading to all facets of society. You could call it the Beavis & Buttheading of America. You saw it in the way the dead-tree crowd savaged Al Gore in 2000. You can see it in the way the meat puppets and "journalists" continue to avoid coming within a country mile of substantive coverage on any issue and stick resolutely to horse race nonsense. And you can see it in the way they deny that it is their job to debunk any of Bush's or McCain's absurdities.

Most of all, you can see it in the way the press gladly plays along with the Republican gambit of making the debate about arugula and elitism instead of Iraq and Afghanistan and energy and the economy.

Thus have we come to the main thrust of McCaine's campaign right now -- competence as epithet. Which, when you think about it, explains the love affair between McCain and his base -- both of them have many flaws, but in neither case is competence one of them.

I would love to believe that Obama's current approach -- intelligent ridicule -- will work. But I'm afraid the Beavises and Buttheads who dominate the national discourse will take just offense.

Update: Brad @ Sadly, No! echoes my point a day before I made it.

The logic of the 21st Century Democratic Party

2008-08-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

Although the 43rd President of the United States has clearly committed too many impeachable offenses to count, we should not even initiate impeachment hearings because the 42nd President of the United States was impeached over damn near nothing at all, which means investigating the 43rd President of the United States would be seen as too political.

(Can you say it in a way that is less absurd?)

More parody-proof stupid

2008-08-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

MoDo-ism sprouts at the WSJ:

Too Fit to Be President?

Facing an Overweight Electorate,
Barack Obama Might Find
Low Body Fat a Drawback

...

The candidate has been criticized by opponents for appearing elitist or out of touch with average Americans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in July shows Sen. Obama still lags behind Republican John McCain among white men and suburban women who say they can't relate to his background or perceived values.

"He's too new ... and he needs to put some meat on his bones," says Diana Koenig, 42, a housewife in Corpus Christi, Texas, who says she voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

"I won't vote for any beanpole guy," another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.

I am beginning to think that the aversion to substance among our media gods is more than just
an allergy. It is starting to look more like a full-blown phobia. "Don't for the guy because he's too skinny" -- I'm sorry, but my reservoir of ridicule has run just about dry. Anti-fitness identity politics -- who knew?

But it shouldn't stop there. Where are the articles quoting anonymous Alzheimer's people (unnamed because they don't remember them) who won't vote for anyone without major cognitive deficits? Melanoma survivors hostile to the melatonin-advantaged? And, most importantly, the Anti-Toastmasters of America, who would never vote for a guy who can deliver a speech. C'mon, guys ... there's lots more where this came from.

Update: Oh, this is rich. Turns out the basis for this journalistic malpractice is borderline sockpuppetry.

And while we are on the false flag subject...

2008-08-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Glennzilla provides the context utterly lacking from the MSM reporting on the recent developments in the anthrax case. In short, it seems near-conclusive that the poison sent out out with notes intended to appear to come from foreign muslims actually came from U.S. government employees.

A fine new motto

2008-07-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

The famous saying from John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern macroeconomics is, "In the long run ... we're all dead." Today I saw another, better quote from him in the sig of a commenter to a killer (though perhaps too optimistic) post today by the legendary Billmon @ dKos: "Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking."

So that's why I write that way....

Ich bin ein Cassandra

2008-07-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

Sy Hersh, today, reporting on a conversation in Darth Cheney's office:

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Yr humble scribe, April 2006:

Absent provocation like the sinking of a few U.S. ships, Bush will never get away with going nukular against Iran. So how to provoke Iran into taking the gambit? "Incredibly, we are on now upon the second iteration of that genus of questions. We know that Bush talked with Tony Blair about how to goad Saddam into throwing the first punch against us three years ago." It is probably safe to assume that such high-school logic still prevails. So the Administration will look for ways to provoke such an attack again.

One possibility we cannot dismiss out of hand is a "false flag" strategy.

They didn't listen to her, either.

Another reason to love New Zealand

2008-07-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - New Zealand students protesting the Iraq war offered a reward to anyone who carries out a citizen's arrest of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to the country Friday.

The Auckland University Students' Association is seeking Rice's arrest for her role in "overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation" of Iraq, Association President David Do said. The group is offering a $3,700 reward.

Heh, indeed.

More Schadenfratricide

2008-07-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

Columnist Robert Novak tells Fox News that he suspects that he might have been used as a pawn to steal publicity from Senator Obama after airing a rumor that Senator McCain planned to shortly announce his vice presidential pick.

"I had a suggestion from a very senior McCain aide late yesterday afternoon that he was going to announce it this week," Novak told Fox News' Martha MacCallum. "They suggested that I put it out."
"I since have been told by certain people that this was a dodge," Novak lamented. "They were trying to get a little publicity to rain on Obama's campaign. That's pretty reprehensible, if it's true."

Awwwwwwww.

Update: And in more traditional schadenfreude, heh.

Updater: Oh, my - apparently Novak has expressed his pique by mowing down a pedestrian in his Corvette. Why doesn't he just invade a small country like his pals do when they feel inadequate?

Updatest: Politico unearths this gem from Nokula:

Novak, 77, has earned a reputation around the capital as an aggressive driver, easily identified in his convertible sports car.

In 2001, he cursed at a pedestrian on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th streets Northwest for allegedly jaywalking.

“’Learn to read the signs, [bodily orifice]!’ Novak snapped before speeding away,” according to an item in The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column.

Novak explained to the paper: "He was crossing on the red light. I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Another milepost on the road to perdition

2008-07-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

In the not-too-distant past, the rap against Hollywood (well, one of many) was that movies, TV, and the people who bring them to us lived in a consequence-free fantasy world. Welcome to Upsidedownistan:

SHREVEPORT, La. - Police say actors Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, along with members of a crew fiming an Oliver Stone movie, were arrested during a bar fight in Shreveport.

Shreveport police Sergeant Willie Lewis says Brolin, Wright and five others were arrested just after 2 a.m. Saturday at a club called the Stray Cat bar.

Had Brolin really been the guy he was playing, he would had James Baker around to make sure we would never hear about the arrest that never happened, that the people he hit were silenced, and the cops who booked him were bought off.

Of course, now that our Fratboy in Chief is about to exit, neither he nor his handlers see much need to muzzle his antisocial instincts, or give a damn about the consequences.

Once there was a Constitution

2008-07-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

We say that the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, that it is thus almost 220 years old. But in a very real sense, it is younger than some who could be reading this blog.

The Warren Court (which started in 1953) arguably created much of what we now think of as Constitutional Law. The Burger Court and every other court since has been hell-bent on undoing what Earl Warren, William O. Douglas and a few others did. But today it wasn't the Court that surrendered a major battleground. Today Congress did it.

I am not going to catalog the long list of rights lost. This blog has logged those offenses for almost 4 years now. Others have done it better in and in greater detail. But it is a very long list, and it got significantly longer today.

What is most appalling to me is not so much what he lost, but how we lost it.

The Bush has been pursuing a FISA get-out-of-jail-free card for something like two years. The Democratic party delivered what the Republicans could not. And the most significant and humiliating cause of that capitulation was the first Presidential candidate in my lifetime I was briefly tempted to vote FOR (as opposed to being the beneficiary of my vote AGAINST their opponent.

That impulse is as dead as the rule of law and 4th Amendment. I'm back in hold-my-nose territory.

U.S. Constitution, 1953 -2008

We're winning

2008-07-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Oil is cheap

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans “have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims” by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.
Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

Freedom is on the march

Dubya, 9/21/2001:

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

Our few remaining freedoms are now "quaint anachronisms". After the FISA outrage passes in a few days, the Adminstration's triumph over freedom will be virtually complete.

Mission Accomplished.

Another enemy we have become

2008-07-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.
...
The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.
...
The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

On the other hand...

Update:

John Cole reminds me of this:

Remember when Dick Durbin said the following:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Remember how Durbin was forced to recant?

Armageddon countdown

2008-07-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

Four:

A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.
The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

Three:

The commander of the US navy's Fifth Fleet warned on Monday that the United States will not allow Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil supply route in the Gulf.

"They will not close it... They will not be allowed to close it," Vice-Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff said at a press conference in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is based.

His remarks followed comments by the chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards who issued a new warning last week against any attack against the country over its controversial nuclear drive.

"It is natural that when a country is attacked it uses all of its capabilities against the enemy, and definitely our control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be one of our actions," Jafari said.

The strait between Iran and Oman is a vital conduit for energy supplies, with as much as 40 percent of the world's crude oil from Gulf oil producers passing through the waterway.

Two:

The White House declined to comment Monday on a news report that US lawmakers last year approved 400 million dollars to ramp up covert operations in Iran to undermine Tehran's leadership.
"I couldn't comment either way," spokeswoman Dana Perino said after The New Yorker magazine reported tat the US Congress passed US President George W. Bush's funding request for a dramatic increase in such secret operations.
Asked about the likelihood of US military action against Tehran's disputed nuclear program before the president leaves office in January 2009, Perino said Bush "is singularly focused on trying to solve this issue diplomatically."
The New Yorker, which cited former military, intelligence and congressional sources, said the funding revealed a "major escalation" in clandestine operations aimed at destabilizing the Islamic republic's religious leadership amid concerns over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

One:

...Iran has Russian anti-ship missiles that are to the Exocet (the weapon that nearly defeated the British in the Falklands) what an F-22 is to a WWII-era Spitfire, and that there are no effective countermeasures. Our Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf, is completely vulnerable
....
What would happen if, for whatever reason, Iran sank a couple of American warships? George Bush would find another megaphone and another telegenic pile of bubble to stand on. The Andrew Sullivans and Thomas Friedmans of the world would drag their laptops and their Huggies with them as they dive under their beds, and again write trembling jibberish praising their Savior in Chief. And millions who only recently wandered out of Camp Jingo would scurry back in mortal fear.
The cowed millions would demand action, and action they would get. Bush would round up his nuclear posse and unleash an unprecedented retaliation. Iran would glow for millennia with the radiation of a thousand nuclear warheads in the first all-out nuclear strike in history. Millions of Iranians, or perhaps tens of millions, would die. And Red State America would cheer.

You gotta be kidding me

2008-06-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Well I guess we won't be seeing Wes Clark in the VP slot after all.

What Clark actually said:

Bob Schieffer: General-could I just interrupt you-I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.

General Wesley Clark: I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president...

-- Face the Nation (CBS), 6/29/08

What did he do? He said something that no rational being could dispute -- that the things McCain did 40 years ago, and that at least several hundred of other men did, do not perforce make him or any of them qualified for the highest office in the land. What he did not do is in any way impugn McCain's service or patriotism. Which, of course, means that the MSM was of a single voice in saying that he impugned McCain's service and patriotism.

The performance of the MSM in this whole episode is such a stunning affirmation of every negative stereotype of the stunning, omigawd stoopidity that has defined the MSM since the 90s.

What Clark said is a textbook Kinsley gaffe (that is, an accidental truth). The skills that make a good POW, or even a good pilot don't necessarily map to POTUSness. (We know that being a questionable fighter jock is associated with being the Worst President Ever, but it isn't worth getting into whether McCain's skills 40 years ago were any better.)

Anyway, we now know three things: (1) the MSM has learned precisely nothing; (2) the MSM is still very much McCain's base, and (3) if ever he was, Wes Clark is no longer on the short list for the veep slot.

Only the third item is newsworthy.

Worse

2008-06-25T20:56:00.001-07:00

Today Obama tried to explain his surrender on FISA, and just made things worse.

I don't blame Obama for wanting to put some distance between himself and the DFHs. Were I in his place I would indeed tack to the center. He should take us for granted. And he could have done it without significantly eroding his support among the (smarter) DFHs.

What I do blame him for is for putting real distance between himself and the Constitution.

There is policy (Social Security, universal health care, tax policy etc.), which you can horsetrade. And then there is bedrock principle. Or, at least, there should be. Today I learned that you can fit every Senator who feels that way in a single minivan. And the presumptive Democratic nominee ain't one of them.

Obummer.

Feet of clay

2008-06-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Telecom immunity passed the House. Obama triangulated himself into going along with it, which likely means the Senate will seal the deal.

The very definition of "hopeless cause" seems to be "whatever I support."

I was initially baffled by the cave-in, but seeing Pelosi's incoherent Gingrich-like cheerleading made it clear: there must be buckets of blood on her hands, and a paper trail to prove it. There are enough Dems complicit in the warrantless wiretapping that there truly was bipartisan interest in making sure the truth stayed buried. She looked, to coin a phrase, terrified.

I watched "An Unreasonable Man" a few days ago. Paired with this sorry episode, it is hard not wonder if my contempt for Nader and his "not a dime's difference" perspective was unfair.

Oh, and Somersby has the goods on Saint Timothy of MTP. Why the hagiography by his peers? In short, because he was the journalistic equivalent of all hat, no cattle -- lots of gravitas, but wrong about everything.

Stop telecom immunity

2008-06-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Overtime

2008-06-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

One of the most important victories the blogosphere has achieved has been the derailing of telecom immunity in connection with the FISA debate. But the bottomless pockets on the other side have ensured that no succession of silver bullets, garlic and stakes through the heart is enough to make immunity stay dead. And so they are at it again, and trying to do it on the down low.

Greenwald has the latest, and is again leading the charge.

I know there is a fundamental conflict between claiming that this is the last stand for democracy and the other times I have said it. But you can think of us as the goalie protecting the Constitution and rule of law. This is sudden death overtime, and every shot on goal can destroy what is left of the republic.

This time the guy with the puck is, nominally, one of our own. Steny Hoyer has to be stopped, and ActBlue is taking him on.

I put my money where my mouth is. I urge you to do the same.

We don't need to do this indefinitely -- Congress will recess for summer in a few weeks, and the odds of it coming up on the eve of the election are probably remote. If we can stop it this time, we might just finally kill it dead.

McWag the dog

2008-06-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

About a year after his release from a North Vietnamese prison camp, Cmdr. John S. McCain III sat down to address one of the most vexing questions confronting his fellow prisoners: Why did some choose to collaborate with the North Vietnamese?

Mr. McCain blamed American politics.

“The biggest factor in a man’s ability to perform credibly as a prisoner of war is a strong belief in the correctness of his nation’s foreign policy,” Mr. McCain wrote in a 1974 essay submitted to the National War College and never released to the public. Prisoners who questioned “the legality of the war” were “extremely easy marks for Communist propaganda,” he wrote.

Americans captured after 1968 had proven to be more susceptible to North Vietnamese pressure, he argued, because they “had been exposed to the divisive forces which had come into focus as a result of the antiwar movement in the United States.”

Now this is just plain sad. I feel for him, and for other POWs. No one should have to go through what they went through, though my willingness to empathize is sharply reduced when victim so completely morphs into perp, as the now torture-lovin' Maverick has (and what he and his friends are doing sounds fully worthy of the Hanoi Hilton). It should come as no surprise that he is still fighting the last war -- or perhaps 3 or 4 wars back. But in addition to demonstrating how McCain's world view was frozen in amber 40 years ago, this story shows an incredible self-centeredness in his approach. He was a POW; free speech made his job as a POW harder; ergo the problem is free speech.

To use the interrogation techniques employed against men who never should been in harm's way to begin with as justification for limiting or muzzling in any way the voices of those who tried to bring them home is truly to look at the world through the wrong end of the telescope.

John Cole nails it

2008-06-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.

I will refrain from Russert-bashing today. But jeeze, folks, enough.

Jungleland

2008-06-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

So much going on...

Victor Davis Hanson is still an eedjit.

David Broder is not just an eedjit, but a venal hypocrite.

Newsweek thinks Wes Clark is a likely veep choice for Obama. (I am not going to make a prediciton, but that sure makes sense to me)

The L.A. Kobes (now with extra hubris!) are about to get theirs.

Oh, and the Supremes just revived habeas corpus.

The bloggers 'round here don't write nothin' at all
They just stand back and let it all be.

Welcome to the Hades Ice Rink

2008-06-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

1. A black man is the going to be the Democratic nominee for President and, most likely, be elected in November.

2. I am ever so slightly rooting for the Celtics against the Lakers. (20 years ago, if you had asked me which of these two items would happen first, I would have gone with President Jesse Jackson.)

3. And I just read and agreed with a Charles Krauthammer column.

There will be more: I predict that gay marriage will reach its sell-by date as a political wedge a month or so after the California Supreme Court ruling takes effect.

Something is going on out there.

Yesterday's conspiracy theory is today's "duh"

2008-06-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

Tin foil hats are about to go mainstream:

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that a small group of Pentagon officials who'd collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the group's activities after only a month, and Pentagon officials never followed up on investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.
The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.

The Bush Administration was not content to screw up solo. Evidence now surfaces that our epic misadventure in Iraq was an example of willing sock puppetry controlled by Iran.

I've been dismissive of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. But at this point about the only thing holding me back is my unwillingness to believe that this bunch of asshats could actually (a) do it and (b) keep quiet about it.

And you thought it was just Gov. Conan

2008-06-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

Our awe-inspiring Preznit Conan:

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a "confused" pep talk:

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal."

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

The original:

Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.

(Actually, our English-as-a-second-language Governor did a much better job than our cerebral-cortex-as-a-foreign-organism Commander in Chief.)

If the Inuit have 100 words for snow*...

2008-05-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

Gas prices have accelerated the move away from trucks and sport utility vehicles at a furious pace, leaving the Big Three at the most crucial crossroads in 30 years.
"In the early '70s, we were caught flatfooted, without smaller, fuel-efficient cars. We had nothing to sell," said Gerald Meyers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. "That's exactly what's happening now."

Then the language of Detroit should have 500 words for stupid.

* Funny thing -- they don't.

Recount

2008-05-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

Atrios said he couldn't even watch.

I watched the second half, and fought back tears.

I remember watching the whole drama unfold in real time. I was even briefly in DC during the thick of it.

I remember feeling disappointment, but I was not blessed (or cursed) with the foreknowledge of how momentous the effects would be.

I remember being outraged at the utterly transparent nonsense from the Supremes, but I had come to the conclusion long before that the Court was a political animal, so I saw it as a difference in degree, but not in kind.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is this: I'd bet that Scalia and Thomas think, even now, that their treachery all worked out for the best.

I also remember being told back then by someone far lefter than me that there just wasn't much difference between Gore and Bush anyway. I strongly disagreed.

I can't think of a major issue today that wouldn't have been avoided or reduced had the actual winner been sworn in as President in January 2001.

Happy Memorial Day.

Happy birthday, Esoder

2008-05-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growing anxiety about their economic prospects and deep unhappiness with President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress plunged Americans into a dark mood this month, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.
...

Concerns about the direction of the country and personal finances rose sharply, and dissatisfaction with Bush, Congress and the administration's economic and foreign policy all climbed.

Bush's approval rating fell 4 percentage points to 23 percent, a record low for pollster John Zogby, and positive marks for the U.S. Congress fell 5 points to tie an all-time low at 11 percent.

Why I fight

2008-05-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863)

I suspect that most Americans take for granted the freedoms and Constitutional protections a few of us are always on about. Perhaps that explains, at least in some people, why clanging alarms about an Administration positively run amok are met with yawns and blank stares.

But it is now much worse than that. I think a growing segment of our population has moved to a much more dangerous stage in the descent into totalitarianism. Rather than assuming that freedoms are safe, they have reached the stage at which the very value of those freedoms is no longer, to coin a phrase, self-evident.

Think it can't happen?

Think again.

Many Americans assume that China’s internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their government’s oversight and control of the internet. But in a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007, over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

Ten years ago, I would have argued that a story like this was completely inapplicable to the American experiment -- that all men were Socrates, as it were. If you still believe that now, I have a used (though not recently) Constitution to sell you.

I have ranted before about the dangers that flow from what could be thought of as the "pig happy" industry. I see it all as part and parcel of our pursuit of the model now prevalent in China, in which ideas are pre-screened for our own protection.

By the time we get there, and it won't be long now, the pigs may well realize that their happiness is as passe' as Socrates but it will be too late to go back.

That's gonna leave a mark

2008-05-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

It isn't so much what was said:

"When Bush tries to articulate a vision," ... "he will butcher the Gettysburg Address. Obama, he will make an A&P grocery list sing."

.. as it is who said it:

Tom Davis, who chaired the (National Republican Congressional Committee) for four years...

Ouch.

Finally, a scarcity of greater fools?

2008-05-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

High fuel prices are causing the value of used SUVs to plummet, often below what's listed in the buying guides many shoppers use to negotiate with dealers.

As a result, some new-car buyers think they're getting cheated by dealers who are offering them little for their SUV trade-ins.
...
...(W)holesale prices on big SUVs such as Chevrolet Tahoes, Ford Expeditions and Toyota Sequoias are down 17% from a year ago. Full-size pickups have fallen as much as 15%...

The NOCHA hits just keep coming. I just don't feel sorry for the soccer moms and machismo dads dropping $120-plus to fill their Bulgemobiles, or the dealers who shelled out serious green to build Hummer dealerships, or the Detroit execs who happily supplied them with rolling three-ton barns wrapped in juvenile fantasy.

Am I smug? Sure. I put my money where my smugness is -- in the form of a deposit on one of these almost a year ago:

Name that year!

2008-05-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

Gas prices have Americans stampeding to buy smaller vehicles.
...
"It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here," said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.
The trend toward smaller and lighter vehicles with better mileage is a blow to Detroit automakers, which offer fewer such models than Asian carmakers like Toyota and Honda.

Talking about the 1973 oil crisis?

Nah.

The 1979 crisis?

Nope.

This NOCHA moment was brought to you by the dumbest companies on planet Earth. And their enablers.

MA Day

2008-05-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

President Bush did not say "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on 1 May five years ago. But the banner above him did.
And the picture of those two words said more than the 1,829 words of his speech.

And so it was.

America ...

2008-04-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

...in two easy steps.

One:

As of the end of March, 2008, there were ...2.3M homes...homes that are empty and for sale. That adds up to a vacancy rate of 2.9 percent, which is the highest, reports Bloomberg, "since the bureau started keeping count in 1956." 2.2 million homes were vacant and for sale one year ago.

Two:

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Second Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, released in March 2008, "the total number of homeless persons reported on a single night in January 2006 was 759,101."

Assuming that number bears some reasonable relation to reality, that would mean there are 24 unoccupied homes for every homeless person in the United States.

If you have a more succinct summary, please share it with the class.

Update: As sharp-eyed reader Byronius correctly notes, Andrew Leonard's math (and thus in effect mine) is off by an order of magnitude or so -- the numbers show 2.3 homes per homeless person.

Feh.

Update #2: This doesn't quite top the homes/homeless thing as a totemic moment, but still speaks volumes:

The mortgage industry, facing the prospect of tougher regulations for its central role in the housing crisis, has begun an intensive campaign to fight back.
As the Federal Reserve completes work on rules to root out abuses by lenders, its plan has run into a buzz saw of criticism from bankers, mortgage brokers and other parts of the housing industry. One common industry criticism is that at a time of tight credit, tighter rules could make many mortgages more expensive by creating more paperwork and potentially exposing lenders to more lawsuits.

Hillary meets the Rapture

2008-04-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

Watching Hillary's bizarre, opportunistic travels through places like Richard Mellon Scaife's offices, an analogy struck me.

Think about the bizarre alliance between millennialists like Rev. Hagee and the pro-Israel cabal. The folks who are just sure the Second Coming is both prophesied and imminent are Israel's bestest buddies -- not because they like the Chosen People (Jews, after all, reject their most basic beliefs, and are going to end up in Hell as a direct result), but because the Rapture monkeys are sure that war in the Holy Land will trigger Armageddon, and usher Jesus back to earth.

Why do the Joe Liebermans and AIPACs of the world allow themselves to be used for this obviously hostile purpose? Because of the benjamins, natch. The Reverend Hagees of the world get to help bring on the End of the World; The friends of Israel pocket some serious walking around money in the meantime. Everybody is happy -- well, other than the thousands or millions who would die if the Rapturers got their wish.

Now think of how all those same nutjobs are suddenly embracing Hillary Clinton. The dynamics are essentially the same. Scaife et al. are playing classic the-enemy-of-my-enemy tactics. They know that Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, and that Hillary's delusions cannot change that fact. But they also know that feeding those delusions is a great way to accomplish their underlying goal -- rough up the inevitable nominee, sow havoc among Democrats, and thereby help John McCain.

In both cases, one party to the exchange is delusional, while the other coolly calculates the benefits that come from flattering the crazies. The objective absurdity of what Hillary and Hagee hope for is the very engine that makes both juggernauts go.

Lovely.

Circlejerkular reasoning

2008-04-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

George Stephanopoulos defends his role in the craptacular debate thusly:

“The questions we asked were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant and what you would expect to be asked in a presidential debate at this point,” he said. “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.”

I couldn't have said it better myself. He unabashedly admits that the reason for wallowing in stupid right-wing talking points is that all the other kewl kidz are wallowing in stupid right-wing talking points. And, of course, we would be naive to expect him to rise above such turd-licking.

Senator Tweety

2008-04-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Chris Matthews told Stephen Colbert that he wants to run for Arlen Specter's Senate seat. (He didn't actually announce, of course. He just used that hypothetical, coy evasiveness that is so common among the unannounced candidates who troll for money on "hardball."

First reaction -- yechhh.

Second reaction -- well, that explains a lot. It explains his toadying. It explains his unwillingness to be more than the James Lipton of political talking heads.

And third, paradoxically, he might do less damage in the Senate than he does now.

But most importantly, perhaps, it shows how the talking head class sees itself as essentially interchangeable with the people it covers. Chris Matthews does not see himself as a representative of the audience seeking answers from the ruling class. he sees himself as a member of the ruling class who shapes the (non-)answers his fellow rulers deign to offer to the rest of us.

The real Marie Antoniette

2008-04-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

You have probably seen how Clinton, McSame and the MSM are all in a tizzy about Obama's allegedly "elitist" insights into Middle Murka.

Well George F. Will has yer elitism right here, pal:

During presidential elections, when candidates postulate this or that "crisis" for which each is the indispensable and sufficient cure, economic hypochondria is encouraged, so a sense of suffering is rampant. Recently the Wall Street Journal, like Joseph Conrad contemplating the Congo, surveyed today's economic jungle and cried, "The horror! The horror!"

...
So far during this "crisis," the homeownership rate has declined just three-tenths of 1 percent since it peaked in 2004. At 67.8 percent, it remains higher than it was when President Bill Clinton left office.

Subprime mortgages are a small minority of mortgages, and only a minority of subprime borrowers are not making their payments. Casting this minority of a minority as victims of "predatory" lending fits the liberal narrative that most Americans are victims of this or that sinister elite or impersonal force and are not competent to cope with life's complexities without government supervision.

If there is a more blatant "let them eat cake" moment from this year's silly season, I have not seen it.

The Last Redoubt

2008-04-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

...Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz, ..."yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

My understanding and commentary have followed a depressing arc over the almost four years I have been at this. First, I blamed the Bush Administration for its endless and unprecedented wrongdoing. Then I blamed the media for its bias and failure to report that wrongdoing. More recently I have been forced to confront the fact that the truth has gradually come out, and is now available to all who would but seek it, but that our citizenry no longer cares.

With this ABC story, it seems to me that this journey is complete. The President of the United States has freely acknowledged complicity in war crimes. The press has reported that searing, unfathomable truth. It is now up to the opiated masses.

Again: the President of the United States has not merely admitted that his underlings have broken the law, and crossed moral lines universally thought inviolate only a decade ago; the President of the United States has just admitted his own participation in and approval of those transgressions. I submit that further reporting about his malfeasance is now superfluous -- what could possibly top that?

If George Bush is not impeached now, then he is right about what America truly is. If Rice and Rumsfeld and Tenet and the rest are not indicted, then the American people thereby are -- indicted for their complicity and acquiescence in the brutality done in their -- in my -- name.

Jersey watch

2008-04-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

There goes the Eichmann defense

2008-04-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
...
Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.
"I can say that questioning the detainees in this program has given us the information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks here in the United States and across the world," Bush said in a speech in September 2006.
In interview with ABC's Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: "It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States."

And by what means did the A.G. tell the Administration that it was legal?

Yoo who...

The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall. The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld's office. The Yoo-Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guantánamo led to abuses at Abu Ghraib.

There is a move afoot for a sliver of accountability -- to push Boalt Hall Law School to dump Yoo. Where he belongs is on the faculty at the law school inside San Quentin.