SARAH PALIN CITES A BOOK
Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page yesterday:
The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies.... even the possibility of such a talk weakens the dollar and renews fears about its continued viability as an international reserve currency....
All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence....
In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on "green energy," while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources....
Though the chant of "Drill, baby, drill" was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point....
The book Palin cites in this post, Peter Schweizer's Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them, was published by Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins yesterday.
Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life will be published by Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins on November 17.
Shill, baby, shill!
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
There Are Known Knowns, and Unknown Unknowns, and then there's WTF?
From a reported exchange of views on Afghanistan:
Lately our political discourse seems to me to have become not merely more opaque but ultimately insane. Its partly the abymsmal reporting and editing. But its partly because people like McCain don't mind acting out like toddlers having a sugar induced meltdown. I can't even figure out what this exchange is supposed to mean. McCain is supposed to have urged Obama to quick, decisive, action because after 8 years the next five minutes are always "of the essence." To me this is like the fat man on the elevator screaming at the skinny guy who gets on last that he is responsible if the elevator falls. Kerry seems to have done the gracious and logical thing and pointed out that every single person in that room, who has been around for the last eight years, bears some responsibility to think this through carefully. McCain seems to be stuck on using an actual war, and the deaths of thousands of people, as a manly way of sobbing that he would, too have been a better president than Obama.
aimai
From a reported exchange of views on Afghanistan:
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) said everyone at the table in the State Dining Room shouldered part of the responsibility for the decision.
A Senate aide told TPMDC that Kerry said, "Mr. President, this is your ultimate decision, but it's shared by the Congress because together we have to hold together the consent of the American people for this policy, that's one of the lessons of Vietnam."
McCain later said he disagreed with his colleague. "This is your decision - your sole decision," he told Obama.
Lately our political discourse seems to me to have become not merely more opaque but ultimately insane. Its partly the abymsmal reporting and editing. But its partly because people like McCain don't mind acting out like toddlers having a sugar induced meltdown. I can't even figure out what this exchange is supposed to mean. McCain is supposed to have urged Obama to quick, decisive, action because after 8 years the next five minutes are always "of the essence." To me this is like the fat man on the elevator screaming at the skinny guy who gets on last that he is responsible if the elevator falls. Kerry seems to have done the gracious and logical thing and pointed out that every single person in that room, who has been around for the last eight years, bears some responsibility to think this through carefully. McCain seems to be stuck on using an actual war, and the deaths of thousands of people, as a manly way of sobbing that he would, too have been a better president than Obama.
aimai
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
FRIST, JINDAL, THOMPSON DRAW SHORT STRAWS, ARE REQUIRED TO ACT LIKE MATURE, RATIONAL ADULTS
Via Time blogger Karen Tumulty, I see that a San Francisco Chronicle politics blogger, Carolyn Lochhead, thinks there's a surprising new trend in the GOP -- adult behavior:
Is this a pattern? Top Reps call for health care reform
What's going on here? Former Bush administration Health and Human Services secretary and Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson says today the Senate Finance health legislation should pass....
In a joint statement with former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, Thompson sounded like President Obama....
Last week, former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, told several news outlets that he would vote for the health care bill....
[And] Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stepped up his calls for Republicans to join the health care debate.... Jindal says there's no way the Democratic bill can pass, but after Democrats give up on their "grand experiment," he says, "Republicans have to join the battle of ideas." ...
(Jindal of course, published a Washington Post op-ed this week enumerating GOP health-care ideas -- many of which are already in the Democrats' health care bill, but never mind.)
Now, all this is nice, but, as Time's Tumulty notes, none of these people are actual members of Congress, so it doesn't really matter what they think. But what is going on here?
Well, you know the way a party or a political campaign will sometimes send out a low-level loyalist -- say, a state party chair -- to launch a nasty, vicious attack that no major figure can launch without serious repercussions? I think this is that process in reverse.
See, if you're a politician in the modern GOP, you're pretty much required to be a barking lunatic, someone who'd rather lose an eye than give an inch to that fascist commie community-organizer terrorist guy in the White House. The base demands no less. Boss Limbaugh and Boss Beck demand no less. Even alleged moderates like Charles Grassley know enough to get with the program.
But the GOP knows that there's some value in kinda-sorta looking as if the party occasionally considers options other than scorched earth. A few mandarin pundits might be deeply impressed. So might some swing voters. And so someone in the party gets stuck with the onerous job of going out there and risking the wrath of the base by ... acting like an adult.
It's a terrible sacrifice to demand of any Republican. That's why most of the Republicans who've volunteered for the mission (Frist, Thompson, former Bush administration official Mark McClellan) are not presently holding any elected or appointed office.
But Jindal was willing to step up and take one for the team. Jindal was willing to pretend to be a grown-up. Jindal was willing to be the designated driver.
Clearly, he must not be running for president in 2012.
Via Time blogger Karen Tumulty, I see that a San Francisco Chronicle politics blogger, Carolyn Lochhead, thinks there's a surprising new trend in the GOP -- adult behavior:
Is this a pattern? Top Reps call for health care reform
What's going on here? Former Bush administration Health and Human Services secretary and Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson says today the Senate Finance health legislation should pass....
In a joint statement with former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, Thompson sounded like President Obama....
Last week, former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, told several news outlets that he would vote for the health care bill....
[And] Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stepped up his calls for Republicans to join the health care debate.... Jindal says there's no way the Democratic bill can pass, but after Democrats give up on their "grand experiment," he says, "Republicans have to join the battle of ideas." ...
(Jindal of course, published a Washington Post op-ed this week enumerating GOP health-care ideas -- many of which are already in the Democrats' health care bill, but never mind.)
Now, all this is nice, but, as Time's Tumulty notes, none of these people are actual members of Congress, so it doesn't really matter what they think. But what is going on here?
Well, you know the way a party or a political campaign will sometimes send out a low-level loyalist -- say, a state party chair -- to launch a nasty, vicious attack that no major figure can launch without serious repercussions? I think this is that process in reverse.
See, if you're a politician in the modern GOP, you're pretty much required to be a barking lunatic, someone who'd rather lose an eye than give an inch to that fascist commie community-organizer terrorist guy in the White House. The base demands no less. Boss Limbaugh and Boss Beck demand no less. Even alleged moderates like Charles Grassley know enough to get with the program.
But the GOP knows that there's some value in kinda-sorta looking as if the party occasionally considers options other than scorched earth. A few mandarin pundits might be deeply impressed. So might some swing voters. And so someone in the party gets stuck with the onerous job of going out there and risking the wrath of the base by ... acting like an adult.
It's a terrible sacrifice to demand of any Republican. That's why most of the Republicans who've volunteered for the mission (Frist, Thompson, former Bush administration official Mark McClellan) are not presently holding any elected or appointed office.
But Jindal was willing to step up and take one for the team. Jindal was willing to pretend to be a grown-up. Jindal was willing to be the designated driver.
Clearly, he must not be running for president in 2012.
This Cracks Me Up
Wish I'd done this--oh, wait, I did. But from a "participant observer" standpoint. Amanda links to OK Cupid and this little experiment:
I essentially did a little gedankenexperiment on just this topic nineteen years ago in order to meet Mr. Aimai. I read and analyzed all the male and female personal ads in the local free newspaper and determined for myself that I thought the most sucessful ad to run would be the one that brought the most responses from people who were likely to like the kind of person you were. That would give you the widest field of choice and the best chance of finding someone who was prepared to be a good match. I was turned off by the typical ad that described no one, or described a person who was fixated on trivial details (car, hair, height). And I reasoned that anyone I'd be interested in would be too--that there would have to be something in the ad that reflected who they were for them to be intrigued enough to respond. The way to do that, I thought (and boy was I right) was not to choose anodyne descriptors that would be good for anyone, but to essentially figure out what kind of person I would like, that I thought would like a person like me, and describe that person. That way people reading the want ads would *see themselves* in my ad, feel safe responding, and would have a good chance of being a good match.
I wrote the ad in the hypothetical. I began "you are..." and then described myself and all the things I thought were pretty typical of me: education, argumentative, short, etc... I got 88 responses, dated 12, married one. Of the ones I dated all were connected to me in some way-had gone to my school, knew a family member, crossed paths with me or people I knew. Or were short. Or both.
I thought at the time it would be a fascinating field to study. Now I wish I hadn't lost my notes on those 88 guys and what they said on the messages they left me. But it was more or less as the Cupid blog describes. My ad was extensive and it linked the respondent to a telephone message (this was twenty years ago! come on! we were still using those tin cans with string!) where they could listen to a short message and leave me a message. There were a certain number of just plain nutty guys out there who hadn't read or thought about the content of my message. One guy named "Juan" kept calling back, barking out instructions for me to call him. But others were, as it turns out, really good matches and I did end up meeting and dating them. The very first guy I dated, who sounded like a good match, turned out to be a drip and it didn't work out but a year later he called me for a date when I was already shacked up with Mr. Aimai and confessed sadly that he'd run my ad in reverse, for himself, and only two women had replied. The rate at which men respond to women's ads, as you might expect, is much higher than for women responding to men's ads but I was still surprised. It was a damned good ad.
Wish I'd done this--oh, wait, I did. But from a "participant observer" standpoint. Amanda links to OK Cupid and this little experiment:
Ok, here’s the experiment.
We analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online...
#1 – Be literate.
Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs. Our negative correlation list is a fool’s lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst 6 words you can use in a first message are all stupid slang.
I essentially did a little gedankenexperiment on just this topic nineteen years ago in order to meet Mr. Aimai. I read and analyzed all the male and female personal ads in the local free newspaper and determined for myself that I thought the most sucessful ad to run would be the one that brought the most responses from people who were likely to like the kind of person you were. That would give you the widest field of choice and the best chance of finding someone who was prepared to be a good match. I was turned off by the typical ad that described no one, or described a person who was fixated on trivial details (car, hair, height). And I reasoned that anyone I'd be interested in would be too--that there would have to be something in the ad that reflected who they were for them to be intrigued enough to respond. The way to do that, I thought (and boy was I right) was not to choose anodyne descriptors that would be good for anyone, but to essentially figure out what kind of person I would like, that I thought would like a person like me, and describe that person. That way people reading the want ads would *see themselves* in my ad, feel safe responding, and would have a good chance of being a good match.
I wrote the ad in the hypothetical. I began "you are..." and then described myself and all the things I thought were pretty typical of me: education, argumentative, short, etc... I got 88 responses, dated 12, married one. Of the ones I dated all were connected to me in some way-had gone to my school, knew a family member, crossed paths with me or people I knew. Or were short. Or both.
I thought at the time it would be a fascinating field to study. Now I wish I hadn't lost my notes on those 88 guys and what they said on the messages they left me. But it was more or less as the Cupid blog describes. My ad was extensive and it linked the respondent to a telephone message (this was twenty years ago! come on! we were still using those tin cans with string!) where they could listen to a short message and leave me a message. There were a certain number of just plain nutty guys out there who hadn't read or thought about the content of my message. One guy named "Juan" kept calling back, barking out instructions for me to call him. But others were, as it turns out, really good matches and I did end up meeting and dating them. The very first guy I dated, who sounded like a good match, turned out to be a drip and it didn't work out but a year later he called me for a date when I was already shacked up with Mr. Aimai and confessed sadly that he'd run my ad in reverse, for himself, and only two women had replied. The rate at which men respond to women's ads, as you might expect, is much higher than for women responding to men's ads but I was still surprised. It was a damned good ad.
EMOTIONALLY, IT WORKS FOR HIM
Bob Herbert in today's New York Times:
The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging....
Americans need jobs now, and if the economy on its own is incapable of putting people back to work -- which appears to be the case -- then the government needs to step in with aggressive job-creation efforts....
The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives....
See, here's the way Barack Obama approaches a problem.
1. First, he announces that he's seeking bold, transformative change, the kind that some people are certain to resist. But he's going for it. He's going to get matter and antimatter to coexist happily. He's going to persuade the lion to lie down with the lamb.
2. Even as he's promising bold change, he's reaching out to likely antagonists -- and, predictably, getting rebuffed on the notion of bold, transformative change. And he doesn't wait for antagonists to show up -- he welcomes some of the less antagonistic antagonists into his inner circle. And he's somewhat taken aback when even they rebuff aspects his bold, transformative vision.
3. More antagonists have come out of the woodwork; they're piling on objections in addition to the ones raised by the inner-circle antagonists. Now all Obama wants to do is get to yes; now, to him, it seems transformative just to get to yes. And I mean with anything. And it's all happened so fast that he thinks barely eking out a small victory is a natural extension of his original push for bold change. He doesn't know where the bold pronouncement ended and the margin-tinkering began. For him, they're the same thing.
Obviously, this is what's happened on health care -- he let Big Health in to pre-compromise it, then the GOP and teabaggers conservative Democrats had at it. But it's also what happened on his economic recovery package -- first the Wall Streeters in his administration kept it weak, then Congress weakened it further.
When I thought about writing this post, I considered saying that the recession is Obama's Iraq, because (as Herbert says) he doesn't seem to understand the fact that he's failed and the need to correct the failure. I think that's the right analogy up to a point -- but his psyche and Bush's are a bit different.
Bush's primal wound was believing he was the regarded as the dolt in his family; on some level he wanted the war to go on throughout his presidency, so he'd never stop being Important. Obama has a psychological need to be both the mighty leader and the calming presence in the midst of chaos; alas for him, in order to be the former, he has to embrace the process of pissing some people off, which means abandoning the latter once in a while. I'm afraid he can't get himself to do that.
And so he does the bold/timid two-step, on health care, economic recovery, and (I'm afraid) a lot of other issues.
****
ALSO: Scroll down in the comments here for aimai's analysis of the Obama/Emanuel dynamic (she thinks Rahm is the sharp-elbowed guy Obama won't let himself be).
Bob Herbert in today's New York Times:
The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging....
Americans need jobs now, and if the economy on its own is incapable of putting people back to work -- which appears to be the case -- then the government needs to step in with aggressive job-creation efforts....
The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives....
See, here's the way Barack Obama approaches a problem.
1. First, he announces that he's seeking bold, transformative change, the kind that some people are certain to resist. But he's going for it. He's going to get matter and antimatter to coexist happily. He's going to persuade the lion to lie down with the lamb.
2. Even as he's promising bold change, he's reaching out to likely antagonists -- and, predictably, getting rebuffed on the notion of bold, transformative change. And he doesn't wait for antagonists to show up -- he welcomes some of the less antagonistic antagonists into his inner circle. And he's somewhat taken aback when even they rebuff aspects his bold, transformative vision.
3. More antagonists have come out of the woodwork; they're piling on objections in addition to the ones raised by the inner-circle antagonists. Now all Obama wants to do is get to yes; now, to him, it seems transformative just to get to yes. And I mean with anything. And it's all happened so fast that he thinks barely eking out a small victory is a natural extension of his original push for bold change. He doesn't know where the bold pronouncement ended and the margin-tinkering began. For him, they're the same thing.
Obviously, this is what's happened on health care -- he let Big Health in to pre-compromise it, then the GOP and teabaggers conservative Democrats had at it. But it's also what happened on his economic recovery package -- first the Wall Streeters in his administration kept it weak, then Congress weakened it further.
When I thought about writing this post, I considered saying that the recession is Obama's Iraq, because (as Herbert says) he doesn't seem to understand the fact that he's failed and the need to correct the failure. I think that's the right analogy up to a point -- but his psyche and Bush's are a bit different.
Bush's primal wound was believing he was the regarded as the dolt in his family; on some level he wanted the war to go on throughout his presidency, so he'd never stop being Important. Obama has a psychological need to be both the mighty leader and the calming presence in the midst of chaos; alas for him, in order to be the former, he has to embrace the process of pissing some people off, which means abandoning the latter once in a while. I'm afraid he can't get himself to do that.
And so he does the bold/timid two-step, on health care, economic recovery, and (I'm afraid) a lot of other issues.
****
ALSO: Scroll down in the comments here for aimai's analysis of the Obama/Emanuel dynamic (she thinks Rahm is the sharp-elbowed guy Obama won't let himself be).
AND IF HE HADN'T GONE?
I should have said this days ago, but I'll say it anyway because the late hits are still coming on the president's trip to Copenhagen -- see, for instance, Richard Cohen in The Washington Post:
Barack Obama's trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome.
Really? Why?
Here's what I'm not clear on: Do most Americans even realize that every other head of state with a city in the running went to Copenhagen? The king of Spain? The prime minister of Japan? The president of Brazil? Do they realize that heads of state have been personally making Olympic pitches more and more in the past few years?
In 2005 when the IOC was voting for the 2012 Olympics, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew into Singapore to meet dozens of IOC members and actively back London's bid.
French leader Jacques Chirac was also there, though he was holding the bare minimum of meetings, thinking frontrunner Paris had done enough with a good bid.
As has been the case on many an IOC vote, the favourite was left beaten, with London celebrating an unexpected victory largely credited to Blair's successful lobbying.
At the IOC session in Guatemala in 2007 there were two clear frontrunners for the 2014 Winter Games: Austria's Salzburg with a long winter sports tradition and South Korea's Pyeongchang, which had narrowly missed out to Vancouver four years earlier.
Rank outsider Sochi, Russia's Black Sea resort, had technically the weakest bid with almost all of the venues needed to be built from scratch and with no experience of hosting major international winter sports events.
The presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the session, addressing the IOC members in impeccable English -- a first according to his country's reporters -- proved decisive as Sochi snatched victory.
Does Richard Cohen even know any of this? Or all the other haters who think Obama shouldn't have made the trip?
I bet I know the circumstances under which we would have all known that every other head of state went to Copenhagen: we would have know that if Obama hadn't gone. Omigod! First he won't put his hand over his heart for the national anthem, now he won't stick up for America in front of the IOC! No wonder Chicago -- no, sorry: no wonder America -- lost!
Really, isn't that how the rhetoric would have gone?
I should have said this days ago, but I'll say it anyway because the late hits are still coming on the president's trip to Copenhagen -- see, for instance, Richard Cohen in The Washington Post:
Barack Obama's trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome.
Really? Why?
Here's what I'm not clear on: Do most Americans even realize that every other head of state with a city in the running went to Copenhagen? The king of Spain? The prime minister of Japan? The president of Brazil? Do they realize that heads of state have been personally making Olympic pitches more and more in the past few years?
In 2005 when the IOC was voting for the 2012 Olympics, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew into Singapore to meet dozens of IOC members and actively back London's bid.
French leader Jacques Chirac was also there, though he was holding the bare minimum of meetings, thinking frontrunner Paris had done enough with a good bid.
As has been the case on many an IOC vote, the favourite was left beaten, with London celebrating an unexpected victory largely credited to Blair's successful lobbying.
At the IOC session in Guatemala in 2007 there were two clear frontrunners for the 2014 Winter Games: Austria's Salzburg with a long winter sports tradition and South Korea's Pyeongchang, which had narrowly missed out to Vancouver four years earlier.
Rank outsider Sochi, Russia's Black Sea resort, had technically the weakest bid with almost all of the venues needed to be built from scratch and with no experience of hosting major international winter sports events.
The presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the session, addressing the IOC members in impeccable English -- a first according to his country's reporters -- proved decisive as Sochi snatched victory.
Does Richard Cohen even know any of this? Or all the other haters who think Obama shouldn't have made the trip?
I bet I know the circumstances under which we would have all known that every other head of state went to Copenhagen: we would have know that if Obama hadn't gone. Omigod! First he won't put his hand over his heart for the national anthem, now he won't stick up for America in front of the IOC! No wonder Chicago -- no, sorry: no wonder America -- lost!
Really, isn't that how the rhetoric would have gone?
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Robert Kuttner at the Huffington Post:
If the unemployment numbers keep rising into 2010, the Republicans are primed to pick up dozens of seats in the House, crippling the Obama administration's capacity to recoup in the second half of the president's first term. Obama would lose his very tenuous working majority and would confront a situation very much like the one Bill Clinton faced after the Republican gains of 1994, when he worked even more closely with Republicans in order to save his own skin. If you liked triangulation Clinton-style, wait for Rahm Emanuel's version of it.
And that would differ from right now how exactly?
Robert Kuttner at the Huffington Post:
If the unemployment numbers keep rising into 2010, the Republicans are primed to pick up dozens of seats in the House, crippling the Obama administration's capacity to recoup in the second half of the president's first term. Obama would lose his very tenuous working majority and would confront a situation very much like the one Bill Clinton faced after the Republican gains of 1994, when he worked even more closely with Republicans in order to save his own skin. If you liked triangulation Clinton-style, wait for Rahm Emanuel's version of it.
And that would differ from right now how exactly?
Monday, October 05, 2009
PETRAEUS: THEOCRAT? AMERICA HATING HIPPIE?
(updated with medical news)
Today, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times revived Petraeus-for-president talk, oddly enough because he doesn't seem particularly important in the Obama administration. Or maybe that's not so odd.
No longer does the man who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have one of the biggest voices at National Security Council meetings, as he did when Mr. Bush gave him 20 minutes during hourlong weekly sessions to present his views in live video feeds from Baghdad. No longer is the general, with the Capitol Hill contacts and web of e-mail relationships throughout Washington's journalism establishment, testifying in media explosions before Congress, as he did in September 2007, when he gave 34 interviews in three days.
The change has fueled speculation in Washington about whether General Petraeus might seek the presidency in 2012.
I can see it. I think he could be a strong contender. In my dreams, though, I occasionally have the completely preposterous fantasy that doing something like this might make it hard for him to run for president in America:
"Under the rubric of free speech and the twisted idea of separation of church and state," reads a promotion for a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William McCoy, "there has evolved more and more an anti-Christian bias in this country." In Under Orders, McCoy seeks to counter that alleged bias by making the case for the necessity of religion -- preferably Christian -- for a properly functioning military unit. Lack of belief or the wrong beliefs, he writes, will "bring havoc to what needs cohesion and team confidence."
McCoy's manifesto comes with an impressive endorsement: "Under Orders should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy," reads a blurb from General David Petraeus....
Nahhh. Who am I kidding? That's a selling point for his campaign (certainly in the primaries).
On the other hand, if Petraeus does want to run as a Republican, he's going to have to hope no one brings any of this up:
General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.
In an appearance on Radio Free Europe on Sunday, the man hailed by conservatives as the preeminent military figure of his generation left little room for doubt about where he stands on some of Obama's most contentious policies....
"With respect to Guantanamo," Petraeus [said], "I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."
That could hurt. He'll have to flip-flop on that.
****
UPDATE: Or maybe not. Petraeus has revealed that he's being treated for prostate cancer, and no one in the Free Republic thread seems to know that he ever said a kind word about the Geneva Conventions or closing Gitmo:
In Jesus' name. Not yet.
****
Oh no .. most earnest prayers for Gen. Petraeus, America's rock of duty, country, honor.
Lord, guide his docs, rejuvenate him with healing.
****
Gen. Petraeus is a hero among heroes. Lord, please bless and protect this man. We need him among us much longer.
****
This news should cause more than a few Democrat orgasms.
And the Freepers assume the release of the news is a Democratic plot to undermine Petraeus, now and for 2012. (I guess they didn't notice that John Kerry and Rudy Giuliani ran for president after successful prostate cancer treatment.)
(updated with medical news)
Today, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times revived Petraeus-for-president talk, oddly enough because he doesn't seem particularly important in the Obama administration. Or maybe that's not so odd.
No longer does the man who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have one of the biggest voices at National Security Council meetings, as he did when Mr. Bush gave him 20 minutes during hourlong weekly sessions to present his views in live video feeds from Baghdad. No longer is the general, with the Capitol Hill contacts and web of e-mail relationships throughout Washington's journalism establishment, testifying in media explosions before Congress, as he did in September 2007, when he gave 34 interviews in three days.
The change has fueled speculation in Washington about whether General Petraeus might seek the presidency in 2012.
I can see it. I think he could be a strong contender. In my dreams, though, I occasionally have the completely preposterous fantasy that doing something like this might make it hard for him to run for president in America:
"Under the rubric of free speech and the twisted idea of separation of church and state," reads a promotion for a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William McCoy, "there has evolved more and more an anti-Christian bias in this country." In Under Orders, McCoy seeks to counter that alleged bias by making the case for the necessity of religion -- preferably Christian -- for a properly functioning military unit. Lack of belief or the wrong beliefs, he writes, will "bring havoc to what needs cohesion and team confidence."
McCoy's manifesto comes with an impressive endorsement: "Under Orders should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy," reads a blurb from General David Petraeus....
Nahhh. Who am I kidding? That's a selling point for his campaign (certainly in the primaries).
On the other hand, if Petraeus does want to run as a Republican, he's going to have to hope no one brings any of this up:
General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.
In an appearance on Radio Free Europe on Sunday, the man hailed by conservatives as the preeminent military figure of his generation left little room for doubt about where he stands on some of Obama's most contentious policies....
"With respect to Guantanamo," Petraeus [said], "I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."
That could hurt. He'll have to flip-flop on that.
****
UPDATE: Or maybe not. Petraeus has revealed that he's being treated for prostate cancer, and no one in the Free Republic thread seems to know that he ever said a kind word about the Geneva Conventions or closing Gitmo:
In Jesus' name. Not yet.
****
Oh no .. most earnest prayers for Gen. Petraeus, America's rock of duty, country, honor.
Lord, guide his docs, rejuvenate him with healing.
****
Gen. Petraeus is a hero among heroes. Lord, please bless and protect this man. We need him among us much longer.
****
This news should cause more than a few Democrat orgasms.
And the Freepers assume the release of the news is a Democratic plot to undermine Petraeus, now and for 2012. (I guess they didn't notice that John Kerry and Rudy Giuliani ran for president after successful prostate cancer treatment.)
RAHM EMANUEL'S UTTER INABILITY TO GRASP THE ZEITGEIST
I confess I haven't read ryan Lizza's New Yorker article on the fiscal crisis -- I've read only the excerpts that are showing up in blog posts by Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, and Brad DeLong. At first I was prepared to see Larry Summers as the biggest villain of the piece because he chose not to present Christina Romer's (undoubtedly accurate) trillion-dollar-plus estimate for how much stimulus was needed:
The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn't require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer's analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was "an insurance package against catastrophic failure." At the meeting, according to one participant, "there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars."
But then I see this:
Emanuel made the final call: six hundred and seventy-five to seven hundred and seventy-five billion dollars, with the understanding that, as the bill made its way through Congress, it was more likely to grow than to shrink.
It was more likely to what?
Of course, what happened is that there was an $825 billion bill in the House and we wound up with a $787 billion bill -- barely more than Emanuel's upper limit -- of which only about $600 billion was genuine stimulus.
Where the hell did Emanuel get the idea that the bill would grow in Congress? Did he have no bloody idea what modern Republicans are like (utterly intransigent) and what modern Democrats are like (unwilling to take their own side in an argument)? Is this the great genius driving the Obama bus -- a guy who thought everything would just be absurdly easy because of Obama's (and his own) irresistible brilliance and wonderfulness?
Give him the hook.
I confess I haven't read ryan Lizza's New Yorker article on the fiscal crisis -- I've read only the excerpts that are showing up in blog posts by Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, and Brad DeLong. At first I was prepared to see Larry Summers as the biggest villain of the piece because he chose not to present Christina Romer's (undoubtedly accurate) trillion-dollar-plus estimate for how much stimulus was needed:
The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn't require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer's analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was "an insurance package against catastrophic failure." At the meeting, according to one participant, "there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars."
But then I see this:
Emanuel made the final call: six hundred and seventy-five to seven hundred and seventy-five billion dollars, with the understanding that, as the bill made its way through Congress, it was more likely to grow than to shrink.
It was more likely to what?
Of course, what happened is that there was an $825 billion bill in the House and we wound up with a $787 billion bill -- barely more than Emanuel's upper limit -- of which only about $600 billion was genuine stimulus.
Where the hell did Emanuel get the idea that the bill would grow in Congress? Did he have no bloody idea what modern Republicans are like (utterly intransigent) and what modern Democrats are like (unwilling to take their own side in an argument)? Is this the great genius driving the Obama bus -- a guy who thought everything would just be absurdly easy because of Obama's (and his own) irresistible brilliance and wonderfulness?
Give him the hook.
THE COUNTERFACTUAL FIRESIDE CHAT AMERICANS HAVEN'T HEARD
Steve Benen, responding to this New York Times article, which says that Republicans plan to make the abysmal job market a big issue going into 2010:
As a matter of political strategy, that makes a lot of sense. The job market is awful; Democrats are in power; therefore it stands to reason Republicans would blame Democrats for the awful job market....
The problem, though, is one of credibility. For one thing, as the economy fell off a cliff, President Obama pushed through a stimulus package that helped prevent a depression.
Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post:
How close did we come to the Great Depression 2.0? ... Christina Romer, the head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, already has an answer: pretty darn close....
Private markets for goods, services, labor and securities do mostly self-correct; but panic, driven by the acute fear of the unknown, feeds on itself and disarms these stabilizing tendencies. In this situation, only government can protect the economy as a whole, because most individuals and companies are involved in the self-defeating behavior of self-protection.
Government's failure to perform this role in the early 1930s transformed recession into depression...
Look, you and I (and Steve Benen and Robert Samuelson) all know that government intervention kept this crisis from being much, much worse. But the average American doesn't know that. The average American doesn't know that we wouldn't have been better off just letting everything fail that was on the verge of failing, with government intervention limited to, oh, say, some tax cuts.
Contemptuous shouts of "Neo-Hooverism!" don't settle the matter. Most Americans don't understand what that means. They don't even necessarily understand how much worse the Great Depression was than this. They don't know what would have happened if the response to this crisis had been Hooverite. And I can't say I could describe it with any precision. Twenty percent unemployment rather than ten percent? For maybe four years? What exactly would it have been like? What would it have felt like?
I'd love for someone to tell the story of what didn't happen -- as a narrative of history we didn't live through. I wish we had a president who would tell that story, in plain words, in order to show what government interventions -- inadequate though they may be -- have prevented. (By the way, folks, don't even think about a second stimulus. Obama's as likely to get one of those as Mississippi is to approve gay marriage by referendum.)
I'd settle for a magazine article or a TV show or a documentary or a widely read blog post, or maybe one of those This American Life money stories. But it would be ideal if a narrative really reached the broad public that explained why government does these things. It's the central thing most Americans just don't get. And it's that lack of comprehension that keeps neo-Hooverism -- and the entire Norquistite shrink-government-so-it can-be-drowned-in-the-bathtub idea -- alive and well as a thinkable approach.
****
(AND: While I'm blue-skying, let me point out that I also wish there'd been serious, too-big-to-fail-destroying regulatory reform, preferably in the first hundred days, and preferably enough to destroy "too big to fail" once and for all. My support for the bailouts is not out of any love for fat cats.)
Steve Benen, responding to this New York Times article, which says that Republicans plan to make the abysmal job market a big issue going into 2010:
As a matter of political strategy, that makes a lot of sense. The job market is awful; Democrats are in power; therefore it stands to reason Republicans would blame Democrats for the awful job market....
The problem, though, is one of credibility. For one thing, as the economy fell off a cliff, President Obama pushed through a stimulus package that helped prevent a depression.
Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post:
How close did we come to the Great Depression 2.0? ... Christina Romer, the head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, already has an answer: pretty darn close....
Private markets for goods, services, labor and securities do mostly self-correct; but panic, driven by the acute fear of the unknown, feeds on itself and disarms these stabilizing tendencies. In this situation, only government can protect the economy as a whole, because most individuals and companies are involved in the self-defeating behavior of self-protection.
Government's failure to perform this role in the early 1930s transformed recession into depression...
Look, you and I (and Steve Benen and Robert Samuelson) all know that government intervention kept this crisis from being much, much worse. But the average American doesn't know that. The average American doesn't know that we wouldn't have been better off just letting everything fail that was on the verge of failing, with government intervention limited to, oh, say, some tax cuts.
Contemptuous shouts of "Neo-Hooverism!" don't settle the matter. Most Americans don't understand what that means. They don't even necessarily understand how much worse the Great Depression was than this. They don't know what would have happened if the response to this crisis had been Hooverite. And I can't say I could describe it with any precision. Twenty percent unemployment rather than ten percent? For maybe four years? What exactly would it have been like? What would it have felt like?
I'd love for someone to tell the story of what didn't happen -- as a narrative of history we didn't live through. I wish we had a president who would tell that story, in plain words, in order to show what government interventions -- inadequate though they may be -- have prevented. (By the way, folks, don't even think about a second stimulus. Obama's as likely to get one of those as Mississippi is to approve gay marriage by referendum.)
I'd settle for a magazine article or a TV show or a documentary or a widely read blog post, or maybe one of those This American Life money stories. But it would be ideal if a narrative really reached the broad public that explained why government does these things. It's the central thing most Americans just don't get. And it's that lack of comprehension that keeps neo-Hooverism -- and the entire Norquistite shrink-government-so-it can-be-drowned-in-the-bathtub idea -- alive and well as a thinkable approach.
****
(AND: While I'm blue-skying, let me point out that I also wish there'd been serious, too-big-to-fail-destroying regulatory reform, preferably in the first hundred days, and preferably enough to destroy "too big to fail" once and for all. My support for the bailouts is not out of any love for fat cats.)
Palin and Steele Represent the Same Problem
Palin and Steele are both being sent to stand in the corner--to pay for the failures of the actual leaders of the party. The whole party is essentially made up of old, stupid, white guy *gamblers*--just as McCain made a gamble that by picking Palin he'd get just enough support and excitement to get over the hump and get into the White House they thought that they could somehow, for a short time, parlay Steele's blackness into a short term benefit vis a vis the Democratic party and Obama. He was the default choice but he was their choice and that was fairly explicit in their public reasoning on why he was chosen--he was there to reassure suburban whites that the GOP weren't stone racists.
But just as with McCain's picking Palin, or Joe the Plumber, this form of "identity politics" will almost always push a cardboard cutout of a person into an important role (vp, spokesman, rnc chair) that you actually need a very talented person to fill. They've just run up against the limits of putting a figure head in to do a real job and are now trying to figure out how to get rid of him and put a technocrat in. This move won't hurt them with their base, because their base really hates token blacks. In the case of Palin the move will hurt them with their base, because Palin was sold to them, and believed to be, "one of them." Pass the popcorn.
**Edited to add that Steve M. rightly takes me to task for imprecise thought and language in this post. I absolutely misspoke when I said "their base really hates token blacks" and there is a longer discussion of this in comments that tries to take apart my casual usage of the words base and token. I think this is a good place for one of those strikeout thingies but I don't know how to do it. So consider "their base really hates token blacks" to be struck and replaced by the discussion in comments.
Because I always have one more "one more" thought I'd like to add that I think different parts of "the base" or of "people paying attention at any given time" which are, of course, not synonymous really value different things in public positions at different times. There's a huge populist/working class audience that assumes that drones like "officials who represent my party" are just party hacks of no particular talent. They neither know nor care who these guys are and have as much loathing and disrespect, based on a correct lower class assumption that the suits are assholes and dopes anyway, that probably isn't at all disturbed by Steele's race. Unless he falls to their ire as another version of that strange symbolic figure the "affirmative action hire" who "prevented some guy like me" from "getting that job." That figure is like the wandering jew of white ressentiment and pops up like a ghost even, or especially, when the two categories (the viewer and the affirmative action hire) were never in competition for the same job or school position at all.
Palin and Steele are both being sent to stand in the corner--to pay for the failures of the actual leaders of the party. The whole party is essentially made up of old, stupid, white guy *gamblers*--just as McCain made a gamble that by picking Palin he'd get just enough support and excitement to get over the hump and get into the White House they thought that they could somehow, for a short time, parlay Steele's blackness into a short term benefit vis a vis the Democratic party and Obama. He was the default choice but he was their choice and that was fairly explicit in their public reasoning on why he was chosen--he was there to reassure suburban whites that the GOP weren't stone racists.
But just as with McCain's picking Palin, or Joe the Plumber, this form of "identity politics" will almost always push a cardboard cutout of a person into an important role (vp, spokesman, rnc chair) that you actually need a very talented person to fill. They've just run up against the limits of putting a figure head in to do a real job and are now trying to figure out how to get rid of him and put a technocrat in. This move won't hurt them with their base, because their base really hates token blacks. In the case of Palin the move will hurt them with their base, because Palin was sold to them, and believed to be, "one of them." Pass the popcorn.
**Edited to add that Steve M. rightly takes me to task for imprecise thought and language in this post. I absolutely misspoke when I said "their base really hates token blacks" and there is a longer discussion of this in comments that tries to take apart my casual usage of the words base and token. I think this is a good place for one of those strikeout thingies but I don't know how to do it. So consider "their base really hates token blacks" to be struck and replaced by the discussion in comments.
Because I always have one more "one more" thought I'd like to add that I think different parts of "the base" or of "people paying attention at any given time" which are, of course, not synonymous really value different things in public positions at different times. There's a huge populist/working class audience that assumes that drones like "officials who represent my party" are just party hacks of no particular talent. They neither know nor care who these guys are and have as much loathing and disrespect, based on a correct lower class assumption that the suits are assholes and dopes anyway, that probably isn't at all disturbed by Steele's race. Unless he falls to their ire as another version of that strange symbolic figure the "affirmative action hire" who "prevented some guy like me" from "getting that job." That figure is like the wandering jew of white ressentiment and pops up like a ghost even, or especially, when the two categories (the viewer and the affirmative action hire) were never in competition for the same job or school position at all.
FIRE BECK? YOU'RE JOKING, RIGHT?
At the Huffington Post, Ben Cohen says he thinks Rupert Murdoch will fire Glenn Beck. It'd be nice if Cohen were right, but he's not.
Rupert Murdoch is a smart man. In the U.K, Murdoch aligns his newspapers with the popular political party and helps them enact their policies by giving them favorable coverage. For the past 12 years, he supported the Labour Party. Now they are out of favor, Murdoch switched seamlessly to the Conservatives. Desperate to gain a grip on the Chinese media market, Murdoch saddled up to the Communist Party and even married a Chinese woman.
In short, Murdoch doesn't care about Left or Right. He cares about money.
In the United States, his news channel is doing just about everything it can to irritate the current President, and it is beginning to effect his business....
OK, stop there.
Cohen, of course, goes on to discuss the fact that sponsors are fleeing Beck's show because of racist remarks he's made about the president. That's true -- sponsors are fleeing. (Latest news: a British supermarket chain just stopped its ads on the Sky TV rebroadcast of Beck's show in the U.K.)
But have you seen the ratings overall? TV Newser, September 29, 2009:
Q3 Cable Ratings: FNC Shows Fill Top 10; #3 Network on Cable; Beck Grows Timeslot 136%
... Fox News has been dominating, even more than usual, in 2009. In the just-finished third quarter, Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC combined in Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo in both total day and primetime viewing. FNC is also the only cable news network to post across the board gains vs. Q3 '08.
... FNC had the top 10 programs in cable news.
... And for the month of September, FNC claimed the Top 13 programs in cable news in Total Viewers, which hasn't happened since Nov. 2004....
Go to the link and note the numbers for Beck in particular. His ratings put Fox 136% ahead of where the channel was a year ago in that time slot among viewers in the desirable 25-54 age bracket, and 89% ahead among all viewers. His viewership rivals that of Big Kahuna O'Reilly -- and that's despite the fact that he's on at 5 in the afternoon (O'Reilly is on in prime time).
With ratings like that, Rupe can afford to lose a few sponsors.
As for sucking up to the ruling party? Yeah, Murdoch does that. So when he challenges the head of state in America, it's clear he's made his judgment: Obama and the Democrats are not the people you have to worry about to do business in America. He's not kowtowing to Obama and the Dems because he doesn't fear them. He thinks they're paper tigers. (Can't blame him for thinking that, can you?)
Beck's much-talked-about "hatred for white people" remark might have caused some problems for Murdoch -- but, as I've said, the losses to Murdoch's bottom line are more than offset by the gains. And besides, Murdoch doesn't have to fire Beck -- he just has to order him not to be overtly racist in that same way again. (Coded racism is just fine, of course.)
By the way, let's not forget that Beck's rant was part of an across-the-board let's-call-Obama-a-racist strategy on the right in late July -- see, for instance, Investor's Business Daily and Fox Nation describing health-care reform as "reparations" just around the time Beck was making the same assertion. And also watch this Media Matters compilation video:
And, gosh, what happened right after this late-July flurry of uncoded race talk in the wingnut media? Oh, yeah, right -- the town hall thuggery. Hey, you don't suppose the decision to go over the line was a recruiting technique, do you?
So Beck and Murdoch suffered some consequences. But the net gain has been more than satisfactory, for Murdoch, Beck, and the right. Trust me: Beck isn't going anywhere.
At the Huffington Post, Ben Cohen says he thinks Rupert Murdoch will fire Glenn Beck. It'd be nice if Cohen were right, but he's not.
Rupert Murdoch is a smart man. In the U.K, Murdoch aligns his newspapers with the popular political party and helps them enact their policies by giving them favorable coverage. For the past 12 years, he supported the Labour Party. Now they are out of favor, Murdoch switched seamlessly to the Conservatives. Desperate to gain a grip on the Chinese media market, Murdoch saddled up to the Communist Party and even married a Chinese woman.
In short, Murdoch doesn't care about Left or Right. He cares about money.
In the United States, his news channel is doing just about everything it can to irritate the current President, and it is beginning to effect his business....
OK, stop there.
Cohen, of course, goes on to discuss the fact that sponsors are fleeing Beck's show because of racist remarks he's made about the president. That's true -- sponsors are fleeing. (Latest news: a British supermarket chain just stopped its ads on the Sky TV rebroadcast of Beck's show in the U.K.)
But have you seen the ratings overall? TV Newser, September 29, 2009:
Q3 Cable Ratings: FNC Shows Fill Top 10; #3 Network on Cable; Beck Grows Timeslot 136%
... Fox News has been dominating, even more than usual, in 2009. In the just-finished third quarter, Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC combined in Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo in both total day and primetime viewing. FNC is also the only cable news network to post across the board gains vs. Q3 '08.
... FNC had the top 10 programs in cable news.
... And for the month of September, FNC claimed the Top 13 programs in cable news in Total Viewers, which hasn't happened since Nov. 2004....
Go to the link and note the numbers for Beck in particular. His ratings put Fox 136% ahead of where the channel was a year ago in that time slot among viewers in the desirable 25-54 age bracket, and 89% ahead among all viewers. His viewership rivals that of Big Kahuna O'Reilly -- and that's despite the fact that he's on at 5 in the afternoon (O'Reilly is on in prime time).
With ratings like that, Rupe can afford to lose a few sponsors.
As for sucking up to the ruling party? Yeah, Murdoch does that. So when he challenges the head of state in America, it's clear he's made his judgment: Obama and the Democrats are not the people you have to worry about to do business in America. He's not kowtowing to Obama and the Dems because he doesn't fear them. He thinks they're paper tigers. (Can't blame him for thinking that, can you?)
Beck's much-talked-about "hatred for white people" remark might have caused some problems for Murdoch -- but, as I've said, the losses to Murdoch's bottom line are more than offset by the gains. And besides, Murdoch doesn't have to fire Beck -- he just has to order him not to be overtly racist in that same way again. (Coded racism is just fine, of course.)
By the way, let's not forget that Beck's rant was part of an across-the-board let's-call-Obama-a-racist strategy on the right in late July -- see, for instance, Investor's Business Daily and Fox Nation describing health-care reform as "reparations" just around the time Beck was making the same assertion. And also watch this Media Matters compilation video:
And, gosh, what happened right after this late-July flurry of uncoded race talk in the wingnut media? Oh, yeah, right -- the town hall thuggery. Hey, you don't suppose the decision to go over the line was a recruiting technique, do you?
So Beck and Murdoch suffered some consequences. But the net gain has been more than satisfactory, for Murdoch, Beck, and the right. Trust me: Beck isn't going anywhere.
The Krug-thulu is Shrill
Remember when the Times wouldn't let him even hint that Bush was lying on his Tax numbers?
aimai
Remember when the Times wouldn't let him even hint that Bush was lying on his Tax numbers?
aimai
Sunday, October 04, 2009
AMERICA: WHAT, US WORRY?
The cover story in today's New York Times Magazine is about anxiety -- specifically, about researchers' belief that certain people are predisposed to a higher level of anxiety than others, a predisposition that can carry on through life and rise to the level of a mental disorder.
Curiously, the article doesn't mention people at the other end of the spectrum -- those innately predisposed not to worry. At some point, believing nearly all the time that everything's going to work out fine surely causes problems. At some point, surely, it becomes a bit unhealthy and delusional. But you'd never know it from reading this piece.
But that's America, isn't it? We tend to like people who don't worry, who never anticipate calamity or even unpleasantness. We make them heroes. We elect them to office. Oh, yeah, sure -- we don't always elect them to office. Every so often we elect someone to office who says there are problems in this country. Usually we do this after people who aren't capable of anticipating calamity have screwed everything up for us so much that we need someone to clean up the mess. (And then we tend to blame the mess-noticer for the continued existence of the mess.)
Most of the time, though, the vast majority of Americans don't want to hear it if you feel any anxiety. Full speed ahead! Why are you being such a gloomy Gus ? You're worried that something could go wrong if we invade Iraq? You're afraid the housing boom could be a bubble? You have health insurance and don't have a serious illness and you're worried that if you have a really serious medical problem you might not still be insured, or might not be truly covered? Hey, enough! You're bumming us all out!
I sometimes think the reason liberals struggle in this country is not that we're wrong (as right-wingers believe) but that we're right too soon. We're the first ones to see clouds on the horizon. We're aware very early of the downside risk.
And most of the time we're loathed for it. And our opposite numbers, the power-of-positive-thinking types, are the culture's football heroes, even though they're the ones who actually screw things up. Their utter inability to see danger even when it's actually present, or imminent, isn't seen as a problem at all.
The author of the Times article tells us:
In the modern world, the anxious temperament does offer certain benefits: caution, introspection, the capacity to work alone. These can be adaptive qualities.... high-reactive kids ... grow up to be the Felix Ungers of the world, ... clearing a safe, neat path for the Oscar Madisons.
People with a high-reactive temperament ... are generally conscientious and almost obsessively well-prepared. Worriers are likely to be the most thorough workers and the most attentive friends. Someone who worries about being late will plan to get to places early. Someone anxious about giving a public lecture will work harder to prepare for it. Test-taking anxiety can lead to better studying; fear of traveling can lead to careful mapping of transit routes.
But it's usually assumed that you'll do all this worrying and preparing in a quiet corner all by yourself, for the benefit of a cheerful optimist who takes advantage and gets the glory. Heaven forfend you should peek out from that corner and inject your concerns into any discussion of a serious issue. That's now how we do things in America. We divide the world into doers and doubters. Problems? They'll take care of themselves ... won't they?
The cover story in today's New York Times Magazine is about anxiety -- specifically, about researchers' belief that certain people are predisposed to a higher level of anxiety than others, a predisposition that can carry on through life and rise to the level of a mental disorder.
Curiously, the article doesn't mention people at the other end of the spectrum -- those innately predisposed not to worry. At some point, believing nearly all the time that everything's going to work out fine surely causes problems. At some point, surely, it becomes a bit unhealthy and delusional. But you'd never know it from reading this piece.
But that's America, isn't it? We tend to like people who don't worry, who never anticipate calamity or even unpleasantness. We make them heroes. We elect them to office. Oh, yeah, sure -- we don't always elect them to office. Every so often we elect someone to office who says there are problems in this country. Usually we do this after people who aren't capable of anticipating calamity have screwed everything up for us so much that we need someone to clean up the mess. (And then we tend to blame the mess-noticer for the continued existence of the mess.)
Most of the time, though, the vast majority of Americans don't want to hear it if you feel any anxiety. Full speed ahead! Why are you being such a gloomy Gus ? You're worried that something could go wrong if we invade Iraq? You're afraid the housing boom could be a bubble? You have health insurance and don't have a serious illness and you're worried that if you have a really serious medical problem you might not still be insured, or might not be truly covered? Hey, enough! You're bumming us all out!
I sometimes think the reason liberals struggle in this country is not that we're wrong (as right-wingers believe) but that we're right too soon. We're the first ones to see clouds on the horizon. We're aware very early of the downside risk.
And most of the time we're loathed for it. And our opposite numbers, the power-of-positive-thinking types, are the culture's football heroes, even though they're the ones who actually screw things up. Their utter inability to see danger even when it's actually present, or imminent, isn't seen as a problem at all.
The author of the Times article tells us:
In the modern world, the anxious temperament does offer certain benefits: caution, introspection, the capacity to work alone. These can be adaptive qualities.... high-reactive kids ... grow up to be the Felix Ungers of the world, ... clearing a safe, neat path for the Oscar Madisons.
People with a high-reactive temperament ... are generally conscientious and almost obsessively well-prepared. Worriers are likely to be the most thorough workers and the most attentive friends. Someone who worries about being late will plan to get to places early. Someone anxious about giving a public lecture will work harder to prepare for it. Test-taking anxiety can lead to better studying; fear of traveling can lead to careful mapping of transit routes.
But it's usually assumed that you'll do all this worrying and preparing in a quiet corner all by yourself, for the benefit of a cheerful optimist who takes advantage and gets the glory. Heaven forfend you should peek out from that corner and inject your concerns into any discussion of a serious issue. That's now how we do things in America. We divide the world into doers and doubters. Problems? They'll take care of themselves ... won't they?
IN WHICH I DEFEND CLARK HOYT YET AGAIN, WHILE EVERY OTHER LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER IN AMERICA SNICKERS
Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, is clearly a glutton for punishment: everyone in the left and right blogosphere (except me) mocked his column on ACORN last week, in which he also noted that the Times "would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media."
Righties think this is laughably inadequate, while lefties think this is making wingnut crazies the assignment editors for the Times; that was clear in the blogosphere's reaction to Hoyt's column last week, and it's clear from most of the responses Hoyt quotes this week, which echo the mainstream left and right blog reactions almost exactly.
And then there are these reactions:
Leigh Allen of San Francisco ... said she relies on The Times to keep her informed: "I often don't hear about the latest conflict until I read a Facebook rant from an old high school friend or talk on the phone with my mother (both in conservative Orange County, Calif.). It's embarrassing not to be able to respond with facts when I hadn't even heard about the issue." Michele Cusack of Novato, Calif., said that when someone asked if she had heard the latest about Acorn, "I had to answer 'no' because I get all my news from The New York Times."
Well, exactly.
A hell of a lot of people still get their news exclusively from the Times and other old-line news organizations, which have long felt that much of the crazy, conspiratorial chatter on the far right is beneath them. And then there's a segment of the population -- possibly a third of the country, and possibly the population subgroup most fixated on politics -- for which all that crazy, conspiratorial stuff is the news. Somebody needs to cover the crazies' top stories in a way that isn't crazy and conspiratorial, so the people in the former group can talk to, and (let's hope) rebut, the people in the latter group.
Is that making the crazies into "assignment editors" for the mainstream press? Yeah -- and so what? It's only a problem if the mainstream press lets the crazies dictate conclusions; if, instead, the non-crazies shed light where the crazies have heretofore shed only heat, what's the problem? (And yes, I know: that's a big if.)
Activists and rabble-rousers and hell-raisers, across the political spectrum, always force stories onto the national agenda; that's part of the point of being a political activist. So let's acknowledge the success of the right-wing Wurlitzer, which is both a corporate-funded counterrevolutionary force and a ragtag bunch of troublemakers, for its ability to make a third of the country think something is news whether or not it should be news. And let's stop pretending that playing hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil with regard to this sort of thing is somehow going to make the topics in question disappear from a large of percentage of the country's radar. It seems to me that if a seemingly marginal topic can go from one of Andrew Breitbart's Web sites to the floor of Congress as fast as a Maserati going from zero to 60, then the sane press ought to weigh in before Breitbart steps on the gas.
****
UPDATE: Last word on this. I fully understand skepticism about the Times and other mainstream news outlets. It's hard to imagine them pursuing right-wing stories without echoing the right-wing line, and I understand that. But there's a need for someone to do this, and to do it right. For years we've let the right push stories into the public consciousness without effectively rebutting those stories. We respond to the right-wing noise machine the way Democrats and progressives responded to the town-meeting agitations -- with too little that came too late. That's got to stop.
Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, is clearly a glutton for punishment: everyone in the left and right blogosphere (except me) mocked his column on ACORN last week, in which he also noted that the Times "would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media."
Righties think this is laughably inadequate, while lefties think this is making wingnut crazies the assignment editors for the Times; that was clear in the blogosphere's reaction to Hoyt's column last week, and it's clear from most of the responses Hoyt quotes this week, which echo the mainstream left and right blog reactions almost exactly.
And then there are these reactions:
Leigh Allen of San Francisco ... said she relies on The Times to keep her informed: "I often don't hear about the latest conflict until I read a Facebook rant from an old high school friend or talk on the phone with my mother (both in conservative Orange County, Calif.). It's embarrassing not to be able to respond with facts when I hadn't even heard about the issue." Michele Cusack of Novato, Calif., said that when someone asked if she had heard the latest about Acorn, "I had to answer 'no' because I get all my news from The New York Times."
Well, exactly.
A hell of a lot of people still get their news exclusively from the Times and other old-line news organizations, which have long felt that much of the crazy, conspiratorial chatter on the far right is beneath them. And then there's a segment of the population -- possibly a third of the country, and possibly the population subgroup most fixated on politics -- for which all that crazy, conspiratorial stuff is the news. Somebody needs to cover the crazies' top stories in a way that isn't crazy and conspiratorial, so the people in the former group can talk to, and (let's hope) rebut, the people in the latter group.
Is that making the crazies into "assignment editors" for the mainstream press? Yeah -- and so what? It's only a problem if the mainstream press lets the crazies dictate conclusions; if, instead, the non-crazies shed light where the crazies have heretofore shed only heat, what's the problem? (And yes, I know: that's a big if.)
Activists and rabble-rousers and hell-raisers, across the political spectrum, always force stories onto the national agenda; that's part of the point of being a political activist. So let's acknowledge the success of the right-wing Wurlitzer, which is both a corporate-funded counterrevolutionary force and a ragtag bunch of troublemakers, for its ability to make a third of the country think something is news whether or not it should be news. And let's stop pretending that playing hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil with regard to this sort of thing is somehow going to make the topics in question disappear from a large of percentage of the country's radar. It seems to me that if a seemingly marginal topic can go from one of Andrew Breitbart's Web sites to the floor of Congress as fast as a Maserati going from zero to 60, then the sane press ought to weigh in before Breitbart steps on the gas.
****
UPDATE: Last word on this. I fully understand skepticism about the Times and other mainstream news outlets. It's hard to imagine them pursuing right-wing stories without echoing the right-wing line, and I understand that. But there's a need for someone to do this, and to do it right. For years we've let the right push stories into the public consciousness without effectively rebutting those stories. We respond to the right-wing noise machine the way Democrats and progressives responded to the town-meeting agitations -- with too little that came too late. That's got to stop.
In Re Michael Moore and his Detractors.
Dennis Hartley has a great piece up about Moore and Roy and his commenters are going at it hammer and tongs too. Here's what I've been arguing in comments at Roy's as long as it was polite to do so. I've edited and fixed some things, added some links, and included a few of the intervening comments but the whole thread over there is great.
Me:
chuckling
....But I don't agree entirely with your first sentence and would suggest losing it...
satch
I disagree, Chuck...the unspoken issue here IS class. The way you can tell is that the Right's fallback position, after they've accused Moore of lying, manipulating timelines, and practicing cheap shot ambush filmmaking, and more often than not come up empty, is to pull put the all purpose weapon against anyone fighting for the little guy: the accusation of fomenting Class Warfare.
Yesterday, 8:33:54 PM
Guest
I guess I'm not 100 percent sure who we're talking about anymore. If it's still liberals (you know I mean those other liberals (seriously)) who ritualistically chirp they agree with Moore's politics but don't like his methods, then perhaps I'd agree that it's primarily a class thing. But if we're talking about wingnuts, I'm inclined to believe that they really believe Moore is an elitist. An elite elitist at that. You know they see only what they want to see. They're not very sophisticasted. [sic]
Me:
Dennis Hartley has a great piece up about Moore and Roy and his commenters are going at it hammer and tongs too. Here's what I've been arguing in comments at Roy's as long as it was polite to do so. I've edited and fixed some things, added some links, and included a few of the intervening comments but the whole thread over there is great.
Me:
The unspoken issue here is actually class, not art. Moore is a propagandist in a long and respectable tradition of political theater and political action through theater. Well, who is that theater aimed at? Its not aimed at intellectuals or people who arrive at their political convictions and understandings through study. And its not aimed at the proportion of the population who is getting their moral experience of politics and capitalism through a steady diet of kinder, kuche, kirche fuzzy vaseline smeared evangelical films/images/art. Its aimed at everyone who is dis-involved and dis-enchanted and dis-informed, exhausted and demoralized and who don't get any stimulation or education from a mass popular media market that is wholly corporate owned.
What he's trying to do isn't aimed at people who are choosing between high art and low brow entertainment. Its aimed at people who have little real choice offered to them and who aren't interested in the aesthetic issues, of which clumsiness and repetition are only a few. Moore has set himself the task of alarming, enthralling, challenging, stimulating, angering, and explicating some really complicated things to people who are really busy. Limbaugh and Beck do the same thing and that is why their followers love them--they offer (however crazily) a kind of common sense explanation for the world around their listeners. It can't be stressed too highly that the people who listen to these guys think they are getting a *free education* from someone who is more educated and more connected than they can be. [This, by the way, was one of the discoveries of Janice Radway in Reading the Romance. That the women reading pulp historical fiction actually experienced themselves as getting a powerful educational "boost" and social status boost because of the few, scattered, but valuable historical and cultural bits in the romances.]
Moore is literally the only person on our side--and of course he's not a Democrat but a Progressive (or something)--who takes outreach seriously. The upper class Dems and the serious political actors only care about turning out the vote periodically. They don't care about real outreach or real community building which takes a serious project aimed at informing and enraging voters. But really caring enough to spend the time engaging people where they live is always a dicey proposition class wise. Moore isn't accused of "going native" only because he's already assumed to be one of the low life, low class, radical scum.
aimai
Yesterday, 1:26:26 PM
chuckling
....But I don't agree entirely with your first sentence and would suggest losing it...
satch
I disagree, Chuck...the unspoken issue here IS class. The way you can tell is that the Right's fallback position, after they've accused Moore of lying, manipulating timelines, and practicing cheap shot ambush filmmaking, and more often than not come up empty, is to pull put the all purpose weapon against anyone fighting for the little guy: the accusation of fomenting Class Warfare.
Yesterday, 8:33:54 PM
Guest
I guess I'm not 100 percent sure who we're talking about anymore. If it's still liberals (you know I mean those other liberals (seriously)) who ritualistically chirp they agree with Moore's politics but don't like his methods, then perhaps I'd agree that it's primarily a class thing. But if we're talking about wingnuts, I'm inclined to believe that they really believe Moore is an elitist. An elite elitist at that. You know they see only what they want to see. They're not very sophisticasted. [sic]
Me:
Well, we don't have to be speaking permanently of any one section of society, do we? I agree with Chuckling that leading with that sentence
"The unspoken issue here is actually class, not art. "
was a bit ambiguous, because, of course, it leads to the question of "unspoken by whom." Also, subsidiary questions about Class and Art. Let me just take the "by whom" and "Class" question:
I'd argue that we can split the "by whom" question into three: liberal critics, right wing critics, and an undifferentiated mass audience that Moore, the Liberals, and the Right want to capture and speak to for their own purposes.
1) Middle and Upper Brow (I'm dating myself) discussions of Moore, such as the one that just appeared in the New Yorker, are "about" class because a certain kind of middle class intellectual and liberal finds Moore's championing of the lower classes from their street side/world wrestling foundation aesthetic style disgusting or offputting or overly enthusiastic or too manipulative or all of the above. Its related to class in both its classic formulations--class as a relationship to the economy (these cultural consumers and knowledge workers don't see themselves as being subject to the same class issues and pressures as the working class) and also class as a kind of social status/aesthetic position and, again, the people speaking about and for Moore don't see themselves as the legitimate targets or consumers of his work. His work is low class/low aesthetic/not challenging and people who like that stuff are too.
2) Right wing discussions of Moore are also "about" class and class issues but from a different perspective. The right wing in this country is, of course, a composite of an uneasy mix between capitalist rulers who trade money and media manipulation for votes in order to loot the treasury, and sucker rubes from the lower and working classes who have votes to trade for psychological massage (spite voters, libertarians, evangelicals). In that context Moore's agitprop is *competing for votes* with Fox and Murdoch. Moore specifically rejects the entire ideology and cultural edifice that makes "capitalism" and "the free market" and "individualism" code identical to the interests of any actual working class, immigrant, or poor person. His work is aimed at creating a mass populist movement. Well, so is Fox's work aimed at creating a mass public movement: just one that serves the interests of larger corporate masters.
In this analysis Fox and right wing commenters and analysts have to attack Moore's methods, and also his standing with the imaginary populist crowd. They can do that a number of ways--and they do. They can attack the "crowd" that he's representing and argue that its poor/non white. But Moore counters that by focusing on their very target audience (working class whites) and showing how their interests are not severed from the interests of Fox's out groups (blacks, women, immigrants). They also attack Moore as an authentic representative of their populace--by arguing that he's "not religious" (which is always an ambiguous and shifting target because what they really mean is he's not evangelical and focused on the prosperity gospel, and they are confounded by his catholic/seminary Christianity) or "not nice" or fat, or has no "values" or is anti American, or not a gun owner (which he countered directly in Bowling for Columbine) or that he's not a respectable elite *because* he's working class or he's a hypocritical manipulative elite *because* he's made money doing what he's doing. That's the accusation that he isn't walking the walk by "sharing the wealth" with his employees. That is, that he's nothing but another fat cat elite and so can't ever be aligned with, or speak for, the poor.
Discussions of Moore's wealth and class status, by the right, are extremely complicated and can only be understood with reference to some basic and contradictory assumptions about the way wealth and power play to their populist base. On the one hand wealthy individualists are exalted and held up as the standard towards which even the humblest poor American can and should aspire. That's the market in Galt futures discussed here (and see also its popular, romantic, children's version here and here.)
On the other hand wealthy “elites” are of course, for propaganda purposes, excoriated when necessary as too libertine, too liberal, or too deracinated/unamerican/globalist (see e.g. Gore, Polanski, Soros, Kennedy and hundreds more). Fox News and other rightist organizations play all sides of this court at all times. Underlying these polar opposites—the rich man who deserves everything he's gotten and the rich man who doesn't are lots of other little bits of fifth business. Underlying these is a basic argument that the right wing makes, even when its not making it, that since all people are self interested and wealth interested first any person who, by virtue of their wealth, is now in the upper class has to be a hypocrite and a con man for continuing to pretend that they care about poverty or social justice.
Then there's the actual target audience: that's everyone I talked about up above. And the scary thing about Moore's work for his competitors is that he's damned good at what he does. He knows his audience. He's very convincing to a lot of people, whether because of his low brow, unaesthetic, funny, style or in spite of it. Ask any right wing, conservative, working class guy if he's seen one of Moore's films and he'll tell you he was blown away by how much sense it made. That's why the right wing spends so much time simply trying to defang Moore and prevent people from even wanting to go see his stuff. They don't screen Moore's films to make fun of them. They don't use his films as object lessons. They work incredibly hard to make sure that every time Moore's name is mentioned some weak kneed liberal is standing by to tut tut and say "well, of course he goes over the top" or "the film drags a bit" or "anyway, he's fat..." I see why Fox and the conservatives have to do this--they are simply trying to protect market share--but I'm damned if I can see why liberals buy into it unless, as I suppose one is forced to, one decides that the liberal project is, as Rosenberg is arguing over at Open Left, a complete con and a failure and doesn't want to achieve its own aims.
If Moore had Murdoch's money and Murdoch's control of Fox News? We'd see a revolution in this country along the lines that Moore wants.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
This is So Disturbing and Complicated that You Have To Read the Whole Thing. Then Shoot Yourself. It Will Be Quicker.
Kagro X. explains Senate Parliamentary Procedure:
Italics mine. This doesn't make the slightest sense unless you read the whole thing over there, so I'll wait while you do that....
OK, done? Now, here's the thing. This *still* doesn't make the slightest sense. In no realistic way, shape, or form does a given Senator not know how they will or won't vote on something as big as "My Party's Signature Bill and the Public Option." The actual voting procedure is not really a set of strategic choices in which the vote is always up for grabs. In reality the Senator has some goals--which may or may not conflict with the party hierarchy and what it wants--and the Party leaders have some goals and some tools to compel compliance. If the Party isn't using its tools that's another matter. But that is merely to say that they are abdicating their responsibility to get the best legislation, or at any rate the legislation they want, out of the process.
We have exactly the 60 votes necessary under all the arcane rules. We have 60 Senators who should be completely under our thumb and committed to the good of the party and the country which, in this case, is arguably the same thing and certainly from their perspective has to be the same thing. In the real world all our Senators stand or fall with the fortunes of our party, and our party stands or falls with the fortunes of our legislation. This weird calculation of individual Senatorial interests is based on some notion that there's some legitimate separation between a Senator's interests and that of the national party platform. But even weirder, its based on the totally fake argument that there is a legitimate fear, on the part of those wavering Senators, that minor portions of their voting record will be known and remembered against them by their constituents. Its an utter and complete head fake. No one in the real world--and no one in their states--is watching to see whether a given Senator voted against their party on a key piece of legislation. Most people have no idea what each step entails. They simply don't care. If they like the end piece of legislation they won't know who supported it, and if they don't like it they still won't know. And as the Republicans have demonstrated with their recent volte face on Medicare even if you opposed the original legislation and voted against it you can always come around and champion it later to great effect. Everyone loves a reformed whore. Or you can say you were lied to. (Just don't try Kerry's moronic "I voted for it before I voted against it." Really, just don't bother.)
I've been saying this for a while and so its not new but what the hell. There is simply no excuse for Reid and Obama and Rahm and the Democratic Donors to have allowed Lincoln, the Nelson's, or anyone else to think that going against the Party and its signature legislation could ever have any payoff for them. The votes should have been in Reid's pocket before Obama started us down this road. And they could have been. Of course they could have been. Each one of these assholes has his price.(Lincoln, Carper, Nelson, Nelson, Baucus, Conrad, I'm looking at you.) They have done everything up to and including hanging a tag with a dollar sign on every orifice. And I can't exactly blame them. Obama and Rahm with their backroom Pharma Deal have made it clear that there wasn't enough money in the General Fund for in house bribery. They've allowed the Democrats to continue relying on outside funders, as it were, for their needs. If you want to call the tune, you've got to pay the piper. This aint no eleventy eleven dimension chessety chess game. Its a straight up "when good government is for sale money talks and bullshit walks" same as it is when bad government is for sale.
aimai
Kagro X. explains Senate Parliamentary Procedure:
See what I mean? Without an unanimous consent agreement imposing a 60 vote threshold on a public option amendment, the leadership will have to prevail on wavering Dems for their cloture votes on the amendment, then again on final passage of the Senate bill (assuming the public option amendment is adopted, and causes Republicans to force a cloture vote on the whole bill), then maybe a third time on the conference report. But with an unanimous consent agreement and a 60 vote threshold, conservadems get to vote no on the public option amendment and defeat it even if there's a majority for it, and then won't be asked to cast a procedural or substantive vote involving the public option again until the measure before them is the conference report. They may be asked along the way to vote for cloture on any number of other issues, but not the public option.
So, is that a reason to swallow a strategy that entails keeping the public option out of the bill brought to the Senate floor, and OK-ing an unanimous consent agreement imposing a 60 vote threshold to add it? Well, it's a plausible explanation for it, anyway. But boy, is that ever going to require a sales job. And it had better include some ironclad guarantees from the Dems who get pampered by it. Because you're asking a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus, not to mention grassroots supporters across the country, to sit on their hands while events look for all the world like the public option is going to its death, all for the political comfort of a very few nervous, conservative Democrats. And those Democrats will have the power to sink the whole thing in the end, if they think it suits them. The conventional wisdom may be that no Dem wants the blood of the health bill on their hands, but the Democrats we're talking about are busy running away from the party as fast as they can (or at least as fast as they can look like they're running, anyway). And those aren't people I feel all that comfortable trusting with that much power over such an important bill.
How will you be able to tell -- if the public option isn't in the Senate's version of the bill and a public option amendment goes down under a 60 vote threshold -- whether there's a secret deal to bring it back in conference, and an agreement from troublemaking Dems to buck up for one key cloture vote in the end, if necessary?
You won't. You'll be asked to believe in the eleventy-billion dimensional chess Tooth Fairy again. But could there really be one? Yes there could.
Italics mine. This doesn't make the slightest sense unless you read the whole thing over there, so I'll wait while you do that....
OK, done? Now, here's the thing. This *still* doesn't make the slightest sense. In no realistic way, shape, or form does a given Senator not know how they will or won't vote on something as big as "My Party's Signature Bill and the Public Option." The actual voting procedure is not really a set of strategic choices in which the vote is always up for grabs. In reality the Senator has some goals--which may or may not conflict with the party hierarchy and what it wants--and the Party leaders have some goals and some tools to compel compliance. If the Party isn't using its tools that's another matter. But that is merely to say that they are abdicating their responsibility to get the best legislation, or at any rate the legislation they want, out of the process.
We have exactly the 60 votes necessary under all the arcane rules. We have 60 Senators who should be completely under our thumb and committed to the good of the party and the country which, in this case, is arguably the same thing and certainly from their perspective has to be the same thing. In the real world all our Senators stand or fall with the fortunes of our party, and our party stands or falls with the fortunes of our legislation. This weird calculation of individual Senatorial interests is based on some notion that there's some legitimate separation between a Senator's interests and that of the national party platform. But even weirder, its based on the totally fake argument that there is a legitimate fear, on the part of those wavering Senators, that minor portions of their voting record will be known and remembered against them by their constituents. Its an utter and complete head fake. No one in the real world--and no one in their states--is watching to see whether a given Senator voted against their party on a key piece of legislation. Most people have no idea what each step entails. They simply don't care. If they like the end piece of legislation they won't know who supported it, and if they don't like it they still won't know. And as the Republicans have demonstrated with their recent volte face on Medicare even if you opposed the original legislation and voted against it you can always come around and champion it later to great effect. Everyone loves a reformed whore. Or you can say you were lied to. (Just don't try Kerry's moronic "I voted for it before I voted against it." Really, just don't bother.)
I've been saying this for a while and so its not new but what the hell. There is simply no excuse for Reid and Obama and Rahm and the Democratic Donors to have allowed Lincoln, the Nelson's, or anyone else to think that going against the Party and its signature legislation could ever have any payoff for them. The votes should have been in Reid's pocket before Obama started us down this road. And they could have been. Of course they could have been. Each one of these assholes has his price.(Lincoln, Carper, Nelson, Nelson, Baucus, Conrad, I'm looking at you.) They have done everything up to and including hanging a tag with a dollar sign on every orifice. And I can't exactly blame them. Obama and Rahm with their backroom Pharma Deal have made it clear that there wasn't enough money in the General Fund for in house bribery. They've allowed the Democrats to continue relying on outside funders, as it were, for their needs. If you want to call the tune, you've got to pay the piper. This aint no eleventy eleven dimension chessety chess game. Its a straight up "when good government is for sale money talks and bullshit walks" same as it is when bad government is for sale.
aimai
SHED EVEN MORE TEARS FOR THE SUPER-RICH
Yet another article in The New York Times about how utterly horrible it is to be stinking rich in this downturn:
IT turns out the other half -- or at least the tiny slice who live at the top of the wealth pyramid -- are not sleeping any better than the rest of America.
(We'll be the judge of that.)
At a closed-door meeting of advisers to family offices -- which serve families who typically are worth more than $500 million -- I learned that the super-rich are just as concerned about the future as everyone else.
Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March 9 low, the family office advisers said many of their wealthiest clients were bracing for more bad news...
According to a study the Family Office Exchange plans to release this month, the super-rich are most worried about what they do not know. Some 45 percent of the 108 ultrahigh-net-worth families surveyed in August ranked the economy and financial markets as their No. 1 concern. They were most concerned about government intervention in the financial markets and a commercial real estate bust....
[A] risk to super-rich families is government action and increased regulation. They suspect it is coming but do not know how it will affect them. The result is that they are increasingly anxious about the future while still shell-shocked from the past year....
You know what, richies? Maybe you wouldn't have been as freaking shell-shocked from the past year if, a few years ago, all the regulations you fret about so much had actually been enforced. Maybe regulation is your friend, not your enemy. Maybe, when regulators don't regulate, things can actually get so bad that even people like you are affected.
Maybe regulators could have prevented the nightmare -- the living hell -- you're currently experiencing:
The basic issue for them is deciding what they want to do as a family now that they realize they cannot do everything. "You're worth $500 million one day and wake up the next and it's $350 million and you've pledged $100 million to the Met," said Rob Elliott, senior managing director at Bessemer.
Oh, the humanity!
And give me a break -- if there are new regulations, you have people to figure out exactly how to take advantage of them/manipulate them/evade them. (The very folks who are the subject of this article.) And come on -- you richies are smart enough to know that the Beckista rubes are wong -- the Obama administration, however populist it sounds at times, really, really worries about your welfare. If it didn't, it would have called down the nation's wrath on you full bore months ago. (Apparently it will never do so at all.)
Meanwhile, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now:
NO MORE EASY MONEY One reason for the subprime mortgage collapse was that banks gave mortgages to homebuyers without verifying their ability to repay. The super-rich had their own version of this: the signature loan.
In this case, a person's net worth would be verified but not, say, the value of the building she was buying. The feeling was if someone was worth $1 billion, she would have no problem paying back a loan for a $100 million office tower.
... One of the other uses of signature loans had been to pay for a lifestyle. Until a few years ago, many banks advised wealthy families to have 100 percent of their wealth invested to take advantage of the high returns across asset classes. If they needed cash, they could borrow at a low rate. It was easy, until it was not.
"They've realized they can't have everything," Ms. McCarthy said. "Now they're asking, Is it worth it? That's a question everyone should be asking."
Yeah, that's what I'm asking: Is it worth it? Is it worth it to use slippery financial practices to be staggeringly stinking rich when I could swear off them and just be startlingly stinking rich?
I'm so glad my betters have taught me this lesson -- in this downturn, it's really applicable to my lifestyle.
Yet another article in The New York Times about how utterly horrible it is to be stinking rich in this downturn:
IT turns out the other half -- or at least the tiny slice who live at the top of the wealth pyramid -- are not sleeping any better than the rest of America.
(We'll be the judge of that.)
At a closed-door meeting of advisers to family offices -- which serve families who typically are worth more than $500 million -- I learned that the super-rich are just as concerned about the future as everyone else.
Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March 9 low, the family office advisers said many of their wealthiest clients were bracing for more bad news...
According to a study the Family Office Exchange plans to release this month, the super-rich are most worried about what they do not know. Some 45 percent of the 108 ultrahigh-net-worth families surveyed in August ranked the economy and financial markets as their No. 1 concern. They were most concerned about government intervention in the financial markets and a commercial real estate bust....
[A] risk to super-rich families is government action and increased regulation. They suspect it is coming but do not know how it will affect them. The result is that they are increasingly anxious about the future while still shell-shocked from the past year....
You know what, richies? Maybe you wouldn't have been as freaking shell-shocked from the past year if, a few years ago, all the regulations you fret about so much had actually been enforced. Maybe regulation is your friend, not your enemy. Maybe, when regulators don't regulate, things can actually get so bad that even people like you are affected.
Maybe regulators could have prevented the nightmare -- the living hell -- you're currently experiencing:
The basic issue for them is deciding what they want to do as a family now that they realize they cannot do everything. "You're worth $500 million one day and wake up the next and it's $350 million and you've pledged $100 million to the Met," said Rob Elliott, senior managing director at Bessemer.
Oh, the humanity!
And give me a break -- if there are new regulations, you have people to figure out exactly how to take advantage of them/manipulate them/evade them. (The very folks who are the subject of this article.) And come on -- you richies are smart enough to know that the Beckista rubes are wong -- the Obama administration, however populist it sounds at times, really, really worries about your welfare. If it didn't, it would have called down the nation's wrath on you full bore months ago. (Apparently it will never do so at all.)
Meanwhile, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now:
NO MORE EASY MONEY One reason for the subprime mortgage collapse was that banks gave mortgages to homebuyers without verifying their ability to repay. The super-rich had their own version of this: the signature loan.
In this case, a person's net worth would be verified but not, say, the value of the building she was buying. The feeling was if someone was worth $1 billion, she would have no problem paying back a loan for a $100 million office tower.
... One of the other uses of signature loans had been to pay for a lifestyle. Until a few years ago, many banks advised wealthy families to have 100 percent of their wealth invested to take advantage of the high returns across asset classes. If they needed cash, they could borrow at a low rate. It was easy, until it was not.
"They've realized they can't have everything," Ms. McCarthy said. "Now they're asking, Is it worth it? That's a question everyone should be asking."
Yeah, that's what I'm asking: Is it worth it? Is it worth it to use slippery financial practices to be staggeringly stinking rich when I could swear off them and just be startlingly stinking rich?
I'm so glad my betters have taught me this lesson -- in this downturn, it's really applicable to my lifestyle.
IN MODERATION AT BALLOON JUICE? WHAT? I'M TOO IMMODERATE FOR BALLOON JUICE???
I didn't even mention the word socialism!
A great discussion of the Right Wing Celebration of the death of another American City--the IOC rejection of Chicago--has been going on for two days over at Balloon Juice. All the comments are great and worth reading even if you don't brew beer. My comment is long and winding but it hit the moderation wall and I wanted to post it here.
I didn't even mention the word socialism!
A great discussion of the Right Wing Celebration of the death of another American City--the IOC rejection of Chicago--has been going on for two days over at Balloon Juice. All the comments are great and worth reading even if you don't brew beer. My comment is long and winding but it hit the moderation wall and I wanted to post it here.
The whole thing is fascinating on a number of levels. First, its been standard operating procedure for the right wing to find an “enemy city” and an enemy people within the US itself to run against—and from that point on everything that is good or bad about that city, or for that city, is seen through the lens of a zero sum game. If its good for that city/its bad for the republicans, if its bad for that city/its good for the republicans. "Ford to [New York]: Drop Dead!" anyone? George Bush ran against Massachusetts over and over again, as well as against other states—naming names, distinguishing himself by denying (for example) that he was born in CT/the east coast. No modern democratic candidate would ever dream of running against an entire part of the country. Dean, for example, explicitly tried to include southerners in to what he was doing. You never saw Kerry attack Texas or Texas mores. He wanted Texan votes. You saw the entire Republican party swing into action and attack New Orleans and the state of Louisiana as well as individual Katrina victims and the press didn't think anything of it.
At a media level: O’Reilly, as others have noted, explicitly wished for the destruction of SF—that it be left undefended as a kind of non America. Cokie Roberts referred to Hawaii as not really American and Obama as somehow foreign for vacationing there. Savage (IIRC) loudly proclaimed his hatred for New York and specifically for the 9/11 victims and widows.
But the Republicans always need an internal enemy. This is just the latest incarnation.
The other thing that is going on is a similar strange over identification with the body of the king and therefore with the strength and potency of the usurper’s body. When Bush was King the strength, manliness, genitalia, swagger, compassion, and even thumbsucking need for his own pillow at night were explicitly celebrated. Bush was our King, and thus all credit that accrued to him accrued to us. But what happens when the new King is a usurper or a changeling child? This is explicitly the case, for Republicans at this point. And they are going through all the stages of discovering how uncomfortable it is to be identified with a symbol and a person who you otherwise reject. We're all Dixie Chicks now!
When the Republicans obsesses about our “Foreign Image” and Obama as strong dictator/weak pussy. As other people have pointed out they consistently represent him as “Chamberlain on Foreign Policy” and “Hitler on Domestic Policy” but they are happy to play off these oppositions and flip it where the flip makes Obama look bad, or worse look illegitimate.
We have to understand that the Republican Party at this point has no real program—neither foreign nor domestic. Their programs and policies are purely reactive, as well as reactionary. Senator DeMint’s pro-coup policy is a perfect example. The Republican Party and the American People have no legitimate dog in this fight. Why’s he there? Why does a dog lick its balls? All that they have is an unbroken cry of primal rage that they don’t control the horizontal and they don’t control the vertical. And all that they can try to do is get back in the game by controlling, as they see it, the optics of the situation.
So the whole focus is on trying to figure out what makes Obama look bad to other people. They don’t care whether its logical (countries like to have the Olympics, brings money in), or historically relevant (Bush wanted the Olympics to be in Chicago and would have lobbied hard for it), or even sane (Obama wears mom jeans! the sexiest man alive is not sexy! Obama uses a teleprompter! A well known author, speaker, teacher is actually really stupid!). That’s the strategy. What’s the payoff? Well, at this point, they are hoping the payoff is real, as in their “side” sort of “owns” the week in news. But really of course the payoff is purely psychological. They can’t help themselves. They are really hurt and angry that their politics and policies are dominated by “that one” from “the other side.” And they want and need to share their hurt with the rest of the country.
Can we avoid becoming part of their little psychodrama? This point was raised on an earlier thread at Baloon Juice. And the answer there—Elle’s (or Elie?) and General Winfield Stuck, I believe, argued that we have to keep politely and insultingly focused on what is important, while making fun of them a teeny bit. I think that’s right. And ultimately I think that is what is happening. The tea parties, the cheering for the loss of the Olympics, the sobbing “he’s a terrorist” and “where’s the birth certificate” and “you’re going to kill granny” is starting to look bad to the general public. They had to turn the control of the imagery over to a stupid, slovenly, fat, hysterical, angry, sobbing, spiteful, set of “not ready for prime time” losers with the August recess. They don’t fully control the image of their party anymore—not on TV and not on the streets. That is really hurting them with the general public. And they know it.
So we can’t ignore them because that enables them to maintain a two track system in which dignified elder statesmen speak up for a frightened but powerless imaginary majority of white Americans. We have to let them, or force them, to own their hysterics and their holy rollers and their sobbing, bitching, whining, moaning, out to lunch minority. We have to keep pointing out just how childish, spiteful, stupid, and besides the point the right wing’s fixation on Obama is.
They are explicitly saying that if Obama is America then they hate America. And any thing or person they identify with Obama will come in for the same kind of hatred and obsessive spite. But while this works for them it can't really work for the rest of the country, can it? I mean, for the duration, Obama is America on the world stage. And if they are going to aim their anger at everything and everyone that has ever touched Obama, or been touched by him, they are going to have to aim their fire at pretty much everyone in the country. That's what it comes down to, doesn't it? If Obama is Hawaiian Hawaii's out, if Obama is Chicago, Chicago's out, if Obama is Black, black people are out, if Obama is mainline Christian, mainline Christian's are out, if Obama is an elitist banker type, elitist banker types are out, if Obama is a sexy husband, sexy husband's are out (they threw a fit over his taking his wife out to a special dinner, remember!), if Obama talks to school kids, talking to school kids are out, if Obama visits the public parks, public parks are out.
Within the party this can look like another round of the Life of Brian's famous PFOJ sketch. Its all fun and games until you start insisting that "if you really want to join the People's Judean Front...you have to really hate the Romans..." if everyone around you, at some point, is going to be called a Roman. In very short order there will be no constituency, no part of the country, and no individual voter who the Republicans and their media representatives haven't first tied to Obama and then attacked as race, class, culture, or religious traitors. The bigger Obama gets and the more evil, well--the more evil all his imagined supporters. Its hard to walk that back. They are trying to walk it back already--they started out the summer calling Medicare botched socialism and eventually realized that they were telling grandma she was a botched socialist leech. Graham tried to split the baby on that one yesterday when he said this:"Do I want some of his policies to fail? You better believe it," he said. "Do I want him to fail? No. Because he's my commander-in-chief."
Graham realizes the danger that his party is in--they are tied to a very vociferous, angry, hysterical, irrational, and spiteful base and as long as that is the public face of their party they won't be able to win back any voters. But he's not a Republican for nothing--he's not smart enough, or not sane enough, or honest enough to be able to differentiate between his party's will to power and a rational democratic system. A good person would never have wound up his pitch to the voters with "I want Obama's policies to fail." No liberal ever said that they wanted Bush's war in Iraq to "fail"--they might have thought and believed that it was bad policy, and that it wouldn't work. But *failure* of any major policy initiative has so much punishing fallout that we never, ever, hope for it. The fact that Graham couldn't figure out a way to say that is shocking but not surprising. He went as far as he could go with a party and a base that will take even that anodyne fact of political life as a slap in the face.
aimai
Friday, October 02, 2009
WHEN THEY'RE NOT RUNNING IT, RIGHT-WINGERS HATE AMERICA
Well, the schadenfreude was predictable:
When the International Olympic Committee voted against Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics this morning -- after the President and First Lady flew to Copenhagen to push for it in person -- the Weekly Standard newsroom burst into applause.
"Cheers erupt at Weekly Standard world headquarters," wrote editor John McCormack in a post titled "Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!" ...
"Chicago and Tokyo eliminated. No Obamalypics," Michelle Malkin tweeted, following up with, "Game over on Obamalympics. Next up, Obamacare."
"Please, please let me break this news to you. It's so sweet," said Glenn Beck on his radio show....
Ah, but just imagine the right-wing reaction if Chicago's experience had been a rerun of London's four years ago:
LONDON, July 7 - Bomb explosions tore through three London subway trains and a red double-decker bus in a deadly terror attack today, killing at least 37 people in coordinated rush hour carnage that left the city stunned, bloodied but stoic.
Only one day after the British capital erupted in joy at winning the 2012 Olympic competition over such cities as Paris and New York, commuters packed in the city's subways -- the Tube -- were plunged into the city's perennial nightmare of a subterranean bloodbath....
A win for Chicago today, then terrorist bombings on the city's public transportation system tomorrow? Can you imagine?
The smug satisfaction of the right would have been off the charts.
Well, the schadenfreude was predictable:
When the International Olympic Committee voted against Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics this morning -- after the President and First Lady flew to Copenhagen to push for it in person -- the Weekly Standard newsroom burst into applause.
"Cheers erupt at Weekly Standard world headquarters," wrote editor John McCormack in a post titled "Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!" ...
"Chicago and Tokyo eliminated. No Obamalypics," Michelle Malkin tweeted, following up with, "Game over on Obamalympics. Next up, Obamacare."
"Please, please let me break this news to you. It's so sweet," said Glenn Beck on his radio show....
Ah, but just imagine the right-wing reaction if Chicago's experience had been a rerun of London's four years ago:
LONDON, July 7 - Bomb explosions tore through three London subway trains and a red double-decker bus in a deadly terror attack today, killing at least 37 people in coordinated rush hour carnage that left the city stunned, bloodied but stoic.
Only one day after the British capital erupted in joy at winning the 2012 Olympic competition over such cities as Paris and New York, commuters packed in the city's subways -- the Tube -- were plunged into the city's perennial nightmare of a subterranean bloodbath....
A win for Chicago today, then terrorist bombings on the city's public transportation system tomorrow? Can you imagine?
The smug satisfaction of the right would have been off the charts.
THEY'RE PAPER TIGERS! NO, THEY'RE TAKING OVER! NO, THEY'RE ...
Right-(sorta)-centrist he-man David Brooks doesn't think the wingnuts are so tough. Look, he says, at the '08 GOP primaries:
It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They're weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.
Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.
Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins!
... McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks ... can't even deliver South Carolina!
Brooks thinks he's proved that the crazies don't have as much clout as they think they do. In fact, all he's proved is that they lose some clout when they're not all rowing in the same direction. Some, as he said, liked Thompson, others Romney. And there were further divisions: Sean Hannity was continuing his bromance with Rudy Giuliani, as was Pat Robertson.
The lack of a coherent, relentlessly reiterated single message from the usually highly disciplined GOP noise machine left the rank-and-file to think for themselves -- and some of them, yes, acted in ways their leaders didn't like. Many evangelical voters ignored the Huck's-a-squish talk and persuaded themselves that Huckabee would bring a much-needed theocracy to America. Military-minded righties responded to McCain's saber-rattling -- which he seemed to made the focus of his campaign almost unwittingly, as if he didn't quite realize that the best way to win over modern GOP voters was to out-butch his opponents on the war, disregarding the fact that the mainstream commentariat said the war was broadly unpopular.
Brooks goes on to argue that wingnut talkers failed on immigration:
Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. House Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their re-election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their seats.
Wow! Big victory for the forces of reason! That must be why the Bush administration's immigration reform effort passed with flying colors! ... Er, what's that? It didn't? Oh, yeah, right.
As Brooks says:
Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don't exist.
Right. That's the point. If people think you have power, if they defer to you because you seem to have power, you, um, have power.
Besides, it's different now. This isn't a primary season with multiple preferred outcomes. It's not even a right-wing battle against a right-wing president whose position on one issue doesn't jibe with that of his party's base.
There's a Democrat in the White House and there are Democratic majorities in Congress. There's one enemy. There's one target. And much of what's being pursued by the Democrats is economic, so the fat cats and lobbyists are out front, and the Christians are rowing in the same direction as the fat cats (because it's always easy to get them to believe their interests and the fat cats' interests coincide), and the right-wing talkers have talking points exquisitely crafted by the finest artisanal talking-point crafters in the lobbying community.
So, no, David, the bloviators aren't paper tigers.
****
Peggy Noonan has a very different message today:
When William Safire died the other day, we lost one of the Elders of journalism and the argumentative arts. We've been losing a lot of them lately: Walter Cronkite, Bob Novak, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol....
You know the current media environment. You think I'm about to say, "Boy, what's said on cable, radio and the Internet now is really harmful and dangerous." And you're right, and it is. Some of the ranters don't have the faintest idea where the line is....
It is a daily agitating barrage that coarsens and inflames. It tears the national fabric. But it could wind up doing worse than that.
This is why, I think, so many people ... are worried that our elected leaders are not safe, that this overheated era will end in some violent act or acts.
... knowing where the line is, matters. Seeing clearly the lay of the land, knowing the facts of the country and your countrymen, matters.
Which gets us back to Safire and Cronkite and Novak and the rest. They knew where the line was.
Safire? Novak? Kristol? They knew where the line was? The hell they did. They were the transitional generation: they watched the crazies rise up -- and happily worked hand in glove with them. They gave them mainstream cred. They used their Georegetown-cocktail-party reputations to blur the distinction between right-wing bomb-throwing and business as usual.
If a politician or a large number of workers in a federal building end up dead sometime soon, the late lamented alleged line-observers will not be exempt from responsibility.
Right-(sorta)-centrist he-man David Brooks doesn't think the wingnuts are so tough. Look, he says, at the '08 GOP primaries:
It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They're weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.
Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.
Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins!
... McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks ... can't even deliver South Carolina!
Brooks thinks he's proved that the crazies don't have as much clout as they think they do. In fact, all he's proved is that they lose some clout when they're not all rowing in the same direction. Some, as he said, liked Thompson, others Romney. And there were further divisions: Sean Hannity was continuing his bromance with Rudy Giuliani, as was Pat Robertson.
The lack of a coherent, relentlessly reiterated single message from the usually highly disciplined GOP noise machine left the rank-and-file to think for themselves -- and some of them, yes, acted in ways their leaders didn't like. Many evangelical voters ignored the Huck's-a-squish talk and persuaded themselves that Huckabee would bring a much-needed theocracy to America. Military-minded righties responded to McCain's saber-rattling -- which he seemed to made the focus of his campaign almost unwittingly, as if he didn't quite realize that the best way to win over modern GOP voters was to out-butch his opponents on the war, disregarding the fact that the mainstream commentariat said the war was broadly unpopular.
Brooks goes on to argue that wingnut talkers failed on immigration:
Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. House Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their re-election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their seats.
Wow! Big victory for the forces of reason! That must be why the Bush administration's immigration reform effort passed with flying colors! ... Er, what's that? It didn't? Oh, yeah, right.
As Brooks says:
Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don't exist.
Right. That's the point. If people think you have power, if they defer to you because you seem to have power, you, um, have power.
Besides, it's different now. This isn't a primary season with multiple preferred outcomes. It's not even a right-wing battle against a right-wing president whose position on one issue doesn't jibe with that of his party's base.
There's a Democrat in the White House and there are Democratic majorities in Congress. There's one enemy. There's one target. And much of what's being pursued by the Democrats is economic, so the fat cats and lobbyists are out front, and the Christians are rowing in the same direction as the fat cats (because it's always easy to get them to believe their interests and the fat cats' interests coincide), and the right-wing talkers have talking points exquisitely crafted by the finest artisanal talking-point crafters in the lobbying community.
So, no, David, the bloviators aren't paper tigers.
****
Peggy Noonan has a very different message today:
When William Safire died the other day, we lost one of the Elders of journalism and the argumentative arts. We've been losing a lot of them lately: Walter Cronkite, Bob Novak, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol....
You know the current media environment. You think I'm about to say, "Boy, what's said on cable, radio and the Internet now is really harmful and dangerous." And you're right, and it is. Some of the ranters don't have the faintest idea where the line is....
It is a daily agitating barrage that coarsens and inflames. It tears the national fabric. But it could wind up doing worse than that.
This is why, I think, so many people ... are worried that our elected leaders are not safe, that this overheated era will end in some violent act or acts.
... knowing where the line is, matters. Seeing clearly the lay of the land, knowing the facts of the country and your countrymen, matters.
Which gets us back to Safire and Cronkite and Novak and the rest. They knew where the line was.
Safire? Novak? Kristol? They knew where the line was? The hell they did. They were the transitional generation: they watched the crazies rise up -- and happily worked hand in glove with them. They gave them mainstream cred. They used their Georegetown-cocktail-party reputations to blur the distinction between right-wing bomb-throwing and business as usual.
If a politician or a large number of workers in a federal building end up dead sometime soon, the late lamented alleged line-observers will not be exempt from responsibility.
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING
I should say something serious in response to the big New York Times story about John Ensign's sleazy efforts to build up a lobbying business for ex-aide Douglas Hampton in the wake of Ensign's affair with Hampton's wife -- but I find myself fixated on one detail in the story:
At a black-tie Christmas party at the White House in 2006, Mr. Ensign and Ms. Hampton beamed as they posed for a picture with President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. It was that night that he realized that his feelings toward Ms. Hampton had become romantic....
Are we supposed to read this as cause and effect?
Eeeeeuuuuuuw.
I should say something serious in response to the big New York Times story about John Ensign's sleazy efforts to build up a lobbying business for ex-aide Douglas Hampton in the wake of Ensign's affair with Hampton's wife -- but I find myself fixated on one detail in the story:
At a black-tie Christmas party at the White House in 2006, Mr. Ensign and Ms. Hampton beamed as they posed for a picture with President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. It was that night that he realized that his feelings toward Ms. Hampton had become romantic....
Are we supposed to read this as cause and effect?
Eeeeeuuuuuuw.
Rats Eat the Seed Corn:
Via the incomparable Sadly,NO!, the most trusted name in Sarcasm.
A)
B)
Via the incomparable Sadly,NO!, the most trusted name in Sarcasm.
A)
Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon’s police force if it votes to unionize.
B)
You didn’t read that incorrectly,” blogs Zaid Jilani. “Councilman Erickson’s response to the possibility of Macon’s cops forming a labor union is to abolish the police department.”
Thursday, October 01, 2009
MATTHEW YGLESIAS IS RIGHT -- AND WRONG
Matt's really on to something when he says this about Representative Alan Grayson's "die quickly" speech:
I think the real issue -- and the real import -- of Grayson's statement is that it involved breaking one of the unspoken rules of modern American politics. The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don't. Instead, progressives talk about our causes in bloodless technocratic terms. This is also one of the reasons that Ted Kennedy's stark, moralistic attack on Robert Bork's legal theories are for some reason often cast by the MSM as some kind of illegitimate smear campaign. The reality is that it was just him talking about a conservative the way conservatives relatively talk about liberals. Like Grayson he characterized his opponents' views polemically, but wasn't offering any kind of wild factual distortions. But moralism from the left is very unfamiliar to American political debates.
But then Matt says this:
There's a semi-legitimate practical reason for this, namely the fact that substantially more people identify as conservatives than identify as liberals.
Matt, is it possible you're confusing cause and effect? Do Democratic pols refrain from this sort of rhetoric because there aren't very many self-identified liberals -- or are there not very many self-identified liberals at least partly because Democratic pols hardly ever talk this way?
Matt's really on to something when he says this about Representative Alan Grayson's "die quickly" speech:
I think the real issue -- and the real import -- of Grayson's statement is that it involved breaking one of the unspoken rules of modern American politics. The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don't. Instead, progressives talk about our causes in bloodless technocratic terms. This is also one of the reasons that Ted Kennedy's stark, moralistic attack on Robert Bork's legal theories are for some reason often cast by the MSM as some kind of illegitimate smear campaign. The reality is that it was just him talking about a conservative the way conservatives relatively talk about liberals. Like Grayson he characterized his opponents' views polemically, but wasn't offering any kind of wild factual distortions. But moralism from the left is very unfamiliar to American political debates.
But then Matt says this:
There's a semi-legitimate practical reason for this, namely the fact that substantially more people identify as conservatives than identify as liberals.
Matt, is it possible you're confusing cause and effect? Do Democratic pols refrain from this sort of rhetoric because there aren't very many self-identified liberals -- or are there not very many self-identified liberals at least partly because Democratic pols hardly ever talk this way?
GLENN BECK DESCRIBES HIS MOST DELICIOUS FANTASY
Don't worry, cube dwellers, it's suitable for work (if possibly not for sensitive stomachs), because his most delicious fantasy doesn't involve sex -- it involves being made a martyr by us:
Excerpt from the transcript at Beck's site:
I am willing to go into the night broke for what I believe in. I am willing to lose everything. I am willing, I am willing to be alone. It doesn't bother me.... Shoot me in the head. I'm not going to violate what I believe is right.
He says "willing." What he means is "desperate." Oh, not really -- he doesn't actually want this to happen. But he really, really likes thinking of himself as someone who's ready to be killed or ruined, who's important enough to be killed or ruined, by God or a terrestrial enemy.
More:
It's only a matter of time before they find a way to destroy me. And that's fine. And they are going to try to use me to intimidate you because anybody else gets out of line, that will happen to you, too. Don't think that what happened to Sarah Palin didn't go through my mine when I saw my character on Saturday Night Live and we all laughed and my wife said, my gosh, they have you down. I mean, that is really, I mean, even your mannerisms and your moves. Don't think that I didn't feel like, oh, my gosh, they're going to "Sarah Palin" me. That's what they want you to understand. You get out of line, we'll destroy you. Bring it on, jack.
By the way, do you know what set off all this luxuriating in self-pity, according to the transcript? It was Bill Maher saying this:
MAHER: I'm telling you it is not that long before we're going to find Glenn Beck dressed as a woman or playing with his feces. He is extremely unhinged and it's going to happen on air.
Glenn, you schmuck, he's not talking about us destroying you, he's talking about you losing it completely, all by yourself. Ah, but never mind: the thought of being destroyed by your enemies is much more exquisitely pleasurable.
And as someone who went through some nasty bouts of depression myself, I've got to say I sure hope no poor bastard in the Bible Belt hears this part of Beck's rant (an allusion to his history of substance abuse) and takes it seriously:
I will tell you that in my past I've done bad things. I've already I mean, read my books. Hello. Very clear. I was a bad dude. You don't roll up in a ball, you know, in a fetal position on the floor thinking about putting a gun in your mouth if you're a good guy!
Nice, Glenn -- tell depressives that their depression is their fault. (Plenty of people get into precisely that frame of mind with or without mind-altering substances; it's an illness, for crissakes, not a moral failing.) Hey, Glenn, it's not enough that you're putting every federal employee in America at risk of assassination with your rhetoric? You've got to tell uninformed people with severe mood disorders that they're evil? You're afraid that when this sorry moment in American history is over you won't have enough blood on your hands?
Don't worry, cube dwellers, it's suitable for work (if possibly not for sensitive stomachs), because his most delicious fantasy doesn't involve sex -- it involves being made a martyr by us:
Excerpt from the transcript at Beck's site:
I am willing to go into the night broke for what I believe in. I am willing to lose everything. I am willing, I am willing to be alone. It doesn't bother me.... Shoot me in the head. I'm not going to violate what I believe is right.
He says "willing." What he means is "desperate." Oh, not really -- he doesn't actually want this to happen. But he really, really likes thinking of himself as someone who's ready to be killed or ruined, who's important enough to be killed or ruined, by God or a terrestrial enemy.
More:
It's only a matter of time before they find a way to destroy me. And that's fine. And they are going to try to use me to intimidate you because anybody else gets out of line, that will happen to you, too. Don't think that what happened to Sarah Palin didn't go through my mine when I saw my character on Saturday Night Live and we all laughed and my wife said, my gosh, they have you down. I mean, that is really, I mean, even your mannerisms and your moves. Don't think that I didn't feel like, oh, my gosh, they're going to "Sarah Palin" me. That's what they want you to understand. You get out of line, we'll destroy you. Bring it on, jack.
By the way, do you know what set off all this luxuriating in self-pity, according to the transcript? It was Bill Maher saying this:
MAHER: I'm telling you it is not that long before we're going to find Glenn Beck dressed as a woman or playing with his feces. He is extremely unhinged and it's going to happen on air.
Glenn, you schmuck, he's not talking about us destroying you, he's talking about you losing it completely, all by yourself. Ah, but never mind: the thought of being destroyed by your enemies is much more exquisitely pleasurable.
And as someone who went through some nasty bouts of depression myself, I've got to say I sure hope no poor bastard in the Bible Belt hears this part of Beck's rant (an allusion to his history of substance abuse) and takes it seriously:
I will tell you that in my past I've done bad things. I've already I mean, read my books. Hello. Very clear. I was a bad dude. You don't roll up in a ball, you know, in a fetal position on the floor thinking about putting a gun in your mouth if you're a good guy!
Nice, Glenn -- tell depressives that their depression is their fault. (Plenty of people get into precisely that frame of mind with or without mind-altering substances; it's an illness, for crissakes, not a moral failing.) Hey, Glenn, it's not enough that you're putting every federal employee in America at risk of assassination with your rhetoric? You've got to tell uninformed people with severe mood disorders that they're evil? You're afraid that when this sorry moment in American history is over you won't have enough blood on your hands?
Noodling with God:
And for those times, there's Slacktivist, with the best commenters on the planet:
And for those times, there's Slacktivist, with the best commenters on the planet:
I really don't think the big difference between NT!God and OT!God is that NT!God is particularly nicer, it's that OT!God is big on collective guilt and NT!God isn't. So, OT!God sees nothing wrong with slaughtering Egyptian babies because Pharoah was mean. NT!God is actually *more* vindictive than OT!God, because OT!God just kills people, he doesn't keep them in a personal torture chamber from which there is no escape, not even death. But NT!God targets *individuals*, possibly because of having spent some time as one.
And I just realized I'm describing the Spectre.
Anyway: Yes, there are times when God isn't smiting people in the Bible. That doesn't change that he *does* smite people. "I throw a harpoon at somebody ONE TIME, and now everybody calls me 'Crazy Harpoon Guy'!"
BEST JOB APPLICATION ESSAY EVER:
No, really, it will make your day. Unless your name is Fred Hiatt.
And see also Glenn Greenwald for a quickie primer on how to write for the WaPo in case you want to submit your own spec column.
Aimai
No, really, it will make your day. Unless your name is Fred Hiatt.
And see also Glenn Greenwald for a quickie primer on how to write for the WaPo in case you want to submit your own spec column.
Aimai
WAS POLANSKI ARRESTED NOW BECAUSE HE'S OUTLIVED HIS USEFULNESS TO HOLLYWOOD?
I didn't really want to post anything about Roman Polanski (though Aimai may have something to say). However, with regard to his arrest and the "why now?" question, I've been harboring a rather conspiracy-minded theory -- a theory that gets support from this New York Times article:
... in a town where heat is measured by who will take your calls -- and how quickly -- Hollywood has most assuredly become a chillier place for Mr. Polanski over the last decade. And it has been for reasons beyond morals.
Studio executives cite a cold box office streak and the director's idiosyncratic approach to his career. In short, it's a judgment call that this guy is no longer readily commercial.
... the warmth of fellow artists isn’t shared by most studio accountants.
... "Frantic," a middling box-office performer, was followed by two tiny films, "Bitter Moon" and "Death and the Maiden." In 1999 came an attempt at something more commercial -- a mystery starring Johnny Depp called "The Ninth Gate" -- but it was a dud. Mr. Polanski's 2005 version of "Oliver Twist" was a disaster, costing an estimated $60 million but selling only $2 million in tickets at North American theaters. (It sold $40.5 million overseas.)
"The Pianist," which cost about $30 million to make, was a hit that sold $121 million in tickets worldwide.
But by 2003 Mr. Polanski had reached an age and an income level that made him unwilling to bend to the demands of an evolving Hollywood....
Hollywood is an industry. When an industry has serious clout in a city, can that industry's honchos pressure or persuade law enforcement to back off in certain cases? And has that sort of protection now ended for Polanski because the suits think it's highly unlikely that he's ever going to make them any money again?
(If you care, I think he should face justice, and shouldn't have been allowed to evade it for so long -- and yet I'm also grateful for the existence of The Pianist. He should have been jailed, and yet he did good work because he wasn't. There just isn't an exact moral correspondence between creative work and the people who make it.)
I didn't really want to post anything about Roman Polanski (though Aimai may have something to say). However, with regard to his arrest and the "why now?" question, I've been harboring a rather conspiracy-minded theory -- a theory that gets support from this New York Times article:
... in a town where heat is measured by who will take your calls -- and how quickly -- Hollywood has most assuredly become a chillier place for Mr. Polanski over the last decade. And it has been for reasons beyond morals.
Studio executives cite a cold box office streak and the director's idiosyncratic approach to his career. In short, it's a judgment call that this guy is no longer readily commercial.
... the warmth of fellow artists isn’t shared by most studio accountants.
... "Frantic," a middling box-office performer, was followed by two tiny films, "Bitter Moon" and "Death and the Maiden." In 1999 came an attempt at something more commercial -- a mystery starring Johnny Depp called "The Ninth Gate" -- but it was a dud. Mr. Polanski's 2005 version of "Oliver Twist" was a disaster, costing an estimated $60 million but selling only $2 million in tickets at North American theaters. (It sold $40.5 million overseas.)
"The Pianist," which cost about $30 million to make, was a hit that sold $121 million in tickets worldwide.
But by 2003 Mr. Polanski had reached an age and an income level that made him unwilling to bend to the demands of an evolving Hollywood....
Hollywood is an industry. When an industry has serious clout in a city, can that industry's honchos pressure or persuade law enforcement to back off in certain cases? And has that sort of protection now ended for Polanski because the suits think it's highly unlikely that he's ever going to make them any money again?
(If you care, I think he should face justice, and shouldn't have been allowed to evade it for so long -- and yet I'm also grateful for the existence of The Pianist. He should have been jailed, and yet he did good work because he wasn't. There just isn't an exact moral correspondence between creative work and the people who make it.)
ALAN GRAYSON'S NEXT APOLOGY
Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida has said on the House floor that the Republican health plan is: "die quickly" He's called current U.S. health policies "this holocaust."
I think he should go to the House floor and apologize to his colleagues for saying those things (and not just "to the dead," as he already has). No, really, he should.
But here's how he should do it. First he should quote, verbatim, every remark made in the past few months on the floor of the House by Republicans that said health care reform would kill people, with names and dates. Basically, he should replicate the highlight reel that starts below at about 4:25:
(Some excerpts here.)
Then he should say, "I apologize for the remarks I've just quoted, which accuse my colleagues of trying to kill people, on behalf of those who made those remarks and have never come here to the House floor and apologized for them themselves.
"And I apologize for my own remarks accusing colleagues of trying to kill people.
"Now, who will be the next to apologize?"
Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida has said on the House floor that the Republican health plan is: "die quickly" He's called current U.S. health policies "this holocaust."
I think he should go to the House floor and apologize to his colleagues for saying those things (and not just "to the dead," as he already has). No, really, he should.
But here's how he should do it. First he should quote, verbatim, every remark made in the past few months on the floor of the House by Republicans that said health care reform would kill people, with names and dates. Basically, he should replicate the highlight reel that starts below at about 4:25:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
(Some excerpts here.)
Then he should say, "I apologize for the remarks I've just quoted, which accuse my colleagues of trying to kill people, on behalf of those who made those remarks and have never come here to the House floor and apologized for them themselves.
"And I apologize for my own remarks accusing colleagues of trying to kill people.
"Now, who will be the next to apologize?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)