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Tuesday, June 30, 2009 ARCANE MYSTERIES REVEALED ONLY TO A CHOSEN FEW! Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum just published his big Sarah Palin article -- and William Kristol thinks he has Purdum dead to rights: Here's a highlight of Purdum's reporting: "More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy'--and thought it fit her perfectly." Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don't believe it for a moment. I've (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I've gone decades without "several" people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Um, Bill? If you Google the word "narcissist," the second result you get is the Wikipedia page for "Narcissistic personality disorder." Here's the first paragraph of that page: Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic classification system used in the United States, as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy." Not far below that are nine DSM-IV criteria for the disorder. Bill, is it really so hard to imagine that several of Purdum's sources might have conducted such a search -- each one after, say, a particularly fraught meeting with Governor Palin? posted by Steve M. | 10:35 PM | THAT PALIN ARTICLE: YAWN I dunno, is it just me? Todd Purdum's new Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin contains, I'm told, 9,823 words (Chris Cillizza, Washington Post) and has "nuggets galore" (The Hill), but I was unimpressed. Here's a "nugget" -- one of her advisers was Mark McKinnon. Mark McKinnon! Nobody knew that! Wowee zowee! Tell Drudge to put up an extra red siren! Yeah, it's semi-interesting that Palin blew off prep for the Katie Couric interview because she was inordinately fixated on answering a questionnaire from The Frontiersman, an Alaska newspaper, but it's long been established that Palin doesn't like studying issues in depth (see this New Republic article from last fall), and we knew she refused to prepare for Couric (Carl Cameron of Fox News told us that in November), so who cares why? If it hadn't been that questionnaire, surely she would have blown off the prep for some other reason. That's Palin. Even this anecdote, which The Hill calls an "eye-popper," doesn't impress me much: When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father." First of all, this isn't a scoop -- the Anchorage Daily News reported it just after Trig was born, in the spring of '08. And while I fully agree that Palin's a narcissist, I'm not sure this is as megalomaniacal as it seems. Here's more on the e-mail, from the ADN: In a letter she e-mailed to relatives and close friends Friday after giving birth, Palin wrote, "Many people will express sympathy, but you don't want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this." She wrote it in the voice of and signed it as "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father." "Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed-up world you live in down there on Earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome," Palin wrote. Maybe I've just lurked at too many right-wing Web sites, but this seems like garden-variety Christian-right inspirational schmaltz. Even the first-person aspect of it seems no weirder than, say, those God Speaks billboards. I'm not saying it's a bad article, just that I'm not sure it reveals much we didn't already know. **** I do think Purdum is right when he says this: ... no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition.... Palin has always been a party of one. It makes me realize that Palin reminds me of Madonna. In much the same way that Palin has shot to the top without seeming to have a true political purpose -- a real set of well-developed ideas or issues or policy goals -- Madonna succeeded without seeming to have any great skill at what was apparently her job: singing. But both of them are extraordinarily good at making people pay attention to them (and making people keep paying attention to them). Both of them have an extraordinary sense of will. Both act as if they're physically stunning even though they're not really beautiful -- and as a result, people think they're beautiful. (Purdum certainly thinks Palin is beautiful -- he calls her "the sexiest brand in Republican politics" and "by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics," adding, squirm-inducingly, that she is "the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.") Purdum ends his article by speculating that Palin may not have much of a future in GOP politics -- she doesn't have the right advisers, country-club Republicans don't like her, and so on. In this, he sounds like every music fan from the mid-1980s on (myself included) who found Madonna resistible, and therefore assumed she just had to be reaching the end of her 15 minutes of fame -- and kept saying that for the 20 years she was one of the biggest stars in the world. **** UPDATE: Oops -- I'm being thanked for this post by William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, of all people. Thanks, Bill. Too bad I still think you're an ass. Oh, and I love what one of his commenters says, apparently (to judge from the commenter's profile and blog) in all earnestness: Palin/Keyes. Libs are scared to death of them. Neither backs down, both are knowledgeable and versed in public speaking, and Keyes is a damned genius. I would love to see the Keyes treatment of Biden in a Veep faceoff. Oh, me too. Me too. Only one other ticket could top that one. posted by Steve M. | 3:18 PM | CHENEY WARNS OF DIRE CONSEQUENCES. AMERICA OFFERS CHENEY QUARTER, ASKS HIM TO PHONE SOMEONE WHO CARES. Washington Times: Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday said he is concerned about U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities within 24 hours. Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times' "America's Morning News" radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done. "But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks." ... Andrew Sullivan makes the obvious point: ...he is gearing up to blame Obama if the withdrawal leads to bloodshed or chaos. You know what? Fine. Let him. The American people -- including Republicans -- just don't care anymore: A new national poll suggests that nearly three-quarters of all Americans support the plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns, even though most believe that the troop movements will lead to an increase in violence in that country. The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll [was] released on Tuesday morning.... "This plan has widespread bipartisan support," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Seventy two percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans favor this move." The poll indicates that 52 percent think the level of violence in Iraqi cities will increase after U.S. troops withdraw, with 32 percent saying things will remain the same and 15 percent feeling that the level of violence will decrease. If violence does increase, the poll suggests Americans are quite clear about how to respond. "Nearly two-thirds say that the U.S. should not send combat troops back into Iraqi population centers even if there is a significant increase in the number of violence attacks." Holland notes. "Americans seem to believe that once the Iraqis are in charge, it's up to them to solve any future problems." I think, beyond a simple fight-your-own-battles message, Americans are overwhelmingly rejecting the core of the Bush-Cheney argument, which is that the Iraq War has prevented a second 9/11. Maybe Americans have finally figured out that Al Qaeda is still out there, in Waziristan rather than Iraq. Maybe they don't really see the difference between American kids dying in roadside bombing in Iraq and Americans dying in the towers. Maybe it's just that they see a lot of nasty stuff on the news -- terrorist attacks in Mumbai, brutal repression in Iran -- and they're thinking, in a general way, Wasn't the point of the Iraq War that it would get all these people to stop fighting and make nice? Whatever's going on, Cheney can lay all the groundwork he wants for attacks on Obama if Iraq worsens, but America just doesn't give a crap. posted by Steve M. | 10:34 AM | TENTH AMENDMENT WINGNUTS HOPE TO MAKE HEALTH CARE REFORM ILLEGAL There isn't even a health care bill yet in D.C., but legislators in Arizona are already jumping in to try to ban what they think is coming. It's easy to mock this as paranoia, but warning of doom can have the effect of suggesting to the public that doom is precisely what's coming: Voters in Arizona will decide next year whether residents will be subject to mandates in the pending health care reform that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are promoting. ... [The] initiative (HCR2014), ... if passed, would amend the state constitution to codify that no resident would be required to participate in any public health care option. Arizonans will vote on the initiative in November 2010. "HCR2014 is proactive and will protect patients' fundamental rights," Arizona State Rep. Nancy Barto, a Republican, said in a statement. "We are a front-line battle state to stop the momentum of this powerful government takeover of your health care decisions. Health care by lobbyists thwarts your rights and can be stopped here." ... Now, we all know there isn't going to be mandatory "socialized medicine," but the wingnuts, of course, think (or want the public to think) that merely having a public option will be an apocalyptic corporate plague that causes all private health insurers to go out of business -- and, of course, saying so loud enough and frequently enough makes at least some of the public believe that's true, and would be unspeakably awful. And note above that the dreaded "socialized medicine" is being criticized as "Health care by lobbyists." The evildoers are both commies and fat cats! Actually, the law doesn't just seek to ban "socialized medicine" -- it also seeks to ban individual or corporate mandates: [The] proposal ... would constitutionally override any law, rule or regulation that requires individuals or employers to participate in any particular health care system. ... the [Obama] plan, at least for the time being, is expected to include some sort of mandatory purchase. That could involve companies being forced to provide insurance for their workers as well as a requirement that every individual obtain coverage or face financial penalties. But I think the key point here is OBAMA WANTS TO MAKE CAPITALISM ILLEGAL!!!!!1!1!!!!, and that problem is very directly addressed: HCR2014 ... would prohibit any fine or penalty on anyone or any company for deciding to purchase health care directly. ... it would overrule anything that prohibits the sale of private health insurance in Arizona. But this is just silly and quixotic, right? People want real health care reform, right? Well, in Arizona a similar proposal almost became law last year: The measure is similar to an initiative pushed onto the ballot last year by Eric Novack, a Phoenix orthopedic surgeon.... But the initiative was narrowly defeated, at least in part amid concerns that the change would undermine the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid program. Tenth Amendment fans are cheering this on as "nullification": "The main point that nullification aims to address is that a government allowed to determine the scope of its own powers cannot remain limited for long. This is a lesson we should have learned by now. Moreover, since piecemeal solutions to reducing federal power have accomplished nothing, we can hardly afford to dismiss out of hand the idea of nullification, a remedy that is at once creative and intelligent, and recommended by some of the greatest political thinkers in American history." As it has in the past, my mind goes back to a gruesome monologue in Apocalypse Now, in which Marlon Brando, as Colonel Kurtz, recalls helping to give some Vietnamese children polio vaccines and then learning that the VC have amputated all of the children's inoculated arms. That's what modern Republicans seem to want to be -- tough cadres whose willful resistance to the enemy extends even to medicine. If these folks actually have an alternate proposal for dealing with America's (or even just Arizona's) health care problems, I'm not aware of it. posted by Steve M. | 8:40 AM | Monday, June 29, 2009 YOU THINK THIS IS VENGEANCE? I'LL SHOW YOU VENGEANCE. I do think there's something showoffy about the 150-year sentence given to Bernie Madoff, and I think the length is a consequence of the social status of many of his victims, but unlike Taylor Marsh, I can't exactly say I find it outrageously long: Talk about sentence overkill.... Madoff's lawyers referred to the verdict as "mob vengeance." ... Good riddance to the schmuck, but the overkill sentence is nothing less than judicial smoke and mirrors.... Well, it's either one or the other -- overkill or smoke and mirrors. He'll spend the rest of his life in prison. He'd've spent the rest of his life in prison if he got 20 years without parole. So where's the overkill, except, well, rhetorically? The judge gets to say he threw the book at Madoff. That's all there is to this. There could be real vengeance in this sentence, but it would have to be a very, very different sentence, as I'll explain below. Marsh has a point about the sentence, obviously, here: It should come as cold comfort for people, because the system that allowed it to happen is still in place with no answers as to where the regulatory agencies were when Madoff ran amok. As does Melissa McEwan: It's just a little fucked up that the asshole who swindled rich people gets 150 years, but most of the assholes who swindled poor people haven't even lost their jobs. And that's to say nothing of the assholes staffed by the regulatory bodies whose enormous incompetence enabled Madoff's crimes, no less members of the administration under whose watch the economy collapsed. And yet my thoughts keep going the other way. I don't approve of the death penalty -- I don't think it's any kind of deterrent, as it's applied. But -- notwithstanding the fact that Madoff isn't the only person responsible for his Ponzi scheme -- if we're going to have a death penalty, why do we never impose it on white-collar felons? Aren't these precisely the kinds of people it actually might deter? We execute people for crimes of violence -- but the people walking around free who are committing the same kinds of crimes, or who will do so in the future, aren't deterred, because the choice to do that means they've already accepted violence as a part of life. Being killed at the end is not a huge shock to someone who's led a violent life. But white-collar criminals are different. Executing a few of them would scare the bejesus out of the rest. They don't do that kind of harm, and they feel entitled not to have it done to them. What if they no longer had the luxury of that assumtion? It might concentrate the mind, no? This is just a thought exercise, of course. A society that won't police the Madoffs of the world effectively, and that will barely punish swindlers of the non-posh at all, surely isn't going to treat white-collar crooks like "real" felons. And I guess I'd be squeamish about society doing so if it actually were happening. I'm just saying I think it might be the only kind of death penalty that would actually work. posted by Steve M. | 7:29 PM | THE VILLAGE LOVES GRAHAM. ACTUAL REPUBLICANS, NOT SO MUCH. The Beltway Villagers simply can't bear the brave new world in which Republicans aren't obviously dominant, so they're desperately seeking someone -- anyone -- whose leadership can help restore the status quo ante. Here's The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza with the latest possible standard-bearer for a future restoration: Dispirited Republicans looking for national leaders amid a wash of scandals that have dominated national news over the last fortnight got a bit of good news on Sunday with an inspired performance on "Meet the Press" by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R).... Asked about Gov. Mark Sanford's extramarital affair, Graham, who is close to the governor, said that he was "disappointed" in his friend's behavior and praised Obama as "one of the better role models in the entire country for the idea of being a good parent, a good father." Of the two major legislative victories for Democrats so far this Congress -- the economic stimulus bill and the climate change measure -- Graham offered a criticism that acknowledged the mistakes his own party had made while subtly hanging the politics as usual label on Obama and Democrats. "The stimulus package was Karl Rove politics; pick a few Republicans off, call it bipartisan," said Graham. "The climate change bill was Tom DeLay banging heads and twisting arms to get one vote more than you needed. So there's really been no change in Washington." ... Does one solid performance on a Sunday show mean that Graham is the new "it" guy for the GOP? No. But the notoriously private Graham seemed to signal on Sunday that he is ready to take more of a leadership role.... Politico's Jonathan Martin seconds this. All of which would be swell news for the GOP, except for one small stumbling block: the unswerving resistance of actual Republicans. Here's some reaction to the same Meet the Press appearance from Free Republic: You go Goober! Way to waste valuable face time praising Our Little President.! **** Really. I wish this insipid little sh*t would just shut up and go away. **** Graham is amazing -- he doesn't even demand a $30 economy box of Frito chips nor a gas card in return for his services. **** Hitler loved his dog. WTF does it matter to the country what kind of father Obozo is to his kids? **** What's that brown stuff on your nose, Lindsey? **** pitiful white liberal guilt affects RINOs And these folks have no doubt that rumors of Graham's homosexuality are true: Why couldn't it had been Graham in Argentina? At least we could call him Lindsey and not leslie **** What would that little homo weasel know about being a father? And, incidentally, they have some rather baroque theories about the president: Rumor has it that [Obama] is only biological father to one: second offspring is result of angry underbite's affair. Look at her: she does not resemble the One is any way, shape or manner. **** Well, he’s pretty good at using his kids as photo-ops. What goes on behind the scenes, who knows? He was pretty certainly molested as a child himself, one reason why he seems to have turned out gay, but that doesn't mean he grew up to be a child molester himself. Rather, he is a pathological narcissist, who I suspect pays little or no attention to his kids or his dog except when he is being watched or photographed, when he wants to show unlookers what a wonderful guy he is. **** Well, Lindsay, you wanna warm his bed when m'obozo is taking a taxpayer-free shopping jaunt in Paris? Since obozo is bisexual, he wouldn’t mind having a little white boy like servicing him. Oh yeah -- this is a group of voters that's really ready for a change from overheated, fire-breathing rhetoric, wouldn't you say? posted by Steve M. | 3:00 PM | IF OBAMA'S POPULARITY DECLINES SIGNIFICANTLY, THIS WILL BE WHY It's because he's setting in motion a lot of things the public wants and needs right now, but he's done so with no plan to prevent outcomes like this: Somewhere on earth, there must be a more difficult task than this: persuading American mortgage companies to lower payments for homeowners who can no longer afford their loans. But as Karina Montenegro struggles to accomplish this feat for a troubled borrower, she strains to imagine a more futile pursuit.... Among her clients is Vladimir Vishmid, who owes $490,000 on the mortgage for his three-bedroom home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles.... Software on Ms. Montenegro's computer logs the details of the three applications her company has submitted for Mr. Vishmid. Chris, the WaMu representative, is telling her to send in No. 4. "Personally, I'd submit a new file," Chris counsels. "I'm telling you honestly, anything over 30 days is a new submission for us." ... In the same office, Ms. Montenegro's colleague, Sean Milotta, has run into a problem on a loan billed by American Home Mortgage Servicing. Though the borrower appears eligible for the Obama administration plan, the company refuses to take an application because the loan is owned by an investor who is unwilling to absorb a loss. In another office down the hall, Ramin Lavi, 27, has picked up the file of Alice Descovich, who is seeking to shave down the $708,000 she owes on a mortgage serviced by WaMu for her home in Alameda, Calif.... A note in the system shows that the bank confirmed receiving documents on April 29 -- pay stubs, tax returns, a letter disclosing her hardship, bank statements. Since then, the company has been waiting for WaMu to review the file. But when Mr. Lavi calls, a representative coolly discloses that the application has been rejected because one document, a proof-of-insurance form, is missing. He must start over.... This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the notion of activist government proves itself -- or doesn't. Get this kind of thing wrong and GOP rhetoric begins sounding persuasive to voters again -- specifically, rhetoric about how government is never the solution, always the problem, and about how the scariest words in English are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." If you can't get better results than this -- because your legislation is too watered down, because your oversight is underfunded, because you're unable or unwilling to knock heads together, especially the heads of powerful special interests, to get the results you need -- then at least you have to use the bully pulpit to identify the enemies of progress. You have to do some sort of follow-through, just to keep faith with the public. Health care can't be like this -- it just can't. If what results from legislation is byzantine, compromised, and corrupted, the failures can't be allowed to stand. What worries me is that Obama doesn't seem to be very good at dealing with the stubborn and intransigent -- people who don't want him to succeed. His game plan always seems to anticipate that he can talk people out of resistance, and he seems surprised when he can't. (The latest example: the resistance he's getting on closing Guantanamo.) Even if he gets a good health care bill, the powerful are going to find ways to weasel out of doing the right thing. He needs to assume that from Day One, and be ready for it. posted by Steve M. | 11:59 AM | Sunday, June 28, 2009 YEAH, I BOUGHT PIECES OF THE TRUE CROSS FROM THIS GUY. HE'S A FIRST-RATE SELLER World Net Daily has posted three stories in the past 48 hours on the subject of an eBay seller who claims to have (and we all should have seen this coming) a Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. Story #1: With dozens of lawsuits filed over access to Barack Obama's certified long-form birth certificate, many more lawyers working on his behalf to keep it secret and the validity of the U.S. Constitution hanging in the balance, guess where a "certified copy" of the original Mombasa "document" has been found? On eBay. Item No. 160344928067, at least as of today, is described as "a certified copy of President Barack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate." ... The seller, identified by the user name " colmado_naranja," states, "President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in The Coast Provincial Hospital at Mombasa in Kenya at 7:24 PM on August 4th, 1961." So, what does it look like? Ah, there's the rub: ... "I am not posting any photos of the birth certificate here on eBay. I have not seen this birth certificate anywhere on the Internet, to post it here on eBay would lead to a flood of facsimiles on the Internet. This would inadvertently decrease the value of the certificate as well," the seller said. A later story reported that the listing had been "twice scrubbed by eBay -- But seller of 'Obama's birth certificate' dodges administrators to post 3rd time." And in a third story we learn that the document can't possibly be real according to ... um, that incredibly reliable truth-teller Jerome Corsi: WND's senior staff writer, Jerome Corsi, traveled to Kenya in 2008 to look into Obama's past and remaining ties to the nation.... Corsi told WND that despite contacts in government offices, the help of others and even the offer of financial reward, the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa would not confirm Obama's birth there nor provide access to records. "When I was there, I tried to get records from that hospital, but I couldn't do it," Corsi said. "The hospital either had no records or wouldn't release them. "That's what makes me skeptical," Corsi continued. "How did [colmado_naranja] get the birth certificate, if it's real?" Hey -- if anyone should have gotten this phony-baloney document, it's me! Oh, and colmado_naranja has now tried to post the item four times, and those pesky eBay people keep scrubbing the listing -- even though, starting with listing #3, colmado said he wasn't actually selling the birth-certificate-you-can't-see anymore: Under its now third eBay number, 160345002984, the item up for sale is listed as a "story" and specifically states the document is a gift to the winner, not the object of bidding itself: "I'm now auctioning my story (true story) of how I obtained U.S. President Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate," the listing states. "The winner of this auction will not bear copyrights to my story. However, along with my story the winning bidder will also take home U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's Kenyan (African) birth certificate. Certified birth certificate. I am giving the birth certificate to the bidder that wins this auction, which is for my story." Just to be certain, the listing restates, "You are not bidding on Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate in this eBay auction." Glad to have that cleared up. Oh, and we're reminded that WND's founder, Joseph Farah, is posting this billboard on American highway (or at least, so far, on Pennsylvania's Highway 78):  (Donations to post more of these damn things happily accepted here.) **** And meanwhile, self-appointed linguistic sleuth Jack Cashill, whom I told you about last fall, is persisting in his campaign to prove that Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama's first book; he now claims a pseudonymous "Mr. West" has provided him "759 matches" between Ayers's books and Obama's Dreams from My Father (no, I'm not exactly sure what constitutes a "match"), all of them "C-level or above" (no, I'm not sure what that means either). The "matches" includes the likes of this: Ayers is fixated with faces, especially eyes. He writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, eyes "like ice," and people who are "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed." As it happens, Obama is also fixated with faces, especially eyes. He also writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, and uses the phrases "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed." Obama adds "smoldering eyes," "smoldering" being a word that he and Ayers inject repeatedly. (For the record, a search of Dreams from My Father at Amazon finds that the word "smoldering" shows up exactly twice in the 480-page book, only once in reference to eyes. It shows up five times in Ayers's Fugitive Days -- but never in reference to eyes.) Can't you people come up with better nutball conspiracy theories than these? posted by Steve M. | 11:18 PM | BACK THESE EVENING Sorry -- another Sunday off the grid. See you tonight.... posted by Steve M. | 9:47 AM | Saturday, June 27, 2009 STEYN: SOUTH CAROLINA HAS A CHEATING, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE GOVERNOR BECAUSE OF LIBERALISM Yup, that's the message from the insufferable Mark Steyn, along with (as I suggested a few days ago) the talking point that governors should be able to go AWOL for days and days, and the only reason we don't think so is that we're zombified addicts of Big Government: ...At the news conference, the governor rationalized his unfaithfulness to Mrs. Sanford by saying that he needed to get out of "the bubble." ... Although staffers kept up his ghostwritten tweet of the day on Twitter, by Monday state senators were revealing that they hadn't heard from the Governor since Thursday. And we can't have that, can we? ... In a republic of limited government, the governor, two-thirds of the state legislature and the heads of every regulatory agency should be able to go "hiking the Appalachian Trail" for a lot longer than five days, and nobody would notice.... ... The real bubble is a consequence of big government. The more the citizenry expect from the state, the more our political class will depend on ever more swollen Gulf Emir-size retinues of staffers hovering at the elbow to steer you from one corner of the fishbowl to another 24/7. Yup, that's right -- it's not a problem that he was gone and incommunicado -- it's a problem that we think that's a problem. And now here's how big government actually made Sanford cheat: "Why are politicians so weird?" a reader asked me after the Sanford news conference. But the majority of people willing to live like this will be, almost by definition, deeply weird. So big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits.... Small government, narrow responsibilities, part-time legislators and executives, a minimal number of aides, lots of days off: Let's burst the bubble. Uh-huh -- if in recent years we'd shrunk the government of the dominant country on the planet to the size of the Bugtussle Town Board, Mark Sanford would have remained faithful to his wife. posted by Steve M. | 1:27 PM | THE MOMENT I ALMOST BECAME A LIBERTARIAN It was yesterday afternoon, when I was listening to NPR and David Brooks and E.J. Dionne were asked to talk about Michael Jackson. (Audio link.) It wasn't appalling. They eventually moved on to subjects about which they actually know something. But really, was this necessary? posted by Steve M. | 11:01 AM | Friday, June 26, 2009 SANFORD AND ENSIGN'S PALS: THAT HITLER HAD SOME REALLY GOOD IDEAS Interesting report a couple of days ago from U.S. News -- though it just scratches the surface, as I'll explain below (and yes, Hitler is involved): Sanford Cites Secretive Christian Group's Role in Helping Confront Affair Mark Sanford's news conference today was unusual for lot of reasons, but here's a less obvious one: The South Carolina governor referred to "C Street," a Washington dormitory for lawmakers funded by a highly secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship. (The Fellowship is the group behind the National Prayer Breakfast, where President Obama rolled out his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships earlier this year.) It's rare for elected officials to publicly allude to C Street or to anything affiliated with the Fellowship. But here's the exchange between Sanford and a reporter: QUESTION: Did your wife and your family know about the affair before the trip to Argentina? There's more about the group in this 2003 AP story -- which listed John Ensign as one of the six congressmen living in the Fellowship dorm -- and in this new story from The Washington Post. But I also want to point you to Lindsay Beyerstein's interview with Jeff Sharlet, author of a book on the group called The Family. (The Family is an alternate name for the Fellowship.) ...Sharlet spent nearly a month living at Ivanwald, a dormitory in Virginia where sons of the Family are sent to immerse themselves in Jesus and clean the toilets of congressmen and senators.... Lindsay Beyerstein What is the Family? Jeff Sharlet: It's an international network of evangelical activists in government, military and business. The Family is dedicated to this idea that Christianity has gotten it all wrong for two thousand years by focusing on the poor, the suffering and the weak. The Family says that instead, what Christians should do is minister to the up-and-out -- as opposed to the down-and-out -- to those that are already powerful. Because if they can win those people for Christ, they win the whole deal. That's what this network is dedicated to. It includes nonprofit organizations, it includes think tanks, it includes various ministries.... Lindsay Beyerstein: In "The Family," a lot of subjects explicitly state their admiration for Hitler and other authoritarian political figures. How much of that is admiring their style, and how much is admiring their substance? Jeff Sharlet: I'd argue that there isn't a hell of a lot of difference. I spent a lot of time living with these guys, and I remember at one point asking them, "What's the deal with all this Hitler talk?" And they'd say, "Oh, it's not the ends, it's the means." But to most of us, the means seem pretty bad, too. The means are authoritarianism. It's pretty close to the substance because it grows out of this very broad movement in the 1930s of elites concluding that democracy has run its course, that democracy was a temporary phase in world history. And so, these people were experimenting with all sorts of different alternatives. And remember, before World War II it was considered a perfectly legitimate and acceptable position to endorse fascism. (Sharlet explains in the book that Hitler is admired not for his ideology but for his approach to organization and social influence. Admiration is also expressed for Lenin, bin Laden, and the Mafia. If you're registered at Amazon, search for some these terms in the book -- it's fascinating.) The interview also talks about Hillary Clinton's ties to the group (sigh); about the group's belief in "small group sex confessions"; and about Family/Fellowship involvement in, of all things, the making of the cheeseball sci-fi film The Blob. Go read it. (WaPo link via Balloon Juice.) posted by Steve M. | 2:47 PM | PATRONIZING PEGGY Peggy Noonan has been fairly reasonable lately -- criticizing her party for some of the right reasons, giving President Obama's approach to ther Iranian situation some backup -- but this week she back to being a patronizing right-wing troll: Something seems off with our young president. He appears jarred. Difficult history has come over the transom. He seemed defensive and peevish with the press in his Tuesday news conference, and later with Charlie Gibson on health care, when he got nailed by a neurologist who suggested the elites who support a national program seem not to mind rationing for other people but very much mind if for themselves. All this followed the president's first bad numbers. From Politico, on Tuesday: "Eroding confidence in President Barack Obama's handling of the economy and ability to control spending have caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest level since taking office, according to a spate of recent polls." Independents and some Republicans who once viewed him sympathetically are "becoming skeptical." As I've explained, Obama's "bad numbers" aren't bad at all, and are much better than the numbers racked up at a similar point in his term by George W. Bush, even though he'd been the bearer of a hell of a lot less bad news and even though he'd just given the American public a big fat tax cut. Bush, of course, would go on to be the Shakespeare of peevishness. You can say this is due to a lot of things, and it probably is, most especially the economy, which all the polls mentioned. But I think at bottom his problems come down to this: The Sentence. And the rough sense people have that he's not seeing to it. The Sentence comes from a story Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that "a great man is one sentence." His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don't have to hear his name to know who's being talked about. "He preserved the union and freed the slaves," or, "He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War." You didn't have to be told "Lincoln" or "FDR." That's a pearl of wisdom? That's a guide to right conduct for a president? No -- that's a guide to getting a Hollywood film grrenlighted: you're supposed to have a premise so simple you can write it on a napkin ...New White Houses are always ardent for change, for breakthroughs. They want the sentence even when they don't know the sentence exists, even when they think it's a paragraph. The Obama people want, "He was the president who gave all Americans health care," and, "He lessened income inequality," and, "He took over a failed company," and other things. That last one? The hell they want that. Stop listening to Limbaugh, Peggy. Occasionally you show signs of being smarter than that. I guarantee that nobody in this administration ever wanted to take over big companies any more than states want to take custody of abused children. They wants a jumble of sentences and do a jumble of things. But an administration about everything is an administration about nothing. Mr. Obama is not seeing his sentence. He's missing it. This is the sentence history has given him: "He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror." That's all anybody wants. It's all that's needed. Oh. Thank you. I'm sure the president is chastened now -- sorry that he tried to step out of the box that you, Peggy Noonan, speaking for all three hundred million Amrican citizens, have assigned to him. Hey, Peggy -- we were in economic dire straits when Ronald Reagan was elected, and he presided over a brutal recession. What was his sentence then? Did it have anything to with running up massive debt in an attempt to destroy the Soviet Union? How would you have felt back then if you were in your West Wing office and someone had written that Reagan should limit himself to a task preassigned by history? ... we have a series of presidential actions that seem less like proposals than non sequiturs. A new health-care program that Congress itself says will cost a trillion dollars over 10 years? A new energy program that will cost however many hundreds of billions in however many years? Running General Motors, and discussing where its plants should be, and what the interiors of the cars should look like, and shouldn't the little cup holder be bigger to account for Starbucks-sized coffee? Wait, what if it's a venti latte? One imagines the conversation in the car czar's office: "You know, I've always wanted to see a mauve car because mauve is my favorite color, I mean to the extent it's a color." Right. Trying to drag GM kicking and screaming into a greener, less oil-dependent future is exactly like micromanaging cup-holder size. There is a persistent sense of extraneous effort, of ambitions too big and yet too small, too off point, too base-pleading, too ideological, too unaware of the imperatives. Right. Dealing with our preposterous health care system is "extraneous." Preventing further climate change is "extraneous." Trying to actually be the greatest country in the world, rather than just boasting that we are, by leading on energy and climate innovations, which might actually be the foundation for an economy built on making stuff rather than creating financial bubbles -- that's "extraneous." ... In terms of our security, we face challenges all over the world, from state and nonstate actors. Today a headline popped up on my screen: North Korea has threatened to attack us. A mordant response: Get in line, buddy. The administration, which has been appropriately modest in its face toward the world, should be more modest internally, and seek a new and serious bipartisan consensus on our defense system, our security, our civil defense, our safety. This of course is an impossible dream, but it was impossible back in the fractious '50s to reach a workable consensus on a strategy toward the Soviets. And yet we did it. Do we have anything like a bipartisan strategy for our age? Not nearly. We're split in two, in three. Too much foreign policy fractiousness strikes you as a problem, Peggy? Maybe you should talk to your boss about it, and all the rabble-rousers his media empire enables. Our economy and our security are intertwined. They are at the heart of everything, even to our ultimate continuance as a nation. Mr. Obama cannot replace his sentence with 10 paragraphs, and he can't escape it, either. Because history dictated it. History wrote it. "He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror." Sentences don't really get better than that. He should stop looking for a better one. There isn't a better one. No, Peggy, history didn't write it -- you wrote it, because Obama just might succeed in taking history in certain directions that scare you. **** And Ahab says: But what about the Shrub? Hasn't Peggy a line for Mission Accomplished, the Decider, With Us or Against Us? Seems like it could write itself. How about: He fucked up the world yet got re-elected. I was going to say "He destroyed everything he touched." And I'm sure there are many other possibilities. posted by Steve M. | 12:12 PM | NOT QUITE JACKIE ROBINSON, BUT CLOSER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK There was a point when "Billie Jean" was #1 on the charts for week after week -- and yet MTV didn't want anything to do with it. It was immensely popular but it was, y'know, black. No, sorry -- it was "black music." It wasn't in a racial category, it was in a market segment. And that, MTV insisted, was the point. Cable TV was part of the brave-new-world "new media" of the early 1980s (especially this channel that played strange things called music videos), and cable was all about market segmentation. That was all there was to MTV's shunning of "Billie Jean." Really. The song just wasn't what its target demographic would want to hear. It's hard to remember now, but this felt political at the time. Ronald Reagan seemed to be mythologizing an America full of sandy-haired Norman Rockwell families and greed-is-good zillionaires; MTV was giving us Duran Duran on a yacht. Melanin was missing from both of these pictures. I don't want to lay MTV's original thinking entirely at the feet of the right. Even though MTV was mostly a pop-music channel, it was following the lead of those artifacts of the rock counterculture, album-rock radio and the punk/post-punk/New Wave movements, which thought of themselves as politically left-leaning but were virtually all-white clubs. White people -- white males in particular -- were assumed not to want to have anything to do with black music or music that was in any way danceable, especially after disco hit. It was rumored that CBS Records threatened to pull all its videos from MTV if MTV refused to play Michael Jackson's next video. The next video was "Beat It." It had guitar solos played by a famous white guy. It got played. And now, if you didn't live through that, if you only remember what came after, you think that MTV was always the best friend ever to Michael Jackson -- and to the R&B and hip-hop artists it would go on to champion, the ones it had stupidly thought its audience wasn't interested in. The floodgates were opening quickly, on MTV and elsewhere. Prince; Wynton Marsalis; The Cosby Show; Eddie Murphy's movie career; the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson; rap; and on and on. A lot of these people were reaching out to us whites -- Jesse Jackson taking his campaign to white farmers and union workers, Run-D.M.C. recording with the guys from Aerosmith (from the beginning, hip-hop DJs had always sampled a fair number of white artists). Blacks knew we were in their world; it took a while for us to stop ignoring them. But the change did happen, and Michael Jackson was a big part of it. And he's gone now. ***** UPDATE: Phil Nugent has a very different take on the politics of Michael Jackson, and it popurs a bit of cold water on what I just wrote: ...the scale of his success made people want to see him as more than a mere entertainer, as being symbolic of something. For a lot of people, including liberal rock critics looking for a sign of hope in the Reagan era, that something was the news that a black man was the most popular star in the world. But others--including the Reagans themselves, who welcomed him to the White House--must have taken stock of his old-school show business chops and all-embracing niceness and found him very reassuring. Jackson was never under any obligation to make political statements or pick sides, but at some point, his stardom became so much a reflection of what was ugliest about the '80s that it was sort of distasteful. He was the greatest of all time and the biggest star in the world because he moved the most units. At the same time, he was, like Reagan, celebrated because of the supposedly magical quality of his seeming...not quite there. True. Phil has a lot more to say, about Jackson's talent and the possible reasons for his decline, and about the celebration and rejection of Jackson's "Boo Radleyisms." His post is well worth a read. posted by Steve M. | 7:46 AM | Thursday, June 25, 2009 OVERTURNING ELECTION RESULTS WHILE BRUTALLY SUPPRESSING DISSENT ... TAKING A QUESTION FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST ... YEAH, THEY'RE MORE OR LESS THE SAME THING At least they are according to Carl Cannon of AOL's Politics Daily, who goes Dana Milbank one better: In Iran, the freedoms that have been stamped out by unelected, violence-prone clerics run the whole gamut: No freedom of worship, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no right to a fair trial, no freedom to field candidates of your choice, no right to have your votes actually counted, and, of course, no freedom of the press.Although we journalists are taught to believe this last right may be the most important, the truth is that they are all important. It's also true that dictators often display a special fear of open communication, and in cracking down on the protests that greeted their latest fraudulent election, Iran's mullahs have tried mightily to jam the e-mailing- and Internet-based communications that has kept ordinary Iranians in touch with each other, and with the horrifying events taking place in their nation. The tyrants met their match with Twitter, however, at least for awhile -- earning the New Media a place in the history of democracy. Unfortunately for both the Iranian people and New Media practitioners, however, a well-intentioned but clumsy little stunt pulled by President Obama and his communications team this week served as a reminder that the urge to manipulate the news runs deep, even among small 'd" democrats -- and large 'D' Democrats (and Republicans), too.... Here was Obama, in a press conference in which he finally found his voice on Iran, using the kind of ham-handed methods at media manipulation that leaders use in nations without a free press.... Congratulations. Carl -- you've written a column premised on pure Hoekstraism. I had to sit through a question from a reporter the president planned in advance to call on -- it was almost like having all communications critical of the government brutally suppressed under the threat of extreme violence! posted by Steve M. | 11:34 PM | MOST FUN WAY TO "GO GALT" EVER! Well, now I get it: according to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Sanford was "going Galt" -- horizontally. [Sanford] had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn't want any part of it. He lost the battle. He said, 'What the hell. I mean, I'm -- the federal government's taking over -- what the hell, I want to enjoy life.'... I'm not [kidding]. My first thought was he said, 'To hell with this. The Democrats are destroying the country. We can't do anything to stop it. I gave everything I had to stop it here in South Carolina.' ... Folks, there are a lot of people looking at life and saying, 'screw it.' They're saying, 'screw it.' Before Obama takes away their money, before Obama takes away their house, or the economy takes away their house, there are people who are saying, "To hell with all this.... I'm just going to try to enjoy it as much as I can.' (Audio here.) Also, I see from Limbaugh's site that he was in Hawaii recently, and his listeners are having a very calm, rational reaction to the Obama presidency: This is an attitude that is -- hell, I encountered it out in Hawaii over the weekend. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I heard. I'll just tell you one thing. One guy is saying he's looking for property all over the world to move to. I said, "You gotta be kidding me." He said, "No." I said, "How in the hell what happens on the mainland going to affect you here?" He's retired. He said, "Rush, we in Hawaii, we have a seven-day supply of anything. Virtually everything we have has to be shipped in here one way or another. We can't feed ourselves on these islands. We don't have any oil on these islands. We don't have any refineries. Everything's got to be delivered here. We have a seven-day supply. This guy starts monkeying around with all the systems in the economy to keep people prosperous, to hell with it. Hanging around here is a death sentence." That's the way he's looking at it. A couple other people were not that far gone, but they were talking about, "Yeah, you know, I just indulge myself as often as I can now. I try to enjoy myself as much as I can before all hell breaks loose." They're not even thinking about what they can do to stop it. I'd love to know the names of these guys, because if someone goes Von Brunn in Hawaii in a few months, it would be nice to know if there's a match. ***** Meanwhile, a look at one of yesterday's transcripts suggests that Limbaugh's principal sexual thrill these days is reciting one particular phrase as often as possible: By the way, another sign to put on your TV if you're going to watch the Obama infomercial tonight on ABC: "Free Breast Implants?" with a question mark. Either put "These People are Going to Die of Anal Poisoning," or "Free Breast Implants?" Now that so many observers have pointed out his anal obsession, plus the fact that "anal poisoning" is apparently his coinage, I guess he just says this every chance he gets now, like a child screaming the one phrase he's been told not to say. posted by Steve M. | 7:24 PM | JESUS, NOW WE CAN'T EVEN SNICKER AT FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO ARE CLUMSY HORNDOGS? Apparently it's morally wrong and we need to go stand in the corner, according to John Dickerson of Slate: Heartless The disturbing glee at Mark Sanford's downfall. ... The minute [Mark] Sanford started speaking, the reviews poured in via e-mail and Twitter. He was rambling, confused. He didn't tear up enough when talking about his wife. He favored his mistress. He answered the questions too thoroughly. All these judgments seemed absurd. A man standing in front of a bank of cameras in the middle of a complete collapse is going to say a lot of things poorly. The snap judgments failed to acknowledge a grain of the fundamental human carnage we were witnessing. You can laugh at Sanford, as you can laugh at a video of a wrecked Amy Winehouse falling all over her house. But at some point, even though they did it to themselves, you have to feel sorry for them as human beings. You can do that, I think, and not be a fan of adultery or drug use. I'm not offering Sanford's humanity as an excuse. I'm just marveling at how few people stopped for a moment to even nod to it. My thoughtful colleague William Saletan and Andrew Sullivan were exceptions. Maybe there are others. Maybe people expressed these views in private conversations. But in the e-mails and Twitter entries and blog posts I read in the aftermath, Sanford's human ruin was greeted with what felt like antiseptic glee. The pain he's caused, the hypocrisies he's engaged in, seemed like license to deny him any humanity at all. Boo freaking hoo. OK, granted: I didn't watch the whole news conference, and in the bits I saw he did seem like a confused guy wrestling with what he'd done. But you know what? He's a prominent, powerful public figure. He set out to become a prominent, powerful public figure -- specifically seeking positions in which he knew any indiscretion of this kind would be subject to precisely this kind of scrutiny. It seems a tiny price to pay for the privilege of wielding enormous amounts of power over a couple million people, with the potential (at least until this incident) of wielding it over hundreds of millions. I'm supposed to feel sorry for the guy because he's now in a fishbowl when he chose to be in a fishbowl? There's a simple alternative: get a real job. Be like the rest of us schmucks, whose work doesn't take us on frequent junkets to global capitals where we can impress exotic strangers with our romantic Marlboro Man Americanness. And John -- Amy Winehouse? It's morally wrong to laugh at this woman? Yes, I know she's a victim of her biochemistry. In the higher-level, rational parts of my brain, I realize that a tendency toward addiction is quite possibly killing her, and that's a grim story. But hey, I'm a nobody, while she's become a fabulously successful superstar borrowing the musical style of another race and era; she courted the limelight -- but I guess now, after we paid her all that money, we're not supposed to pay any attention to what she does in the limelight we made possible for her. We're supposed to weep for her when her best-known freaking song is a middle finger waved at the very notion of getting clean -- and when there are millions of other addicts out there who don't have a millionth of the resources and opportunities she has to straighten up. And getting back to Sanford, no, I'm not being a party-hack hypocrite. I wanted Bill Clinton to stay in office once it was clear he wouldn't resign, but I could never blame anyone who thought his sexual behavior was funny, or pathetic, or hurtful. I wrote a dumb post about John Edwards, but, yeah, his affair and the cover-up are absurd, and he's a cad. Spitzer, McGreevey, etc., etc.? Pretty pathetic, and quite understandably mocked. (McGreevey's struggle with his sexuality isn't pathetic at all, but, yeah, the narrative of his cheating was tawdry.) Whether these people should be driven from public life is a separate story; for that, our rational brains should take over. But these are questions involving status and power -- it's a normal human response to be at least somewhat amused when the powerful cut themselves down to size. posted by Steve M. | 1:45 PM | OUR DOMESTIC-ABUSE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PRIVATE INSURANCE INDUSTRY The insurance industry says it really cares about us. It says it has our best interests at heart. And sometimes it really does treat us well. Much of the time we think things are OK between us. But sometimes the insurance industry scares us: As Washington considers overhauling the nation's health care system, a new poll finds considerable concern about health costs, with nearly half of all Americans worried about paying for future care. Nearly one in four people expressed fear of losing coverage in the next year. About the same number reported that they or a family member delayed seeing a doctor in the past year because of what it might cost. The survey, released Wednesday, was conducted by the University of Michigan to measure consumer confidence in the health care system. The study was financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.... And we have reason to be afraid: Families USA, a group that advocates for health care reform, found that costs are rising at a rate five times faster than wages in America in a report issued in October 2008. And the Kaiser Family Foundation found that family health care costs increased by 78 percent between 2001 and 2008. And when we ask the insurance industry for help, sometimes it lashes out at us: Frustrated Americans have long complained that their insurance companies valued the all-mighty buck over their health care. Today, a retired insurance executive confirmed their suspicions, arguing that the industry that once employed him regularly rips off its policyholders. "[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. ... "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment," Potter said. "…(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."... And if we complain about the abuse, the industry insults us and says we asked for it: Executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers told federal lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders, despite withering criticism from Republican and Democratic members of Congress who decried the practice as unfair and abusive.... An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations ... found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.... Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc., parent of Blue Cross of California ... said rescissions are necessary to prevent people who lie about preexisting conditions from obtaining coverage and driving up costs for others.... But if we so much as hint that we might walk out -- if we mention turning to someone else, like the government -- the insurance industry won't hear of it. And it'll make sure that our supposed friends take its side: Senators Worry That Health Overhaul Could Erode Employer Insurance Plans Senators struggled Wednesday with the possibility that in offering subsidized health insurance to millions of individuals and families, they could inadvertently speed the erosion of employer-provided coverage, which they want to preserve. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, who is leading efforts to write health legislation, said "much of the discussion" focused on this issue at meetings of senators on Wednesday.... After a while, we learn to settle for the status quo, and even we start caring more about the industry's well-being than our own: In the new Post-ABC poll, 62 percent support the general concept [of a public option], but when respondents were told that meant some insurers would go out of business, support dropped sharply, to 37 percent. So to all appearances we seem content. But maybe it's just that we fear what happens if we leave the relationship. posted by Steve M. | 10:47 AM | SARAH DUKAKIS I mock -- but Lucianne.com, which has a collective girl-crush on Palin, thinks she looks just great:  To Palin's credit, she apparently decided to forgo the codpiece. This photo was taken during Palin's visit to the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska on Monday. She was presumably looking to pad out her forthcoming memoir, and to garner stills for her 2012 presidential ads on the federal taxpayer's dime. After that? Gov. Sarah Palin is on her way to an undisclosed "overseas" location to visit deployed Alaska National Guard troops. From Palin's Twitter feed: "Travel now to bring appreciation from their Alaska family & Natl Guard leadership to heroes in US European Command's area of responsibility." The European command's area of responsibility includes Europe, Russia, the Caucusus and Greenland. I'm not sure where all the state's National Guard troops are deployed in that area, but we know from news coverage some are in Kosovo.... The Anchorage Daily News has more photos, in most of which she doesn't look nearly as dorky, presumably because she's not in those goggles, which a savvy politician wouldn't wear within a mile of a camera. posted by Steve M. | 7:01 AM | Wednesday, June 24, 2009 INDEED Exchange on ABC News tonight regarding Mark Sanford (video link): CHARLIE GIBSON: ... We've had a lot of governors and senators with these kinds of problems, personal indiscretions. Governors: Spitzer, McGreevey, Blagojevich of Illinois, and now Sanford. Senators: Craig, Vitter, and Ensign. There's a lot of 'em. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Boy, there sure are, but one remarkable fact, Charlie: you look at that breakdown, on the Democratic side, Spitzer, McGreevey, you add the Detroit mayor, Kilpatrick -- all of the politicians were forced out of office. Every one of the Republicans you just mentioned held on. True. Funny how that's worked out post-Clinton. posted by Steve M. | 11:33 PM | ADULTERER MARK SANFORD: SOMEWHAT LESS HYPOCRITICAL THAN YOU'D THINK Mark Sanford has now acknowledged an affair with a woman from Argentina, begun about a year ago -- which is approximately when he said this in an interview with Ray Nothsine of the Acton Institute: I think the Bible says, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father that's in heaven." Hopefully, by the way in which you act.... And so I would say it's a mistake to confine one's belief to only matters of government. If you have a religious view, it's incumbent upon you and it's real to have that. The Bible talks about the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. There ought to be certain things that are clearly observable by your actions. It's also around the time he said this: While I do, in fact, "believe," it is my personal view that the largest proclamation of one's faith ought to be in how one lives one's life. But, to be fair, I should point out that the latter quote came as he was refusing to sign a bill permitting South Carolina to issue "I BELIEVE" license plates featuring a stained-glass window and a cross. (He did, however, let the bill become law without his signature.) Oh, and this is from a 1998 Time story about the Clinton impeachment: "You've got your clear attack dogs. They love it, they don't mind living in glass houses and throwing rocks," said Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican. "But most of us feel uncomfortable in the role of judge. It isn't exactly why we came to Congress. We're off center and edgy." (He did, however, vote yes on three of the four Clinton impeachment articles.) So he's a bit less of a traditional-values phony than he could be. posted by Steve M. | 5:11 PM | "WHAT MOTIVATES DICK CHENEY?" ER, MONEY, MAYBE? Well, now I think we have a fairly definitive answer to the Rush Limbaugh question Mark Halperin quoted approvingly last month, during Dick Cheney's Self-Justification and McCarthyism Tour: What motivates Dick Cheney? ... What motivation does Dick Cheney have to go out and say these things? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is motivated by national interest? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is motivated by love of and for his country? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is speaking from his heart and is not speaking politically? In a word, no. We knew Cheney had mentioned writing a book, and then, less than two weeks after that Limbaugh broadcast, The New York Times reported that Cheney was actively shopping for a book deal. And then, at a certain point, you'll notice Cheney stopped showing up on your TV every two hours. Clearly he felt he'd hyped himself enough, and it was time to do some dealmaking. Now that process is over -- but I'm not sure he got what he wanted: As widely expected, Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a deal with an imprint of Simon & Schuster to write a memoir about his life in politics and his service in four presidential administrations A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said Mr. Cheney would write a book for Threshold Editions, where Mary Matalin, his close friend and adviser, is editor in chief. Mr. Cheney ... had been looking for a publisher for about two months.... A person familiar with the negotiations said Mr. Cheney would receive around $2 million for his book. The spokesman for Simon & Schuster declined to comment. Hmmm ... he signed with his ex-adviser's imprint, "[a]s widely expected," but he "had been looking for a publisher for about two months"? Sounds as if Matalin's imprint (also the publisher of books by Cheney's wife and daughter) was always the fallback, but he was hoping for a bidding war, and possibly a lot more money. (He's being paid a princely sum, if the Times report is correct, but note that he got only twice as much as his little-known daughter Mary received a few years ago for her book, which turned out to be a huge flop.) Oh well -- at least this is settled, and now that he doesn't have to be a walking book proposal, maybe he'll shut up for a while. posted by Steve M. | 2:23 PM | DID SANFORD BELIEVE HIS OWN B.S.? The Mark Sanford story gets more bizarre -- now it turns out he was cruising along the coast of Buenos Aires ("I wanted to do something exotic"), not writing or hiking the Appalachian Trail. MSNBC's Mark Murray says, "Who goes to one of the world's most romantic cities in the world alone?" -- but Sanford says he was unaccompanied. (It occurs to me that profoundly bipolar people take major trips like this on impulse, sometimes alone -- but I can't find any evidence of manic behavior in news reports about Sanford.) Not checking in with his family is peculiar -- but I'm not sure it's so odd that he didn't check in with staff. Remember, he's one of the top slingers of Limbaugh/Fox/Norquist-style talking points these days. If you say government is inherently evil, isn't it possible that eventually you'll start to believe your own bullshit? And if government is evil, isn't it a good thing when nobody knows where the governor is, even if you're the governor?* ***** Sanford has been accused of liking to travel on other people's dime, though I can't tell whether his degree of travel is unusual. When Sanford, then a congressman, ran against incumbent governor Jim Hodges in 2002, Hodges complained about Sanford's "taxpayer-funded junkets to 18 countries and four continents," including "Argentina (twice)" and a number of other Latin American countries. (Also see this complaint, where we learn details of a Sanford trip to Cuba, of all places, via the Bahamas.) Later, as governor, he was ranked as one of the top 50 travel spenders among state employees, "based on the total amount that he spent on trips paid by his office and those paid by the state Commerce Department. Sanford has traveled to China, Argentina and Brazil through the Commerce Department, which has travel reports showing taxpayers covering $21,488 for those trips. Sanford also spent $1,976 in travel through his office." Sanford has also, as governor, met with Argentine ambassador and his wife in South Carolina. Make of all that what you will.... ***** *UPDATE: Via Phil Nugent, I see that Erick Erickson of RedState is pushing just the anti-government message I was talking about: Now, here is all you need to know about this whole entire story -- the reaction from the erstwhile Republicans angry at Sanford for not being a fiscal squish and from the media all go back to their core belief that without Sanford manning the barricades of government at all times, the government will collapse and people will starve, die, and forget how to read and write. That’s it. But that did not happen. Life in South Carolina went on. The world did not end. Government did not go off the rails. That the media and politicians would react as they did says more about their world view than anything else. It is refreshing that Mark Sanford is secure enough in himself and the people of South Carolina that he does not view himself as an indispensable man. All government officials should do this -- in fact, they should do it permanently! They should all go Galt!!!!!1!!! posted by Steve M. | 12:13 PM | ALTERNATE REALITY On Fox News this afternoon:  Jesus wept. What, Pat Boone and Carrie Prejean weren't available to lend their expertise on this subject? Chuck Norris and Ted Nugent didn't return Fox's calls? **** UPDATE: Oh, I'm sorry -- I didn't realize it was Reintroduce Giuliani Day in the media. He also has a New York Times op-ed today about New York State, in which, among other things, he calls for an amendment to the state constitution requiring a legislative supermajority to pass any tax increase. Yeah, that's really working out just great for California, isn't it? I assume Rudy's courting the spotlight again in anticipation of a run for governor or senator, or possibly he's just decided he wants to be the next self-selected leader of the GOP who gets taken extremely seriously by the media.... posted by Steve M. | 7:42 AM | Tuesday, June 23, 2009 WORST NON-WINGNUT POLL ANALYSIS EVER Matthew Cooper blogging for The Atlantic, has a theory about the decline in Barack Obama's approval ratings that's intriguing, counterintuitive -- and utterly wrong: I have a slightly different spin on this, which is that it's the spending and the modest success it seems to have brought in stopping the total collapse of the banking and financial system. If the economy felt like it was in the same free fall that it was a few months ago, he'd be doing better because there'd be less questioning of government spending and more calls to pour everything on the fire. But with the respite in the fall comes the freedom to question spending. Or, to put it another way: The firemen saved your house but now you're pissed off about all the water damage in the den. Matt, can I tell you something? To the average American, the economy is still in the same free fall it was in a few months ago. Economically speaking, Americans have one concern above all: hanging on to their damn jobs. Unemployment was 7.6% in January -- and 9.4% in May. The average American sees that -- lives through it -- and doesn't think, "Oh well, there are green shoots elsewhere, and besides, we all know employment is a lagging indicator." To the average American, that is the story. (Well, that and fat cats getting bailed out.) Americans know this will take a while to work out. They blame Bush. But for heaven's sake, they're not somewhat dissatisfied with Obama because they think things are getting better. **** Cooper has had a couple of dumb posts today. Here's another one, about the president's remarks on smoking at his news conference today: Obama's Weird "AA" Crack ... The weirdest moment came when he got asked about his own smoking and the new law giving the FDA authority to regulate tobacco. First, he referred to it as his law, which seemed a little grandiose since the likes of Henry Waxman have been pushing it since he was just a Chicago law professor. But more odd was his rather lengthy, odd defense of his current smoking. He likened it to being in "AA," which is an unsettling image ("Everyone, this is Barack." "Hi, Barack.") and he pronounced himself 95 percent cured, which sounds odd. And his lawyerly answer about not smoking in front of family raised more questions than answers. You wished he'd just said that he struggled with it and not gotten into specifics or alchoholism metaphors. Has Cooper ever known anyone who's almost over the smoking habit? I certainly have -- and Obama's description of his own near-success and his self-imposed rules (" I don't do it in front of my kids. I don't do it in front of my family") sound very familiar to me. The near-successful quitter I know best had a long list of rules for curbing smoking: only while drinking (back when you could smoke in New York bars), never during work hours (even outside the building), never in a house or apartment. This is someone who, though fully smoke-free now, was "95 percent cured" for a long time, which is just what Obama says he is these days. Sounds like a perfectly apt description to me. And referencing AA? Hey, don't a lot of us think we're biochemically addicted to porn/shopping/blogging/gambling/bad relationships/whatever? At least nicotine is literally an addictive chemical. posted by Steve M. | 11:00 PM | IS LIMBAUGH'S HEARING LOSS CONTAGIOUS? Maybe it wasn't the OxyContin that caused Rush Limbaugh's hearing loss; maybe it was the right-wing rage. And maybe Michelle Malkin is having similar problems. Here's a bit of bile from a post she wrote about President Obama's news conference: Meanwhile, Obama snapped at a McClatchy reporter who had the audacity to ask him about his cigarette addiction in light of the recently passed FDA tobacco regs. Obama sarcastically chastised the reporter for asking a "cute" question, then argued that the new regulations don't apply to him, but to "future generations." In other words: Do as he says, not as he smokes. Did he really say this was a "cute" question, in a chastising way? Let's go to the transcript: MR. OBAMA: ... Margaret from McClatchy? Where's Margaret? There you go. QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. As a former smoker, I understand the frustration and the fear that comes with quitting. But with the new law that you signed yesterday regulating the tobacco industry, I'd like to ask you a few questions. How many cigarettes a day... MR. OBAMA: A few questions? QUESTION: Well... (LAUGHTER) He didn't say "cute question." He jokingly (yes, perhaps mockingly) echoed her words and asked, "A few questions?" -- for the obvious reason that "a few questions" is more than most reporters get to ask at presidential press conferences. Raise the volume and double-check your assertions before you hit "post" next time, Michelle. **** Did he get a bit testy after that? Well, maybe -- but in what way can it be said that he "argued that the new regulations don't apply to him, but to 'future generations'"? If he still smokes (he says he does once in a while), he's going to smoke the same cigarettes everyone else does, isn't he, subject to the same regulations? It's the attempt to dissuade smokers from starting that affects "future generations": QUESTION: ... how many cigarettes a day do you now smoke? Do you smoke alone or in the presence of other people? And do you believe the new law should help you to quit? If so, why? MR. OBAMA: Well, the -- first of all, the new law that was put in place is not about me. It's about the next generation of kids coming up. So I think it's fair, Margaret, to just say that you just think it's neat to ask me about my smoking as opposed to it being relevant to my new law. But that's fine. I understand. It's an interesting human -- it's an interesting human interest story. Look, I've said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. The -- am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No. I don't do it in front of my kids. I don't do it in front of my family. And, you know, I would say that I am 95 percent cured. But there are times where... (LAUGHTER) There are times where I mess up. And I mean, I've said this before. I get this question about once every month or so. And, you know, I don't know what to tell you, other than the fact that, you know, like folks who go to A.A., you know, once you've gone down this path, then, you know, it's something you continually struggle with, which is precisely why the legislation we signed was so important, because what we don't want is kids going down that path in the first place. OK? Yeah, right, Michelle -- nothing but narcissism and demands for special privileges there. posted by Steve M. | 6:43 PM | McCAIN SCORES, AFTER FURTHER REVIEW BY THE VILLAGE In a post titled "Klein 1, McCain 0," Steve Benen quotes remarks by Joe Klein of Time in response to John McCain's recent haranguing of Barack Obama over Iraq -- including a blog post in which Klein says of McCain, His behavior has nothing to do with love of country; it has everything to do with love of self. A lot of people agree that what McCain is guilty of is self-love. DougJ of Balloon Juice: McCain's self-aggrandizement isn't cynical, it's based on the belief that what's good for John McCain is good for the United States. Atrios: ...John McCain is a severe narcissist. He certainly doesn't think he's putting himself ahead of country, he's just not really able to distinguish between the two. All of which makes sense, except for one thing: the score isn't "McCain 0" at all. What McCain has been doing has had at least some of the effect he wanted it to have. From Politico's story on Obama's news conference today: President Barack Obama came closer Tuesday to declaring common cause with Iranians who have mounted wide-scale protests against the Iranian regime in recent days.... Obama ... rejected suggestions that he was stepping up his support for the protesters in response to criticism from Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).... Here are the questions, from Fox's Major Garrett and NBC's Chip Reid: MR. OBAMA ...Major Garrett? Where's Major? QUESTION: Right here, sir. In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged. What took you so long? **** MR. OBAMA: Chip? QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Following up on Major's question, some Republicans on Capitol Hill, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, for example, have said that up to this point your response on Iran has been timid and weak. Today it sounded a lot stronger. It sounded like the kind of speech John McCain has been urging you to give, saying that those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history, referring to an iron fist in Iran, deplore, appalled, outraged. Were you influenced at all by John McCain and Lindsey Graham accusing you of being timid and weak? That's from the transcript; you can read it and decide for yourself whether Obama effectively rebutted the criticism. I think he did a pretty good job -- but the mere fact that there was a question about McCain's criticism is a victory for McCain and the GOP. McCain isn't preening right now. He's in GOP-loyalist mode -- and, in that mode, it isn't "what's good for John McCain is good for the United States," it's "what's bad for Democrats is good for the United States." It's not so much that McCain believes the McCain myth. It's that he knows people in the Beltway are often very happy to believe that myth, to see him as a guy who surely must be right about anything remotely to do with "toughness" and "courage," no matter what the circumstances, just because he was in a war and was tortured (and bizarrely, to believe the same about Graham and Lieberman, just because they hang out with McCain). So if it becomes the conventional wisdom that McCain stiffened Obama's spine, then McCain was "narcissistic" like a fox. posted by Steve M. | 2:55 PM | ON CHRIS MATTHEWS, MARCO RUBIO, AND GUNS I should let this go, but I see that Geoffrey Dickens of NewsBusters is upset at Chris Matthews for saying this about a recent tweet from Florida Senate candidate and wingnut favorite Marco Rubio: CHRIS MATTHEWS: ... Take a look at what Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio of Florida posted on his Twitter page after watching those scenes that we've been watching. Quote: "I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd Amendment like ours." Wow! Things would be different if the protestors had the Constitutional right to bear arms?! To fight back against the Iranian Guard? I hadn't thought of that. Then again it wouldn't really be a non-violent protest, would it Mr. Rubio, if the non-violent protestors were walking around with guns! What Rubio wrote was preposterous, but was it preposterous because nonviolence is the key to the Iran uprising? Nonviolence may be tactically appropriate for the protestors up to a point, but I don't think a lot of us have a huge problem with the fact that they violently attacked Basiji goons who had intended to intimidate them through violence. No, I'll say it again -- what Rubio wrote is ridiculous because it's ridiculous to talk about a country like Iran and then toss in an utterly incompatible counterfactual: What if the rulers of this repressive regime let people freely own guns? If the rulers of this repressive regime let people freely own guns, it would be because they're not repressive in a hundred other ways. And if they weren't repressive in those ways, the uprising almost certainly wouldn't be necessary. It's absurd to imagine a regime that's repressive apart from one massive weapons-based exception. I'm having trouble letting go of this because Rubio's idiotic logic (which is certainly not his alone) is the foundation of virtually all pro-gun thinking in this country -- and that thinking helps determine so many of our gun laws. The basic idea is this: free societies don't remain free because core documents and laws enshrine institutions and practices that sustain freedom, or because an insistence on sustaining freedom is culturally transmitted. Not really. Freedom is sustained by one thing: private ownership of firearms. A Second Amendment would make Iran free. Repeal of the Second Amendment would, inexorably, make America vulnerable to tyranny. The gun is the panacea, the magic ingredient, the disinfectant that instantly cleanses a society of all repression. This is the gunners' way of satisfying themselves that there's a philosophical justification for their Walter Mitty fantasies (that they buy guns not because they like them but because they need them to fight off evildoers and tyrants). It utterly ignores the fact that many free nations don't have liberal gun laws, just as it ignores the fact that it wouldn't be all that hard for a determined government to repress even armed citizens, using superior levels of armaments (not to mention a hundred other manifestations of tyranny, possibly including confiscation of the very weapons it had previously allowed citizens to own). NewsBusters' Dickens harrumphs that Matthews is "completely missing the point that our Founding Fathers understood that it is much harder to repress a free people that is armed." What the hell does that have to do with Iran? Iran's populace isn't "a free people." Iran is not a free society in its totality. America is a free society in its totality -- and so are Canada, Japan, and the nations of Western Europe, which have restrictive gun laws. Guns aren't the linchpin of freedom. But don't you dare tell a gun absolutist that. posted by Steve M. | 12:02 PM | HEY, I THINK I FIGURED IT OUT The State (Columbia, South Carolina) today: S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's staff said late Monday that the governor is hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him. Neither Sanford's office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday.... Joel Sawyer, the governor's spokesman would not disclose where on the trail the governor was hiking, nor would he reveal whether Sanford was hiking alone.... Us Magazine, two days ago (via Newser): Jon Gosselin Has "No Idea" Where Kate Is Day Before Their Big Announcement Jon Gosselin didn't just spend his Father's Day with his eight kids. He also spent it talking to fans and reporters outside his $1.1 million Pennsylvania home. In an impromptu press conference Sunday afternoon, the Jon & Kate Plus 8 star signed autographs and answered questions with the dozens of people who stopped by to get a look at the family. Although he mainly told the group that they would have to watch the show for answers, when asked where his noticeably absent wife, Kate, was, he replied, "I have no idea." ... That's it! Governor Sanford spent the weekend with Kate Gosselin! Mystery solved! posted by Steve M. | 9:47 AM | Monday, June 22, 2009 SO ANGRY AT OBAMA ABOUT THE DEFICIT THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN WAIT TILL HE WAS PRESIDENT The conventional wisdom (per Politico) is that President Obama's approval ratings are starting to wilt, and in the search for the reason, we have a conventional-wisdom winner: it's the deficit! Analyzing her firm's latest poll, Gallup's Lydia Saad said it is "not clear what's behind the decline" in the president's numbers, but she pointed to growing concerns over the administration's deficit spending as a likely cause. And there's been some slippage in a new Washington Post/ABC poll. Hmmm -- why? Perhaps this? ... many people disapprove as approve of his handling of the federal budget deficit. On the deficit, intensity runs against the president, with 35 percent "strongly" disapproving, compared with 22 percent who say they are solidly behind his efforts. More broadly, worries about the deficit remain widespread, with almost nine in 10 Americans saying they are "very" or "somewhat" concerned about its size. There's just one problem with that analysis: If you look at the Post/ABC numbers, you see that concern about the deficit was being expressed even before Obama was inaugurated, and is barely higher than it was a month before he took the oath of office:  Sure, the percentage who are "very" concerned has gone up since December, when Bush was still president -- but it's also gone down (somewhat) since April. Overall concern has barely budged. So, um, how can this be the reason for "wilting" or whatever is happening to Obama's approval? In fact, how wilted are his numbers? Gallup has him at 57% approval, 35% disapproval. The new Post/ABC poll has him at 65% approval, 31% disapproval. The latest New York Times/CBS poll has it 63%-26%. NBC/Wall Street Journal? It's 56%-31%. Now, where was George W. Bush in June 2001? ... Gov. James S. Gilmore III of Virginia, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, took the unusual step of arranging a conference call with reporters today to counter publicity about polls showing that Mr. Bush's approval rating is around 50 percent. ... a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published today put Mr. Bush's approval rating at 50 percent, the lowest presidential approval rating in five years. Another survey released today, by Reuters and Zogby, showed Mr. Bush was popular with 51 percent of those polled. The decline was also apparent in the New York Times/CBS News Poll, published June 21, which found that Mr. Bush's job approval rating stood at 53 percent, down seven points from March.... Let's see: at that time the unemployment rate was 4.5% and Bush had just signed into law a huge tax cut. Right now the unemployment rate is more than twice that and Obama has presided over massive amounts of pain. And yet Bush's numbers were far worse than Obama's. People aren't feeling the effects of the stimulus and aren't seeing much evidence of stimulus activity. People don't like seeing large amounts of money going to guys in expensive suits while they themselves get nothing. To the extent that people are upset, that's what's bothering them -- I'd say more than the deficit. But the public is still on Obama's side -- more than it was on Bush's at this time in '01. posted by Steve M. | 10:40 PM | JUST CHANGE THE NAME OF THE GOP TO THE WINGNUT-CHEETO-EATER-IN-THE-BASEMENT PARTY Here are the opening paragraphs of a right-wing blog post from yesterday:  Now here's a tweet from Marco Rubio, the right's preferred candidate in the upcoming Florida Senate race:  Do I even have to explain the stupidity of saying something like this about a regime that's broadly repressive? Do I need to explain that it's sort of like saying things would have been really different in Hitler's concentration camps if he'd only allowed inmates access to earth-moving equipment? And this is the depth of thought we get from a would-be U.S. senator? Ladies and gentlemen, there are your movement conservatives. John Cole said for much of 2008 that John McCain's campaign seemed as if it was run by wingnut bloggers; we're basically to the point where you can say that about the whole Republican Party. (Via Politico.) posted by Steve M. | 3:46 PM | HEALTH CARE POLLING: HOW THE VILLAGE SEES IT VS. HOW YOU AND I SEE IT Chris at AMERICAblog looks at that New York Times/CBS poll showing 72% support for a public health care option and asks: With poll numbers like this, why are Democrats caving? Chris asks this because he's not a Beltway insider -- he's not in the Village. Outside the Village, that's a meaningful number. Inside the Village? Well, check out how Cokie Roberts, in an NPR chat with anchorman David Greene this morning, buried that number and described the news for reform advocates as nearly all bad (audio transcript mine, emphasis added): ... COKIE ROBERTS: Well, the House Democrats put forward a plan at the end of last week that included this so-called public option, a government-backed insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies, and Republicans have just been over the weekend screaming, "No way, it's not going to happen," and some Senate Democrats seem to agree with them. So they're trying to come out with a plan this week, but they're having a lot of trouble coming up with a consensus between the two Democratically dominated committees that control the health care debate, the tax-writing Finance Committee, and the committee that writes health policy. And it was made a whole lot more difficult, David, by the Congressional Budget Office estimate last week that the health committee plan that's emerging would cost 1.6 trillion dollars. That terrified some moderate senators. Now, they did get some good news over the weekend when the pharmaceutical companies agreed to give an 80-billion-dollar break to seniors receiving prescription drugs, but that's the only good news they've gotten at the moment. They're really having a lot of trouble writing this bill. (Nope -- this poll doesn't count as good news over the weekend. Read on.) DAVID GREENE: These big price tags, or the possibility of a big price tag, is actually making a lot of people out in the country very afraid. These polls that we've seen on this issue -- they're a little confusing. There's a lot of public support for overhauling health care -- that's pretty clear -- but also a lot of worry about the cost, and I guess I wonder, how does that worry over red ink play itself out? Does it slow down President Obama a lot? COKIE ROBERTS: Well, it slows down the Congress, certainly. Now, the polls do show Americans, by large majorities -- over 70 percent are saying they like this idea of a public option, but they are more and more concerned about the deficit and about the role that the government is playing in the overall economy, especially in dealing with the automobile companies. They're mad about that. In a New York Times poll, by two to one, the respondents said the president had no clear plan for dealing with the deficit. Now, they're still blaming President Bush and the Democrats in Congress, interestingly, over the deficit. But President Obama, of course, more and more will be the owner of this economy, and that's one of the reasons that he wants to move quickly on all of these issues, before his support erodes.... So if a poll yields a result that challenges the cozy status quo you and your Republican/Democratic Blue Dog/lobbyist friends like, wrap that result in other poll results that yield the answers you and your pals prefer. (And ignore the fact that the same poll that contains those oh-so-quotable numbers on Obama's plans regarding the deficit also shows that respondents approve of Obama's handling of the economy by a 57%-35% margin.) Oh, and while you're at it, throw in a GOP meme or two, whether or not it accurately represents reality. I'm referring to that bit about "the role that the government is playing in the overall economy, especially in dealing with the automobile companies." Um, isn't it just possible, Cokie, that resentment of the GM and Chrysler bailouts is resentment of the decision to hand tax money to very well-paid guys in really expensive suits who screwed up? That it's not about the role of government in relation to private industry in the abstract, as in the Limbaugh/Fox News/Club for Growth talking point? Isn't it possible that using government to put a curb on private insurers and drug companies would get a very different response than using government power to write checks to GM and Chrysler? ... Oh, sorry, I forgot: the GOP frame says they're both commie-fascist attacks on the free market. So that's Cokie's frame, too. Now do you see why I'm gloomy? Now do you see why I don't take a whole lot of comfort from that Times/CBS poll? **** UPDATE: Well, what do you know: Democrats May Unite On Public Health Plan Emboldened By Apparent Public Backing For "Public Option", Democrats May Drop Attempt To Compromise Emboldened by polls that show public backing for a government health insurance plan, Democrats are moving to make it a politically defining issue in the debate over the future of medical care. Behind-the-scenes attempts to get a deal with Republicans on nonprofit co-ops as an alternative to a public plan have led only to frustration, complains a key Democrat. He and his colleagues may have to go it alone, said Sen. Chuck Schumer. The co-ops were seen as perhaps the last hope for compromise on a contentious issue that threatens any remaining prospects of bipartisan support for President Obama's sweeping plan to remake the health care system. ...Schumer's role is important because he had been acting as an intermediary between liberal Democrats and moderates who are trying to strike a deal on the issue with Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.... Overnight, did someone kidnap the entire Democratic Party and replace it with one that actually weighs public opinion against GOP/Village conventional wisdom and dares to side with the public against the Village? posted by Steve M. | 10:11 AM | Sunday, June 21, 2009 THAT HEALTH CARE POLL: EVERY SILVER LINING HAS A CLOUD This morning, when I grabbed the print New York Times and read the article about about the new Times/CBS health care poll, I thought my gloomy health care post from last week had been fairly thoroughly refuted. 72% of surevey respondents support the public option! 50% think the government would do a better job of providing medical coverage, up from 30% two years ago! 57% would pay higher taxes to ensure universal coverage! But. I'm looking at CBS's write-up and there are some disturbingly large openings for those who are desperate not to see this happen: Overall, 57 percent of Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so that all Americans would have health insurance they can’t lose. Majorities of Democrats and independents are willing to pay higher taxes, but two thirds of Republicans are not. However, when a specific dollar amount is included in the question, support drops. Just 43 percent of Americans would be willing to pay $500 a year more in taxes to pay for universal health care. And although 64 percent of Americans think the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone, they are less supportive when a direct cost is mentioned. If the cost of their own insurance were to rise, support for a government guarantee of insurance for all drops to 47 percent. And even the majority support for paying an unspecified additional tax to get universal coverage is no different from what we had the last time health care reform was on the agenda. In fact, according to the raw numbers (PDF), support was higher in 1993:  Meanwhile, the trash-talking and slow-walking seem bipartisan: Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina who appeared on ABC's "This Week," said estimates on overhauling health care were "a death blow to a government-run health plan." Dianne Feinstein of California joined Republicans in voicing reservations. Ms. Feinstein, who appeared on "State of the Union," said that controlling the cost of a new health-care system "is a very major and difficult subject." Ms. Feinstein also said that Mr. Obama might not have the votes in the Senate to pass his legislation. "I think there's a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus," she said. Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, appearing with Ms. Feinstein, said that overhauling the health care system should be done slowly and not this year, as Mr. Obama has insisted. "I think it should be incremental steps," Mr. Lugar said. Mr. Lugar also suggested a period of study to find and consider alternatives. Ms. Feinstein also suggested that the results of Mr. Obama's efforts to repair the economy and overhaul the financial-regulatory system should be measured before taking on health care. "What all of the impact of this is not yet known," Ms. Feinstein said. I'm telling you, this is not going to happen. posted by Steve M. | 10:13 PM | BACK THIS EVENING Yeah, another when I won't be able to blog until the evening. This may become a regular occurrence, at least for a while. I'll keep you posted. In any case, see you tonight. posted by Steve M. | 9:05 AM | Saturday, June 20, 2009 NOTES FROM OUR "POST-RACIAL SOCIETY" You really should go here and listen to NPR's story about Obbie Riley, a county supervisor in Neshoba County, Mississippi. This weekend, he and some volunteers will personally do the physical labor required to install a memorial to the slain civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. You see, there seems to be no other way to get the monument installed -- but it isn't because of racism, oh, heavens no. Why, it's simply because of a jurisdictional dispute: The state Department of Archives and History has authorized a historical marker on Mississippi 19 south at the intersection of Road 515 near where three civil rights workers were murdered here in 1964, but county supervisors said Monday they would not be responsible for erecting the sign. ... William Thompson, a special projects officer with Archives and History, said the request for the historical marker was made by the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation based at the University of Mississippi. Since the historic marker would be on right-of-way of the state Department of Transportation, the consensus of supervisors on Monday was that MDOT [Mississippi Department of Transportation] officials should erect it. Riley recommended that the county do the work, telling supervisors that he had spoken with MDOT officials who said they did not install such markers unless directed by the state Legislature. Riley did not get any support from the other four supervisors. Did I mention the fact that, according to the NPR story, all the other supervisors are white? After the meeting, Riley said he would solicit other volunteers to help him put it up. "We just need to dig a hole with a post hole digger and add some concrete," he said. "The pole is already equipped with all the hardware." In the NPR story, Riley says he's a country boy who's dug his share of post holes, and he's ready to do this kind of work -- even though local temperatures are in the mid-90s, with a triple-digit heat index. That fact comes out as a result of his interviewer, as does the fact that all of Riley's fellow supervisors are Caucasian. He's the soul of politeness -- he says his colleagues are all good people and won't speak ill of them. It's heartbreaking and infuriating. I wish him well. posted by Steve M. | 2:54 PM | THE GUN IS SACRED An infuriating story from Eric Lichtblau in The New York Times: People on the government's terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report. In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives. The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government's terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, but they cannot be stopped from buying a gun.... Instapundit, of course defends the practice: SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: Terrorist watch lists are bad, and Orwellian, because they're full of mistakes and put together without due process. Well, terrorist watch lists are bad and Orwellian when they're full of mistakes and put together without due process. And the one we've got, yes, is quite flawed. I've criticized it repeatedly for ensnaring people just because they have common names, or merely share names with people who are under suspicion. And there need to be much better procedures for appealing inclusion on the list. But if we're using it to keep people off planes, or for any purpose at all, why is the gun so sacrosanct that it gets a carve-out? Oh yeah, I forgot: this is America, and the gun is God. ... Well, the Supreme Court says that gun ownership is a constitutional right, and you’re not normally supposed to lose a constitutional right because some bureaucrat puts you on a list without any due process. One suspects that this Eric Lichtblau story in the Times is part of a PR effort designed to gin up support for doing just that.... Is that it? It is only if Lichtblau and his editors are extraordinarily naive. After all, this gun carve-out was brought to the public's attention a few years ago and approvals of watch-listed purchasers subsequently went up: ...From February 2004 through February 2009, the report found, there were 963 requests for gun purchases through the federal system by people on the list. Of that group, 865 purchases -- or 90 percent -- were approved after a three-day review by the F.B.I. failed to turn up any other disqualifying factors. A narrower study by the G.A.O. in 2005 first drew public attention to the issue. The Justice Department took some limited steps to address the issue, centralizing the review of gun purchases by those on watch lists to ensure that all possible disqualifiers were being considered. Nonetheless, the rate of approval for requests to buy a gun went up from 80 percent in 2005 to the new study's 90 percent.... And don't tell me it's different now because we have a Democratic president and Congress. All the gun-worship has to do is stamp its fight loud enough and Obama and the leadership in Congress will just back off. It's the NRA's country -- the rest of us just try to stay alive in it. posted by Steve M. | 1:02 PM | Friday, June 19, 2009 AN EXCELLENT POINT ABOUT OBAMA AND IRAN From Tom Hilton: the people who (claim to) have the greatest faith in what Obama's endorsement would do for the Iranian opposition would be the last to admit that before the election, the opposition was newly energized by Obama's speech in Cairo. The things Obama actually does have no value; it's only the things he doesn't do that could transform the world. posted by Steve M. | 3:06 PM | A STORY YOU'RE SURE TO FIND ON THE NEXT NEO-NAZI MURDERER'S WEB SITE This is a real story, but -- as I note below -- it's starting to enter the realm of lunatic right-wing fantasy, and it will definitely get synapses firing in the brain of the next von Brunn wannabe. Case of $134-billion T-bond bust fuels conspiracy theories For your entertainment, Bloomberg News columnist William Pesek lets his imagination run wild about the strange case of two Japanese men who were allegedly trying to smuggle $134 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds into Switzerland last week: Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear. Well, those are fun theories. But there's a new, much more wingnut-friendly conspiracy theory: a Lucianne.com thread links to a story at a favorite far-wingnut site, Canada Free Press (warning: CFP might do odd things to your computer), and that story leads to this, from something called the Northeast Intelligence Network. I'll highlight the key bit: 19 June 2009: Good morning America! On June 3, either an attempted attack on the economy of the U.S. on an unprecedented scale was narrowly averted -- or a criminal conspiracy involving the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve that would legitimize the most radical of globalist conspiracies of all time -- was exposed. In either event, a deliberate media blackout was employed in the U.S. When news of the event gained traction in the foreign media, the U.S. media was compelled to report it as well, but only after facts could be changed and damage control employed by the highest levels of the U.S. government, aided and abetted by faceless global powerbrokers. The event involves the smuggling of $134.5 billion in U.S. government bearer bonds, which by no coincidence, happens to be the exact amount remaining in the U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] as announced by the Department of the Treasury on March 30, 2009.... Bingo! Oh yeah, that's going to get serious traction on the fringe. (I was going to say that Glenn Beck will be all over the story soon, but he's already talking about it, or at least about the initial reports. He apparently hasn't made the TARP leap -- yet.) The Northeast Intelligence Network story goes on to link the Japanese story to Representative Paul Kanjorski's statement last fall (a conspiracists' favorite) that there was an "electronic run on the banks" one day in September. I'm not sure I understand the alleged connection, but NIN assures me that all of this put together "would provide a great deal of legitimacy to the so-called conspiracy theorists who have suspected such illicit activity involving the U.S. money supply, the Federal Reserve, and the direct involvement or complicity of numerous U.S. administrations over the last 75-plus years." Oh, is that all? (I'll remind you that Rush Limbaugh responded to that Kanjorski statement by speculating that the alleged bank run was something George Soros did to destroy the economy in order to get Barack Obama elected.) Oh, this has the potential to make a lot of righty heads explode. I think Beck, for starters, is going to make the leap to anti-Obama/TARP/(Soros?) conspiracy talk any day now. posted by Steve M. | 11:51 AM | KEN STARR, PUSHOVER After issuing a warning in February that Barack Obama's Supreme Court picks were likely to face GOP resistance, is Ken Starr now consorting with the enemy? Has he crossed the line? David Corn reports: Kenneth Starr, the lawyer who chased after President Bill Clinton and his wife, said on Thursday that he supports President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Starr voiced his backing of Sotomayor while delivering the keynote speech at a luncheon held in Los Angeles for Loyola Law School's program for journalists who cover legal issues. He said that he "thinks very well of her." ... Starr said that he has told more than one US senator that he supports her nomination, but he wouldn't identify which senators he has spoken to about Sotomayor. Corn adds: ... he's out of the closet as a Sotomayor booster. How will Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and other conservatives who have tried to depict Sotomayor as a race-obsessed liberal activist take this news? ... Well, Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al. could always take a cue from wingnut journalist Richard Poe, who published a book called Hillary's Secret War a couple of years ago in which he argued (as he explained in a FrontPage Magazine interview) that Starr was really just a mealy-mouthed appeaser of Democrats: Poe: Well, as I explain in my book, there are two Ken Starrs. There's the imaginary Ken Starr conjured up by Big Media -- a ruthless, rightwing religious zealot, bent on toppling the Clintons. Then there's the real Ken Starr -- a timid bureaucrat, afraid of his own shadow, who shrank from investigating any of the truly serious Clinton scandals. On the contrary, Starr actively helped to suppress and whitewash evidence of Clinton wrongdoing. Take the Vincent Foster case. In September 1994, Starr appointed Miquel Rodriguez to lead the grand jury investigation into Foster's death. Rodriguez resigned in protest less than four months later, charging that the investigation was rigged. Rodriguez accused Starr's people of pressuring him to announce that Foster committed suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. After resigning, Rodriguez tried to go public. But Big Media shut him out.... FP: Why would Ken Starr cover for the Clintons? It has been alleged that the Clintons had some sort of hold over Starr -- that, in fact, Starr was "fixed," either by threats, blackmail or perhaps mutual self-interest. According to White House whistleblower Nolanda Hill, Starr's team was thoroughly infiltrated by Clinton loyalists. Even Starr's FBI investigators reported secretly to Janet Reno. This gave the Clintons enormous leverage to guide and manipulate the investigation their way. Moreover, Starr had a conflict of interest. In his private legal practice, he represented a subsidiary of CITIC, a company owned by the People's Liberation Army of China, and led by arms dealer Wang Jun, a Chinese military intelligence operative and a key player in the Chinagate scandal.... And there's even more of this kind of thing here and here. So I think Limbaugh and Gingrich and the rest can safely declare Starr a right-wing unperson and airbrush him out of all the photos.... posted by Steve M. | 9:43 AM | Thursday, June 18, 2009 THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME TO TRY TO DO HEALTH CARE, ASSUMING THERE'S EVER A GOOD TIME It's widely assumed that health care reform is in trouble -- Ezra Klein and The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn say it's because of the cost estimates for the plans that have put forward, while Sam Stein at the Huffington Post thinks it might have been a mistake for the White House to defer to Congress on the details (even though not deferring to Congress is said to be what sunk the Clinton plan). But really, wasn't this always going to be an extreme long shot? Democrats were always going to be craven; Republicans were always going to socialist-bait any plan that emerged; vested interests were always going to fight like cornered rats. And why on earth did two consecutive Democratic presidents think the best possible time to attempt health care reform was when people were still feeling the sting of a recession? On the latter question, I think I know the thought process of the wonky Clinton and the wonky Obama: The American people are hurting, so let's free them from some big fears by developing this swell new addition to the economic safety net. It's the perfect time to do it. People will be so grateful. And we can get it done because it's early in my term and I'm quite popular. Now, here's the reality: Clinton introduced his plan when the Poppy Bush recession and the S&L crisis were still fresh in everyone's memory; Obama is proceeding while we're still in a horrible economic mess. In each case, the public got stuck with the bill because of greed and deceit the government failed to detect. And then a Democratic president came along and said, in effect, I'm from the government and I'm here to help ... you get health care. Oh, and it's OK that the plan is going to be complex and costly ... even though complexity, large amounts of money, and government oversight were just what, in each case, Americans had just experienced in damaging financial scandals. Health care reform is just too easy a target -- especially in tough times. This is why the opponents of real reform seem so ready for a brawl right now and the proponents (and people who should be proponents, like centrist Democrats) don't, and seem desperate to make compromises: the anti crowd knows it can persuade the public again that this is a huge, nasty ripoff, in effect the next financial scandal, the next parasite on the public's wallet. The anti crowd doesn't even need an alternative -- it just needs to shout "Government control!" and "Deficits!" and support will erode among people who now associate complexity-plus-government with gazillion-dollar, recession-inducing fraud. Yeah, I know -- it's different this time. Obama is more popular than Clinton was; polls say the public really wants a government-run plan this time around. Look, I'm not getting my hopes up. There's a reason all Republicans and far too many Democrats are resisting health care reform: it's ridiculously easy to liberal-bait. They know the American people have no class consciousness, and that no politician has ever been punished at the polls for failing to deliver on this issue. I'm not sure America will ever see serious health care reform -- but I think if it ever happens, it'll be because it was attempted in flush times, not lean times. Maybe I'm wrong and it can be done now -- but it's going to be the hardest fight Obama's ever fought or will ever fight, and much harder than he thought it would be. It's going to take more of a selling job than even he seems prepared to undertake. Because America just doesn't want this enough -- especially now. **** UPDATE: From Politico, here's the self-fulfilling conventional wisdom, and it pretty much tracks what I posted above: President Obama's campaign for health care reform by this fall, once considered highly likely to succeed, suddenly appears in real jeopardy.... Business groups, which had embraced the idea of reform and have been meeting quietly with Democrats for months in an effort to shape the legislation, now talk of spending millions of dollars to oppose the latest proposals out of Capitol Hill. And Democrats themselves are not united, with leading party figures making contradictory declarations about how far they should go to overhaul the system when deficits are soaring and prospects for an economic recovery remain cloudy. And top Democratic officials tell POLITICO they are increasingly pessimistic about getting any more Republican votes than they did on the stimulus package.... Public anxiety about red ink ... has come roaring back, with a Gallup Poll showing deficits and spending as the only issues where more people disapprove of Obama’s performance than approve of it. Republicans think the “borrow and spend” issue may be the biggest single vulnerability for Obama and the Democrats in the midterm congressional elections of 2010 and the presidential year of 2012. The president’s own advisers privately agree.... If it we were about to pursue, oh, say, a huge war of choice under a Republican president against a foe we were being told was the new Hitler and whose continued rule meant we were all going to die, budget concerns would not mean a thing and everyone would get on board. But pols, especially Democratic pols, know that voters can be sent into a tizzy about government spending whenever something other than war is involved -- and will never be sent into a tizzy if pols fail to deliver on health care. posted by Steve M. | 11:24 PM | EX-PRESIDENTIN' IS HARD! George W. Bush said in March that Obama "deserves my silence," but I'm not sure that was out of genuine respect or high-mindedness -- I think it was an old habit. Recall that, as president, Bush used to leave the really nasty attacks to Karl Rove and others -- in other words, he let the help do his dirty work. Back then, when those guys attacked, it helped him; now, I think Bush is having trouble adjusting to the fact that he doesn't have any muscle on the payroll anymore and has to fight his own battles. As I said before, I think it really upset Bush last month when there was a big mano-a-mano speech battle between President Obama and Dick Cheney on a day when Bush spoke to some high school kids and said nothing more newsworthy than the revelation that he now picks up his own dog's crap. I think he saw signs that Cheney's becoming a hero in wingnut circles in the way Bush used to be a hero. Bush knows Cheney is looking to write a book, and knows that if Cheney keeps rousing the rabble that book might eclipse his own. So Bush went out yesterday and attacked Obama in everything but name. Take that, Dick! The Decider is back in the fray! Except that Bush pulled a punch or two ("Asked by the evening emcee at the 104th annual Manufacturer and Business Association meeting if he finds the new president's policies 'socialist,' Mr. Bush started -- then stopped") and cribbed his nastiest line... "I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said. "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that -- persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind." ... from a four-year-old Karl Rove speech: Rove ... told a gathering of the New York Conservative Party that "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Damn, it was so much easier when Rove and Cheney and the rest were doing that stuff for Bush! Now if he wants to repair his reputation, he has to do all the grunt work himself! It's not fair! posted by Steve M. | 2:27 PM | MY SCURRILOUS SPECULATION ABOUT THE LEAK New York Times today: As tens of thousands of Iranian protesters take to the streets in defiance of the government in Tehran, officials in Washington are debating whether President Obama's response to Iran's disputed election has been too muted.... Even while supporting the president's approach, senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.... Holly Bailey, at Newsweek's Gaggle blog, responds to this: There's apparently an internal divide at the White House over how tough or not Obama should be... What's interesting to your Gaggler is this is only second or third time we've heard about internal discontent coming from this very buttoned down, very on message, very "all is great" White House. So who leaked this out? Hmmm ... you think it's possible that a little birdie whispered in Hillary's ear and inspired her or a subordinate to leak this?  Just a completely unsubstantiated hunch. We'll probably have to wait for the Bob Woodward book to find out for sure.... posted by Steve M. | 12:48 PM | AMERICANS: TAKING THEIR CUE FROM PEOPLE THEY HATE There are new polls out -- a New York Times/CBS poll and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll -- and they both show some public discontent with President Obama's policies, and slippage in his overall approval rating. What's odd is that this is happening even though the public is thoroughly disgusted with the party responsible for setting the terms of the debate on Obama. As the Times story notes: While Republicans have steadily increased their criticism of Mr. Obama, particularly on the budget deficit, the poll found that the Republican Party is viewed favorably by only 28 percent of those polled, the lowest rating ever in a New York Times/CBS News poll. In contrast, 57 percent said that they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party. The numbers in the NBC/WSJ poll (PDF) are no better:  (Click to enlarge this and all other charts.) And yet whose message are Americans listening to as the begin to express dissatisfaction with Obama? Hooveresque Republicans rail about the deficit -- and suddenly, according to the NBC/WSJ poll, deficit concerns have increased dramatically (by 9 points since January):  Republicans say government is the problem -- and the percentage of people who say "Government should do more to solve national problems" has dropped seven points in three months, according the Times/CBS raw numbers:  And so on. Why is this happening? Why are Republican-averse Americans parroting Republicans? I have a couple of theories. One is that Republicanism isn't as unpopular as it seems. From the rhetoric at the tea parties and from lurking at right-wing Web sites, I've picked up a strong sense that the hip response on the right to a question about the GOP is "I disapprove" -- but that disapproval is because the GOP is supposedly not wingnutty enough. So right-wing poll respondents are talking trash about the Republican Party while supporting its ideas -- and the numbers of those people aren't really shrinking (and they're influencing some people in the middle). I'll add that I also believe a lot of people don't see Fox News and other parts of the Republican noise machine as Republican. (We had an electrician working for us a couple of months ago who praised Glenn Beck while insisting Beck is a "centrist" because he sometimes criticizes Republicans, too. Beck and others on the talk radio/Fox News right do deny party loyalty on a fairly regular basis.) And beyond that, some Americans just seem to respond to practically anyone who's sure of himself Check out the numbers of Dick Cheney in the NBC/WSJ poll:  Still abysmal -- but his positive numbers are up 8 points in two months. And no one doubts he's a Republican. But he knows what he believes, and we know what he believes. Obama and Obama's policies are still much more popular, but maybe he needs a bit more Cheneyesque righteous fervor and ideological purity. The corporatist semi-liberalism of Obama's economic approach is a lot of what's getting him into trouble, I think. He'd be better off if he seemed to be unabashedly on somebody's side, and let us know that unmistakably by his deeds and words. I'd hope it would be the average person's side, but as Bush and Reagan proved, you can be pretty damn popular champuining fat cats, just so long as you do it in no uncertain terms. posted by Steve M. | 7:27 AM | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 BARACK OBAMA KNOWS WHAT WORDS MEAN. JAKE TAPPER, NOT SO MUCH. ABC's Jake Tapper has a blog post up in which he demonstrates either that (a) he can't understand the meaning of plain English words or (b) he knows he'll get more hits from furious right-wingers if he tweaks the truth: President Obama: Not Much Difference Between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi President Obama argued yesterday that there is little different [sic] between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi on policies critical to the U.S. "It's important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised," the president told CNBC. "Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons. And so we've got long-term interests in having them not weaponize nuclear power and stop funding organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. And that would be true whoever came out on top in this election." Did Obama actually say there's not much difference (or different) between the two? No. Here's what he said: * "...the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised." If we make the reasonable assumption that "as has been advertised" means "as has been suggested or implied by some who've taken the side of the demonstrators," he's absolutely right -- the difference isn't night and day. As Tapper points out, Mousavi supports the nuclear program; he also doesn't recognize Israel. But Obama doesn't say how much difference there is between the two -- he just says it's been exaggerated. * "Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States... that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons." That's true. Obama carefully limits himself to the past ("historically been hostile ... has caused") in the first two instances -- he doesn't know what kind of government Iran will end up with, and he's predicting nothing. He talks about the future only with regard to nukes. So maybe there'll be a big difference in relations in the region and with the U.S. if Mousavi triumphs. Obama isn't offering an opinion. * "And so we've got long-term interests in having them not weaponize nuclear power and stop funding organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. And that would be true whoever came out on top in this election." Again, Obama's careful -- he's predicting nothing. Our long-term interests with regard to these issues don't change; Iran's choices might. He's not saying. So no, Jake, he didn't say what you said he said. He chose his words with extreme care. And either out of ignorance or a desire for online eyeballs, you distorted what he said. posted by Steve M. | 7:18 PM | IS THIS WHAT BIDEN HAD IN MIND? I don't know what's ultimately going to happen in Iran, but as I listen to the ranting on the right about Obama's supposed weakness and ineffectuality in dealing with Iran -- which seems to have set the terms of mainstream debate about Obama's response -- I'm thinking about a famous so-called Joe Biden gaffe from the campaign trail last October. I'm thinking not about the parts everybody quoted, but about a sentence that seemed to get overlooked. Emphasis mine: "Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." "I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you -- not financially to help him -- we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right." I didn't know what Biden meant at the time. I still don't. And obviously this isn't "a generated crisis" specifically intended "to test the mettle of this guy." But I think -- as I thought at the time -- that Biden was talking about Obama's tendency not to go for the obvious rally-the-populace response. Obama rarely aimed for the cheap seats when he was under fire in the campaign, and his foreign policy ideas tend to the counterintuitive, if your idea of "intuitive" is somewhere between "rah-rah" and "exterminate the brutes." I think Obama's approach is right, but Obama needs defending because it's clearly not apparent to a lot of people that he's right. Biden was right -- in foreign policy, the crowd pleaser often thinks the best solution is one that doesn't please the crowds. posted by Steve M. | 5:32 PM | NSFW So I'm reading Wesley Pruden's Washington Times opinion piece about President Obama's response to the Iranian elections (surprise, Pruden's against it!), and in it Pruden: * says that Obama's "tongue, golden and honeyed though it may be, is no match for reality"; * accuses Obama of relying on "the sticky warmth of mere words"; and * says of voters in Iran that "the naughty ones [are] often punished." Um, is Dita Von Teese ghostwriting these things for Pruden? Oh, and the headline is very Sacher-Masoch, wouldn't you say? Obama feels the clenched fist. I could really use a shower right now. posted by Steve M. | 11:28 AM | "THE LIKELIHOOD OF THE SENATE PASSING HEALTHCARE REFORM IS LOW" That sentiment is ascribed to Representative Ron Kind, a conservative Democrat from Wisconsin, several paragraphs into this story from The Hill about secret health care meetings that are currently taking place between Blue Dog Democrats and centrist Republicans. I believe it. One thing that's clear from the story is that the likelihood of the Senate and the House passing any reform with a public option is probably zero: Those centrist factions are wary of the proposals their respective leaders will introduce this month. [Democratic] Blue Dogs are leery of the so-called public option in the healthcare reform bill that is expected to hit the House floor this summer. ... The [centrist GOP] Tuesday Group bill contains a number of policies that are similar to those being discussed by Blue Dogs, including the option of forming insurance cooperatives. The coalition's measure does not contain a government-run public option, an essential healthcare reform ingredient for liberals. But is anything going to be passed, this year or anytime in the Obama presidency? Stan Greenberg, who polled health care for Bill Clinton when Clinton was trying to overhaul the system, insists, in this New Republic article, that there's a chance "if Obama learns from the Clinton experience and rises to the educative role that he relishes," but Greenberg's enumeration of the storm clouds on the horizon is much more convincing than his cautiously upbeat conclusion: I've been immersing myself in my old surveys and focus groups and memos to the president. It's even led me to return to the field, posing the same questions to the public, to determine how the mood has shifted and how the forces that oppose reform can best be countered. Perhaps I should know better than to have sensed any profound changes in the country. And, when I got the results for the new survey, I looked at each question warily, remembering how it all went badly wrong. As I reached the last of the questions, I exclaimed: "Oh no. It can't be. Nothing's changed." Then and now, the country proclaimed its readiness for bold reform. In both instances, one-quarter say that the health care system "has so many problems that we need to completely rebuild it"; half the country sees "good things" in the current system but believes "some major changes are needed." Then and now, about 60 percent of the public feel dissatisfied with the current health insurance system. Yet three-quarters are satisfied with their own health insurance--once again eerily parallel numbers. The same holds when the public is asked to focus on reform. Yes, we're no longer living in the shadow of Ronald Reagan. But the country has maintained the same anxieties about government's ability to improve the system. The country divides evenly on whether the greater risk is an unchanged status quo or government reforms that "create new problems." And, finally, Obama might want to pay attention to how closely his situation echoes Clinton's. Then and now, more people favor the president's health care plan than oppose it, but the supporters make up less than a majority.... Read the Greenberg article. Not a damn thing has changed -- people are wary of losing coverage or being dropped for getting sick, but as long as their coverage is working out for them, they're content. They want reform, but they don't want it to cost anyone any money. And they look at health care reform in What's in it for me? terms -- which means, for instance, that senior citizens, who opposed Clinton's plan going in (they were truly and understandably content with the status quo), already oppose the Obama plan: It may surprise you that Obama has already lost seniors, according to our current survey--only one-third approve of his plan. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see there isn't much in it for them. There is already talk of carving out major savings from Medicare and, unlike during Clinton's battle, no offer of a new drug benefit. Clearly, they need to see health care gains for themselves too. Good luck making that case. Unfortunately, the message is It's good for the country; it may not be good for you, but it's good for people you know, not now but eventually -- but that's not going to win any votes. I don't understand why this had to happen so early in Obama's term. It seems to me that nothing short of a Bush-on-Iraq-level all-out propaganda war could get this done -- it would take months and months and months, and a monomaniacal focus. I'm very pessimistic. **** And here's what we get the longer we do nothing: Executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers told federal lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders.... The executives -- Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc., parent of Blue Cross of California -- ... would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage, a refusal that met with dismay from legislators on both sides of the political aisle. ...A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne. The sister of an Illinois man who died of lymphoma said his policy was rescinded for the failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstones that his physician noted in his chart but did not discuss with him. ... The committee's investigation found that WellPoint's Blue Cross targeted individuals with more than 1,400 conditions, including breast cancer, lymphoma, pregnancy and high blood pressure. And the committee obtained documents that showed Blue Cross supervisors praised employees in performance reviews for rescinding policies. One employee, for instance, received a perfect 5 for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.... But this isn't a big news story. It's as appalling as tobacco executives saying under oath in Congress that they don't believe smoking causes cancer -- and yet it's not a major news event, except, apparently, to the L.A. Times, which has been covering the rescission issue for a while now. Americans who don't go to Michael Moore movies just don't believe this will happen to them. They bloody well don't want to pay a bit more in taxes to ensure that they'll never have to worry about this kind of abuse, because they're mostly content now. And so nothing is likely to change. posted by Steve M. | 9:58 AM | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 ANTI-LETTERMAN DEMONSTRATOR, ACROSS FROM THE ED SULLIVAN THEATER, 6/16/09, SHORTLY BEFORE 5:00 P.M. You know, nothing says "concern for the well-being of adolescent girls" like an "I'd Rather Be Waterboarding" button, don't you agree? (Click to enlarge and read the button.)  And as a lapsed Catholic, I especially like the fact that she wore it with a crucifix:  This protest was right by my office. The headline at MTV News is "Anti-David Letterman Protest In New York Draws Approximately Three Dozen People," while CNN said, "Letterman protest draws more media than activists." Both of those are pretty much correct. There's a real PUMA presence in this "movement," by the way -- rally organizer Anna Barone has PUMA ties, as does BettyJean Kling, one of the demonstators quoted in the New York Daily News story about the rally. Maybe John "Mr. Greta Van Susteren" Coale's plan to have Sarah Palin help retire Hillary Clinton's debt wasn't completely crazy. posted by Steve M. | 10:38 PM | LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: HANNITY OK, CHARLIE GIBSON GOEBBELS-ESQUE? The right-wingers are working the refs hard at this moment, led by Drudge, and five bucks says they'll succeed in making this a big scandal: ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm! Highlights on the agenda: ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House. The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.... The Drudge story includes a letter of almost genuine-seeming outrage from Republican National Committee chief of staff Ken McKay. The charge that ABC plans to "exclude opposing voices" is, you will not be surprised to learn, a crock (emphasis added below): President Obama's health care push will continue next week with a primetime event at the White House, with ABC's Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer set to moderate a nationally televised event called "Questions for the President: Prescription for America." The president will answer questions offered by audience members "selected by ABC News who have divergent opinions in this historic debate," as well as some submitted via ABCNews.com, according to the press release announcing the event.... Ah, but you can't blame the right for reacting -- the broadcasts are coming from inside the White House, dammit! Surely "Dr. Goebbels would be so proud" (as this guy says), and this is (per this guy) "Goebbels media" in action. Republicans would never, ever do such a thing, would they? Except, um, yeah, they did, in 2006: Two weeks before a pivotal election, the Bush administration brought some of the Republican Party's conservative base to its front yard Tuesday by inviting talk radio hosts to broadcast from the North Lawn of the White House. About three dozen radio hosts set up inside a huge tent, interviewing administration stars such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and political guru Karl Rove. The hosts, both national and local plus a smattering of liberals, hailed from New York to San Diego. ... Bush spokesman Tony Snow, himself a former radio talk show host, sat for at least 34 radio interviews in the big white tent. His hit list included national hosts Glenn Beck and Neal Boortz.... ... According to Talkers magazine, four of the five top talk radio audiences tune into conservatives: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham. Of those, only Hannity showed up at the White House on Tuesday, and his day included an interview of Vice President Cheney to be run on both his radio and Fox News television programs Tuesday. ... Hannity ... also interviewed Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove and Snow.... There was a similar event less than a week before the 2002 midterms, involving the likes of Hannity and Ollie North. If you find a right-winger comparing these events to the techniques of Goebbels, let me know. **** Ah, memories: 
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WILL TEA PARTIERS COMPLAIN WHEN THE BANKS MAKE EVERYONE ELSE PAY FOR "DEADBEATS"? (Plus: PUMA tea partying!) The tea partiers who congregated last April really didn't like the notion of giving other people help with their mortgages:   And, of course, the rant that got the tea party movement rolling from CNBC's Rick Santelli, was especially focused on mortgages. But let me predict that when it's the banks themselves that are helping out "deadbeats" -- even when they're also threatening to raise good customers' fees and reduce benefits -- you won't hear a peep out of the teabaggers. Bankers are capitalists, you see, and it's OK if they From today's New York Times: ... As they confront unprecedented numbers of troubled customers, credit card companies are increasingly doing something they have historically scorned: settling delinquent accounts for substantially less than the amount owed. ... many credit card issuers have revised internal guidelines to give front-line employees the power to cut deals with consumers. The workers do not even have to wait for customers to call and ask for a break. ... Banks and credit card companies are discussing new programs that would, for the first time, allow credit counselors to invoke reductions of principal as a routine part of their strategy, said Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, a lawyer for many counseling agencies. In the past, counselors could persuade card issuers to adjust interest rates and modify late fees, but the balance was untouchable. An example of how quickly the card companies are shifting their approach is in the behavior of HSBC, a major issuer, toward Mr. [Edward] McClelland [of Chicago]. He was paying fitfully on his card, which was canceled for delinquency. In April, HSBC offered him full settlement at 20 percent off. He declined. A few weeks later, it agreed to let him pay half.... At the very least, a principled anti-deadbeatism would require teabaggers to take their business elsewhere when banks impose this sort of socialist wealth-sharing, no? So there'll be a rash of angry phone calls from teabaggers demanding to know whether their bankers are Marxist bleeding hears -- right? I'll just say I'm not holding my breath waiting for the teabags to start flying at American Express and HSBC. ***** Meanwhile, I see there's been an unholy marriage: the tea party movement and the PUMA movement: On the June 15 edition of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck hosted Nancy Armstrong -- whom he described as a "disenfranchised Democrat" who "has a blog called MsPlacedDemocrat.com" -- in order to assert that it wasn't "only Republicans" who have hosted tea parties. One topic that didn't come up during the discussion is the numerous posts on Armstrong's blog advancing the falsehood that President Obama has not released a valid copy of his birth certificate. ... A March 23 post reads: Dr Orly Taitz, both a lawyer and naturalized citizen has personally taken on the issue of Obama's eligibility. There is nothing wrong with her questioning this issue because Obama has literally hidden every evidence of his past. What has he hidden? All school records, passport records, employment records ( forget his stupid story about ice cream and an ice cream shop....I believe it is another one of Obama's lies.) and his REAL birth certificate.... Orly Taitz is, of course, one of the most prominent (and persistent) PUMAs. As for Nancy Armstrong herself, she's an organizer of post-tea party tea parties now and was a PUMA organizer (and party-goer) last year: DENVER -- One of the weirder soirees in the offing last night would have to be the Republican National Committee's cocktail party for Hillary Clinton supporters. ... As [a] big TV across the room showed Michelle Obama speaking on the convention floor, two young women and a young man from the College Republicans stood next to a couple of middle-aged women from Wichita. The Democrats were doing most of the talking. "I know he's a maverick," Nancy Armstrong, a 48-year-old retired Navy veteran, was saying to the young Republicans, who nodded politely.... Now, when she's not organizing and appearing at tea parties, she's obsessed with ACORN (and trying to get Karl Rove to read her ACORN blogging). PUMA and the tea party movement seem like a perfect match, in that they both seem to stem from the notion that anyone you disagree with on a political issue must be unspeakably, world-historically, in fact supernaturally evil, in fact the center of all evil in the universe. posted by Steve M. | 11:37 AM | DOES AMERICA WANT A COWBOY AGAIN? Voices on the left and right are calling for a more muscular response on Iran from the White House, The Washington Post quotes grumbles even on the White House's Facebook fan page ... and then there's this poll, taken before the Iranian election: Most Americans -- including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents -- say President Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea and Iran. A FOX News poll released Monday finds more than two-thirds of Americans say Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea (69 percent), while some 15 percent think his actions have been "about right" and 3 percent think he has been too tough. Sizable majorities of Democrats (65 percent), Republicans (78 percent) and independents (61 percent) agree Obama should be tougher on North Korea. Among those voters who backed Obama in the 2008 presidential election, 59 percent say he has not been tough enough. I've mocked Fox polls before, but primarily for end-of-poll questions that echo right-wing memes. Typically, on big issues, Fox polls have tracked polls elsewhere in the non-Rasmussen world: Obama popular and backed on most issues, Republicans mostly discredited. It's possible that, like the rulers in Iran, the Fox pollsters are just now starting to fake their numbers brazenly. But I'm not sure. (It should be noted that a few weeks ago Gallup had very good numbers for Obama on foreign policy, and the Middle East and Korea specifically.) With Obama, whenever there's breaking news I expect a window of a few days when hyped-up, ADD America demands a quick response and he's just ... weighing his options. It's his style. It was his style in the campaign and it's been his style as president. In due time, he weighs in. But in this case, an effective lack of response is the response. And at least some of the public clearly wants more. He needs to make an aggressive defense of his lack of aggression -- in other words, he needs argue that the stirring words some people (across the political spectrum) want him to utter could turn out to be Bushian bluster, with Bushian results. He shouldn's say all of this explicitly: "The calculation here is this: We don't want to become the story in Iranian politics," said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution analyst who led a White House review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. "The Ahmadinejad forces would love to turn this into the United States against the Islamic Republic and to make the opposition portrayed as the cat's paw of American imperialism." "At the end of the day, we can condemn it all we like," Riedel said. "That isn't going to help one person on the streets of Tehran. That may make us feel better; it's not going to make the Iranians feel much better." But if he favors caution, he should make a forceful case for it, and identify feel-good cheerleading with what's led to grief in the recent past. posted by Steve M. | 8:10 AM | Monday, June 15, 2009 ALTERNATE REALITY I gather I'm missing yet another Carrie Prejean interview on Fox News as I type this. Then again, I believe at any given moment, if I'm not watching Fox, I'm missing a Carrie Prejean interview. Google hits at foxnews.com for "mousavi foxnews.com": 402. Google hits at foxnews.com for "moussavi foxnews.com": 364. Google hits at foxnews.com for "prejean foxnews.com": 308,000. (Oh, and that last number includes 12,800 Prejean pages marked "Exclusive.") posted by Steve M. | 10:46 PM | THE "NICE" EX-PRESIDENT BUSH CRITIQUES ANOTHER SITTING DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT I don't know where we got the idea that it was unheard of for ex-presidents to criticize their sitting successors -- here's George H.W. Bush doing it in an interview with The Washington Times, which explains to us that he only kinda-sorta did it, so it probably doesn't count: ...In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Times a day after his 85th birthday -- which he celebrated by skydiving from 10,000 feet to a perfect landing -- the 41st president ... took a mild swipe at President Obama for intervening in General Motors Corp.'s bankruptcy.... Mr. Bush and his son, former President George W. Bush, have followed the custom adopted by other former chief executives not to criticize the day-to-day operations of the sitting president. But the elder Mr. Bush slipped across that line a bit as he talked about the current state of the economy, with the White House taking over car companies and financial institutions. "I think people are alarmed now. There's too much government intervention into everything -- putting people on the boards of directors. Too much. And too much spending," Mr. Bush said. "I think people are, you know, understandably concerned about some of the things that are going on now." Yeah, he's no vitriol-spewing Cheney, but I seem to recall hearing that this kind of thing is just Not Done. Except it was also done by Poppy the last time there was a Democratic president: * In an appearance at a San Antonio grade school on October 13, 1993, Bush expressed concern that the humanitarian mission to Somalia that he had launched nearly a year earlier was being "messed up" by the Clinton administration.... Several news reports noted that Bush's comments appeared to violate his earlier pledge not to publicly criticize Clinton during his first year in office. [The New York Times, 10/14/93; The Boston Globe, 10/23/93] * In an interview published in the February 1994 issue of Washingtonian magazine, Bush criticized the Clinton administration's purported lack of a "general strategy" in the foreign policy arena and the "start-and-stop" failures it had exhibited. Bush pointed to the Clinton administration's handling of the situation in Haiti as an example and also criticized Clinton for his policy toward Bosnia.... * In a March 8, 1994, speech in Indian Wells, California, Bush repeated his criticism of Clinton's actions toward Haiti.... At the list, that list contains longer quotes, and goes on for a while. But the next time a Republican is president, this rule will be in effect again, and the Democrat who violates it will be pilloried. posted by Steve M. | 6:27 PM | NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY STRANGE BEDFELLOWS E.J. Dionne on a new anti-Obama campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Business has been on the ropes since last fall's financial collapse, but the first glimmerings of recovery are calling forth a capitalist counteroffensive. It's one thing for President Obama to face off against Fox News, the right-wing radio empire and Republican congressional leaders whose names are unfamiliar to much of the public. It's quite another to confront organized business. Really? It's quite another thing? The hell it is. Whose interests does Dionne think Fox News and right-wing talk radio and the GOP represent? We're seeing what we always see on the right: politicians and bloviators stirring up the base in whatever way works, all in order to discredit the party that's (slightly) more likely to threaten big business, and to help the party that unabashedly wants to give big business whatever it wants. The only difference is that right now the principal rabble-rousing issue is not, say, abortion or gay marriage, but the treatment of big business itself. Dionne writes: As long as the global economy was crumbling, business held back and even welcomed the infusion of hundreds of billions of government dollars to prop up the system. Business leaders, like everyone else, were frightened to death. They welcomed Big Government's exertions to keep the banks alive and gin up consumer purchasing power. It is an odd tribute to the short-term success of Obama's recovery effort that the business lobbies now feel free to return to the old-time religion of bashing government and singing the praises of the unfettered marketplace. You might expect the corporate guys to show a little gratitude to the government that bailed them out. Well, you might, E.J., but not me. Maybe big business "welcomed" government largesse, but that didn't mean the fat cats believed in interventionist government in principle. They believed, as they always do, in a quid pro nothing: give us everything we want and don't you dare ask for a damn thing in return. Their attitude toward government intervention in the abstract was exactly the same as the GOP's or Limbaugh's -- they just weren't going to say anything until they got everything they could get. They unswervingly oppose "big government" -- except when they're the beneficiaries. And then, as soon as they've pocketed the boodle, they go right back to bashing "big government" again. But they're happy to see their defenders in Congress and the media bash away throughout the process. posted by Steve M. | 2:50 PM | A PUBLIC HEALTH CARE OPTION: THE NEW ABORTION? It's far from an exact analogy (we don't have a public health care option for most America and we do have somewhat legal, somewhat available abortion), but once again, the message, even from the seemingly sympathetic, seems to be: yeah, maybe this is a good thing, but it's just so icky and regrettable, isn't it? Doesn't it seem as if the ideal state would be having no abortions/public option at all? AP: Obama camp floats cooperative as alternative health-care option With Republicans fighting the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, Obama administration officials said yesterday that they are open to a compromise: a cooperative program that would expand coverage with taxpayer money but without direct governmental control.... The concessions could be the smoothest way to deliver the bipartisan health-care legislation the administration seeks by its self-imposed August deadline, officials said.... Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Budget Committee, has offered the co-op idea as a way to avoid a bruising and protracted political wrangle on Capitol Hill. "It's far preferable to the government-run plan that has been discussed by the administration," said Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine). "We need to better understand how it would work. But it's certainly better than a Washington-run plan." Obama's political team at the White House has seen such a compromise as an option, although publicly the administration remains in support of a government competitor to private insurance. But during appearances on Sunday news programs, the support seemed to waver.... Also see The Hill's story. I know Obama and his team have been reading polls showing that most Americans are content with their current health plans; having a public option rather than single-payer does seem like a reasonable compromise (which Team Obama does still seem to be pressing for, albeit in a "wavering" way). But no one except the usual single-payer advocates (certainly no Obamaite or congressional Democratic leader) seems to want to say, "Government involvement in health care is good!" -- just as virtually everyone wants to talk about abortion as a horrible thing that's a necessary evil at best, rather than the right choice for a lot of women and girls. When the arguments of the anti side are passionate and pure, and the pro side is sheepish, the anti side has the power. If no one will try to motivate the public to want -- really want -- a public option specifically, I fear it doesn't have a chance, because there'll be no widespread public demand for it. posted by Steve M. | 10:18 AM | Sunday, June 14, 2009 THEY WANT OUR ENEMIES TO THRIVE SO THE PRESIDENT WILL BE HUMILIATED Wasn't that what the right said about the left's reaction to Bush's war in Iraq? That we wanted harm to come to the president more than we wanted it to come to overseas evildoers? Well, that's where we are right now with the right-wing hawks -- they're rooting for Ahmedinejad and against Obama. They're rooting for Ahmedinejad because an Ahmedinejad victory, especially a fraudulent one, can be seen as discrediting Obama and his policy of engaging Iran. Max Boot, barely containing his glee: On the principle of "the worse the better" for our enemies -- and, make no mistake, Iran is our enemy -- it is possible to take some small degree of satisfaction from the outcome of Iran’s elections.... If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win. He would have presented a more reasonable face to the world.... Even the Obama administration will be hard put to enter into serious negotiations with Ahmadinejad, especially when his scant credibility has been undermined by these utterly fraudulent elections and the resulting street protests.... So in an odd sort of way a win for Ahmadinejad is also a win for those of us who are seriously alarmed about Iranian capabilities and intentions.... Daniel Pipes, shortly before the election: I'm sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think I would, with due hesitance, vote for Ahmadinejad, in that I would prefer to have an enemy who is forthright and blatant and obvious, who wakes people up by his outlandish statements. The New York Times this morning: "This is the worst result," said Thomas R. Pickering, a former under secretary of state.... Mr. Pickering ... said the outcome would hinder efforts to court Tehran and would embolden those who argue that such efforts are futile. And elsewhere in the Times: Outside Iran, the result was comforting to hawks in Israel and some Western capitals who had feared that a more congenial Iranian president would cause the world to let down its guard against a country galloping toward nuclear weapons capability.... "In fact, Moussavi will be more difficult to deal with, because he will be nicer," one skeptical Western diplomat said on the eve of the vote. To give them their due, these people may not be primarily looking to humiliate the present -- they also think you simply can't reason with any of these hateful wogs and not a one of them understands any language other than force. But this means that their interests and the hard-liners' interests are identical -- namely, maintaining the status quo. They're rooting for our enemies. I remember when that used to be a bad thing. **** BUT: Despite satisfaction with the outcome in certain right-wing precincts, the next sound you hear is going to be other right-wingers -- or perhaps even the same right-wingers -- complaining that Obama should be more forthright in backing Mousavi and denouncing the sham results. Those who are arguing that Obama has to avoid seeming to intervene (because a U.S. intervention will invoke memories of the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of the Mossadegh government and will thus strengthen Ahmadinejad's hand) will be denounced as quislings -- maybe even by people who rooted for an Ahmadinejad win before the violence started, and who said Iran with Mousavi as president would be indistinguishable from Iran with Ahmadinejad as president. This is a tough call -- I want the president to do whatever helps the anti-Ahmadinejad forces, and I don't know what that is -- but I'm sure that whatever he does, he's not going to act hastily, and his caution is going to be portrayed as weakness by the usual blowhards. posted by Steve M. | 9:33 PM | Busy day -- back this evening.... posted by Steve M. | 9:06 AM | Saturday, June 13, 2009 MORE LEFT-WING HATE Good grief, what is it with lefties like Pat Buchanan? Leading White Nationalist To Speak At Pat Buchanan’s American Cause Conference This Month The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan has invited the editor of a white nationalist, anti-immigrant website to speak at the upcoming conference for his group, the American Cause. ...It's no surprise that Buchanan would invite such a hatemonger to his conference. Buchanan himself has appeared at least twice on a neo-Nazi radio show; one appearance was streamed live on Stormfront, one of the most prominent white supremacist online forums.... We know Pat Buchanan's a lefty because he doesn't like neocons:  As our right-wing friends have so helpfully explained to us, anyone who dislikes neocons is a liberal. posted by Steve M. | 4:39 PM | IS THIS HOW THE VILLAGE WILL TURN ON OBAMA? Maybe I'm crazy to be worried about this, but a few days ago my interest was piqued by Gabriel Sherman's New Republic aricle about Bob Woodward's planned book on the Obama administration. Yeah, Woodward turned on Bush -- eventually -- but his early Bush books burnished W.'s image, while his writings on the Clinton White House, particularly the 1994 book The Agenda, harmed the reputation of the Clintons (and don't forget Woodward's 1996 revelation, in The Choice, that Hillary Clinton had conversations with an imagined Eleanor Roosevelt). Sherman says the Obama administration is concerned about the forthcoming book -- and I think Obama, being a Democrat, is right to be concerned. What's Woodward's likely line of attack? Hard to say, but it might be thisty, according to Sherman: One possibility, and a potentially worrisome one for this administration, is that Woodward will choose to focus on national security--the area where Obama has always seemed hypersensitive about being portrayed as weak and directionless. If he does, a likely source could be Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones. A couple of years ago, Jones was a guest of Woodward at his wife Elsa Walsh's fiftieth birthday party held at Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee's house. "He and Elsa were glued to Jones at the cocktail party before the dinner started," one attendee told me. Which brings me to this report from Newsweek's Holly Bailey: Over at Foreign Policy magazine, the very well-connected Tom Ricks, formerly of the Washington Post, says he's "picking up the vibe" that some "powerful people" want to see Defense Secretary Robert Gates replace Jim Jones as President Obama's national security adviser.... Bailey cites Steve Clemons of the Washington Note (who quotes an e-mail about Jones that says, "Knives getting longer") as well as a recent David Ignatius column in The Washington Post, in which Gates denied that there's friction involving Jones. Fox News fanned the flames a couple of days ago, tossing in this detail: One NSC staff member claimed that Jones is so forgetful that at times he appears to have Alzheimer's disease. Will Jones become so disgruntled that he'll agree to be a prime source for an Obama-bashing Woodward book? Or perhaps -- and yes, this is more paranoid -- are certain people rumor-monering because they want Jones to become so disgruntled that he'll agree to be a prime source for an Obama-bashing Woodward book? It does look as if Team Obama knows this is a potential problem. But will the Bradlee/Quinn/Woodward/Post crowd ultimately win this battle, smacking down the Democratic usurper? Do they think he's trashing the place, and it's not his place? posted by Steve M. | 12:38 PM | Friday, June 12, 2009 THE MENTION OF LETTERMAN MAKES SARAH SMILE You're going to say I'm nitpicking, but watch the video I've posted below, of this morning's Today show interview of Sarah Palin by Matt Lauer (also available "here). Watch, specifically, as the discussion shifts, around 3:20, from the subject of Alaska's natural gas pipeline to the subject of David Letterman jokes that have been denounced, by Palin and others, as literal inducements to pedophilia and statutory rape. Here's Palin talking about the pipeline, just before the subject changes:  And here's Palin a few seconds later, when Lauer brings up Letterman:  Watch it on the video. Lauer says, with an awkward smile, "Can we talk about some of the other, um, ways you've been in the news lately? And you know about this. There's been this feud this week with Late Show host David Letterman" -- and Palin interrupts, saying (I'd say impishly), "If you must." And she's grinning the whole time. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy She grins again around 7:00 when Lauer brings up her statement that Letterman ought to stay away from Willow:  Now, I've said that I think Letterman went way, way over the line. I think Palin's daughters should be off-limits with regard to this kind of thing. But I'm sorry -- if I had a 14-year-old daughter and I felt she'd been, in effect, sexually assaulted with words, and you asked me about it on TV, I wouldn't get a cat-about-to-chow-down-on-a-canary grin on my face. I wouldn't be smiling at all. I'd be furious just thinking about it. But that's Palin. She knows David Letterman gave her (specifically, her career) a big fat Christmas present, and she's smiling because she's ready to take full advantage. She has her talking points ready. She has supportive e-mails ready to be read from her BlackBerry. She's prepped. Her daughters largely disappear from the discussion. She's got her ducks lined up in a row for a self-righteous lecture -- and it's a really, really good feeling. posted by Steve M. | 11:50 AM | RIGHT-WINGERS BAFFLED BY PEOPLE WHO PUT SOME THINGS ABOVE PARTY LOYALTY The National Organization for Woman has put David Letterman in its "Media Hall of Shame," and right-wingers' brains may explode: utterly shocked, Hot Air's Allahpundit writes, "Oh my," while Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard writes, "I’m frankly, pleasantly surprised about this." Idiots. Do they have any idea what the history of this (fairly recent) "award" is? If not, are they capable of clicking on a few links? Sure, right-wingers have been very frequent honorees, but during the 2008 campaign Keith Olbermann won a solo award and also shared a separate award with his NBC/MSNBC colleagues; Randi Rhodes won an award; and, hell, even Ludacris, the target of some long-ago Bill O'Reilly two-minute hates, won an award. (Yes! Liberals criticizing a black rapper! It happens!) And the first post-election winner was Obama speechwriter and life-size Hillary cutout groper Jon Favreau. (CORRECTION: It was a Washington Post columnist charged with "making light" of Favreau's actions.) (Oh, and Chris Matthews, whom right-wingers regard as an unswerving lefty, has won or shared three awards, while similarly misidentified liberal Maureen Dowd has won a pair.) See, the prime issue for NOW is feminism. It isn't getting Democrats elected. I know this is utterly baffling to right-wingers, for whom getting Republicans (or at least right-wingers) elected is the be-all and end-all. But that's the way it is. Oh, and I guess, according to the right's new rules of political affiliation, all this makes NOW right-wing, doesn't it? posted by Steve M. | 7:35 AM | Thursday, June 11, 2009 DEEP THOUGHT The anti-war protesters of the 1960s really hated the president who gave us the Voting Rights Act and the Great Society. I guess that means those protesters were all conservatives! Odd that modern conservatives didn't like them more.... posted by Steve M. | 10:39 PM | ALL THE EVIDENCE YOU NEED THAT JAMES VON BRUNN IS A RIGHT-WINGER He's really, really fond of the 10th Amendment. Read the link, then cf. these guys. Also see this and this. Oh, and hey, Tammy Bruce, on this he very much agrees with you (or at least your guest blogger). posted by Steve M. | 3:13 PM | FUNNY, I DON'T RECALL RIGHT-WINGERS CALLING CINDY SHEEHAN A CONSERVATIVE The right's effort to spin the Holocaust Museum shooting by making the absurd argument that James von Brunn is a liberal has gone into overdrive. Limbaugh said today: Well, who did [von Brunn] hate? He hated both Bushes. He hated neocons. He hated John McCain. He hated Republicans. He hated Jews, as well. He believed in an inside job conspiracy of 9-11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right. This follows an Examiner.com story that makes the same argument. (UPDATE: Oh, and I left out this, from Red Alerts: "James von Brunn a Radical Atheist who Hated Christians and William F. Buckley, Just like Daily Kos!") (UPDATE: And also, from Sister Toldjah, "James Von Brunn: Fringe LEFT winger" -- see, it's in ITALIC CAPITAL LETTERS, so it MUST be true!) And now it's being reported (by Fox newspeople) that one of von Brunn's targets (in addition to the Capitol, the White House, and The Washington Post) was "a FOX News location," while a report from Politico's Ben Smith aids the spin effort: FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they'd found the magazine's address Smith adds, to Rupert Murdoch's delight, The focus on the Standard, though, appears to be of a piece with his central motivation: Anti-Semitism. In one essay, Von Brunn attacked "JEWS-NEOCONS-BILL O’REILLY" ... (Would Obama-hostile FBI agents make a visit like this unnecessarily, for political reasons? Is that a paranoid question on my part, or a reasonable one?) **** Obviously, once you're as far out on the fringe as von Brunn is, your ideas don't all line up neatly with ideas on a particular side that are within the pale. But if anger at certain aspects of acceptable conservatism makes von Brunn a liberal, why isn't, say, Cindy Sheehan a conservative? After all, she renounced her membership in the Democratic Party when Democrats voted for war funding in 2007. She considered a challenge to Dianne Feinstein and mounted a campaign against Nancy Pelosi. She was strongly opposed to Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy when Clinton seemed like the most likely candidate to wrest the White House from Republicans. Why doesn't that make Sheehan a right-winger? Why don't right-wingers embrace her? Wouldn't that follow from the right's arguments about von Brunn? posted by Steve M. | 2:22 PM | VON BRUNN AND RONALD REAGAN: HOW MANY DEGREES OF SEPARATION? The answer is two. But first, let me explain why I'm bringing this up. There's an effort out there to push back against the notion that James von Brunn was a man of the right. Michelle Malkin says, "shooter wasn't 'left' or 'right,' just plain loony," while Kathy Shaidle of Examiner.com writes: ... many of von Brunn's political views track "Left" rather than "Right." ... For example, he unleashed his hatred of both Presidents Bush and other "neo-conservatives" in online essays.... As well, even a cursory glance at "white supremacist" writings reveals a hatred of, say, big corporations that is virtually indistinguishable from that of anti-globalization activists. James von Brunn's advocacy of 9/11 conspiracy theories also gives him an additional commonality with individuals on the far-left.... I'll spare you Shaidle's inevitable citation of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Meanwhile, what are we actually learning about the circles von Brunn traveled in? Here's a fascinating detail from a story in today's Washington Post: Todd Blodgett, a former Reagan White House aide who later worked with several extremist groups, met regularly with von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s. "Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people," Blodgett said. "He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be Jews." Blodgett was part-owner of Resistance Records, which distributed music by white racist groups, and worked for Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby, a radical right group. Get that? One of von Brunn's pals had worked in the Reagan White House. I'm not saying that Reaganite conservatism is indistinguishable from neo-Nazism, or that one inevitably leads to the other -- I don't believe that at all. I'm just saying that if you're going to walk out on the loony ledge where people like von Brunn and Blodgett congregate, it's highly unlikely you're going to approach that ledge from the left. I've read a lot about von Brunn and his crowd in the past 24 hours; funny, I haven't read about any ideological soul mate who joined this movement after being part of SDS, or the Mobe, or Gene McCarthy's campaign, or George McGovern's (or Howard Dean's or Obama's or Kucinich's, or MoveOn, for that matter). Here's more about Blodgett, from the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'll highlight one passage in particular: Padded by a wealthy Republican father, Todd Alan Blodgett has been a free-range hustler inside and out of the Washington Beltway since he served as a staffer in the Reagan White House. The 39-year-old son of Republican State Rep. Gary Blodgett of Iowa, Todd Blodgett was a protege of the late Lee Atwater, a key GOP campaign strategist of the time. Fresh from Drake University journalism school in 1983, Todd Blodgett went to work for since-retired Republican Sen. Roger Jepsen of Iowa. Within a year, he was enjoying the run of the Reagan White House as a staff editorial assistant. Then it was on to the Bush/Quayle election committee as a domestic policy adviser. But by 1995, Blodgett also had slipped into the anti-Semitic arms of Willis Carto. Splitting his time between GOP strategy and marketing Carto's anti-Semitic tabloid The Spotlight, Blodgett was soon operating a number of Carto's financial shells, including one that later held Resistance Records. Late in 1998, Blodgett was a glad-handing fixture at the functions of various racist groups, including American Renaissance, a magazine run by white separatist Jared Taylor that focuses on alleged biological differences between races; the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group with ties to many politicians that long has tried to portray itself as a mainstream conservative organization; and the neofascist British National Party. So how long was he both an inner-circle Republican and a peddler of nakedly racist periodicals? How long did it take for someone to conclude that this was a bit, um, awkward? (Then again, hanging out with the Council of Conservative Citizens was practically respectable for years -- Trent Lott regularly spoke at its rallies and wrote for its newspaper; Bob Barr also spoke at one of the group's rallies.) And no, I'm not going to accept as "liberal" John Crommelin, a great fan of von Brunn's book, merely because Crommelin ran for president in 1968 as a Democrat. He was from Alabama, and if being a racist Democrat from Alabama makes you a liberal, then I guess George Wallace was a liberal, too. From Crommelin's New York Times obituary: He also ran unsuccessfully for various public offices. He was a candidate in the Democratic Presidential primary in New Hampshire in 1968 and also repeatedly announced himself as a candidate for the United States Senate. The National States Rights Party, advocating white supremacy, nominated him for Vice President in 1960. In retirement, Admiral Crommelin became known as a supporter of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, and also as an avowed anti-Semite who was active in segregationist circles. It was reported in 1960 that he was a self-styled ''white man's candidate'' for public office and called Jews the real enemy of ''white Christian Alabamians,'' asserting that they controlled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As for von Brunn himself, I haven't been able to confirm this: Freepers themselves cite pictures of Von Brunn's personal truck with "Bush/Cheney '04 sticker" on it posted to the website, holywesternempire.org. But here's the link to the Free Republic comment cited. **** UPDATE: Limbaugh on the shooter: This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate, stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right. The Big Lie. Oh, and I see Coulter wannabe Tammy Bruce and other right-wingers are saying the shooting was Obama's fault. posted by Steve M. | 10:18 AM | Wednesday, June 10, 2009 KEEP MASSAGING THOSE FACTS. EVENTUALLY THEY'LL FIT YOUR THEORY. The Holocaust Museum shooter was a white man and not, as many on the right fervently believed (hoped?), a Muslim. Ah, but according to Debbie Schlussel, he was kind of an honorary Muslim: Much is being made by Muslims and their many defenders on the left--and the ignoramus "conservatives" at Hot Air ... --that the shooter of several people (one now dead) at the U.S. Holocaust Museum is not a Muslim but a White guy, James W. Von Brunn, who is a neo-Nazi. But that is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it is because of Muslims--who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels--that neo-Nazis feel comfortable--far more comfortable!--manifesting their views about Jews.... Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn't feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now--this new era of "tolerance," in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments.... Make no mistake. Muslims created this atmosphere where hatred of the Jews is okay and must be "tolerated" as a legitimate point of view. The shooting today is just yet another manifestation emanating from that viewpoint.... Yeah, right -- Von Brunn was so abashed in his hatreds until now: When his ex-wife met him in the mid-1960s, he was a wine swiller consumed by hatred. "[It] ate him alive like a cancer," said the 69-year-old woman, who did not want her name used.... "He would talk about what the world would become in 20 or 30 years, that most of the country would be governed by black governors and that the Jewish people owned the media." ...On Dec. 7, 1981, von Brunn barged into the Federal Reserve in Washington, with a revolver, a sawed-off shotgun and a knife. He wanted to take hostage Carter administration adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Paul Volcker, chairman of the Fed's board of governors, "to focus attention on high interest rates." He was captured by a guard and sentenced to 11 years in prison in 1983. "[I was] convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for 11 years by a Jew judge," he wrote.... Ah, but he didn't actually kill anybody back then, at the Federal Reserve, so it's sort of like he was, y'know, harmless, right? And the Fed? No big whoop. It's not as if anti-Semites associate Jews with money, right? ***** This is a viler version of the argument we heard back when Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos": Imus is the softest of soft targets. The same can't be said for the black rap shock-jocks. They made Imus possible. They gave him the rapper's bad-housekeeping seal of approval to bash and trash black women. Imus the aging white guy actually said "nappy-headed hos," but it was young black rappers who made him do it. Brilliant theory -- except that Imus had been doing racist comedy since the 1970s -- literally since before the first rap record. I don't know if anyone but Schlussel will have the gall to make this kind of argument about Von Brunn, but I won't be surprised if we hear some form of it again. posted by Steve M. | 11:42 PM | MORAL EQUIVALENCE, FREE REPUBLIC STYLE From a thread about the Holocaust Museum shooting:  Yup, that's the message -- that there's no real difference between Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, and James von Brunn. Five bucks says some right-wing pundit (or elected official, or ex-elected official) is going to make some form of this argument in the next few days. posted by Steve M. | 5:07 PM | HOLOCAUST MUSEUM SHOOTER: WHITE SUPREMACIST? (Yes, apparently) That's what this D.C. resident (an aspiring reporter) is tweeting (here and here). Don't know if it's true. (Though the 1920 birthdate strains credulity -- an 89-year-old shooter?) Washington Post story here. **** The Twitterer works at NBC, and those demographic details come from this NBC story: The suspect, who was not identified, was reportedly a man, born in 1920, who had possible connections to hate groups or anti-government groups. More: MSNBC's Pete Williams is reporting that the shooter (James Wittiker Von Brun (sp?), born in 1920) was arrested in the early 80s for carrying weapons into the Federal Reserve building complaining about interest rates, and has made many anti-Semetic remarks on his Web site since, blaming Jews for his imprisonment, etc. He reportedly also hates Catholics, blaming them for the collapse of the Roman Empire, etc, according to another MSNBC report. Here purportedly is the man's Web site. I can't get through to it directly, but the cached version is here. It says in part: James W. von Brunn holds a BachSci Journalism degree from a mid-Western university where he was president of SAE and played varsity football. During WWII he served as PT-Boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a Commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society. In 1981 Von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison.... In 2008, a Stormfront poster called von Brunn's book Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog (Kill The Best Gentiles) "monumental." Another Stormfronter called him a "white racist treasure." **** This is unsettling, following the Tiller shooting (and April's Pittsburgh cop shootings, also by a white-supremacist conspiratorialist). I don't associate hardcore anti-Semitism with the modern Limbaugh/Cheney/Murdoch/Gingrich/Palin right, so I can't link this in a direct way to the usual targets of my anger ... and yet it's as if a free-floating desire to inflict violence is making a lot of crazy people's pots boil over this spring and summer. It's as if the replacement of a peevish, proud "war president" with a soft-spoken, pro-negotiation (and, of course, Democratic and non-white) president has made angry people feel that anger itself is being repressed. And I should add that, obviously, an anti-Semite who's made mad by the Federal Reserve might be unable to cope with what's being done in D.C. right now to shore up the financial system. Ultimately, I think the old-style crazies are taking what they need from the new post-racist right-wing demagogues. Beck and his pals on Fox don't need to go all racist or anti-Semitic on the Obama administration to hit the anger buttons of the Stormfront crowd -- they just have to suggest that the financial doings are sinister and evil; they just have to create an ongoing wiki-style Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism (which is the prime directive of the right-wing media these days), and believers in the original Protocols will just plug it into what they already believe.... **** Von Brunn is a Holocaust denier, naturally -- but he puts a twist on denial by saying that Hitler's biggest error was not committing genocide: HITLER’S WORST MISTAKE: HE DIDN’T GAS THE JEWS. JAMES VON BRUNN WWW.HOLYWESTERNEMPIRE.ORG Remember, the Federal Reserve Act (1913) gave JEWS control of America’s MONEY. Followed by control of America’s main sources of information . Early on, during the war-torn 20th Century, the only broadcast networks : ABC, CBS, and NBC -- were JEW owned. Today, JEWS control ALL important sources of information (The major networks, Newspapers, Magazines, Book-publishing, Tin-Pan Alley, Music & Recording Industry, Hollywood, Encyclopedia Britannica, Public schools and Universities, the Catholic Church, etc.). Bit by bit Liberalism ascended. Bit by bit the Constitution was re-interpreted. Bit by bit government institutions and Congressmen fell into JEW hands -- then U.S. diplomacy, businesses, resources and manpower came under JEW control. Whitemen sat on their collective asses and did NOTHING - NOTHING BUT TALK. Never before in World history has a Nation so completely been conquered with absolutely NO physical resistance. Whites LOVE their Enemies. Today, on the World stage, Whitemen are LAUGHED AT, their women bred by stronger men. And America ? America is a Third-World racial garbage-dump -- stupid, ignorant, dead-broke, and terminal. Prepare to die, Whitey. jvb-88 Yikes. Yeah, it's no surprise that a financial interventionist black president was going to set a guy like this off. (Though he was arrested and convicted for an armed intrusion at the Fed during the Reagan years.) **** AND: Gosh, can you believe those Department of Homeland Security people were worried a couple of months ago about right-wing extremism? Whatever could they have been thinking? **** MORE: Von Brunn hates: Jews, Catholics, Muslims,* blacks, Hispanics, democracy, communism, neoconservatives ... and that's a partial list. Go here for the whole worldview in a few hundred words. *(UPDATE: I have to acknowledge that I read too hastily -- the link doesn't express hatred of Muslims, which I'm sure could be used as fuel for Debbie Schlussel's insane theories.) **** OH, AND: He thinks (scroll down) Dwight Eisenhower was Jewish. (General Tommy Franks, too.) posted by Steve M. | 2:07 PM | TWO BELIEVERS IN THE ELVES-AND-FAIRIES THEORY OF GOVERNMENT I've summarized the right's main economic theory a number of times, but for those who've missed it, here it is again: All tax money is poured down a rathole. Then e all government services -- law enforcement, firefighting, national defense, education, parks, disaster relief, road building, Social Security, Medicare, the lot -- are provided by elves and fairies, who work for free. Therefore, every tax cut is too small, every tax increase is unnecessary and unjustified, and government is always bad. Whatever we like that comes from government somehow emerged from the labors of those tireless (and completely selfless) elves and fairies. This sounds like snark, but how else do you explain the words and deeds of right-wingers like Sarah Palin and Tom Golisano? Palin, in a recent interview with Sean Hannity bragged about her state's lack of an income and sales tax, and about the state's (decades-old) system of distributing a portion of oil revenues to households ... then, a few minutes later, decried "socialism" in D.C. ... then declared that that ability to tap into oil revenues could be a bad thing if it meant (ick! pthui!) a bigger government: Hannity: ...The price of oil is going up again. It's not quite at $140 a barrel, but it's on its way up to $70 and $80... Palin: Yeah, well and I thank God it's not at $140. You know people say, "Hey, Alaska! 85% of your state budget is based on the price of a barrel of oil. Aren't you glad the price is going up?" I say, "No!" The fewer dollars that the state of Alaska government has, the fewer dollars we spend. And that's good for our families and for the private sector. So more revenue -- dare we call it tax revenue? -- from the oil companies is actually bad for Alaska, even if it means more money distributed directly to each household, because it means government will spend more money. Because all government money is spent on that rathole pour. The elves and fairies don't use any of it. They provide the needed services for free. Meanwhile, here in New York, we have Tom Golisano, a businessman who thought he could buy state Senate Democrats outright if his financial support won them the majority in New York's upper chamber -- but then they had the audacity to respond to a massive budget shortfall by supporting (in addition to cuts in programs) a (gasp!) tax increase on people like Golisano. Didn't they get it? Tax increases are always bad! And always unnecessary! After Mr. Golisano's fruitless meeting with [Democratic Senate majority leader Malcolm] Smith in March, [Golisano aide Steve] Pigeon and Mr. Golisano returned to Albany to meet with Mr. Smith's top aide, Angelo J. Aponte, the secretary of the Senate. Mr. Golisano insisted that there had to be a way to balance the state budget without raising taxes, and at one point snatched a pad from one of Mr. Aponte's aides and began scrawling back-of-the-envelope calculations. One of Mr. Golisano's aides asked whether the state could issue billions of dollars worth of bonds. Mr. Aponte said it was unlikely the bonds would find buyers in the economic slump. But it's always possible not to raise taxes! Wahhh! Wahhh! It should be noted that the coup Golisano helped engineer, in which two Democrats, Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, joined with Republicans to replace Smith with a Republican Senate leader, doesn't seem to have involved say, eliminating earmarks. It's as if the lead plotter of the coup doesn't think spending has anything to do with those taxes he hates. They're completely unrelated! The earmarks are merely redistributed: Mr. Espada has said he joined the effort because he wanted to change how Albany does business. Indeed, shortly after taking power on Monday, Republicans enacted new rules for the Senate, including one ... equalizing distribution of the $85 million the Senate allocates annually for legislative earmarks. This is the right-wing mindset. This, right-wingers, is why your party didn't impose fiscal discipline in D.C. when it held power, something that you now seem to find baffling. Your guys simply don't really understand that there's a direct connection between income and outflow. You guys think taxes are collected are collected just for spite, and that spending just happens. posted by Steve M. | 11:29 AM | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T MAKE HER A MARTYR Please, please do not give Sarah Palin the opportunity to claim the moral high ground. That's one reason not to make the kinds of jokes David Letterman made about her (and her daughter) last night. The other reason is that, simply, it's tasteless and misogynist: While counting down "The Top Ten Highlights Of Sarah Palin's Trip To New York" on the Late Show, David Letterman thought it would be funny to use crude and sexist terms to describe an accomplished governor. According to Letterman, the number two highlight of Governor Palin's trip was this: 2. Bought makeup from Bloomingdale's to update her "slutty flight attendant" look. Sorry, but no. You don't do slut jokes about a female politician any more than you do monkey jokes about a black politician. You're tapping into a group slur that's been used to limit a whole category of people. It doesn't matter that the woman in question is obnoxious, McCarthyite, and ill-informed. You're still crossing the line. And I'm not wild about this line from Letterman's monologue, in reference to Palin's visit to Yankee Stadium: One awkward moment, though, during the game, maybe you heard about it, maybe you saw it on one of the highlight reels, one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game -- during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez. You could argue that Bristol Palin* is now of age, you could argue that she's using her pregnancy to make herself a media figure, but I still don't see her as an appropriate target. She's not really in the arena in the way her mother is. I say leave her alone. *(UPDATE: My error -- Palin was joined on the trip by one of her daughters -- not Bristol, but Willow, who's never been pregnant and who's 14. Wrong. Very wrong. Way, way over the line. Roy Edroso's point that "the only way the joke makes sense" is as a reference to Bristol doesn't wash -- it might have if Bristol had been with the governor, or the whole family, or none of her daughters. But that wasn't the case.) I'm on the fence about the joke Chuck Nice told on the Today show, if only because I can conceive of a similar joke being directed at, say, Bill Clinton: "But, Sarah Palin to the GOP, this is what I've got to say, she is very much like herpes, she's not going away." But why go there? Palin and sex (and contagion) -- what's the thought process that gets you there? I see sexism in this, and I see an opportunity for self-righteousness on the part of Palin and her cult that I'd rather they didn't have. Don't give her and her posse this gift -- please. **** Gratifyingly, Palin can't really manage to take advantage of this opportunity. Apprised of the Letterman slut joke by a right-wing radio host, she reverted to one of her weakest boilerplate riffs: Oh, good old David Letterman. You know, what a commentary there.... For him to pick up on such a thing, a distortion that is based on -- a slow news day, evidently? Not having anything else to talk about? Pretty pathetic, good old David Letterman! A swing and a miss, Sarah. You can't spend days doing multiple visibility-raising public appearances and then complain about the fact that somebody treats you as newsworthy. Either you want to be a public figure or you don't. You get to complain about cheap shots, but you don't get to complain about being discussed at all. Not unless you want to come off as a whiner. Videos below; posted by Steve M. | 11:40 PM | GEORGE W. BUSH: SECRET MUSLIM? Frank Gaffney is getting a lot of flak for a Washington Times op-ed in which he argues that Barack Obama is effectively, if not literally, "America's first Muslim president," and in which he compares Obama to Hitler: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich. But is Obama really America's first Muslim president? Let's look at just one piece of Gaffney's evidence: • Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims -- even pandering ones -- generally don't use that Islamic formulation. Wait -- does that mean George W. Bush was a Muslim, too? President Hosts Iftaar, November 7, 2002: According to Muslim teachings, this season commemorates the revelation of God's word in the holy Koran to the prophet Muhammad. President Commemorates Eid al-Fitr, December 5, 2002: Islam traces its origins back to God's call on Abraham. And Ramadan commemorates the revelation of God's word in the Holy Koran to the prophet Mohammad -- a word that is read and recited with special attention and reverence by Muslims during this season. Remarks by the President at Iftaar with Ambassadors and Muslim Leaders, October 28, 2003: According to the teachings of Islam, Ramadan commemorates the revelation of God's word in the Holy Koran to the prophet Mohammed. The evidence is unambiguous! Bush was one of them! **** In his post on the Gaffney op-ed, Steve Benen cites a post I wrote a while back in which I noted that Gaffney isn't sure Obama's a citizen. The current op-ed suggests that this isn't the only Obama conspiracy theory he finds credible. Gaffney writes: What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. "Suggests"? What does Gaffney mean by this? Specifically, does he not think it's an established fact that Obama's father was a Muslim (by birth, at least)? Is he one of the nutjobs who believe that Obama's real father was the writer Frank Marshall Davis, or possibly Malcolm X? His wording certainly, um, suggests that that's what he believes. posted by Steve M. | 3:37 PM | TERRORISM WORKS That's why terrorists terrorize: it gets results. The Wichita abortion clinic run by a doctor who was shot and killed will remain closed permanently, his family said on Tuesday. Dr. George R. Tiller's clinic was one of the few in the country to provide abortions to women late in their pregnancies, and for decades, women had traveled there from all over the nation and from overseas. It was also the only remaining abortion clinic, even for first trimester abortions, in the Wichita region. ... After Dr. Tiller was shot and killed on May 31 as he served as an usher at his Wichita church, abortion rights advocates – including at least one abortion provider in Nebraska – had said they hoped others might step in and keep Dr. Tiller’s clinic open to provide late-term abortions. Abortion rights advocates had the loss of such a clinic would be devastating to families of women who learned late in pregnancy of catastrophic health issues. Even some abortion opponents, who had long devoted their efforts to closing down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, said they did not wish to see it happen under these circumstances. Last week, Troy Newman, the leader of Operation Rescue, had said that closing the clinic now would send a worrisome message. "Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason," he said in an interview with The New York Times. "Every kook in the world will get some notion." ... Yes, that was one of the most ridiculous articles I've read in the Times lately -- an article titled "Closed Clinic Leaves Abortion Protesters at a Loss" Oh, my God! No more Dr. Tiller? Whatever will we do? "I don't know what the future holds," said Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, one of the most well-known anti-abortion organizations. Seven years ago, Mr. Newman moved his organization's national headquarters, its leaders and his family from Southern California to Wichita to focus a national spotlight on Dr. Tiller, whom he described as "the flagship" of the country’s abortion business. "I think it's too early to say what comes next," he said. Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, "This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine." Oh, give me a break. As for "what comes next," that's easy. What comes next is what's been coming for years: more and more partial victories for the anti-abortion movement, as the ability to obtain a safe, legal abortion slowly but inexorably disappears in the vast majority of the country. Oh, but I know what's bothering Troy Newman -- he's worried that if there are more attacks and killings like this, he won't be able to keep convincing himself that he has nothing to do with it. Either that or he thinks he might lose his hard-won position in respectable society. (A few years ago, after all, Operation Rescue was seen as dangerous and extreme, and now here's Troy getting to write the rebuttal to the lead editorial in USA Today one day last week, as respectable as you please.) Newman and his allies shouldn't worry. No matter how many doctors are gunned down, no matter how many clinics are firebombed, trhe anti-choice movement is still going to keep coming back strong, because liberals are too polite to take our own side in an argument. Oh, sure, we'll defend the bare essence of Roe if it's under threat but, short of that, we won't get mad -- we certainly won't say, "Hell yes, we support abortion rights." Newman and his pals just have to look at the gun crowd, which never apologizes and never even pauses to savor a victory. It just keeps coming -- and the anti-choicers will do the same. ***** UPDATE: I don't know if I'm being punked, but I see that the murder of Tiller is being defended -- no, applauded -- in comments. And I don't mind pseudonyms, but really, schmuck -- naming yourself after the site of the Virginia Tech massacre? Get help. posted by Steve M. | 2:20 PM | NOT A BIG FAN OF COUPS AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE Back in January, I was somewhat surprised to see the gleeful lefty blogger reaction to a coup of sorts in the Tennessee House of Representatives: the GOP had won control of the chamber, by a very slim margin, for the first time in decades, and Republicans planned to choose a far-right Speaker, but Democrats managed to get a moderate Republican voted in as Speaker, thwarting the GOP leadership. I didn't find it a particularly story because here in New York State the Democrats had just won control of the state Senate for the first time in decades -- and a GOP coup involving turncoat Dems voting for a Republican Senate leader had just been thwarted, within days of the election, even before the seating of the new Senate. And now Republicans in New York's Senate have had the coup they sought back in November. Yeah, politics ain't beanbag and all that. And I know -- I was happy when Jim Jeffords flipped the U.S. Senate back in '01. But at least that was a personal renunciation of party by Jeffords. (The swing votes in the Tennessee and New York coups intend to stay in the parties they betrayed.) And it was a 50-50 Senate, Republican-controlled only because of the VP tiebreaker. I look at what happening in New York now, and at Bush v. Gore and Franken v. Coleman, and I sense an increasing disrespect for normal democratic processes. And I strongly suspect that if we're going through an era in which elections are treated as post-modern texts with no fixed meanings, the GOP and the right are going to dominate the process of delegitimizing electoral results. I'm betting that, sometime in the next decade or so, they'll flip a house of Congress that's clearly majority Democrat, with the help of some right-wing Dems. The coup will be portrayed as a revolt against Evil Nancy Pelosi or Dingy Harry Reid or some future equivalent Fox News antichrist du jour. And the coup enablers won't even leave the party. **** Central to the coup was frequent gubernatorial third-party candidate Tom Golisano, a registered Republican (and libertarian) billionaire who's not even a New York resident anymore: One person backing the revolt to put Republicans back in charge was Tom Golisano, the Rochester businessman and founder of Responsible New York, a political action committee that gave thousands of dollars to Senate Democrats last year to help them take control of the Senate, but who has become increasingly critical of the party. Mr. Golisano recently announced that he was moving his legal residence to Florida out of anger about the budget deal crafted in April by Democratic leaders in Albany, which included an increase in taxes on high earners. Yes -- that was a move Golisano told us all about in a New York Post op-ed last month: Last week I spent 90 minutes doing a couple of simple things -- registering to vote, changing my driver's license, filling out a domicile certificate and signing a homestead certificate -- in Florida. Combined with spending 184 days a year outside New York, these simple procedures will save me over $5 million in New York taxes annually. Boo hoo. Golisano tried to buy off the Democrats and then they had the audacity to make him subject to a tax biller that was higher by $5 million. Well, according to Forbes, Golisano's net worth dropped from $2 billion in 2007 to $1.7 billion in 2008 -- a $300 million decline -- while that great tax-cutter George W. Bush was in charge of the economy. I don't recall him writing any op-eds about that. posted by Steve M. | 10:37 AM | Monday, June 08, 2009 THAT NICE NEWT WE ALL REMEMBER MSNBC hasn't posted the clip, but I just watched The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson tell Rachel Maddow that he was surprised at Newt Gingrich's race-baiting of Sonia Sotomayor, because the 1990s-vintage Newt, according to Robinson "trod much more carefully" on racial issues. (UPDATE: Robinson's exact words, now posted: "I frankly was surprised at his outburst at Sotomayor. I wouldn't have associated that particular sentiment -- 'She's a racist! Racist Latina!' -- with the Newt Gingrich of 1994, who trod much more carefully, I think, through racial and ethnic issues.") I think Robinson's memory is failing him a bit -- and I think what he's suffering from is what a lot of the Beltway suffers from, which is part of the reason Gingrich is welcomed back so warmly on any news program he chooses (Dick Cheney, too, for that matter). i'm not saying Gingrich was a sheet-wearing racist, but he took similar shots in his heyday -- like, for instance the 1995 speech to a group of black journalists in which he said the failure of poor blacks to achieve was partly the result of their "habits," described blacks as having little entrepreneurial tradition and said the civil-rights movement had become more focused on filing grievances than on promoting economic opportunity. ... Gingrich said the party is interested in finding ways to help people "who are financially and culturally deprived" but are opposed to what he called "genetically based patterns or grievance-based patterns" of assistance. ...Gingrich said the objectives of the civil-rights movement had been mistaken because it was dominated by lawyers, ministers, political activists and others "who thought there was some way to get fairness of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity." He acknowledged that it was more "difficult to acquire wealth as a black in America" but added that more than skin color is at play. "The truth is that preachers and lawyers have been more dominant in the black culture in the last 40 years than have business people," said Gingrich. "The habits of the church and the habits of the lawsuit have been more powerful than the habits of acquisition and the habits of job creation." ... Gingrich backed Proposition 209, the California anti-affirmative action initiative that passed in 1996. To some extent this was cynical -- news reports quoted him as saying that this was a good way to force Democrats to spend money they'd otherwise spend on election contests. But he described affirmative action as "legalized discrimination." Subsequently, he attacked Bill Clinton for not including Prop 209's principal sponsor, Ward Connerly, on a civil rights panel, and he accused Bill Lann Lee, Clinton's nominee for the top federal civil rights post, of "attempting to force through racial and gender preferences in the LAPD," which he said would have been a "backdoor thwarting of the will of the people of California with regard to Proposition 209." Gingrich was never David Duke. But he did play politics more or less the same way then. Let's not let our memories get fuzzy around the edges. posted by Steve M. | 11:53 PM | DON'T STOP "APOLOGIZING" The wingnut take on Barack Obama is that he apologizes for America at every opportunity. Since wingnuts never mischaracterize anything, inadvertently or (heaven forfend) deliberately, that must mean Obama's foreign-policy posture is infuriating patriotic Americans everywhere. Right? Er, wrong, according to Gallup: Obama's highest issue-specific approval-to-disapproval ratios come in terms of international issues, including overall foreign policy, terrorism, the Middle East, and North Korea.  As president, Obama follows a bratty overgrown seven-year-old whose irresponsibility and tantrums cost thousands of lives, and the new foreign-policy mix -- toughness and empathy, patriotism and, at times, an acknowledgment of error (often error on the part of the brat, though Obama's too polite to say so directly), plus no apparent joy in being a war president -- is playing well. Who'd have thought? Meanwhile, those deficit and spending approval numbers look bad, but damn, he's more at less at par? The disapproval numbers are barely higher than the approval numbers? Considering the level of neck-vein-popping outrage in certain precincts, you'd expect Obama to be flirting with Bush-level numbers by now, but no. Me, I'd like to see a good deal more Keynesianism, and some real pain for the banks (and while you're up, get me some single-payer health care, would ya?), but at the very least there's no reason for Obama to do less. And hell, he's at +13 on the economy overall. Also here's an interesting set of numbers:  Right-wingers will say that Obama's first-half-year popularity is tracking Bush's, which is true -- but Bush, unlike Obama, didn't do any really unpopular stuff in his first half-year. Wow, he gave out tax cuts -- you really have to tap into your political capital when you do that. But Obama is way ahead of Bill Clinton in June '93 -- though, yeah, that was not long after Clinton's tax increase won its first congressional vote. There'd also been a few other shaky moments and phony scandals -- gays in the military, Waco, Lani Guinier, the haircut. Obama, though, has taken some risks and still has the numbers of a guy who went months without taking any. So he's doing OK. posted by Steve M. | 2:30 PM | MORAL CLARITY FROM SAINT SARAH I see that after slamming Barack Obama for his pro-choice stance, first on the campaign trail last fall and then later this past spring at a Right to Life dinner in Indiana, Sarah Palin found time yesterday during her New York trip to attend a Yankee game with ... um, the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani: ...Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose presidential aspirations collapsed in humiliating defeat in Florida last year, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the failed GOP veep pick, enjoyed a game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. The GOP political duo and their spouses exchanged laughs, smiles and small talk as they watched the Yanks take on Tampa Bay.... Giuliani invited the Palins to the game when he learned they would be in town this weekend.... Palin, of course, also criticized Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama to speak at its commencement. Apparently it doesn't bother her that Giuliani was also the target of anti-abortion anger in 2005 when he gave a commencement address at Maryland's Loyola College. This isn't the first time Giuliani and Palin have been linked in print. As I've noted a couple of times, way back in the fall of 2007, when hardly anyone outside Alaska had ever heard of Palin, a frou-frou magazine called Monocle reported that there'd been "gossip" about the possibility that Palin might be the then-GOP front-runner Giuliani's running mate. It's not clear whether that was the result of talk from one or both of the politicians' camps -- it's also possible that some Palin-besotted neoconservative Great Mentioner, possibly Fred Barnes or Bill Kristol, started the rumor, hoping to build a GOP dream ticket for '08 -- but it's interesting to see that the two pols truly get along, and aren't letting a little thing like core moral principles stand in the way of a political friendship. posted by Steve M. | 9:34 AM | Sunday, June 07, 2009 FIREARM WORSHIPERS NEARLY ADMIT THE TRUTH: THEY THINK GUNS ARE GOD Some of you saw this last week, but I just stumbled across the story: A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second Amendment. New Bethel Church is welcoming "responsible handgun owners" to wear their firearms inside the church June 27, a Saturday. An ad says there will be a handgun raffle, patriotic music and information on gun safety. "We're just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of our nation," said pastor Ken Pagano. "And we're not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms -- without that this country wouldn't be here." The guns must be unloaded and private security will check visitors at the door, Pagano said.... As an ex-Catholic, I've got to say that not only did I never attend a church service packing heat, I never attended one that you apparently aren't allowed to attend if you aren't packing heat (or accompanied by someone who is). Nor did I ever attend a church service that was actually a free show-and-tell presentation from local merchants: In Celebration of July 4 and our rights as Americans, New Bethel Church will be hosting an Open Carry Celebration for all who support 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. It will be held on Saturday June 27th, the weekend before July 4th. It will begin at 5PM and picnic food will be served. We are asking responsible handgun owners to attend this service openly wearing their sidearm. This will be a Cold Range Carry meaning handguns must be unloaded and in a secure holster. Area gun store/firing range owners will be invited to attend and tell about their services. There will be patriotic music and short presentation concerning responsible gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights. There will also be a raffle to win a handgun. All that is asked is that you bring a sidearm, a friend who has a sidearm and a canned good for local food bank. I also like the way the logo of the event suggests corporate sponsorship (see the lower left and right corners) -- this for, let me remind you again, a church service:  The Knob Creek Gun Range, by the way, advertises itself as the "Home of the Nation's Largest Machine Gun Shoot & Military Gun Show," where as The Wall Street Journal reported a few years ago, The special draw ... is to be able to go full auto--something heavily regulated since the 1930s--with some of the most impressive hardware on the planet. I knew this was serious when I walked through the main gate and the first range offered flame throwers for rent--$65 for regular grade; $125 a squirt if you wanted to upgrade to Napalm. You just know this isn't going to be the last time New Bethel Church is going to have a gun-based service. And you know the ante is going to be upped -- eventually these folks are going to feel their 2nd Amendment rights are being infringed if they can't actually use weapons at the service. And the affiliation with the host of this hardcore gun show has got to mean we'll eventually see napalm for Jesus as part of worship. No? posted by Steve M. | 11:50 PM | 20,000? ... OR 5,000? Hey, I'm back. Thank you, Tom, Kevin, aimai, and Jerome, for great posts while I was gone. And now I see Sarah Palin has a bit of the right blogosphere in a tizzy. "What 2012 likes Now - It's Palin for the White House," says MacRanger, while A.J. Strata says, "Palin Power Still Very Potent" -- all because (per A.J.) "Palin is still able to mobilize 20,000 Americans on a sleepy June Saturday in a small town upper New York State." He's citing AP's story: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set aside politics only briefly Saturday to help Auburn officials celebrate their inaugural Founder's Day and raise money for a museum honoring William Seward, the 19th-century U.S. secretary of state who acquired Alaska for the United States. More than 20,000 people turned out to see the former Republican vice presidential candidate lead a parade through downtown Auburn and sign a proclamation on the steps of City Hall honoring Seward as "the one person most responsible for Alaska." However, it appears that the pinko commie liberal America-haters in the Auburn Police Department have a somewhat different take on the attendance: An estimated crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 people, according to the Auburn Police Department, filled the downtown area along with dozens of vendors, entertainers and other festival participants. We're told this was triple the size of the crowd for the Memorial Day parade -- so yeah, Sarah's a draw. She's just not a huge draw. The soft-serve ice cream and the pizza frites were drawing pretty big crowds as well. This was a day after Palin went to Seneca Falls, New York, and used a feminist landmark as a jumping-off point for a momentary self-pity party: Governor Sarah Palin paused Friday afternoon in front of a monument bearing the Declaration of Sentiments, an early feminist touchstone. "We anticipate no small amount of ridicule," she read, and remarked: "Some things never change." ... The exact wording in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments is "In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule...." -- and I wonder if Palin has processed the fact that it follows a long list of complaints that, while entirely accurate, would probably have been described by Palin's fellow present-day Republicans (and, in all likelihood, by Palin herself) as "male-bashing": The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.... He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master -- the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women -- the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.... If you believe Sarah Palin, transported to 1848, would have endorsed these sentiments, I have a Bridge to Nowhere I'd like to sell you. And, i you really must, you can watch yesterday's Palin speech in its entirety here by following the links embedded in the Part 1 video. Me, I bailed midway through Part 2, when Palin literally compared Greta Van Susteren to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. No, I'm not making that up. **** UPDATE: In comments, DanP asks: Is it just a coincidence that Palin "unexpectedly" went to Seneca Falls a day after firing the Alaska Public Health Director, Beverly Wooley, a strong advocate for women's sexual health issues? Interesting point.... posted by Steve M. | 1:10 PM | Saturday, June 06, 2009 Newt Gingrich, on Judge Sotomayor: Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.'Some guy on a message board I frequent, also on Judge Sotomayor: I would expect nothing less from someone [who] see[s] the world in race, gender and class glasses. I view the statement as racist.I would actually kind of like to see Gingrich's hypothetical made real. Not in the asinine, reductionist way he means it, of course. What I would like to see is some white guy judge say something comparable to what Judge Sotomayor was saying. I'd love to see Judge Roberts, for example, write a thoughtful, introspective piece about what it means to be a white guy, about how his gender and ethnicity have shaped the way he sees the world, and how they affect his decisions. Not going to happen, of course, and the reason why is the same as the reason it would be so interesting to see it happen, and the reason it's so easy to gin up faux outrage when someone who isn't a white guy does it: because white guys have the luxury of believing their views aren't shaped by their race and gender--of believing they don't "see the world in [sic] race, gender and class glasses". White guy is the default option--in politics, in the news media, in entertainment. White guy isn't a viewpoint limited by race and gender; it's the standard by which the limitations of all other viewpoints are judged. And yes, that's changing, and has changed enormously (remember when an African-American president was a far-fetched movie premise). The value of the moronic "Sotomayor = Racist" talking point is that it illustrates how far we still have to go. posted by Tom Hilton | 8:11 PM | Friday, June 05, 2009 Dear Jeff, Please don't help. Best, Sonia posted by Tom Hilton | 1:33 PM | Coast to Coast with Michael Steele The Republican National Committee has released a series of exciting new videos called "Coast to Coast" starring their party chairman and executive silly person Michael Steele and, golly gee willikers, home slice, do they ever stimulate my package. They each feature a city Steele has visited (he's been, like, everywhere) and saucy, danceable regional background music (try not to get "jiggy wid it," I dare you! Salsa! Blues! Some kinda Texas music!). Each video is comprised of sped-up footage of local Republicans, including every GOP minority within a fifty mile radius, meeting with Steele and walking really fast and signing people up for things and teabagging hippies. There are also snippets of Steele's speeches which rely on heavy repetition ("let's get about the business of...," "you will not be budged...," "now is the time...," "I need you to...") and are jam packed with wizdum like this: I'm asking you to make a small sacrifice to help us build, to help us grow, to help us to stay in the game, not get back in it 'cause, folks, we never left it, so don't believe the hype. We're still in the game. They don't want you to know that, but we're still in the game.In another video he illustrates that they're "still in the game" (and that he's down with his bad self) by shooting an imaginary basketball! He posts up! And it's an airball! Oof! You are not the Hoops & Change Messiah, silly person! He never misses. Steele also encourages Republicans to lure folks into the party, but none of those RINO-types, so I guess he expects them to dig up corpses and pull some Frankenstein-like shit because last time I checked the bankrupt wingnut factories didn't get any bailout money: I'm glad you want to be a Republican, but I don't need you to be a Republican in name only, I need you to be a Republican in principal.Everyone in the crowd "ooooooohs!" after that because they love hating people, even some of their fellow Republicans. But their tent is big and getting bigger. Really, it is! Don't believe the hype. The end. [cross-posted at Rumproast] posted by Kevin K. | 9:18 AM | Wednesday, June 03, 2009 I THINK THERE'S A REAL DANGER IN THIS ARGUMENT: Barbara over at the Mahablog has a great post up about the use of the word "terrorist" and all that that implies for the actions of white, male, christianist, militia types in the US aimed at US targets. She links to a thought provoking interview with Jonathan Turley on Maddow's show. Here's one important paragraph: Yes, but I would also caution though is that no matter what we do—we‘re probably never going to be able to stop the lone actor, the McVeigh, or the individual today, without becoming a totalitarian regime. I mean, lone actors are dangerous because they don‘t come up on the radar screen. This is completely false. Roeder "came up on the radar" numerous times because of his actions, lone or not. He was actually caught with weapons and bombs earlier in his career. And apparently he tried to vandalize or attack Tiller's clinic prior to the shooting. This matters to me because Turley's viewpoint, which is widely shared of course, is that crimes are, in a sense, individualistic and random. But of course they aren't. Any social scientist will tell you that they are more like epidemics, and that ideas are like viruses that propagate through the body politic. We've know, for instance, since Durkheim's groundbreaking work "Suicide" that even this most private and personal event has its seasons, its reasons, and its social aspects. Turley might argue that Roeder is just sort of epiphenomenal. In a society like ours there are always going to be a certain number of impressionable, angry, armed men who will kill someone who has become a popular or celebrity target. In that model, I think, the assumption is that someone was going to kill Dr. Tiller, it just happened to be Roeder. If we had caught and imprisoned Roeder earlier, or had silenced some of his more vocal supporters, or even encouraged his family and friends to see his actions as somewhat abnormal and dangerous, then some other Roeder, by another name, would still have stepped forward to do the deed. I see the dangers of trying to apply an epidemiological approach to crimes of violence in a society devoted to the idea of individual rights and individual wrongs. But I don't think we should give up on trying to find a way to balance a general right to "free speech and debate" with a recognition that one man's freedom of speech can lead pretty directly to another man's death--the final suspension and denial of all civil rights. In Turley's interview the opposition "lone wacko" vs "terrorist" comes up in a discussion of whether we should insist that the term "terrorist," with all its new legal force, be applied to domestic acts of violence. Turley doesn't like that because he doesn't like the slippery slope that we've gone down, and neither do I, in which angry or intemperate political speech can be called "terroristic." As a (former) member of United with Justice for Peace or whatever-the-hell splinter groupy name we had I concur that draconian laws regarding peaceable assembly and political organizing should be voided and avoided. But what does that have to do with prosecuting hostile and intemperate political speech that encourages lawbreaking, criminality, and assassination? No one is suggesting that anti-choice forces don't have the right to be opposed to abortion and abortion rights. To organize against it, to petition against it and even to scream about it. But Turley also thinks the word "terrorist" doesn't apply because Roeder was "just an assassin." This, to my mind, is also incorrect. A brief glance at Roeder's behavior indicates that he wasn't just interested in killing Dr. Tiller, he and his friends in the right to life movement are determined to move the country politically and legally through the creation of a climate of fear and intimidation. Roeder himself actually went in to the clinic in order to intimidate the Doctor physically. That intimidation is in service to a larger goal. If that isn't "terrorism" in its classic sense, I don't know what is. I think we as civil libertarians have gone very far down the wrong path in allowing the right wing and especially the anti choice people to co-opt the language of free speech and free expression to include interference with people going about their lawful business and pursuing their health care. This is not the same as picketing at a military recruiters office since that office is, in fact, a branch of the same government over and against which we hold our civil rights. Of course its related to laws protecting free speech and assembly and financial boycotts of places of business, and for that reason we might want to tread lightly. But this is not all windy abstraction--there are actual facts here. Clinic pickets are violent and intrusive. Violence isn't the exception but the rule. Intimidation is the goal adn they are quite explicit about it. Why doesn't that rise to the level of conspiracy to intimidate? We should at least support doctors and patients who make this argument rather than shying away from it for fear of losing our civil libertarian cred. People feel very strongly, and rightly so, about a lot of political stuff from school vouchers to gambling and yet you very, very, very seldom hear of a case of physical harassment, the posting of pictures with death threats, or outright death threats being made on either side of these issues. And if they were made as routinely as they are made to abortion providers you can bet your boots the FBI would be more pro-active than they are. aimai posted by aimai | 2:41 PM | Can't Help Myself Dear Atlantic, I'm a long time reader of the print version, and I try never to miss an article by James Fallows. I read the online version, too, when one of my friends or colleagues links to it. Much to my shock and horror, as a result, I have come into contact with the work of Megan MacCardle and, frankly, it has cost the Magazine all its credibility with me. Perhaps it has escaped your attention that she is both an economic illiterate and a moral pygmy? Its clear from reading her fan base in the comments that her function, such as it is, is to give her readers the feeling that they can't be as stupid, venal, and corrupt as they are because the blog post that leads them is yet more stupid and venal. In that case you will not, of course, want to hear any criticism of her since at least she's pleasing the troglodytes. But I would have expected the Magazine and its editors to take note of the fact that her blog recently condoned and, indeed, argued for the necessity, of the murder of Dr. George Tiller. This is not, despite Megan's wandering, gauzy way of phrasing her ideas, actually ok. It is not OK to legitimize or celebrate the murderous thugs who have taken over our discourse on a perfectly lawful medical procedure. Megan is ok with the murder, she says, because she thinks that "politics" was a road closed to the rabid anti-abortion forces and (she says) when politics fails individuals and groups may freely resort to murder to get their way. News to me. And, of course, directly opposite the conclusions she reachs when the question arises as to lawful protests against, say, the Iraq war. The whole thing is rendered even funnier by the fact that a close reading of Megan's ouevre, from when she was Jane Galt until now, reveals a woman so selfish that she would abort her own grandmother if grandma got in the way of Megan's next inappropriate and expensive foray into the world of consumer goods. A woman who thinks that being made to stand in line for her iphone and having her credit checked amounts to torture? To paraphrase Jesse Ventura on Sean Hannity, another glib libertarian apparatchik, "Megan would have an abortion in a fetal heartbeat if she thought getting pregnant would cost her five seconds of income." aimai's real name here. posted by aimai | 11:59 AM | YOU KNOW SOCIALISM ISN'T A DIRTY WORD WHEN... Your sweet young dental hygienist from the far, far, working class suburbs of Boston tells you that she thinks that health care and electricity and water and all other utilities, such as gas, should be given to the consumer freely, by the government, because they are necessities and cost too much for the average person. Viva! aimai Thank god I was able to close the italics. posted by aimai | 11:13 AM | Unfortunately You Can’t Castrate Sotomayor Sparky Satori at Shorts and Pants reminds us of a former racist activist on the Supreme Court — Chief Justice William Rehnquist. A superior work of snark, found in its entirety here. November of last year, it was assumed that the USofA had finally vanquished the lingering ghosts of racism and was poised on the cusp of a new post-racial dawn. The long dark night of lynching and discrimination was finally over. “Huzzah!” bleated the media, smugly self-congratulatory. Here’s a snippet from the Nixon tapes to give you an idea of the vetting process from which Rehnquist emerged. Full transcript here. As always with Nixon, fascinating stuff. Sure he was evil, but nobody ever called him dumb. RMN: Yeah, all right, call me back when you get it. But remember, let’s figure on the Rehnquist thing. The political mileage basically is the same kind of mileage if we were to go with Smith. The idea being that we are appointing a highly qualified man. That’s really what it gets down to.   I'm Not Sure They Thought This Through BeforehandWhile there is still some hysterical hyperventilation on the right over the "First Terrorist Attack Since 9/11", they seem to have dialed it back some as of this morning. Which is so unlike them.And I can't help but wonder if maybe it was because the guy used a gun. If a few angry losers want to kill people, they're not going to get it done with whacked-out plots to blow up Sears Tower or the Brooklyn Bridge. They can get it done using guns. Thanks to the extraordinarily lax gun laws in most states in this country, they can kill a whole lot of people with guns. (In the case of George Tiller, of course, they didn't have to kill a lot of people; one was enough to make their point.) Pointing that out--as they do, inadvertently, when they call the murder of Private William Long "terrorism"--does not serve the interests of the gun fetishists. posted by Tom Hilton | 10:25 AM | Tuesday, June 02, 2009 Question: what's wrong with this post title: Obama Silent on First Terror Attack Since 9/11? Here's a hint: posted by Tom Hilton | 7:45 PM | "Limp-Wristed" The current GOP is like the worst game of dodgeball you could possibly imagine because both teams are stocked with nothing but dorks and all they can manage to do is awkwardly attempt to throw the ball at their opponents while yelling zingers like "No, you suck!" I love this game! [cross-posted at Rumproast] posted by Kevin K. | 9:12 AM | Monday, June 01, 2009 LETS NOT LET THE TERRORISTS WIN This is a response to Tom, below. Its not that I disagree with him. Its just that I want, really very strongly, to push back against my own despair. I've waited all day to comment on this because I'm so devastated by this news. But reading this diary over at Kos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonl...y-Abortion- Baby I have begun to hope that this terrible murder--a tragedy for hundreds of people and women and their families around the world, will be the beginning of the end for the anti abortion crusade. It feels like for the first time women and their families are starting to step forward and testify about what abortion has meant for them. Instead of hiding their medical and personal history they are taking responsibility for defending future women's rights and personal choices. I never had to make the choice to have an abortion but I would have, unhesitatingly, if it had been necessary to me and my family. But I have always known that getting one would be very difficult. I went so far as to ask my first obgyn when I was pregnant with my first child. It was a happy pregnancy, very much wanted, but when I chose my doctor I wanted to be sure that she would stand by me through any ups and downs and any difficult choices. Well, I asked her--if I needed one would you perform the abortion? --and she was totally shocked. Nice married women were supposed to remain ignorant of the reality of pregnancy and birth defects until some authority figure brought it up. She told me in no uncertain terms that she would not perform the abortion, even if it were medically necessary, and that none of the local doctors in private practice would do so. It had all been excluded to some clinic, somewhere else. I've been in a rage all day that this good man was taken from us. But late in the afternoon I stopped and asked myself why on earth this very necessary medical practice has been banished from the hospital, from general practice, and from (apparently) the entire Northeast of the country. Why on earth was one man, vulnerable to an ignorant and angry militia tainted christianist community, left to carry the burden that should rightfully be assumed by all ob/gyn doctors on behalf of their patients? Now is the time for women and their families to stand up and demand that women's right to full and complete health care coverage not be limited by the religious ravings of a fringe of militant nuts and their armed terrorist buddies. And I hope this will be the outcome of this brutal murder. posted by aimai | 5:37 PM | |
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