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Sunday, December 06, 2009 OUR CORPORATE FASCISM CAN BEAT UP YOUR CORPORATE FASCISM Is this report from Britain's Daily Mail accurate? I have no idea: Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British 'Climategate' emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow's Copenhagen global warming summit. An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.... Russia -- one of the world's largest producers and users of oil and gas -- has a vested interest in opposing sweeping new agreements to cut emissions.... Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow.... Tomsk is both an energy city and an academic city. The theory makes some sense. But I bring this up because I'm struck by the irony: the same right-wingers who attack the Obama administration for what they see as an unholy and fascistic merging of big business and government -- and who sneer at the Obama White House's "czars" -- are now dancing with glee at an act of espionage that may be real corporate-fascist criminality, from a country that actually has merged government, business and thuggery (the country, as it turns out, that was the home to the czars). Hey, teabaggers -- if the Russians did this, they didn't do it because they love liberty or democracy or truth. If these are your heroes, you're welcome to them. posted by Steve M. | 9:00 PM | THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST The sign of the Last Days? It's not 666 -- it's a seven-figure number. Here's a report of a deal for a forthcoming book, from the subscription-only Publishers Lunch: Authored of Liberal Fascism and syndicated conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg's THE TYRANNY OF CLICHES, to Sentinel, at auction, in a major deal, reportedly for $1 million.... Yes: Jonah Goldberg. One million dollars for his next book. The Apocalypse will be along any minute now. Sentinel is part of Penguin Group (USA), which means it disgraces a publishing enterprise that includes such estimable and highly respected imprints as Viking and Putnam. (Sentinel boasts of the success of such books as The War on Christmas by John Gibson.) More on the Goldberg deal here and here. As for the book itself, even with the current popularity of righty screeds, I'm struggling to see how it will earn back its advance if it doesn't trumpet the notion "liberals are the embodiment of pure evil" somewhere in its title. I also wonder if the book The Tyranny of Cliches will have the same first sentence as the article "The Tyranny of Cliches," which Goldberg published at National Review Online seven years ago. That first sentence is as follows: One of the most important points of this column over the years -- other than my belly, my dog, fair Jessica, my need for a raise, the fact that I have the upper-body strength of an eight-year-old girl and the lung capacity of a Polish whoopee cushion -- is my aversion to cliched thinking. Wow -- can you handle the intellectual heft? More: In debates with readers, colleagues, college audiences, et al. the monitor on my internal respect-o-meter flat-lines every time I hear someone say, for instance, "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished." ... how come it's better that ten guilty men go free? When we translate the principle to reality, we've got to pick a threshold number. So why not say it's better that 50 guilty men go free? Or, say, two guilty men? Is 10 a special number? Or is it just easy to say? Or haven't you thought about it all? Most often, people haven't thought about it all. So let me ask you, why not set free two million guilty men?... I think Sentinel just paid a million smackers for 400 pages of really bad amateur Seinfeld, with no actual humor, just endless self-satisfied kvetching. posted by Steve M. | 9:00 AM | Saturday, December 05, 2009 TELLING APRIL RYAN TO "CALM DOWN": IT'S OK IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN PRESS SECRETARY (UPDATE, SUNDAY: I'm not sure I still believe what I wrote here, after repeated viewings of the clip, but I'll leave it up.) Is this becoming a scandal? Really? Oh, give me a break, Jake (Tapper): Gibbs Tells a Female White House Correspondent to 'Calm Down' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and American Urban Radio’s White House Correspondent April Ryan have long had a contentious relationship. An exchange they had yesterday has started to garner some attention.... Ryan had a heated back-and-forth with Gibbs over whether White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers overstepped her bounds in the “Gate-Crash-gate” incident and was pressing Gibbs on the subject through repeated questions. “Some might have called her the belle of the ball, overshadowing the first lady,” Ryan said. Gibbs said he hadn’t heard that criticism before. Ryan continued in her questioning, asking whether Rogers had invited herself to the first state dinner. Gibbs shrugged it off, then told Ryan to calm down and take a deep breath.... Some are alleging sexism because Gibbs told a female reporter to calm down.... Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is shocked, shocked: How badly did Robert Gibbs handle this? Even the White House press corps audibly gasps when he tells April Ryan, a reporter from American Urban Radio to "calm down" and then compares her to his young son in terms of temperament. Ed's already running a poll:  Funny -- I don't recall Ed running a similar poll back on November 8, 2005, in the Bush years: There were many heated exchanges at yesterday's compellingly readable press briefing . Press secretary Scott McClellan was questioned repeatedly and persistently about what sort of exemption the White House is requesting from a proposed congressional ban on torture. He wouldn't say. And when the journalists in the room wouldn't back off, he lost his cool. When Hearst columnist Helen Thomas kept interrupting McClellan's talking points and demanding a "straight answer" about the exemption, McClellan shot back: "You don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen, and I'm going to tell them the facts." ...Later, when American Urban Radio reporter April Ryan took up the question again, McClellan accused her of "showboating for the cameras" and told her she needed to "calm down."... (Press conference transcript here.) What I see in the Ryan-Gibbs exchange is a battle of two people who regard each other as peers; one is badgering the other and the other isn't condescending but, rather, searching for a non-heated way to end the badgering and move the hell on. Watch -- and draw your own conclusions. (Oh, for what it's worth, Tony Snow also said to a male reporter, "Ed, calm down. I know you're excited, your voice is rising, your pace is increasing" on February 13, 2007. Again, no record of a shocked reaction from Ed Morrissey.) posted by Steve M. | 3:38 PM | COULD ANDREW SULLIVAN BE HELPING PALIN GET ELECTED PRESIDENT? OK, that headline is hyperbole -- but really, enough already with the Trig trutherism, Andy: Palin Puts The Trig Question Back On The Table ... Palin says [in an interview and Facebook post this week] that all inquiries into a candidate's veracity, record, associations, and medical history are legitimate forms of inquiry. She therefore backs this blog's near-solitary attempt to get her to provide evidence -- after very serious questions of fact emerged -- that she was indeed the biological mother of Trig.... Palin has never produced Trig's birth certificate or a single piece of objective medical evidence that proves he is indeed her biological son.... Look: Sarah Palin is, except to her base, a national joke. Much of America regards her as undignified, unserious, and unfit to hold the office of president of the United States (and becoming president is obviously her goal). The only thing that can make her sympathetic to most Americans is below-the-belt attack politics. Mock her words or her thoughts or her behavior? Fine -- most Americans have no problem with that, because she's voluntarily put herself in the arena and said and done dumb things that warrant criticism. But go after the circumstances of her child's birth? That runs the risk of making her seem legitimately aggrieved -- at a time when her political career (which has the potential to be very dangerous for America if it's ever successful) is taking on water. In politics, when an opponent is drowning, you should throw in an anvil. But giving her a legitimate reason to complain about mistreatment isn't throwing her an anvil -- it's throwing her a life preserver. And it's discrediting the left, with which Sullivan is (inaccurately) associated. Really, why the hell would Palin conceal one illegitimate pregnancy on her daughter's part and then take the VP slot, a move that would reveal another such pregnancy to the entire nation and the world? It makes no sense. Some people, including at least one of my commenters, apparently want Palin to produce documentation for one reason only -- because it's satisfying payback for the right's Obama birtherism. Sorry -- the pleasures of tit-for-tat aren't a good enough reason to sink into the gutter with the birthers. The right is far more effective than the left at making people who take edgy or dodgy positions into national laughingstocks. The risk is that Palin will succeed in portraying Sullivan as a symbol of all of the right's enemies -- the media, the liberal Internet community, urban sophisticates in general, even people whose sexual choices aren't "traditional" -- and possibly regain an aura of legitimacy for herself that way. Yes, I suppose that's not going to be easy if it's Sullivan alone raising these questions, but why run the risk? What good can come of it? Atlantic, please either fire Sullivan or refuse to let him use your bandwidth to continue promulgating this nonsense. It's not helping. posted by Steve M. | 12:01 PM | My New Christmas Tradition. He means "epoynymous" Sweater--a phrase I never thought I'd type--but this whole post on Glenn Beck's live non action Christmas special deserves to be read, and savored, every year. Point 2: Labels: Glenn Beck, Holiday Cheer posted by aimai | 11:48 AM |I've Always Hated Cass Sunstein--Now I Remember Why: Sunstein to hire AEI Law 'n Economics ace Randall Lutter to OMB? As Atheanae would say Hell to the no. From "The Pump Handle: A Water Cooler For the Public Health Crowd." via Mike's Blog Roundup. In 2000, Randall Lutter chided his colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for overstating the dollar value of IQ points lost as a result of lead poisoning by as much as six-fold, saying he would reduce the value to somewhere in the vicinity of $1,500. How and why? Instead of focusing on income lost to poisoned children, Lutter centers his calculations on how much a theoretical parent would be required to pay for chelation, a drastic, dangerous, and relatively rare procedure used to treat severely poisoned children. Labels: AEI, Cass Sunstein, OMB posted by aimai | 10:20 AM |OH, TEE-HEE Remember my post from a couple of days ago about the alleged "terrorist dry run" on a flight from Atlanta to Houston, a wingnut panic set off by an e-mail account that went viral, written by a guy who claimed he intimidated and helped restrain the alleged evildoers? Well, now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a bit of interesting news: AirTran 'hero' wasn't on plane, airline says It's a little easier to understand why a man who claimed to have thwarted a potential terrorist attack on a plane has not answered repeated requests to tell his story. He was not on the plane, according to AirTran Airways. "After conducting additional research into this situation, we have verified, according to flight manifests (legally binding documents) that the individual that allegedly created a first-hand account of events on-board AirTran Airways Flight 297, a Theodore Petruna, was never actually on-board the flight," AirTran said in a statement.... "I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said 'you will go sit down or you will be thrown from this plane,'" Petruna wrote. Continuing, Petruna said 11 men dressed in "full attire" speaking Arabic got on the plane together.... There was no way Petruna could have seen what he described on Flight 297, AirTran said in a statement. Petruna departed from Akron-Canton, Ohio, on AirTran Flight 205 on Nov. 17, officials said. He was supposed to connect to Flight 297 to head to Houston, but he missed his first flight out of Ohio. And therefore, he missed the connecting flight. "Flight 297, the flight which Mr. Patruna allegedly wrote a first-hand account of, originally pushed back from its gate in Atlanta at 4:40 p.m. EST, a full 26 minutes before flight 205 arrived at the gate in Atlanta making this flight connection impossible," according to AirTran.... This is rather inconvenient for righty bloggers such as Debbie Schussel, who's essentially gone all Flight 297 all the time. She's clinging to the account by Chaplain Keith Robinson, whose post on the subject I quoted a couple of days ago and who (according to the AJC really was on the plane. Robinson's now giving a lot of interviews -- there's one here with wingnut Melissa Clouthier that's 40 minutes long (I'm not sure I have the strength to listen to it), while Schussel posts the transcript of a Robinson interview by righty talker Steve Gill. In the latter, there's this interesting exchange: Steve Gill: ... you were literally writing this as it happend, right Keith? Robinson: That's correct. That's uh, years ago, I had my own nationally syndicated radio talk show and so I knew that I could forget things very quickly if I didn’t start writing it down and perceiving what was going on.... Hmmm, radio. Do you miss it, Keith? Even that (probably) very low-level access to the media -- do you miss it? Did you find out about Petruna's e-mail and gradually come to see it as your big chance to star in a wingnut reality series, The Real Resisters of Islamofascist Jihad? You and (separately) Petruna? posted by Steve M. | 7:54 AM | Friday, December 04, 2009 WHERE HAVE I HEARD THIS BEFORE? David Brooks today talked about campaigning vs. governing, specifically in reference to the Obama administration. Brooks thinks Obama supporters are disappointed these days because we liked the poetry of the campaign and wish Obama wasn't governing in (deeply compromised) prose. I won't bother to argue that point; instead, I'm struck by Brooks's idea of what campaigning is (and governing isn't), because it reminds me of something that wasn't a campaign at all (or wasn't supposed to be). See if you agree: Many Democrats are nostalgic for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- for the passion, the clarity, the bliss-to-be-alive fervor. They argue that these things are missing in a cautious and emotionless White House. But, of course, the Obama campaign, like all presidential campaigns, was built on a series of fictions. The first fiction was that government is a contest between truth and error. In reality, government is usually a contest between competing, unequal truths. The second fiction was that to support a policy is to make it happen. In fact, in government power is exercised through other people. It is only by coaxing, prodding and compromise that presidents actually get anything done. The third fiction was that we can begin the world anew. In fact, all problems and policies have already been worked by a thousand hands and the clay is mostly dry. Presidents are compelled to work with the material they have before them. The fourth fiction was that leaders know the path ahead. In fact, they have general goals, but the way ahead is pathless and everything is shrouded by uncertainty. Governing isn't like that? It seems to me that governing in the Bush years was precisely like that. Government is a contest between truth and error? That's what we were told repeatedly, by Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and the whole gang. To support a policy is to make it happen? With Bush, that was the case all the time, even after he lost his congressional majorities, except on immigration, Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports World, and -- the only time he was actually thwarted by the opposition -- Social Security privatization. On everything else, he got his way, over and over again. We can begin the world anew? That was practically the mantra of the Bush administration. Leaders knows the path ahead? Bush always did -- just ask him. We were always exactly where we were supposed to be, according to Bush. OK, that last one didn't really pan out. But as for the rest, there rarely seemed to be any difference between what Bush wanted to do and what he did. You think maybe we're disappointed because of that? Because some of us thought -- naively -- that governing does work that way, and would work that way for our guy? posted by Steve M. | 7:15 PM | Why Can't I Choose Her As My Next Senator? aimai posted by aimai | 5:33 PM | UNDER THE LASH OF A NONEXISTENT BULLWHIP In response to a lot of stuff -- Sarah Palin's birtherism, theories that ACORN stole 9 million votes to tip the election to Obama -- Adam Serwer writes: ...some Republicans have show that they're completely willing to embrace nutty ideas absent any empirical evidence supporting them. Conservatives who embrace these ideas have become part of a kind of oppositional culture that denies certain facts as a matter of self-definition, an act of defiance against an oppressive wider culture -- not unlike the Nation of Islam in the '60s believing white people were created 6,000 years ago by a mad scientist named Yakub. And what do you know, here's Jat Nordlinger of National Review Online arguing that "teabagger" is such a horrible word that, like the N-word, it should be banished from society except when used by members of the in-group. To that Adam adds: The oppositional elements of black culture developed over centuries of slavery, racially oppressive violence, segregation, and a campaign of philosophy and pseudoscience designed to deny black humanity that has morphed into the more subtly essentialist messages we see today. Oppositional culture is kind of like an emotional reflex: A society says you're worthless, so you question, deny, or subvert the values of that society.... ... elements of black oppositional culture that conservatives single out as pathological -- conspiracy theories about AIDS for example -- developed in part because of centuries of oppression. All that happened to conservatives was that they lost an election. That's where I disagree. The right has a list of grievances as long as your arm. To be sure, these have to do primarily with being snickered at by liberals for their tastes in food, music, and patriotic accountrements, and maybe not getting their books reviewed in The New York Times, so, no, the grievance list doesn't quite add up to the equivalent of the Middle Passage plus slavery plus Jim Crow plus lynching plus ongoing racism. So they'll throw in the Civil War and Reconstruction to try to get the ledger close to even; a lot of them still resent what happened then, even though Southerners managed to turn the tables completely in recent years and established near-total control of the government, as well as considerable economic strength, even while being disproportionate sucklers at the government teat. But they don't care if you don't think they're hard done by. They think they are, and every time you mock a Deep South accent, they regard it as the equivalent of thirty lashes with a bullwhip. And they are hell-bent on getting payback posted by Steve M. | 1:58 PM | OH, I THINK SHE'LL GET AWAY WITH IT Palin a birther? Is this what finally marginalizes her? Nahhh, I doubt it. First of all, she can spin what she said to radio talker Rusty Humphries as Birtherism Lite: Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran? I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue 'cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers. Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at? I think it's a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record -- all of that is fair game. You know, I've got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were... Worst case, she'll say she's not drawing any conclusions one way or another -- she's just askin'. (UPDATE: Palin re-asks the birther question while simultaneously denying she's being a birther on her Facebook page.) Oh, sure, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker will roll their eyes. Maybe a few more people on the right will migrate into the anti-Palin camp. But I don't think the loss of a few pundits is going to hurt her -- if anything, it'll make her seem more mavericky, more the scourge of entrenched Georgetown-cocktail-party interests. And she cleverly links it to Ayers/Wright/etc., which will play beautifully with her base. (Pay no attention to the fact that Bill Ayers is now in the streets protesting Obama's Afghanistan policy.) What's more, she works birtherism into one of the most effective rhetorical stances possible if you want to appeal to the right-wing crazy base -- self-pity: I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama's past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right? Hey, you know, that's a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn't my real son. And a lot of people say, "Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he's your kid!" Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them. May I take this opportunity to say thanks a freakin' lot, Andrew Sullivan? Please, Atlantic, just fire him. I don't care if he's on our side on other issues. He's giving this abhorrent person the moral high ground and an excuse to encourage more conspiratorial thinking. In this interview, once again Palin seems like to me like Madonna in her prime -- just as Madonna would discover an established subculture (vogueing, S&M) and introduce it into mainstream mall-rat culture as the hot new thing, here's Palin trying to mainstream birtherism. Marginalize Palin? I think it's just possible this will have the opposite effect -- I think it may add birtherism to creationism and global-warming rejectionism as perfectly acceptable stances for mainstream GOP politicians. I think there may well be a birther question asked sometime in the 2012 GOP primary debates, like the evolution question in the last go-round -- and, possibly thanks to Palin, a significant number of the candidates onstage will proclaim themselves birthers. **** UPDATE: I mentioned Palin's Facebook follow-up in the update above, but I think my response to it was hasty. Now I'm thinking that Palin's pointing to a way to mainstream birtherism without seeming to endorse it:  So the question now becomes one of free speech -- should people be allowed to ask this? (Hey, do you know of anyone who's being clapped in irons for asking about the birth certificate? Me either.) It's also one of alleged fairness. David Weigel addressed that this morning -- The lesson she’s taken from the experience is not that conspiracy theories are out of bounds. It’s that if they are going to be conspiracy theories about her, there might as well be conspiracy theories about her political enemies. -- but I'd put that differently: she's saying that if there are going to be conspiracy theories about her, silence with regard to Obama conspiracy theories can only be the result of a repressive, fascistic double standard. This is about freedom, dammit! The freedom the jackbooted liberals want to deny real Americans! That's catnip to wingnut voters. AND: Weigel follows up by noting comments to the Facebook post; as he puts it, "Palin Walks It Back, But the Fans Won't Have It." (The Freepers and Fox Nation crowd also seem to be disregarding the walk-back. Will this embolden Palin to stop hedging and just go for it? Or is this the ideal have-cake-and-eat-it approach? posted by Steve M. | 7:51 AM | Thursday, December 03, 2009 AMERICA HEARTS TRIANGULATION? Yesterday, it seemed as if everyone in the political class was treating the Obama plan for Afghanistan as a pinata. But it looks as if the public is a lot less critical, judging from interviews by CBS pollsters and reported by The New York Times: Afghanistan Speech by Obama Wins Over Some Skeptics A month ago, Donnie Jones, a 40-year-old Republican who lives outside Dallas, told pollsters that he was not sure President Obama had a plan for the war in Afghanistan. But after hearing the president speak Tuesday night, Mr. Jones feels reassured that Mr. Obama not only has a plan, but also one he can generally support. Margaret Gilbert, 62, a Democrat from Portsmouth, Va., told the same pollsters that she did not want the United States to send more troops to Afghanistan. But after listening to Mr. Obama, Ms. Gilbert now believes that he has no choice. And Dave Cegledi, a 66-year-old independent from Olmsted Falls, Ohio, says he does not like Mr. Obama any more today than he did in November. But Mr. Cegledi thinks the president gave a good speech -- good enough, indeed, that he might vote for him for re-election if the strategy for Afghanistan works. ... interviews on Wednesday suggested that, while opinions on the war remained wildly diverse, Mr. Obama managed to persuade a significant number of people on both sides of the political aisle.... I think this is what happens if you succeed in positioning yourself as the middle-of-the-road voice of reason. In his speech, Obama didn't seem to relish an Afghan war the way George W. Bush seemed to relish the war in Iraq, yet Obama clearly wasn't arguing the peracenik position. If these interviews are representative, the public seems content with that stance. Is Obama really in the middle? Well, he's where the middle is perceived to be. On health care, by contrast, he and his fellow Democrats aren't in the perceived middle. And so we're reading that Mike Castle, the GOP congressman from Delaware who's running for Senate, wasn't hurt in the polls by his vote against the health care bill, even though Delaware was a big Obama state. And we're reading (if we can believe Rasmussen) that Blanche Lincoln is being hurt in anti-Obama, anti-health-reform Arkansas because she's not a sworn opponent of reform. I wonder where these polls would be if Obama and the Dems had managed to position the set of proposals we have now as a middle ground between dirty-hippie single-payer advocates and pro-status-quo Republicans. Forcing true progressives to the margins helped Republicans to portray the stance of Obama and the Dems as the far-left position. Imagine if the single-payer fans had been allowed into the discussion, pitchforks in hand. Would Obama look moderate now? The lack of triangulation allows Republicans to claim that Obama and the Democrats -- who in reality are endlessly compromising -- are actually dictators ramming health care reform down our throats. There's no middle, according to this narrative -- there's a jugfgernaut and then there's a band of brave, politically incorrect souls standing before the tanks. That's why centrist Democrats need dirty hippies. It's a lesson many of them struggle to learn. posted by Steve M. | 3:16 PM | THE MONSTER HAS ESCAPED FROM THE LAB "Crunchy" conservative columnist Rod Dreher has discovered to his dismay that many of his fellow righties simply aren't rational: Whether they realize it, ordinary people have become more comfortable with the idea that truth is relative and that emotion is a reliable and sufficient guide to finding it.... Relativism in this sense is no longer a specialty of the left. Here's the nut of an exchange I've had many times over the past year with fellow conservatives: "Barack Obama is a Muslim." "No, he's not." "You have your opinion; I have mine." There is no way to argue with this.... I'll ignore the swipe at the left (noting only that I don't know any lefties who really don't believe in the existence of objective truth). I'm deeply amused at Dreher's despair -- from which he moves on to Sarah Palin: Her mind isn't geared toward resolving basic philosophical contradictions like her observation that corporations and politicians often collude against the common good, and her dogmatic belief in the sanctity of free enterprise. Well, which is it? You can't hymn the majesties of capitalism's "creative destruction" on one page, while proclaiming yourself a staunch defender of traditional families and institutions on another. Well, Rod, you righties are reaping what you sow. Your side made attacking Democrats and liberals from every possible angle at every possible moment the main focus of your political lives, reaching for whatever argument would provide the most effective wallop even if it contradicted your previous argument, and inevitably you were going to inspire younger followers who actually believe every contradictory thing you say. Palin's political mind, such as it is, is formed by nothing but attack-dog movement conservatism. Recall this from Sam Tanenhaus in The New Yorker: When Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard editor and writer, asked Palin who her favorite thinker was, she replied, "You." The mind reels. If there were anything to conservatism these days apart from attack-doggery, young right-wing stars might have an actual thought or two in their heads. But there isn't. So they don't. **** In a subsequent blog post, Dreher fretfully quotes an e-mail he received in response to this column, which says in part: Read your article in my local news paper. You came across as having a distorted thinking pattern disorder. Obama is a Muslim. His father was a Muslim and Obama was brought up as a child in Muslim schools in Kenya.... He is reluctant to use force to kill Muslim terrorist limiting it towards Osama Bin Laden, who is considered an out law by Muslims.... I just love that last bit -- Obama's willingness to go after bin Laden proves he's pro-Muslim! No, really! Well, rank-and-file righties have always had to engage in some complicated doublethink to deal with the fact that their one-time hero George W. Bush didn't really care after a while about going after Bin Laden, even though nothing in the world is or has ever been more evil than "Islamofascism." A few years ago, on the day of the London bombings, I quoted at length from a Free Republic thread started by someone who asked whether it was time to go after Bin Laden -- and was sternly rebuffed: You go find him and show us how easy it is. **** Sure. Go barging into the Northwest Frontier - a region no foreign power has ever controlled. Make it to where our presence in Afghanistan will no longer be tolerated and spark a widespread tribal war that will make the Sunni Triangle look like a school zone. Makes loads of sense. **** People like you both amuse and disgust me. You expend energy to mock and impede the war on terror, you're nowhere to be found as daily we post victory after victory in the GWOT, but the second something like this happens you proclaim defeat, using the Brits' suffering for your own weak position. You should be ashamed. **** ZZZZZZZZZZZ. ZZZZZZZZZ. **** Nothing but more hot air from you. Bush was a saint back then, so raising this point was heresy. On the war, to righties, he still is a saint -- even though he failed at what was presumably Job One. The only way for them to reconcile that was to redefine Job One. And Dreher's e-mail correspondent is still doing that. posted by Steve M. | 12:35 PM | Oddly Enough, I Feel Better: Glenzilla on Obama-- But there was almost none of that in last night’s speech. As Ben Smith correctly notes, Obama did not even mention — let alone hype — the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan. There were no grandiose claims that the justness of the war derives from our desire to defeat evil, tyrannical extremists and replace them with more humane and democratic leaders. To the contrary, he was commendably blunt that our true goal is not to improve the lives of Afghan citizens but rather: ”Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda.” There were no promises to guarantee freedom and human rights to the Afghan people. To the contrary, he explicitly rejected a mission of broad nation-building “because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests“; he said he “refuse[d] to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests”; and even vowed to incorporate the convertible factions of the Taliban into the government. Not only did he refrain from those manipulative appeals, he made explicitly clear that we are in Afghanistan to serve our own interests (as he perceives them), not to build a better nation for Afghans. Nation-building, he said, goes “beyond … what we need to achieve to secure our interests” and “go beyond our responsibility.” We’re there to serve our interests and do nothing else. That should throw cold water on all on the preening fantasies of all but the blindest and most naive “liberal war supporters” that we’re there to help the Afghan people. Independent of motive, it is also quite unlikely that helping Afghans will be the unintended result of our ongoing war there. Just as was true in Iraq — where we bribed and befriended religious extremists and others we spent years demonizing as “Terrorists,” and now protect a government that is extremely oppressive to women, Christians and gays, and brutally violative of human rights in general — we will do whatever benefits us and serves our interests in Afghanistan, even if that means empowering brutal, oppressive and misogynistic fanatics as long as they are willing to carry out our geopolitical directives. Many of the warlords and other local religious extremists on whom we’re already relying and will now use even more are hardly distinguishable from the Taliban on human rights issues. We’re not there on a charity mission but are there to advance what we think are our interests. That’s why some of the most oppressive governments in the Middle East will continue to be our most stalwart allies. [...] But if Obama’s approach — reflective of the Republican “realists” to whom he seems to listen most — slays the pervasive, preening “liberal hawk” fantasy that we invade and bomb other countries in order to help them, that will at least be an important value. With some extremely rare historical exceptions, governments start and wage wars in order to benefit themselves, not to “help” the people in the countries which are being invaded and bombed. We’ve proven so many times as to place it beyond dispute that we’re more than willing to support and empower foreign leaders who do our bidding regardless of how they treat their own citizens. That didn’t change when we had a swaggering, cowboy-hat-wearing, evangelical moralizer in the Oval Office, and it’s not going to change just because he’s been replaced by a charming, nice, eloquent, East-Coast-educated Democrat. The claim that we must stay in Afghanistan in order to reduce genuine threats to our security is at least cogent, though ultimately very unpersuasive. But the claim that we’re fulfilling some sort of moral responsibility to the plight of Afghans by continuing to occupy, bomb and wage war in their country — and by imprisoning them en masse with no charges — is sheer self-glorifying fantasy. Some credit is due Obama for refusing to promote that fantasy last night when doing so might have helped his case. Now that the “Commander-in-Chief” who is prosecuting the war has largely dispensed with this fictitious rationale, will other war supporters do so as well? posted by aimai | 8:59 AM | ARCHIE BUNKER BEATS GAY MARRIAGE IN NEW YORK STATE New York magazine on the failed gay marriage bill in the New York State Senate (8 Democrats joined with all 30 Republicans to defeat the bill, 38-24): Given they live in one of the bluer states, anchored by a city with a long tradition of liberal activism, New Yorkers might have also assumed that their Senate would be more inclined to join the handful of other states where gay marriage is legal. Yeah, but only part of that anchor city has a long tradition of liberal activism. Here's a list of the Democrats who voted no. Of these 8, all but 2 were from the outer boroughs: Joseph Addabbo of Queens, Ruben Diaz of the Bronx, Shirley Huntley of Queens, Carl Kruger of (the non-hipster, non-yuppie part of) Brooklyn, Hiram Monserrate of Queens, and George Onorato of Queens. Many of the voters in these districts are Archie Bunkers (and George Jeffersons). They're not as far to right as Archie -- they're old-school FDR/JFK Democrats, and the non-whites are Obama Democrats, but they're not cultural-issues Democrats. The New York Times reports that some Republicans would have voted for gay marriage if the vote had been closer: Republican advocates who supported the bill insisted that the agreement they struck with Democrats called for Democrats, who have 32 seats in the 62-member Senate, to deliver enough support so only a handful of Republicans were needed to take such a politically risky vote. "Several Republicans wanted to vote for this," said Jeff Cook, a legislative adviser for the Log Cabin Republicans. "But those Republicans aren't willing to take a tough political vote when the bill has no chance of passage. And that's the political reality." But "blue" Gotham wasn't blue enough to have delivered enough Democratic votes to get the tally that close. That's the cultural reality of Democratic thinking -- while Republicans practically everywhere in America are in lockstep on virtually every issue, many Democrats, here and across the country, just aren't with the program on many issues. These senators know this was the safe way for them to vote. I don't know when, if ever, that's not going to be true in the 718. posted by Steve M. | 7:44 AM | Wednesday, December 02, 2009 FOX ASKS THE EXPERTS Tonight on Fox News:  Of course, the Bill Kristol ventriloquist's dummy I'd really like to see in this gig is Sarah Palin, just for the hilarity potential; Quayle, by contrast, has at least a fighting chance of remembering the talking points more or less accurately. Oh well, I'll be watching Top Chef -- and, frankly, I think Padma might have more intelligent things to say on this subject than Quayle (or Palin). (Source.) posted by Steve M. | 7:10 PM | DEAR WINGNUTS: DO YOU GUYS MAKE UP YOUR TERRORISM-PORN LETTERS, OR ARE THEY FOR REAL? I don't know what really happened on AirTran Flight 297 from Atlanta to Houston on November 17 -- a flight that's the subject of right-wing rumors that are going viral right now. I know initial reports claimed that the flight was delayed two and a half hours when a passenger refused to end a cellphone call; a later report was more detailed, though still a bit confusing: ... An AirTran spokesman said a man traveling with a group Tuesday afternoon refused to turn his cell phone off before takeoff. But the woman sitting behind the man said it wasn't a phone at all, and feels the entire incident was the result of poor communication. "He was not talking on a cell phone, it was a camera," said Nancy Deveikis of Marietta. "He was looking at pictures." A flight attendant asked the man twice to turn off the device, Deveikis said. But it was clear the man did not speak English, she said. Although the man was traveling with others, the rest of the group was seated throughout the plane. When the man did not respond to the flight attendant, she took the camera from him, Deveikis said.... The members of the group were asked to leave the plane, then all but two, the man with the device and an English speaker who said he could interpret, were reseated. The flight eventually took off and landed safely. But now I'm hearing from Right Blogistan that THIS WAS A TERRORIST DRY RUN ARGH ARGH WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!1!!!1!!!: Remember the flight from Atlanta to Houston that got turned around because of the guy who wouldn't get off the phone? That's not what happened. From the website Nobody Asked Me via Pierre LeGrand: I was in 1st class coming home. 11 Muslim men got on the plane in full attire. 2 sat in 1st class and the rest peppered themselves throughout the plane all the way to the back. As the plane taxied to the runway the stewardesses gave the safety spiel we are all so familiar with. At that time, one of the men got on his cell and called one of his companions in the back and proceeded to talk on the phone in Arabic very loudly and very aggressively. This took the 1st stewardess out of the picture for she repeatedly told the man that cell phones were not permitted at the time. He ignored her as if she was not there. Let me just interrupt right here and say that if you think it's odd that a bunch of evil murderous jihadists would draw attention to themselves by "talk[ing] on the phone in Arabic very loudly and very aggressively" before takeoff, when they can much more easily be subdued or removed -- especially at a moment when cellphones are supposed to be turned off -- well, you haven't gotten to the really implausible part yet: The 2nd man who answered the phone did the same and this took out the 2nd stewardess. In the back of the plane at this time, 2 younger Muslims, one in the back, isle, and one in front of him, window, began to show footage of a porno they had taped the night before, and were very loud about it. Now….they are only permitted to do this prior to Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the woman via mirror with his back to her. (don't ask me….I don't make the rules, but I’ve studied). (I love that preposterous and utterly implausible bit of folklore, don't you? I have no idea where this guy got it.) The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic devices on at this time. To which one of the men said "shut up infidel dog!" OK, that's it. You lost me there. You were straining credulity up to that point, but now you've gone totally over the line. But there's more: She went to take the camcorder and he began to scream in her face in Arabic. At that exact moment, all 11 of them got up and started to walk the cabin. This is where I had had enough! I got up and started to the back where I heard a voice behind me from another Texan twice my size say "I got your back." I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said "you WILL go sit down or you Will be thrown from this plane!" As I "led" him around me to take his seat, the fellow Texan grabbed him by the back of his neck and his waist and headed out with him. I then grabbed the 2nd man and said, "You WILL do the same!" He protested but adrenaline was flowing now and he was going to go.... Yeah, I really believe this. I really believe you were John Freakin' Wayne, sport. (Our Hero was then interrupted by cops and TSA officials; this is when the Scary Muslims were escorted off the plane, then -- dammit! -- allowed back on.) There's another account of this incident, from Keith A. Robinson, "Corps Commander for the Houston Regional Community Chaplain's Corps" (PDF), that kinda-sorta confirms this one -- except that Robinson apparently missed some of the action and was told of a different set of bizarrely implausible suspicious acts: One gentleman confronted the gate agent demanding his luggage be removed from the flight. As I spoke to him he related that when Flight 297 left the concourse the first time it began taxiing to take off when approximately 12 men of Middle Eastern appearance stood up and began dancing and singing in an Arabic dialect. They refused to be seated when directed to do so by the flight attendants. Then, the singing stopped and some of the men took out their cell phones and began taking pictures of the other individual passengers. Again, the men were ordered to be seated by the flight crew and refused while continuing to take their pictures. Next, the de-boarded passenger related that a few of the men gestured with imaginary guns as their fingers, indicating with their triggering action that they would shoot the people on the plane. Because, really, isn't dancing and singing and making fake shooty gestures what you'd do if you wanted to lull people into a false sense of security before killing them midflight? As I say, I don't know what happened here. I don't know what happened in a similar incident in 2004 reported by Annie Jacobsen (and endlessly blogged about on the right), but I do know that government officials -- remember, Bush was president at the time -- rejected the most overheated theories about what happened. I'm not ruling out the possibility that this is a test by our own government -- a clumsy test scripted like a B-movie. Alternately, it may be that guys in groups sometimes act like assholes even if they're not of European descent. Or maybe this really is a new form of terrorism, in which murder and mayhem are replaced with a sinister, diabolical campaign of ... screwing with our heads. The fiends! ***** UPDATE, SATURDAY: Oops -- it looks as if John Wayne wasn't actually on the flight at all. Oh dear. posted by Steve M. | 1:34 PM | Deathworld One of the best sci-fi novels of my youth was Harry Harrison's Deathworld series. Usually out of print the first of the series is a cautionary tale about imperialism and colonialism and, I always thought, about the settlement of Israel. Harrison describes a world, Pyhrus, that was settled by hopeful immigrants who found nothing but plants and animals and dreamed of a utopian community. Unfortunately for them the plants and animals of the planet were more or less sentient and fight back against the new immigrants by evolving, rapidly, to become deadly specifically to the human invaders. Without realizing it, the humans end up in an evolutionary species war--they must adjust their society, economy, culture, and child-rearing practices to deal with a planetary environment which is entirely hostile to them--everything from the local molds and ferns to the birds and mammals continuously evolve to kill them and pretty soon the humans can't leave their fortress homes without themselves being programmed from birth to kill or be killed. The story of what happened, and why, is discovered not by the Pyhrrans themselves, who are too caught up in the war to grasp its nature, but by a visiting rogue who pieces together the history of the planet and realizes that the very anger, fear, and rage of the humans is creating the permanent state of war with the planet. Unable to ratchet back their anger and fear or come to a truce with the planet and its flora and fauna, the humans are (eventually) forced to abandon their home and become wandering mercenaries. In other words, even when they finally grasp that the planet is simply reacting violently to their own violence, the Pyhrrans are unable to back down the evolutionary war path to their original intentions and their original peaceful society. Basically, the same thing is happening in Afghanistan. We, like other states, have treated the Afghan people as though they are not sentient and have no real understanding of, or stake in, what we are doing for them (or to them.) And we are constantly surprised by the fact that they don't seem to be properly grateful to us, or able to protect us in their villages, or even able to spend our donations and our money responsibly. Well, why should they? Or more importantly, how should they? Afghan society has its own structures and its own institutions through which money, power, and culture flow. And it is only through those institutions that a redirection of Afghan energy from warfare to development can happen. Warfare, and specifically war with invaders, happens because there's nothing much else good going on and the immiediate necessity of attacking the enemy, or stealing his stuff, is more urgent and attractive than continuing to hack out a miserable existence farming or goat herding. I don't know why this isn't incredibly obvious. We are a foreign invader--I don't care how nice we are, or how well intentioned, or how much money we spend. If the Mexicans started dropping bombs that combined shrapnel and money onto the streets of Brooklyn tomorrow, or tried a more targeted approach and handed out money to a few random people on the street, or to the garbage collectors, or to the odd person who spoke Spanish, we wouldn't really expect that that money would be used successfully to develop a parallel school system, or health care system, or anything else...would we? Graft, confusion, inability, and a total lack of local investment in the process would militate against actually achieving those goals, wouldn't they? Why is Afghanistan though of any differently? If I had a goal in Afghanistan it would be to curtail the power of the warlords, educate the women and children, bring peeance and freeance to the villages, and to see the US not spend billions and billions of dollars blowing shit up. Also, I'd like to see the Taliban stop flowing over the border into Pakistan. Our problem in Afghanistan, in re the Taliban, is a problem that is not amenable to a military solution because the Taliban, ultimately, are a problem of Afghan cultural and political struggle over a rubble strewn economic backwater. The Taliban will continue to exist as long as young men can get more respect and money fighting than working their own fields. And the Taliban, as an anti woman and anti education force, will continue to exist as long as the education and empowerment of women and children are seen as destructive of local power relations and religious purity. Remove the threat of foreign interference and imperialism and you remove half the temptation to destroy schools and lives. To get from this Afghanistan to a better Afghanistan we need peace, but our military can't get us peace. Only the Afghans themselves can get to peace. And they Afghan people will choose peace, and development, and education and protect those things when they control them just as they will only protect a new school when they have built it and own it. So my gentle suggestion for the President, if anyone had been able to listen, would have been to withdraw from Afghanistan entirely and to inform the Afghan government and its local ministries that all further development monies would come only in the form of civilian contractors, doctors, teachers, books, etc... when the local Afghan authorities themselves requested it and guaranteed the safety of the mission. Its not that that would have been easy--its just that that is the way that anything gets done in a place like Afghanistan. Basically, villages, elders, political leaders decide what gets done and they make it happen/protect the process or they don't. If they want their daughters to be educated, they'll educate them. If they don't, they won't permit someone else to do it. And trying to force the process is a recipe for disaster. That isn't to say that the way forward is closed. But the way forward has to be through local pathways. If opium is the main crop don't destroy it--buy it. If another crop could bring in more money, help people choose it and plant it and create a market for it. If young men don't have enough money and land to get married and settle down create off farm employment for them. Needless to say all this could be better done through non military means. Not because if we withdraw Afghanistan will be miraculously de-militarized, but because we don't know who to kill and the Afghans do. Just as we don't know what the Afghans want, the Afghans do. aimai Labels: Afghanistan posted by aimai | 10:41 AM |My Reaction: BUFFY: No! You guys are going to have a prom. The kind of prom that everyone should have. I'm going to give you all a nice, fun, normal evening if I have to kill every single person on the face of the earth to do it. I'm too old to get excited and happy watching my president throw good lives and money after doomed to save Afghanistan from the Afghans. Fafblog had it about right. Labels: Afghanistan, Obama posted by aimai | 7:50 AM |DEADLINE PRESSURE? To all the right-wingers who are upset about the fact that the Obama administration has a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and to the war critics who think the timetable is a hopeful sign, don't forget -- Obama also said we were supposed to have a health-care bill by August and be out of Gitmo by next month. So don't get your fears/hopes up. posted by Steve M. | 7:31 AM | BUT REMEMBER, IT'S OBAMA WHO'S "OVEREXPOSED" A message from John McCain's reelection Web site: Media Alert 12/1/2009 **U.S. Senator John McCain will be appearing on the following television programs TOMORROW December 2, 2009, beginning at approximately 7:00 am ET. 7:00 am NBC's TODAY Show with Matt Lauer 7:00 am ABC's Good Morning America with Robin Roberts 7:00 am CBS' Early Show with Harry Smith 7:30 am CNN's American Morning with John Roberts 8:00 am Fox News' Fox & Friends 7:00 pm CNBC's Kudlow Report 5:30 pm BBC Newsnight with Gavin Esler 7:00 pm BBC World News America with Matt Frei Oh, but I'm sure he'll be all talked out after that and we won't see him again on TV for a while -- certainly not, say, next Sunday. Right? **** UPDATE: Surprise, surprise -- despite his punishing schedule today, McCain is going to suck it up and force himself to do a Meet the Press appearance on Sunday. What a noble sacrifice.... posted by Steve M. | 6:55 AM | Tuesday, December 01, 2009 THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF TONIGHT'S SPEECH, BY FAR What did you think the most important aspect of the speech was? The unusual coupling of escalation with exit strategy? The exquisitely subtle critique of Bush administration Afghanistan policy, in contrast to Dick Cheney's recent boorishness with regard to Obama administration policy? The decision to make an economic case against unlimited war in a venue usually chosen by presidents for rah-rah speeches steeped in jingoism and bellicosity? Nope. The most important aspect of the speech -- according to wingnuts, at least -- was this:   The first one is from the Sean Hannity discussion forum. The second one, obviously, is from Fox Nation. And I'm sure ten thousand other wingnuts will utter or type the identical talking point in the next few days. (It'll show up in the next Dick or Liz Cheney interview, don't you think?) **** UPDATE: Here's RedState's Erick Erickson reciting the line (and putting in in boldface with yellow highlighting, as if to say, ACHTUNG! SOUND BITE HERE!):  Also the Patriot Room. Oh, and from non-Wingnuttia, here's Mark Knoller of CBS, too. Media Matters lists quite a few George W. Bush speeches in which he never used the word "victory"; he seems to cranked up his use of "victory" in 2006, quite possibly in response to the rising popularity of this meme on the right -- but he never seems to have used the word directly in reference to Iraq. **** UPDATE: And, inevitably, here comes Andrew Malcolm, the resident wingnut at the L.A. Times, to parrot the talking point. posted by Steve M. | 11:21 PM | STILL ANTICIPATING THOSE NONEXISTENT PITCHFORKS Bloomberg columnist Anne Schroeder tells us that the fattest of fat cats fear violence may be in the offing: "I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit," said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank. I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it's true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that "as a preliminary matter" it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits.... I knew these guys were out of touch with the rest of America, but this confirms it. Yes, Main Street blames Wall Street, and would like to see Wall Street punished, but we don't actually attack businessmen in this country -- it's just not done. It would be an unthinkable act of "class warfare." We don't do class warfare in the U.S.A. -- if we go from Great Recession to utter financial collapse, or if the recession drags on for years and years, we'll just make some familiar or newly minted scapegoat (Mexican immigrants, black teenagers, ACORN) a target for our anger. It's the American way. At the Market Ticker, Karl Denninger explains why just owning a pistol isn't going to help a Goldman guy much -- pistols are accurate only at close range, and only if you've developed shooting accuracy, while many Americans, if they're out for blood, are going to be armed with hunting rifles. But those are precisely the folks who are no more inclined to come to New York than Sarah Palin is -- they're afraid of the city, even fully armed. And if they do come, they're more likely to take a shot at Katie Couric than at Lloyd Blankfein, because that's who they've been trained to hate. No, nothing like this is going to happen -- Main Streeters won't attack and, as Schroeder says, Goldmanites won't really fight back: ... talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall-Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other.... [But] if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. Indeed -- if proles come after the Masters of the Universe, other proles will risk their lives in the Masters' defense. And if by some chance a violent battle did take place between Main Streeters and Wall Streeters, who'd win the ensuing propaganda war? I wouldn't bet on the rebels becoming folk heroes -- lefties would condemn the violence, righties would regard them as the hellspawn of ACORN and welfare-state indolence, and mainstream media coverage would focus on the teary-eyed plutocrats and their families holed up in their mansions. That's not the way it's gone in the past in this country, but that's the way it would be this time -- Main Street America resents the moneymen, but that resentment is never validated by the media or the rest of the culture, so no challenger of capitalism-as-we-know-it is ever acclaimed for such a stance. No reason to think that would change even in a complete financial meltdown. posted by Steve M. | 2:35 PM | OBAMA'S TRIANGULATION: ON FOREIGN POLICY, IT'S WORKING FOR HIM Wow, what could be more perfect if you're trying to be a post-partisan, split-the-difference president? Yesterday, Barack Obama had Michael Moore attacking his Afghanistan troop buildup from the left, in an open letter posted on his Web site ("If you go to West Point tomorrow night ... and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, ... you will do the worst possible thing you could do..."), and today, as he's about to announce that Afghanistan policy, he's being slammed from the right (on Afghanistan and other issues) in Dick Cheney's Politico interview ("Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they've been asked to do?"). At the White House, I think they're quite happy. They can say they're being attacked by extremists on both sides. Yippee! This is how they think it's all supposed to work. But this is what isn't working on domestic issues. If the Obamaites gave it a minute's thought, they'd understand why. On foreign policy, the entire edifice of high-level capitalism doesn't stand firm in the far-right camp -- on the question, say, of war in Afghanistan or Iraq, Wall Street and the Fortune 500, for the most part, don't have a dog in the hunt. That doesn't mean that liberal ideas can ever actually prevail -- in our endless cultural war, it's still risky to sell a non-macho message -- but, at least some of the time (obviously not immediately after 9/11), skepticism about war and military adventurism isn't beyond the pale. On domestic issues, progressivism is beyond the pale -- too much fat-cat money is involved for truly left-liberal ideas to gain purchase. So, on health care and the stimulus, Obama probably assumed that right-wingers would pull one way, liberals would pull the other, and he'd seem like the reasonable guy in the middle. But domestic-issue progressives are utterly marginal. Nobody wanted to pay attention to advocates of a $2 trillion stimulus package or single payer. So all the pulling came from the right, and on domestic issues, we are where we are. I personally don't think there's anything to be gained from continuing the Afghan war. But I continue to think that staying in the fight is going to be good for Obama politically. It allows him to triangulate successfully. Hardly anything else on his agenda does. posted by Steve M. | 8:22 AM | Monday, November 30, 2009 WITHOUT INTENDING TO, SAM TANENHAUS EXPLAINS WHY WE CAN BE SURE PALIN IS RUNNING IN 2012 Sam Tanenhaus reviews Sarah Palin's book in the current New Yorker, and he tells you everything you need to know to confirm the fact that she is, in fact, going to run for president in three years -- or at least that she sees no impediment whatsoever to a run: To an extent unmatched by any recent major political figure, she offers the erasure of any distinction -- in skill, experience, intellect -- between the governing and the governed. As one supporter told Conroy and Walshe [authors of the book Sarah from Alaska, "If she can run a home, she can run the government." Palin agrees: "There's no better training ground for politics than motherhood." Describing the responsibilities of managing Alaska's budget, she makes the same argument in fancier language: "Lessons learned on the micro level still apply to the macro. Just as my family couldn't fund every item on our wish list, and had to live within our means as well as save for the future, I felt we needed to do that for the state." Her insistent ordinariness is an expression not of humility but of egotism, the certitude that simply being herself, in whatever unfinished condition, will always be good enough. (Emphasis added.) That's exactly it. Everyone expecting her to prepare for a presidential run by learning and studying, or to forgo a run because she doesn't want to learn and study, is missing the point -- she doesn't think she needs to prepare for the presidency any more than she's already prepared, by just living. And her fans agree. Did you see Joe Verran being interviewed on NBC at Palin's book signing in Grand Rapids on the subject of Palin's qualifications for the presidency, in the first half of the clip below? JOE VERRAN, PALIN SUPPORTER: ...considering the three we had running last time along with Sarah Palin, she was by far the most qualified to hold that office today. NORAH O'DONNELL (incredulous): More qualified than John McCain, her running mate? VERRAN: More qualified -- John McCain, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama, all they've ever done is hold a seat in the Senate for a debate committee. Nope -- not even McCain's military service cuts it with these folks anymore. He's no Palin -- as Verran tells us, she's "a very real person." And that's what she thinks, too. She thinks that's all the qualification she needs. posted by Steve M. | 11:25 PM | MAURICE CLEMMONS AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF CRAZINESS All the focus seems to be on Mike Huckabee, who as governor of Arkansas gave clemency to Maurice Clemmons after Clemmons received a 60-year sentence for burglaries committed before he turned 18, but I think those who are wondering why Clemmons was free to (allegedly) shoot four cops in Washington State yesterday ought to take a look at how the authoritioes have dealt with him since then: Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County [Washington] for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child. He was released from custody just six days ago, even though was staring at seven additional felony charges in Washington state. Clemmons posted $15,000 with a Chehalis company called Jail Sucks Bail Bonds. The bondsman, in turn, put up $150,000, securing Clemmons' release on the pending child-rape charge.... He was married, but the relationship was tumultuous, with accounts of his unpredictable behavior leading to at least two confrontations with police earlier this year. During the confrontation in May, Clemmons punched a sheriff's deputy in the face, according to court records.... In another instance, Clemmons was accused of gathering his wife and young relatives around at 3 or 4 in the morning and having them all undress. He told them that families need to "be naked for at least 5 minutes on Sunday," a Pierce County sheriff's report says. "The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," the report says. As part of the child-rape investigation, the sheriff's office interviewed Clemmons' sister in May. She told them that "Maurice is not in his right mind and did not know how he could react when contacted by Law Enforcement," a sheriff's report says. "She stated that he was saying that the secret service was coming to get him because he had written a letter to the President. She stated his behavior has become unpredictable and erratic. She suspects he is having a mental breakdown," the report says. Deputies also interviewed other family members. They reported that Clemmons had been saying he could fly and that he expected President Obama to visit to "confirm that he is Messiah in the flesh." Prosecutors in Pierce County were sufficiently concerned about Clemmons' mental health that they asked to have him evaluated at Western State Hospital. Earlier this month, on Nov. 6, a psychologist concluded that Clemmons was competent to stand trial on the child-rape and other felony charges, according to court records.... Yeah, here's a guy who's as sane as you or me -- oh, except for the forced nakedness, the messiah complex, and the belief in his own superhuman powers. That and the apparent multiple felonies up to and including child rape. Obviously this guy was a toxic mix of dangerous and crazy, and yet he could be back on the streets after posting a $15K bond. Regarding insanity, as I understand it,* Washington State judges competence to stand trial by the M'Naughten Rule, which regards you as sane if you know right from wrong, whether or not you have sufficient impulse control to avoid doing wrong. Other states in the union have different insanity tests -- but why does this one persist in even a single state, when even moderate powers of observation would tell you that some people's brains have pockets of proper moral processing but aren't at all capable of preventing those people from committing dangerous, harmful acts? Is it because we think it's weak and wussy to find certain people insane instead of locking 'em all up and throwing away the key? Of course, then we don't lock 'em up and throw away the key -- when the system does declare Clemmons a common (alleged) criminal, it assesses a very low bail for child rape, for heaven's sake. (Well, the man is black, after all. It's quite possible his alleged victim wasn't a photogenic blond girl over whom Nancy Grace could bill and coo. So no big whoop, right?) What a mess -- and yet, although a head or two may roll in Washington State, after this the system will treat guys like guys like Clemmons the same way all over the country. The only national impact this will have is on Mike Huckabee's 2012 presidential bid, which has taken a serious hit. Will this hurt his chances of being the Palin-stopper? Who'll step up if so? (I care because I think there's an excellent chance that Barack Obama will be a one-term president -- especially if, as Paul Krugman says, unemployment is still likely to be above 8% in 2012. Theocrat Huckabee scares me almost as much as Palin, so I'm actually pleased if he's taken a hit, deserved or otherwise.) ***** *UPDATE: See the comments, where I'm told I garbled this. posted by Steve M. | 3:06 PM | Investment The Obama campaign was notable for many different things but the biggest, to my mind, was its ability to create and harness a huge amount of creative energy, idealism, and excitement among voters. Anyone remember the article that came out about the Obama "O" graphic and how it was refigured and appropriated by so many different groups? Anyone remember how easy it was to set up a web site, a fundraiser, a day of action, using the Obama campaign as a springboard? I held a fundraiser for Obama based on the theme "a new thing for an old thing" and had everyone bring something they wanted to get rid of and some money. Everyone who came donated their nice but unwanted article and their money and took home someone else's donation. We raised 1,500 dollars, IIRC. At Halloween we downloaded Obama's image and carved it on our pumpkin. What happened to that enthusiasm and that creativity? If I fault the Obama administration for anything it is that they allowed all that sense of voter investment to die off. I don't have the sense that people watched the inauguration--the high point of my life, certainly--and thought "ok, now I can chill." People were hungry to be called to service, and to be trusted with stuff do to, but the Obama campaign put them out to pasture and only weakly appealed to them late in the Health Care Debate. I know because I stopped getting useful organizational materials and started getting annoying vague appeals to "support the president" by "calling my representatives" or donating money. Previously I could have discovered online groups pushing specific policy proposals, or asking me to go door to door with some kind of locally responsive action agenda. As everyone in the bloggosphere knows a recent poll shows a huge drop in Democratic voter enthusiasm and a drop in people's intention to vote at all during the 2010 election. There are lots of reasons for this drop--I'm experiencing it myself though I will, of course, vote. But the main reason is that the Obama people decided that they could put the voters out to pasture between 2008 and 2010. Did it look like a really long time to Rahm and Axelrod? Too long to keep up the enthusiasm down ticket? Because it looks like a really short time, to me. In effect Obama and his team had one year to get stuff done to make people happy, and one year to let the Democratic Incumbents and Challengers try to reap the benefits at the local level. And that was just to stay even or get a slightly bigger majority to get more stuff done. In other words, as far as I can see, letting the Obama voter lose contact with, and ownership of, Obama's presidency was a really short sighted move. Perhaps they did it because the cacophony of local, small time, democratic (small d) voices were too difficult for Obama to respond to in terms of policy, whether in detail or speed. Or perhaps they dropped their connection because the first few months Obama and Rahm were committed to demonstrating that they cared more about being beautifully conciliatory and bipartisan than ugly and partisan. I hate to go for the sentiment but "in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make" goes double for political action. People are hungry to work with and for their own lives--the teabaggers are proof positive that people will heave themselves up out of their easy chairs, stand in the rain, wear silly clothing--if they feel that their political leaders are asking this sacrifice of them, and if they feel that they will be listened to if they do it. The Obama Administration, unlike the Obama campaign, has forgotten this simple fact and true: the more your trust and empower your supporters the more they are invested in you and your goals. Its a virtuous circle. Rather than assuming that the "grownups" were back in charge and that the agitators and voters and small fry should go into cryostorage until 2010 the Obama people should have allowed the original Obama supporters to continue to field organizers, actions, and ideas. If they'd done that we wouldn't be looking at this immense enthusiasm gap going in to the next election cycle. Labels: Barack Obama, Organizing posted by aimai | 1:52 PM |THE ANTI-OBAMA STORY THAT ISN'T EVEN ON JOHN HARRIS'S RADAR While Politico waits for the news cycle to start up again in earnest, it's giving us this as its lead story: the main anti-Obama narratives the right and anti-Obama centrists want to advance, all conveniently collected in one place under the heading "7 Stories Obama Doesn't Want Told." I'm struck by what's not on the list, which includes many of the old favorites: "He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money"; "Too much Leonard Nimoy"; "That’s the Chicago Way"; "He’s a pushover"; "He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe"; "President Pelosi"; and "He’s in love with the man in the mirror." Most of these are old right and centrist chestnuts -- he's too free-spending, his people are thugs ("Chicago Way"), he's a wimp ("pushover") -- and yes, Harris does note that the latter two seem a tad contradictory, but liberal and Democrats are always accused of being both supervillains capable of destroying Western civilization with a few lawyerly subterfuges and wussy girly-men who should leave politics and stick to flower-arranging and poodle-walking. ("President Pelosi" is probably the only puzzler, but it's a variant on "pushover" -- i.e., that Nurse Ratched Nancy wears the pants in the Obama-era Democratic Party, and is accomplishing more than Obama himself). So what's missing here? What anti-Obama narrative does Harris skip? Well, it's the one that says Obama cares more about Wall Street than Main Street. It's the one that says he's utterly dropped the ball on the economic recovery with regard to the needs of ordinary citizens. Now, see, I'd put that one under "Too much Leonard Nimoy," but Harris doesn't. Here's what he writes: People used to make fun of Bill Clinton's misty-eyed, raspy-voiced claims that, "I feel your pain." The reality, however, is that Clinton’s dozen years as governor before becoming president really did leave him with a vivid sense of the concrete human dimensions of policy. He did not view programs as abstractions -- he viewed them in terms of actual people he knew by name. With that as a lead-in, you'd think Harris was going in a Paul Krugman/Bob Herbert direction. Heavens, no: Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles. Both Maureen Dowd in The New York Times and Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post have likened him to Star Trek's Mr. Spock. The Spock imagery has been especially strong during the extended review Obama has undertaken of Afghanistan policy. He'll announce the results on Tuesday. The speech's success will be judged not only on the logic of the presentation but on whether Obama communicates in a more visceral way what progress looks like and why it is worth achieving. No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance. I suppose Harris could also be thinking of the suffering of the unemployed and the underwater -- but the fact that he can't even get himself to mention those people tells you that this is a pure right and right-centrist critique. No populism, please -- we're the Village! The real worry with regard to Obama's deliberateness is Afghanistan, dammit -- he's not a steely-eyed rocket man! That's what we need! That's what America wants! Actually, America wants us to get the hell out of Afghanistan, but never mind. What America wants is a steely-eyed scourge of the rich and friend to the afflicted. But that's not a narrative Obama has to fear because it's coming only from members of the Great Unwashed -- and not the ones reading from scripts written by Dick Armey. Who cares about those people? Harris's article is Dowd-like, and he invokes Dowd herself, but even she got closer to the real problem with Obama as the general public sees it when (in her November 21 column) she talked about his reluctance to embrace the visceral: ...Obama so values pragmatism, and is so immersed in the thorny details of legislative compromises, that he may be undervaluing the connective bonds of simpler truths. Americans who are hurting get angry when they learn that Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Fed before becoming Treasury secretary, caved to the insistence of Goldman Sachs and other A.I.G. trading partners that they get 100 cents on the dollar when he could have struck a far better bargain for taxpayers.... Dowd then goes on to talk about Afghanistan in this context -- and that's what Harris picked up on. Not the bread-and-butter stuff. Because, in his world, that doesn't matter. posted by Steve M. | 10:15 AM | |
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