ABC News on yesterday's Bush press conference, contrasting two presidential moods that actually aren't different at all:
...At times, he used humor to character[ize] his tenure in the Oval Office. Dogged by persistently low approval ratings, he jokingly dismissed any suggestion that he felt had gotten some bad breaks.
"You know, it's kind of like, 'Why me? Oh, the burdens,' you know. 'Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?'" he said in a mock whiny voice, winning some chuckles from reporters. "It's just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity?"
At other times, he was vintage aggressive Bush, as when he said he was at peace with the decisions he had made.
"I don't see how I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be proud of what I see if I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country," he said.
Maybe I'm making an obvious point, but it occurs to me that when Bush refers to "self-pity," he's actually talking not just about what you and I would call self-pity, but about feeling anything at all -- or at least anything that might be a reasonable human response to other people's pain. Yes, there's presidential self-pity that's merely self-pity, but feeling burdened by great national responsibilities can also be the result of understanding how much pain can result from a bad decision on your part, or from inaction.
It's easy to avoid that burdened feeling if you have no empathy whatsoever, if you really don't give a crap about anything other than pleasing yourself. A little self-pity on Bush's part, in other words, might have been healthy.
****
By the way, if you haven't seen that "mock whiny voice" clip, go watch. It's quite unpleasant to watch. And yes, the Karla Faye Tucker moment comes to mind.
And the News's "lamest duck ever?" photo gallery is either hilarious or more narcissism than a reasonable person can bear, I can't decide which.
Monday, January 12, 2009
MORE "MOVE TO THE CENTER" IDIOCY FROM COKIE ROBERTS AND OTHERS
I was screaming at the radio this morning as I listened to NPR's Steve Inskeep and Cokie Roberts discussingSunday-morning interviews given by the outgoing and incoming presidents (emphasis added):
... INSKEEP: ... [Obama] spoke yesterday to ABC's This Week about homeland security.
OBAMA (on tape): When I set up the hierarchy of things that I've got to do, my number one priority every single day that I wake up is how do I make sure that the American people are safe.
INSKEEP: OK, so that's Barack Obama speaking, although you could imagine President Bush saying that.
ROBERTS: And has been saying that pretty much every day since September 11th, 2001. I was really struck, listening to these interviews back to back, Bush on Fox and Obama on ABC, of how similar they did sound. And that question of safety, of course, is the number one priority for an American president, but I don't think that President-elect Obama really had as strong a sense of that until he started getting these briefings every day that he's now getting from the intelligence community....
Yeah, right -- Obama never thought keeping Americans safe would be a big deal for him as president until he started getting those president-elect intelligence briefings. Never mind the fact that he said this in a Reader's Digest interview conducted before he even won the Democratic nomination:
The first priority of any President has to be to keep the American people safe.
... the single greatest priority of my presidency will be doing anything and everything that I can to keep the American people safe.
This is change Beltway reporters want to believe in, but it isn't change at all.
Roberts was also struck by Obama's reluctance to focus on prosecuting Bush administration figures for war crimes -- but he said virtually the same thing last April to Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News. On the other hand, he's still rejecting torture (including waterboarding), he's still planning (in typically deliberate Obama fashion) to close Guantanamo, and he's still talking about engagement with Iran.
Roberts (and Bill Kristol and others) are desperately clinging to evidence that Obama has suddenly seen the Bush/Cheney light, and are ignoring evidence of breaks with the past. They desperately want to believe that Obama's become someone new since the campaign. I still don't see the evidence.
"I'll be honest with you. I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day.... everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer--and down soldiers...."
I wish someone has asked him a simple follow-up question:
Joe, can you give us some specific examples of reporting on this war that crosses the line?
Come on, press corps, give us what we want. Just ask JTP to back up one of his opinions with an actual set of facts -- it's comedy gold! Fox's Shepard Smith learned that back in October:
SMITH: ... Why specifically is a vote for Barack Obama a vote for the death of Israel?
JTP: Well, I mean, specifically? I suppose I could tell you. I mean, just, you know, look at his record ... look at his past associations, the people he talks to. Um, quite honestly --
SMITH: Like who?
JTP: Uh -- hunh. Uh, quite honestly, the gentleman that approached me with that question, you know, I agreed to with what I know. Um, I just want to push it back on your listeners to go out there and find out why I would, you know, agree with something like that.
... SMITH: Joe, do you know -- do you know Barack Obama's positions on Israel?
JTP: Um, listen, I'm, I -- I know you want to really get some answers on this one. I'm just not going to help you out here, Shepard....
More like this, please. Come on, reporters -- he's just asking for it.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
THE MORALLY REPULSIVE SON HAS A MORALLY REPULSIVE FATHER
From a report on today's Fox News interview of George Bush the Elder and Younger:
The president's father, former President George H.W. Bush, ... said political invective has "gotten worse" since his days in the White House, adding: "It's offensive, very offensive."
The younger Bush agreed. "The biggest disappointment in the political process, that's been this kind of bitterness by a few people to the point where they don't want to have a logical discussion or a civil discussion about policy," he said. "They just want to tear you down."
Bush fils has, under Rove's tutelage, learned to leave the verbal bomb-throwing to the help, but it's just lovely to be lectured on civility by Bush pere, who high-mindedly said of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, "My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos."
(Although Poppy, too, liked to leave this sort of thing to his underlings, as when Dan Quayle said in 1988, "Want to hear a sad story about the Dukakis campaign? The governor of Massachusetts, he lost his top naval adviser last week. The rubber duck drowned in his bathtub.")
When and if Roland Burris claims the Senate seat from Illinois formerly occupied by Barack Obama, it will represent the greatest climb-down by an incoming president since Sam Nunn turned Bill Clinton around on the issue of gays in the military at the start of Clinton's first term.
And there were how many incoming presidents between Clinton and Obama? One? Isn't this a bit, er, narrow? Isn't it a bit like saying that A Bigger Bang is the finest Rolling Stones studio album since Voodoo Lounge? And with a sample set that small, is a high ranking even meaningful? If you're the second-best British band ever with a left-handed bassist, are you really up there with the Beatles?
... the almost universal response ... has been a collective agreement that no one need be punished so long as we solemnly vow that such atrocities never happen again.
This hope that the election represents some kind of legal self-cleansing, a constitutional "rebooting" of the rule of law, is of course not the language of the law. It is the language of recovery, of religion, of political pragmatism.
Those who say that there should be no investigation or prosecution of senior officials who authorized torture and warrant-less surveillance rarely even bother offering legal justifications. They argue that the Obama administration has more urgent problems to contend with. They insist that any such process would devolve into partisan backbiting from which this country could never recover....
Others -- including unnamed officials on the Obama transition team -- have already claimed that there is simply no political will for criminal prosecutions, or even a truth commission.
Of course all this is not the language of the law either. It is the language of self-fulfilling prophecy. With each successive recitation that there is no political will, the political will dissipates. With each repetition of the mantra that Americans just want to turn the page on the past eight years, Americans feel ever better about turning the page....
I'll speak for myself: I've argued that it might be appropriate for the Obama administration to turn the page, but I don't feel good about turning the page.
I say it might be appropriate because I'm aware of the ability of Republican politicians and right-wing commentators to launch a holy crusade, even if it means making the gears of government grind to a halt. I saw their government shutdown in the mid-1990s. I saw a president hounded to impeachment for sex. I've seen health-care reform blocked, and reasonable weapon-control legislation blocked in the wake of Oklahoma City and any number of mass shootings. More recently, I saw virtually the entire agenda of the newly elected Democratic Congress blocked after the 2006 election. In every case, the press was tolerant or actively complicit, and the public either grumbled or shrugged, while accepting the result.
If no Bushie is prosecuted for war crimes, I don't think it will be because Democrats are happy to be rid of the issue. I think it will be because Democrats don't want to endure yet another mass-temper-tantrum sabotage campaign. I certainly don't -- and there's every reason to believe that that's exactly what we'd get.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HERE IT IS: THE CONSERVATIVE MIND
The American Spectator's Robert Stacy McCain has a long post today at his blog that attempts to explain why the proudly ignorant, narcissistic failed president George W. Bush is very, very different from the proudly ignorant, narcissistic right-wing heroine Sarah Palin.
I don't want to get into the details of McCain's argument (the short version is: Palin is a Genuine Conservative and George W. Bush never was). I just want to point out one phrase McCain uses while discussing No Child Left Behind as a betrayal of the True Conservative Faith: McCain refers to the
unconservative belief that informed NCLB -- that human beings are so many lumps of clay who can be magically transformed by the proper government interventions
Yes -- can you imagine? It was informed by the belief that children are actually moldable beings who can be changed through the efforts of government institutions known as "schools"! No, really, I'm serious! People who haven't seen the conservative Light actually believe this!
There it is, folks: the conservative mind. The flaws and merits of No Child Left Behind as it was actually designed and implemented are irrelevant; a true conservative should have rejected it because everything that derives from government that doesn't involve guns or tax cuts is trayf, fruit from a poison tree, schools most definitely included.
****
UPDATE: In a follow-up post, McCain explains at tedious length that his point was that children are moldable, just not infinitely moldable. That may have been what he meant; it isn't what he said. I was responding to his plain words, quoted above.
HEY, DAVID, SARAH PALIN DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SAVE HER FROM HERSELF
... Now Palin is hiring her own handlers, making her own decisions, speaking freely. And if anything, the results are even worse than they were in 2008.
Watch the Ziegler interview yourself, and you will see what I mean. Ziegler represented a new and subtle kind of danger for Palin, the overly friendly interview. Ziegler's questions were all traps, no less dangerous for being set unwittingly. Palin stumbled into every one.
Again and again, Ziegler invited Palin to engage in self-pity and self-excuse - and again and again she accepted.
She tells us she was a victim of sexism. She tells us she was a victim of class prejudice. She complains about her media treatment - then insists she never watched any of it. She deplores the unpleasant personal comments directed against herself, while offering up some equally unpleasant personal comments of her own. She repeatedly shades the truth in order to escape blame for her own mistakes....
A smart politician rebuffs all invitations to speak about his or her own hurt feelings.... such talk betrays a self-involvement that alienates voters almost more than any other personal quality....
Frum says Palin needs to learn to let go of her grievances if she’s going to be a viable presidential candidate in the future. But Frum misunderstands his own people. Righties love her because she embodies grievance, because she gives voice to their Inner Victim. If she ever started to sound unselfish and mature, her fans would lose interest.
I think Palin grasps, at least on some level, that five of the last six presidents we elected -- every one except for Poppy Bush, going back through Carter -- won while facing questions about qualifications, and grasps that all of them managed to make it seem that not fitting the "traditional" presidential mold was actually a good thing, because all of them persuaded voters that they had an approach to politics that was better than a traditional pol's.
So Palin may be breaking the rules because she thinks that breaking the rules works.
Frum is probably right to argue that the electorate at large doesn't appreciate a whiner, while Barbara is correct when she says that Republicans love whining. I think either (a) Palin has such right-wing tunnel vision that she doesn't understand the broad national electorate's aversion to self-pity, and will thus probably suffer a Goldwater/McGovern-level defeat if she's the 2012 nominee, or (b) Palin isn't necessarily aiming at the White House after all.
As I've said before, she may just want to be some sort of Queen of the Wingnuts -- maybe in the House or Senate (as, say, a non-racist Jesse Helms with lipstick), maybe as a (ghostwriter-aided) pundit/provocateur, maybe even on TV or radio (she ain't Cicero in that Ziegler interview, but her sentences in response to a simpatico interviewer are a hell of a lot easier to follow than her responses to Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson).
For what it's worth, I'd say that the persona she's crafted for herself is a feminized combination of Antonin Scalia's arrogant screw-you personality and Clarence Thomas's persecution complex. For right-wingers, at least, I'd say that's a potent, intoxicating brew, and Palin knows it.
Friday, January 09, 2009
YOU SAY "HOLIER THAN THOU" LIKE IT'S A BAD THING
The pro-God outcome of the case is a foregone conclusion, so was it really necessary for every state attorney general in America to be a part of this?
All of the nation's state attorneys general have signed onto a brief to include references to God in President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration this month.
Authored by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the amicus brief was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of atheist Michael Newdow v. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Newdow, a Sacramento physician, seeks to eliminate prayer from the inaugural ceremony and prevent Obama from being able to say "so help me God" in the presidential oath of office....
"Since President George Washington uttered the words 'so help me God' at his first inauguration in 1789, American presidents have a longstanding, historic tradition of invoking the Almighty at their inaugural ceremonies," Abbott said....
(Actually, no eyewitness ever claimed that Washington said "so help me God," although his inauguration speech was steeped in religion.)
Perhaps every state AG in America was sincerely and spontaneously moved to join this effort -- but somehow I doubt it. I assume at least some of them felt pressured to add their names -- who needs this as an issue a future political opponent can bring up?
Oh, and speaking of elections, Senator John Cornyn of Texas said last month that he'd like Abbott to pursue the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. What an interesting coincidence.
Barack Obama won the White House on a message of hope, but when it comes to dealing with the first test of his presidency, he has mixed in a little fear.
... In his economic address Thursday, Obama warned that "we start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime -- a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks."
... Obama’s tactics ring familiar to those President Bush and his administration used when they claimed that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq could come in the form of "a mushroom cloud."
While the economic stakes are not as high as with Bush's unpopular war, there were reports Vice President-elect Biden made a similar argument this week, comparing the current economic crisis to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill: "We're at war."
Much like some Democrats in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Republicans made pleas for patience and due diligence, urging caution and hearings as Congress considers such a sizable stimulus package.
... "There's no question that fear is a tool to be used to drive an agenda through the House or the Senate," [House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor told The Hill....
Yeah, that's a great analogy.
I bet we aren't really even in a recession, and those 2.6 million people who lost their jobs in 2008 are all completely fictitious. I bet SEC inspectors found and destroyed all the bad mortgages back in 1995. I bet Bernie Madoff didn't really have an active Ponzi scheme recently -- I bet he just had a Ponzi scheme buried in his back garden that he wanted to activate. Obama and Barney Frank lied! Limited government died! Yeah, that's the ticket.
PEGGY NOONAN, DOING THE POT/KETTLE THING
Oh, this is too easy. Here's Peggy Noonan writing about that meeting of the presidents this week:
... MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell spoke to a journalist about how presidents get advice and information. Mitchell noted that people often mean to speak hard truths but then "they walk into the Oval Office and get tongue tied." She was referring to the awe with which we view the presidency, the White House, and the famous office with no corners in which presidents so often feel cornered.
Here is an idea for everyone in Washington: Get over it. It's distorting the system. This week we saw the past four presidents standing in the Oval Office for a photo-op on the afternoon of their private lunch. As you looked at the pictures afterward you had to think: How flawed were they? How many were a success?
... We treat them as if they are the Grand Imperial Czar of the Peacock Throne, and we their 'umble servants. It's no good, and vaguely un-American. Right now patriotism requires more than the usual candor. It requires speaking truthfully and constructively to a president who is a man, and just a man. We hire them, we fire them, they come back for photo-ops. They're not magic.
Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King ... is a treacly valentine to Noonan's old boss...
... Ronnie is the goodest of them all--actually a divinely anointed creature. Driving to California, Reagan remembered that "the sun shone on his head the whole way." Later, it breaks through the clouds to shine on his head when he is sworn in as governor. "It was like a halo coming down. It was eerie," a friend remembers.
"I know it doesn't sound true, but it is," Noonan tells us helplessly. A few chapters later, Nancy Reagan relates how her husband was cured overnight of an ulcer, thanks to a prayer group led by "a man from southern California who had a problem he wanted to discuss" (that is, a lobbyist). Meanwhile, Reagan's director of correspondence in the White House is sure that "God put him there for that specific time in history to do what he had to do."
It is even implied that Reagan may be divine. Noonan writes, without a trace of embarrassment, that "I am still searching for an anecdote about Reagan that truly reflects badly on him." She tells us that "Ronald Reagan loved the truth. We all do or say we do but for Reagan it was like fresh water."
... Reagan's personal assistant feels that he was "moved" out of the way of the assassin's bullets....
Yeah, it's terrible to look at presidents this way. Good thing Peggy is more sensible than ... uh, Peggy.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
LIKE FROST/NIXON, BUT WITH A SOCK PUPPET IN PLACE OF FROST
I think Sarah Palin has finally found her voice -- her bitter, resentful, put-upon voice.
We heard that voice in her Republican convention speech, and in some of her campaign appearances, but she struggled in interviews, and never really came close to finding that truly aggrieved, persecuted note.
But now -- freed from the rigors of actually having to try to communicate with non-Dittoheads -- Palin has given a lengthy interview to John Ziegler, the right-wing propagandist pollster and filmmaker responsible for the forthcoming Media Malpractice ... How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared.
The key excerpt, to me, is about 6:21 in. The feisty, I-get-knocked-down-but-I-get-up-again pit-bull hockey mom is gone -- replaced by the spirit of Nixon in a skirt. Substitute a proper noun here and there, lower the pitch about an octave, add a five o'clock shadow, and you could be listening not to Palin whining about the press, but to Tricky Dick seething about the Kennedys:
ZIEGLER: If, by chance, you'd been chosen as the vice presidential candidate for Barack Obama --
PALIN: Uh-huh.
ZIEGLER: Let's pretend he wanted to be really post-partisan. And there's this governor in Alaska who's a reformer, she's an expert on energy issues, all this would be great for the country -- how do you think your candidacy would have been treated?
PALIN: I think they would have loved me as a candidate, and I've already lived through that more on a local level. There have been times where, here in Alaska, I've taken on my own Republican Party, where there has been corruption, and I've been one to say, "No, enough is enough, we're going to clean up this party, and the leaders got to go, and we've got to start anew" -- well the [makes air quotes] "mainstream media" here in Alaska, they've loved me through those episodes. And then, though, the minute that it is that I have done something that is, you know, conservative roots, and we're not going to grow government here in Alaska, and we're going to develop our resources, and -- that's when the [makes air quotes again] "mainstream media" here in Alaska, they turn on you. So there's so much hypocrisy in it all. It's pretty baffling. But, yeah -- had I been chosen, perhaps, to run as a reformer on the Democrat ticket, you would have seen an absolutely different and, I think, if you will, a much prettier profile of Sarah Palin and the Palin family and my administration.
Palin still resents the people responsible for the baby-rumor story (and people she seems to think are responsible, like much of the mainstream press, even though I don't recall any mainstream figure apart from Andrew Sullivan treating the story as in any way credible); she still resents Katie Couric ("Katie, you're not the center of everybody's universe"); and she still thinks she has somehow been prevented from telling her side of the story to those of us in "the Lower 48" (where, I guess, we're prevented by law from watching her many Fox News interviews or reading Bill Kristol's column). Oh, and she anticipates that Caroline Kennedy "will be handled with kid gloves" in her Senate bid, because there's a classist double-standard applied to the two of them. (Kid gloves? Er, no, as we in New York have recently seen.)
Look, I don't expect her to have warm feelings toward everyone who said unpleasant things about her. I don't imagine Barack Obama has warm feelings toward, say, Larry Johnson. It's Palin's decision to dwell on this stuff, to refuse to let it go, to choose her Lower 48 interviewers on the basis of who's going to give her the best chance to hold forth in this way, that's sick and unhealthy. Acknowledge bad press? Sure. But then try to get past it, for heaven's sake.
But she won't. Barack Obama became president in large part by not responding angrily to racism in general or attacks on himself in particular. But success in the GOP is likely to come exactly the opposite way -- by stewing in bitterness -- and Palin knows it.
****
I'm noticing -- in the Palin interview and in Ziegler's comments on it -- an attempt to make the media a new front in the GOP's class war. We know Republicans think they stand for ordinary Joes while Democrats represent slickster elites; well, the Palin interview itself is, according to Ziegler, a blow against the Democratic elite empire, because Palin, though entitled to act like a swell, refuses to do so, which makes her a class traitor of sorts:
What’s particularly valuable about my perspective is that I am not Charlie Gibson, Matt Lauer or Greta Van Susteren (who I understand now gets her mail delivered to the Palin home) -- the conductors of the three most prominent interviews done in this Wasilla home on a frozen lake at the end of a drive with the sign "Palins" posted on a tree. I am virtually unknown nationally and there was absolutely no reason for anything to be done differently as "show" for us. We saw the genuine Sarah Palin and it is patently obvious this is the only one who exists.
She is the real deal.
As a former TV sportscaster and radio talk show host I’ve interviewed a lot big-time "celebrities," and can honestly say that even though you could argue Sarah Palin was the most prominent, she is also by far the nicest, most sincere and seemingly honest subject I’ve ever questioned.
... Our interview started early and ended late (ask Barbara Walters how often that happens at this level)....
By giving this interview (to a right-wing Michael Moore wannabe), Palin is at the forefront of the GOP's desperate effort to develop "new media" outlets. The interview write-up appears at Big Hollywood, the new site developed by Matt Drudge's pal Andrew Breitbart to buck up the spirits of allegedly besieged Hollywood righties. All this is meant to be class-based, I think, old media being "elite" by comparison (except when it's lefties using the new media, I suppose).
This is what the GOP thinks is the path to the future; in reality, it's just the same old preaching to the choir right-wingers have always done, in a few newer formats. But it provides a sense of group solidarity, and Palin is right there to help.
****
APOLOGIES: You probably could have skipped this entire rant and just gone straight to Gawker's take, which is much shorter and a lot funnier. (Headline: "Sarah Palin: Media, its Subjects, and Viewers are All Jerks.")
NEVER SURRENDER
I married into a family of single-payer fans. When I was with my in-laws over the holidays, the talk, when it turned political, often turned to HR 676 ("Medicare for All").
I'm in favor of single-payer, too -- but I don't talk it up very much because I simply can't imagine it coming to America -- certainly not all at once. Maybe gradually, over years or decades -- but that's a big maybe.
I think we forget that when we talk about single-payer, we're talking about the elimination of an entire very large industry segment. For the business community and corpocrats in government, this is an existential threat -- it's like an invasion of the homeland. They'll fight this with ever fiber of their being, and they have the resources to win.
An article in today's New York Times about Tom Daschle's upcoming confirmation hearings confirms my pessimism. Note the reaction to what would merely be a partial incursion onto the private sector's turf:
.... Lawmakers will most likely question him sharply about one of the most contentious aspects of President-elect Barack Obama’s domestic agenda: his call for a new public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
... the proposal is anathema to many insurers, employers and Republicans. They say the government plan would have unfair advantages, like the ability to impose lower fees, and could eventually attract so many customers that private insurers would be driven from the market.
"The public plan option is a terrible idea -- one of our top concerns in the health reform debate," said James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
... "Forcing private plans to compete with a public program like Medicare, with its price controls and ability to shift costs to private payers, will inevitably doom true competition and could ultimately lead to a single-payer, government-run health care program," said Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, before which Mr. Daschle will testify on Thursday.
Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a moderate Republican, shares some of that concern. "Creation of a government plan is no panacea,” she said, and “could disproportionately shift costs from private plans to the public." ...
We're regularly told that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. I think health care is just as much of a third rail. Or not a third rail exactly -- rather, it's an electrified fence topped with razor wire and surrounded by towers where guards have shoot-to-kill orders and packs of vicious dogs at their disposal. Do not -- do not -- believe for a moment that you will be allowed the escape the perimeter.
I know the counterargument: Would-be reformers aren't bold enough, and if someone (Clinton in the '90s, Obama now) had the guts to put the single-payer option on the table, doing so would redefine "the center" and change the terms of the debate, and single-payer might pass.
I don't see it. Clinton didn't propose "socialized medicine," but what he proposed was defeated with arguments that it was socialized medicine. (And here come precisely the same arguments again: I noticed ex-Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in yesterday's Washington Postwarning ominously of "government control of 16 percent of the economy.")
I wish the public were in the streets demanding a real overhaul of health care. As it is, the gradualist reform Obama seeks is the change I'm most pessimistic about ever seeing.
NBC Commiserates with 'Hard Realities' Obama 'Up Against'
Prompted by the CBO's forecast of a $1.2 trillion annual federal budget deficit, the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday commiserated with the challenge ahead for the incoming President. "On our broadcast tonight, facing facts," Brian Williams teased, "President-elect Obama confronts the hard realities he's up against, deficits as far as the eye can see." A dire Williams proceeded to lead with how Obama will take over "during one of the most challenging times in the modern history of the United States."
... Do you think Ronald Reagan got such empathetic treatment in January of 1981 when he was about to assume office at a time of soaring interest rates, raging inflation (12%), high unemployment (7.5%) and a declining GDP? ...
OK, let's go to into the deepest recesses of the festering liberal media pit -- the New York Times archives. I can't give you full articles (well, I could, but I'm too cheap to pay for them) so we'll just look at some opening passages.
WASHINGTON THE most immediate challenge facing the new administration is how to arrest and reverse a deeply entrenched peacetime inflation that has exceeded 10 percent annually for two years in a row. Not since World War I, more than 60 years ago, has the Government's Consumer Price Index increased ...
The first year of the Reagan era dawns bleakly, as the economic problems that helped Mr. Reagan gain the Presidency become his to solve. The list is a formidable one, including double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, lagging savings and investment, sluggish productivity growth, chronic unemployment and a loss by ...
An understandable nervousness has appeared in the economic planning of the Reagan administration. The economy that it promised to set aright looks even weaker than it did on Election Day, with budget deficits and interest rates running higher and Wall Street running scared. The Reagan strategists well remember last ...
As President-elect Ronald Reagan nears office, there is a rising sense among his advisers that the nation's economy is deteriorating at a rate that will not permit the patient, long-term doctoring he advocated during the campaign. "The whole plan for cutting the budget is becoming more difficult by the ...
Was there a reluctance to acknowledge hard times? Well, yes -- but not on the part of the Times.January 2, 1981:
The new Reagan Administration won't issue a stirring declaration of economic emergency, and in a way it's a shame. We like the idea, put forth by Congressmen Jack Kemp and David Stockman, the budget director-designate. Loud, certain trumpets would be a sure way to attract the nation's attention and ...
So it was the incoming Reagan administration that didn't want to issue a declaration of an emergency -- a declaration the Times would have applauded.
Try again, Buster Boys.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
WHAT -- DID THEY THINK JEFF GANNON WAS OVERQUALIFIED?
...No, wait -- I have to respond to this from Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics:
Sometimes an idea can be a "near miss," which is to say that it was close to being a cool idea but crossed the line into a farce.
Example: if you told me that someone hired Joe the Plumber to travel around the country and do a series of 2-minute vignettes with working class families discussing taxes, the economy, life in small towns, etc, I'd say that's sounds like a pretty cool idea and a decent way of generating some PR for your organization.
If, on the other hand, you told me someone was sending Joe the Plumber into a war zone in the Middle East to report on a conflict that he appears to have no particular qualifications or expertise to cover, with the intent of letting Israel's "'Average Joes' share their story," I'd say that sounds like one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.
No, Tom, it's not a "near miss." The former idea is as staggeringly dumb as the latter.
Joe the Plumber isn't capable of doing " a series of 2-minute vignettes with working class families discussing taxes, the economy, life in small towns, etc." because doing that would require listening. Joe the Plumber doesn't listen -- not in any real sense of the word. Joe the Plumber is the blowhard at the end of the bar who has a stack of boilerplate ideas, all of them cribbed from right-wing talk radio and other like-minded sources: Liberals want America's enemies to win. Liberals hate guns and Jesus and working people. Liberals are commies. If he gets into a conversation with you, it's because he's waiting for you to say something he can use as a segue to one of his pre-packaged rants about how messed up this country is because of the damn liberals.
Joe the Plumber wouldn't discuss anything with anyone if he became Charles Kuralt 2.0. Joe the Plumber would just be looking for vignettes he could plug into Limbaughnista morality plays.
Which,of course, is exactly what he'll be doing in Israel, assuming he ever actually manages to pull together a report at all.
Pajamas Media Special Correspondent Joe Wurzelbacher: So, is that a gun? IDF Soldier: Yes, it is. JW: Can I use it? IDF: No. JW: Please? I’ll only aim at Palestinians. IDF: Uh...no. You should go now....
Read the whole thing.
THIS REMINDS ME OF A SONG
Rod Blagojevich played Harry Reid for a chump in the Burris matter, which apparently wasn't particularly difficult; it's been painful to watch, and there probably won't be a better account of what went wrong than Jane Hamsher's post "I Want to Play Poker with Harry Reid."
Now, I suspect Jane wouldn't want to play poker with Barack Obama -- he's reported to be quite skilled. And, according to friends who used to play with him regularly back in Springfield, what's his style?
Obama studied the odds carefully, friends say. If he had strong cards, he'd play. If he didn't, he would fold rather than bet good money on the chance the right card would show up when he needed it.
Thanks to Harry Reid, the right card in this card is never, ever going to show up. Barack Obama has figured this out.
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run.
When to fold 'em? Now.
THE RIGHT'S DESPERATE NEED TO DESCRIBE NEUTRAL LANGUAGE AS "POLITICALLY CORRECT"
There was a mini-hissyfit on the right this week about alleged politically correct language use -- or, rather, the sudden, allegedly hypocritical lack thereof -- by MSNBC's David Shuster. Here was the harrumph from Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters:
Suddenly Puritanical Shuster: Bristol & Levi 'Unwed Parents'
He stopped short of demanding they be branded with a scarlet 'U.' But the suddenly puritanical David Shuster insists that the proper term for Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is "unwed parents."
... Now, it is of course true that Bristol and Levi are parents and unwed. But when's the last time you heard an MSM type refer to an "unwed mother" or "unwed parents"? As we all know, the approved PC terms are "single mother" and simply "parents" or "partners."
So what's caused Shuster suddenly to become strait-laced? You don't suppose it could possibly stem from a desire to embarrass Bristol's mother, do you?
When was the last time the MSM referred to "unwed parents" or an "unwed mother"? Oh, I don't know -- maybe it was this?
Right-wing fist-shakers are so desperate for material that when "PC" doesn't exist, they make it up. Late last year they were whining about media references to the Mumbai terrorists as "militants" and "gunmen" (because those terms don't sound eeeevil enough), and now Shuster is being castigated for selectively crossing a PC line in the sand that, prior to this, didn't even exist.
****
This segues rather nicely into what I understand is the really, really outrageous bit in the new Ann Coulter book -- a denunciation of single mothers, and the alleged media glorification of them. I'm not going to be a conduit for Coulter's rant -- Mr. Finkelstein of NewsBusters provides the details if you want them -- but I will note one Coulter statement made on the Today show this morning:
The National Organization for Women has a bumper sticker: 'A Nuclear Family Can Destroy Your Whole Life.'
It does? I don't find anything whatsoever at the NOW online store when I search for "nuclear," nor do I find any bumper sticker with that message. Searches at the online store for "family" and "families" don't turn this item up. The only Google results turned up by the phrase "A Nuclear Family Can Destroy Your Whole Life" reference Finkelstein's NewsBusters article about the Coulter appearance.
I tried taking out the word "Whole" in a Google search: nothing. I tried "Nuclear Families Can Destroy" and "Nuclear Families Destroy": nothing and nothing. I tried "nuclear families" and "nuclear family" at CafePress: no such item and no such item.
Does this item exist? Is it some 1970s relic, perhaps? Or is Coulter just making stuff up again?
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
BUSH CHUTZPAH WATCH
In his 86,000th "exit interview," this one with John Gizzi of Human Events, Bush says we shouldn't blame him for huge deficits during the pre-economic collapse part of his term because -- get this -- he was spending too much money keeping the troops safe and healthy.
Gizzi: Every time I go to a Republican meeting, just like the RNC meetings, so many people in recent years said they agree with you on tax cuts, but we've lost the spending and smaller government issue. Do you wish you had vetoed more and earlier?
Bush: Actually, I would take exception with their analysis of the spending issue -- for these reasons, John.
First, when we got kids in harm's way wearing the uniform of the United States military, I will spend what it takes to make sure they're well equipped, their families are well supported, and that this volunteer army thrives. And our record has been very strong about supporting families and vets. See, I think we have a special obligation to provide for our military, and we did. And it cost money, because we're fighting a war against terror on two fronts at the same time.
Secondly, a lot of our kids came home wounded. And I, no question about it, made sure that the health care was as good as possible and that the remedy for their wounds was as good as possible.
There are no words.
TOMORROW'S RIGHT-WING PARANOIA TODAY!
Want to amaze your friends by predicting a mass wingnut hissyfit before it happens?
Well, here's one you can say you saw coming a mile away: it's the forthcoming agitation regarding the 2010 census. The American Thinker offers a preview of the (for want of a better word) arguments:
... Those who want clean elections already are very concerned about the widespread vote fraud planned and perpetrated by Obama's friends in the ACORN organization. However, now that the recent election is over, we may let the subject fade from mind.
This would be very unwise. We have a census coming up in 2010, and with every recent census there has been a dispute with liberals who claim that inner-city residents are being under-counted....
If it appears that the number of registered voters is relatively high compared to the actual number of residents that are counted in a census tract, the activists are likely to say: "That proves we are undercounting minorities. We have analyzed the voter registration lists, and you're not finding all of these people."
Given that the Obama Administration will be in power 2010, how likely is it that they will resist these calls for extrapolating from voter records to count people that don't exist? If the voter rolls were accurate and did not include dead people, those registered in multiple states, or those registered under multiple identities and completely made-up names, all of which ACORN has specialized in, it would not be a problem. However, if ACORN pushes for an extrapolation from the voter registration lists, we could see potential losses of congressmen and legislators from more conservative areas to big cities....
...we're not going to waste time on ACORN. The fit into the 2010 Census is obvious.
... here is the Census Bureau's page for getting a job: "The pay is good, the hours are flexible, and the work is close to home." "Thousands" are needed. (Seems a perfect fit for ACORN and its malignant horde, eh?) ...
The key here is the recurring motif. Fraud is everywhere, the wingers say -- and it's all the fault of one all-powerful, hydra-headed monster: ACORN. The wingnuts shriek "ACORN" the way half-mad street-corner radicals used to rail against "Rockefeller," or the way anti-Semites invoke "Goldberg" or "Hymie" -- but that's understandable, because it keeps the subject simple and the Antichrist obvious, which is the way angry right-wingers like their politics.
It's possible that this will stay at the Web/talk radio level, like Obama birth-certificate craziness. On the other hand, the GOP could decide to go mainstream with some form of census paranoia; recall the long campaign in the Clinton years to prevent the evil Democrats from using statistical sampling in the 2000 census (ultimately, the Republicans won that battle). Whatever happens, you will hear "census" and "ACORN" mentioned in the same breath at some point in the future. Remember, you heard it here first.
Wives do not have a "right" to divorce abusive husbands, according to Rick Warren.
...Warren explains:
Having been involved as a pastor in situations of abuse, there's something in me that wishes there were a Bible verse that says if they abuse you in such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them.
"God," Warren says, "hates divorce." This teaching is posted in the "Bible Questions and Answers" section of the Saddleback Family website (#32, "What should I do when abuse is happening in my marriage?").
...Warren recommends that couples temporarily separate while they participate in counseling to repair the marriage. According to Warren, it is better to maintain an abusive relationship than seek the immediate relief of divorce....
Warren omits mention of contacting the police, seeking medical attention, or obtaining legal assistance to secure orders of protection for yourself and your children....
A couple of thoughts: First, while I really, really don't want to downplay what the choice of Warren for Obama's inaugural means in terms of gay rights, I'm sorry this got framed as "Obama and Warren vs. Teh Gay" -- there are a lot of very good reasons to be offended by this pick. This is one more.
Also, I'm struck by the resemblance between Warren's solution to domestic violence problems and the Catholic Church's solution to the problem of sexual abuse of minors by priests. In both cases, what may well be an irresistible compulsion -- to batter, to molest -- is treated as something you can simply pray away. I know it comforts Christians to believe that willpower plus prayer can make any and all bad behavior simply go away, but, er, that didn't work out so well for Catholics, did it?
BUSH: EVEN MORE PRAISEWORTHY THAN YOU IMAGINED!
The Bush Legacy Projects rolls on. Today's Washington Times offers a curious new talking point:
Price dip adjusts Bush's gas legacy More cash left in consumers' pockets seen as fiscal boost
A once-popular bumper sticker says simply, "When Bush took office, gas was $1.46." It was meant to be a slam, but as the end of his eight years approaches, President Bush is seeing gas prices that, adjusted for inflation, are lower than when he was inaugurated.
Last week's $1.59 -- the average for a gallon of regular on Dec. 29, according to the Energy Information Administration -- works out to $1.33 in 2001 dollars, or 9 percent less than it was the day Mr. Bush took office. The tumble in prices, from a high of more than $4.05 in early July, has meant incredible savings.
Yup -- we had months of gas-price hyperinflation, and now we have gas-price deflation. And that crazy instability is a good thing. Well, done, W!
More:
... Republicans said Democrats should issue a mea culpa.
"I wonder if the same people who blamed the president for the increase in prices will now credit him with the reduction in prices. It's only fair," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican....
Sure, I'll credit him. I'll credit him for not lifting a finger to prevent the destruction of the global economy, thus reducing demand for fossil fuels planetwide so much that prices are now cratering. I'll happily credit him with that.
Monday, January 05, 2009
COULTER: THE PHONY BAN AND THE OH-SO-CONVENIENT CANCELLATION
The Drudge Report is blaring that conservative author, columnist, and poison-pen pundit Ann Coulter has been "banned for life" from appearing on NBC News shows, according to an anonymous "top" insider. "We are just not going to have her on any more." ...
So, is she banned for life?
That's easy: Of course she isn't.
Give me a freaking break. She was booked on the Today show to flog her new book. If NBC had a "lifetime ban" in place, do you think the show's bookers would have just forgotten? Has Tim Graham ever even worked at a large profit-making corporation? Do you think underlings just ignore edicts from the top like that, or just fail to take note of them? Please.
Ah, but she was booked on NBC and now -- seemingly in response to criticism of NBC by Media Matters -- she's not going to appear, per Politico. So, Steve, what about that? Hunh? Hunh?
Ann Coulter was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show Tuesday morning to promote her new book, "Guilty." But it's now been canceled, according to her website.
Coulter wrote: "TODAY SHOW AND TODAY SHOW FOURTH HOUR: CANCELLED!"
"I guess this ends the 'they just want to get ratings' argument about liberal media bias," Coulter wrote underneath....
UPDATE: An NBC spokesperson tells Politico that Coulter was bumped for news coverage out of Washington and the Middle East, and would be welcomed back in the future. Perez Hilton will still be on the show.
I don't know, but all I can say is: how convenient.
Coulter's last book was a flop. She missed the Christmas selling season with this one. She needed to have something attention-grabbing happen in connection with this book ... and, well, what do you know -- the Big Bad Liberal Media silences her (or at least forces her to go on CBS instead). What a great way to rally the rubes: get denied airtime by the hated MSM!
Do I know for sure that this is a deliberate publicity stunt and NBC's in on it? No, I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is that it sure is working out awfully well for Coulter.
SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE REAGAN-LOVING FRIEND
Republicans can't win elections, can't keep the economy from running off a cliff, and can't deal with any international situation without making it immeasurably worse ... but they should make a comeback because they know what really matters: whose gun cabinet is bigger.
Six candidates who want to be chairman of the Republican National Committee engaged in gun-upsmanship with one another this afternoon at a debate in Washington, when moderator Grover Norquist queried the group: "How many guns do you own?"
Incumbent RNC Chairman Mike Duncan of Kentucky 'fessed up to owning four handguns and two rifles.... South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson said his stash of guns were "too many to count."
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell boasted: "Seven, and I'm good."
Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis said he owns two guns, "but they wouldn't let me carry them in Washington, D.C."
Former Tennessee GOP Chairman Chip Saltsman ended the round with a good-natured salvo at Blackwell.
"In my closet at home, I've got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns and a .30-06. And I'll take you on anytime, Ken."
The party will choose its new chairman later this month in a Washington convention.
And I'm sure the selection process will stay at this high level.
Oh, I left out one candidate's response:
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele said he didn't own any.
Bzzzt! Sorry, Michael -- we suddenly realize we don't care about your ideas for expanding minority outreach or investing in new technologies, because your answer leaves us kind of ... um ... limp.
The lightning round begins: Who is everyone’s favorite Republican president? Reagan. Reagan. Reagan. Reagan. Reagan. And finally, from Ken Blackwell: "Ronald Reagan, who brought me into the Republican party."
"Good," says Norquist. "Everyone got that one right."
Phew! We feel male again.
LOOK! IT'S THE REVERSE-DOMINO-EFFECT PONY!
Remember the reverse domino effect? We were going to generate it in Iraq: Our overthrow of Saddam would impress everyone in the Middle East so much that they'd instantly stop being all cranky and stuff and decide at once to be our bestest friends, as well as Israel's; the cascade of free elections in which pro-Western, pro-Israeli governments would be elected was going to be make everyone's head spin.
But a defeat of Hamas in Gaza -- following on the heels of our success in Iraq -- would be a real setback for Iran.... It might positively affect the Iranian elections in June.
Public Outrage Gives Iran's Hard-Liners a Political Boost
... Mr. Ahmadinejad's history of criticizing Israel, and his recent condemnation of the Gaza assault, has helped to garner a measure of popular respect across the region. That comes as more moderate Arab states, especially Egypt, draw rebuke for failing to act forcefully enough to stop the violence.
Condemnation of the Israeli offensive has become a rallying cry for thousands of Iranians. If the ground invasion drags on, anti-Israel outpourings in Tehran could become a convenient distraction for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who faces criticism over his economic policies ahead of presidential elections this year....
A point echoed by The National, an Emirates-based paper:
Domestically, hardliners hope the crisis will help them to galvanise support before June's presidential elections. For Mr Ahmadinejad, the Gaza debacle is of particularly fortuitous timing, analysts say.
"He has just submitted a controversial bill to the Majlis [parliament] to cut state subsidies. This will make him even more unpopular. The Gaza affair is a gift to him, which he will use to distract the Iranian people from the economic pain that is about to hit them," wrote Meir Javedanfar, a Jerusalem-based Iran analyst, on one of his blogs.
...At the same time, analysts caution against seeing Iran's stance on the Gaza crisis as one merely of political opportunism. "One should not underestimate the feelings of anger and resentment the tragedy in Gaza is generating among the Iranian leadership and a significant sector of the Iranian people," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran analyst at the University of Hawaii.
"It is these feelings, shared by many throughout the region, that Iranian leaders of all ilks -- Hashemi Rafsanjani and [Mohammad] Khatami included -- are expressing and some are trying to capitalise on," Ms Farhi said in an interview. Mr Rafsanjani and Mr Khatami are moderate former presidents.
Despite joining in condemnation against Israel’s actions, some Iranian moderate and reformist figures have come under attack from hardline opponents attempting to make political capital out of the Gaza conflict.
Kargozaran, a daily newspaper close to Mr Rafsanjani, was closed by Mr Ahmadinejad’s government last week for publishing an article the authorities claimed had "sanitised the Zionist regime’s crimes in Gaza". The article, by a leading student organisation, was critical of Hamas, but also condemned Israel’s blitz of Gaza.
There was also a brief but noisy protest outside the home of Shirin Ebadi, Iran's Nobel peace laureate, whose offices have been raided twice recently by the authorities who are upset by her fearless human rights work.
The protesters chanted "America and Israel commit crimes, Ebadi supports them", said Ms Ebadi, a lawyer and human rights activist. She described the incident as an "attack", but said: "It has nothing to do with what is happening in Gaza because we published two days ago a statement condemning what is going on and supporting the Palestinians."
In other words, this is a golden opportunity for the hard-liners to undermine political opponents in a way that rallies crowds -- using the Gaza situation as a catch-all excuse.
We don't shut down opposition newspapers in this country, but you'd think right-wingers such as Kristol would recognize when they see it a nastier version of the Rove strategy of linking bellicose foreign Antichrists with one's domestic political opponents. Oh well, guess not.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
DID PALIN HELP POSTPONE THE BUST OF HER DAUGHTER'S BOYFRIEND'S MOM?
A Mat-Su drug investigator and the union representing Alaska State Troopers are alleging political meddling in the Sherry Johnston drug case, including a delay in serving the search warrant because of the November election.
Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, who became nationally known in September when Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, announced their daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and he was the father.
... Kyle Young, a troopers drug investigator who was involved in the case, wrote in an e-mail last week to all members of the Public Safety Employees Association, the union that represents troopers and other law enforcement officers around the state ... that after it became clear who Johnston is, "this case became anything but normal."
"It was not allowed to progress in a normal fashion, the search warrant service WAS delayed because of the pending election and the Mat Su Drug Unit and the case officer were not the ones calling the shots," Young wrote.
... John Cyr, executive director of the union, said it's clear to him that the investigation was handled differently because of who Johnston is.
"This really does smack of political favoritism. And if that be the case, it's another example of the Palin administration's direct influence on the public safety unit," Cyr said....
All this, it should be noted, is disputed by the Alaska public safety commissioner, Joe Masters, and Colonel Audie Holloway, director of the troopers.
My favorite detail, from Kyle Young's e-mail, concerns a drug purchase by an informant that was apparently delayed:
"Text messages from Johnston to the informant indicated that she was afraid to meet and conduct one illegal transaction, because of Secret Service presence at her home," Young wrote.
You know, if I'm a hillbilly heroin dealer, and suddenly the Secret Service is hanging around because my son has impregnated the daughter of a VP candidate ... er, I might think of trying to find a new way to earn money. At least temporarily. But hey, that's just me.
*****
Meanwhile, Palin's recent complaint about media reports that Bristol and Levi are "high school dropouts" has caused some more trouble for her. She noted that
Levi is continuing his online high school work in addition to working as an electrical apprentice on the North Slope
-- which led Dan Fagan, a right-wing talk-show host who doesn't like Palin very much, to charge Palin with pulling strings to get Levi into the apprentice program illegally. Fagan asserted (in an Anchorage Daily News op-ed) that it's illegal under federal law to be part of an apprentice program without a high school diploma; in fact, it's OK under federal law but not under Alaska law, at least if you're an electric lineman or electric wireman apprentice.
Oh, and Fagan also questions whether Levi was bumped ahead of wait-listed candidates for the apprentice program. The fun never stops with these folks....
BUSH: WHY I DESERVE AN INCOMPLETE
Frank Rich has a fine column in today's New York Times, in which he tries to explain a paradox: Why does George W. Bush, a man who failed on such a titanic scale, seem like a small, pathetic, laughable, forgettable person rather than a Shakespearean villain or tragic figure? Rich's analysis of the "narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever" whose "arrogance ... allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step" is mostly spot-on -- but I have one small quibble. It's with this:
The crowning personality tic revealed by Bush's final propaganda push is his bottomless capacity for self-pity. "I was a wartime president, and war is very exhausting," he told C-Span.
Actually, if you look at that C-SPAN interview, he doesn't seem to be feeling sorry for himself so much as acting like an irresponsible undergraduate who hopes we'll buy his excuse for not finishing an assignment on time:
Q You've had a tough couple of years. Most second Presidents have had tough second terms. Why is that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, in my case, I was a wartime President and war is very exhausting. War is hard for a country.
Notice that pivot -- from himself to the country. Or is he even talking about himself when he says that "war is very exhausting"? It's almost as if he's saying mistakes were made because the country was too tired to do a good job in his second term.
That would certainly be in keeping with other Bush remarks in recent interviews, some of which are cited by Rich -- about the economic collapse being the result of "decisions that were made on Wall Street ... over a decade or so, before I arrived," or about 9/11 and the failures in Iraq being the result of facts that were unknowable, or misunderstood by other people.
I'd love to charge Bush with a "bottomless capacity for self-pity," but I just don't think it's that exactly -- he just wants us to feel sorry enough for him that we'll absolve him of responsibility for anything that went wrong on his watch. He certainly doesn't seem to have found presidentin' to be very exhausting; quite the country, as he explained to ABC's Charlie Gibson:
I think, at least from my administration, I think they'd be surprised at how our team has worked so closely together. Some days we're not so happy, some days happy; every day has been pretty joyous, though -- that when you have a purpose in life, that no matter what it may look like from afar, that we're a highly motivated group of people that are honored to serve.
In other words, I think people look at the White House and say, oh, man, what a miserable experience it is to be President. You know, there's a lot of noise, a lot of criticism, a lot of name-calling, a lot of this, a lot of that. But I think people would be surprised when they walked in the Oval Office and the White House to see a highly motivated group of people that really enjoy what we're doing.
See? It wasn't his fault. He was joyous and motivated. His subordinates were joyous and motivated. As on his many jogging and biking jaunts with honored guests, he was fine -- it was the country that got tired and couldn't keep up.
Right-wing flame thrower Ann Coulter blasts incoming First Lady Michelle Obama as a freakish Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis imitator in a book to be published next week....
Lashing out at the President-elect's wife, Coulter wrote, "Her obvious imitation of Jackie O's style -- the flipped-under hair, the sleeveless A-line dresses, the short strands of fake pearls -- would have been laughable if done by anyone other than a media-designated saint."
Coulter said Cindy McCain, the wife of vanquished GOP nominee John McCain, "dressed well without freakishly imitating famous First Ladies in history."
Coulter facetiously and snidely refers to Michelle Obama as a "saint" and "Mother Teresa" and suggests that her public service career "advanced in lockstep with the political advancement of her husband." ...
Hunh? These are the punchlines?
Give Coulter this much: in the past, she knew how to gobsmack you with her choice of targets (9/11 widows) or slurs (Al Gore is a fag) or policy proposals (blow up the New York Times building). But this ... this is like the Coulter equivalent of late-period Hunter Thompson -- she's known for a style of outrageous rhetoric that she no longer remembers how to generate, so she just strings together the kinds of harrumphing sentences that used to lead to her peak moments and hopes you won't notice that the peak moments never come. It's sad. I'm almost embarrassed for her. (Almost.)
Friday, January 02, 2009
HOW WE USED TO DO IT
From a New York Timesarticle about the history of Wall Street:
William Duer worked under [Alexander] Hamilton at the Treasury Department and used his insider's information to collude with others in speculating on government bonds. When that scheme went bust, ruining many investors, "there was no bailout," [historian Steve] Fraser said. "Instead, because the collapse of his insider-trading scam produced an immediate local depression, the populace of New York was outraged. They chased Duer through the streets right here where we're standing, and would have probably disemboweled him had they caught him."
Why don't we have mobs anymore with the gumption to do something like this? What's wrong with this country?
Today's financial sleazebags know with absolute certainty that they're not going to be threatened by anything like this. They also know that they're never going to wind up utterly destitute, and they're unlikely to find themselves in any institution worse than a country-club prison. (Duer eventually went to debtor's prison and died there.)
I'm not recommending this as a structural reform, but is it possible that, as a temporary corrective, an angry, murderous, class-enraged mob or two might do this country a world of good?
HEY PAUL, YOU'RE ONE OF "THOSE PEOPLE," TOO
I don't want to downplay racism in the last few decades of American history, but I think Paul Krugman's focus is a bit too narrow here:
...Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
... Contempt for expertise [among Republicans] ... rested on contempt for government in general. "Government is not the solution to our problem," declared Ronald Reagan. "Government is the problem." So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.'s "Southern strategy," which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: "You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites." In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People....
Krugman's absolutely right that opposition to government spending was a way of saying, "Stop handing white people's money to non-whites." It was a racially divisive message, and it worked.
But more than race was involved. That's why the philosophy was able to bring down a guy like Bush, who never seemed personally racist, whose closest personal relationship within government was with a black woman, and who lost tremendous amounts of support within his base when he tried to steer a somewhat less racist course on immigration.
What was important in the GOP's strategy over the last four decades was that somebody needed to be the Antichrist. Sometimes it was nonwhites. Often it was "pointy-headed intellectuals," or liberals in general, or the media. Usually it was some mix of all of the above. The strategy didn't rest on racism alone -- the message has always been that the enemy within wants your money to go to people in this country who don't deserve it and that the enemy within (usually the same enemy) hates America and wants foreign demons to make America weak.
Remember that, when all this started forty years ago, the objects of hatred were nonwhites (all seen as rioters and thugs) and long-haired antiwar rabble-rousers, along with their defenders, the pinko professors and liberal journalists.
The Southern strategy worked for decades in part because it was flexible. Its focus could pivot from enemy to enemy. It could even occasionally defend a black person (say, Clarence Thomas), by demonizing the white liberals who opposed him.
In recent months, Republicans have tried to use the Southern strategy a few different ways -- against, say, Bill Ayers (vintage 60s-style pinko), or against allegedly greedy Northern union workers in Detroit.
But it hasn't been working, because enough Americans realize that, in the current period, Those People -- the people who are doing us harm -- are the Republicans themselves. They've screwed up the war, and Katrina, and the economy. There aren't any Black Panthers or hippie bomb-throwers in sight.
VERY, VERY SLOW LEARNERS
The all-out campaign to salvage Bush's legacy continues today, as national security adviser Stephen Hadley and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten give a joint interview to The Washington Post.
Bolten and Hadley can't seem to think of a single thing Bush did wrong, especially on Iraq -- but, er, guys, if you're going to defend the man's skill at reacting to changed circumstances in a timely fashion, maybe you should avoid saying things like this (emphasis mine):
Hadley also gave little ground to criticism of the administration's detention and interrogation policies, saying there is a balance to be struck between protecting the country and being transparent about what the government is doing to fight terrorism.
"I think the balance that you can strike now, after you have not been attacked for seven years, may be a little bit different than the balance that you would strike in the immediate year after the attack when you don't know who the enemy is," Hadley said. "You've got to be careful about that kind of second-guessing, because it's hard to re-create the environment in which those decisions were made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11."
"In the immediate year"? The enemy was unknown in the immediate year after 9/11?
Good grief. These people were in charge. We were so screwed.
*****
Bonus cluelessness:
When asked why the president took so long to shift course after conditions in Iraq had clearly deteriorated, Hadley replied that Bush had a responsibility to keep hope alive for the soldiers, their families and other coalition partners in Iraq even while considering a new strategy. "Are there things we should and would have done differently? Sure," Hadley said. "Could it have been done sooner? I personally don't think so. You know, these things take some time. The trick was then to realize we had a strategy that didn't work and then to make the change -- and that's what the president did."
Right. The looting started within days of the fall of Baghdad; the course correction happened more than three and a half years later. Hey, don't rush me!
Oh, and the best part: Bush didn't change course so as not to hurt the troops' morale! What a compassionate conservative! So much kinder to leave the troops in the tenth circle of hell, but knowing their commander-in-chief was "staying the course"! I'm sure that made them feel much better!
****
CLARIFICATION: Perhaps I'm misinterpreting Hadley's remark above. Perhaps he doesn't mean that the administration didn't know al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 for a year; perhaps he means "Golly, we didn't know which brown people were the 9/11 evildoers and which ones weren't." So, y'know, just take everyone whose arrest was the result of a bribe or a tribal dispute and just throw 'em in a hole with no due process, in many cases after torture, because getting the facts straight is just hard, dammit.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
OH, BOO HOO
A bit of tone-deafness from an anonymous source for a New York Times article about curtailed bonuses in the financial industry:
In a conference call on Dec. 19, Tim Sloan, a Wells Fargo executive who will head the global markets and investment banking unit, told a group of Wachovia bankers that they would not receive big bonuses. Instead, their allocated bonus money will be returned to shareholders.
He also said there would be no retention packages....
But some employees complained that the rules were being changed late in the game. One employee who identified himself as a third-year vice president said the bank's decision was putting its employees in "financial extremis" and, in some cases, at risk of not making their mortgage payments.
What?! Rendered unable to make mortgage payments? It would be unthinkable for a bank to do that to someone!
(Oh, and if you're wondering what the bankers' mortgages in question look like, go here.)
Just hours before the unemployment benefits fund was to run out in South Carolina, the state with the nation's third-highest jobless rate, Gov. Mark Sanford relented Wednesday and agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so.
The governor's position had drawn rebukes even from fellow Republicans in the Legislature, one of whom denounced Mr. Sanford as "heartless," and from newspaper editorial pages. On Wednesday, The State, the daily newspaper here in Columbia, accused the governor of playing "chicken with the lives of the 77,000" who are unemployed in South Carolina....
This is in keeping with Sanford's overall philosophy of government (and belief in self-aggrandizement):
Mr. Sanford once carried two piglets onto the floor of the House chamber to symbolize his opposition to what he considered wasteful spending. One of the piglets promptly defecated; lawmakers were not amused. Indeed, though Republicans dominate both chambers, they have overriden hundreds of his vetoes on spending over the years, including, in one recent session, money to expand children's health insurance, indigent defense, and to provide cost-of-living adjustments for retired state employees.
After one special session last year, the legislators overrode 228 out of 243 of the governor's vetoes, restoring money Mr. Sanford had rejected for H.I.V. prevention and health programs, and for state parks and beach reconstruction.
This mean-spiritedness, of course, has made Sanford wildly unpopular in a party that desperately needs to regain credibility, and in a state where voters are hurting.
Right?
Er, no:
Mr. Sanford, a wealthy real estate investor, is often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, in part because he is seen as an exemplary adherent of the party's low-government, antispending philosophy. He recently wrote an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal saying he was opposed to a "bailout" for states....
Up until now Mr. Sanford's antispending stance has, if anything, appeared only to enhance his popularity in this conservative state.
He's being criticized now, a bit:
"He's going to make the people of this state suffer for his agenda," said Henry Wright, 53, a laid-off carpenter who said he was on the verge of being evicted from his home. "The only thing I got to live on" was his unemployment check of $207 a week, Mr. Wright said.
Cynthia Bruce, 52, an unemployed mobile-home saleswoman, was also critical. "He's turned a deaf ear to the needs of the people of this state," she said.
But, reading this story, I see no sign that this is a Blagojevich-level error that's going to drive Sanford's approval ratings into the basement. I see no sign that he's now forgone any chance of winning the GOP nomination in 2012.
This is treated as something that's cost him a bit of political capital, but not all that much. In a very, very Republican state, and in the modern Republican Party nationwide, you can be as mean a sonofabitch as you want to be, even in a state that's hurting worse than most during horrible economic times, and you're still seen as presidential timber. Ladies and gentlemen, there's your modern Republican Party.
