Speak and Remove All Doubt

Relocating

2007-08-13T19:13:00.000-04:00

All 50 million Elvis Elvisberg fans please take note: I will be blogging over at Wordpress from now on. Thanks for coming on over!

Counterpropaganda on the surge

2007-08-02T19:44:00.000-04:00

Are there any plans for congressional committees to hold hearings featuring Gen. Shinseki, Gen. Pace, the Joint Chiefs at the time of the discussion about the surge, et al, as Gen. Petraeus releases his report saying that there has been progress in Iraq?

If not, why not?

The notion that the administration is merely "listening to the commanders on the ground" is, of course, transparently false.

They fired the last guy because he didn't support the surge. The administration has ignored and scorned expert military advice since the beginning of the war. That should be highlighted right as Gen. Petraeus, who is a somewhat partisan figure with a poor record in his statements about the war, releases his report.

What's more, the idea that the elected officials should just shut up about whether or not the war is a sound balancing of costs and benefits is quite at odds with how representative democracy is supposed to work.

The Integrity Pose

2007-06-16T13:01:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan fantasizes that John McCain's main problem is that he has too much integrity to win.

That was a plausible rationale 8 years ago.

But given his cave-in on torture, his strident support for a flaccid, ineffective surge, and his demagogic eagerness to tar advocates of withdrawal as advocating "surrender," I think we can retire that one here in 2007.

Though in fairness to Sullivan, he wrote that McCain may have "too much integrity for today's GOP." That still may be the case.

Iraq Invasion: Delusional Thinking Based on Ignorance

2007-06-15T23:25:00.000-04:00

I read, and recoiled from, this article, in 2001, as a future war supporter. Funny how informed people believed different things than the people running the country, and than I did.

THE MAIN working hypothesis, taken almost as an act of faith and embraced by many Western policymakers and pundits since the end of the Gulf War, is that the West's "Iraq problem"--and most of Iraq's problems, too--would be easily solved once President Saddam Hussein disappeared from the scene. Some observers have therefore couched the "Iraq problem" as one of biology--meaning not the threat of Iraqi biological weapons, but rather Saddam's mortality.

Not all delusional thinking is based on ignorance, but this example is. The contention that Saddam's removal through death or incapacitation would solve most of the difficulties at hand is flawed on at least two counts, one having to do with the past, the other with the future.

First, it ignores the far-reaching changes that Saddam and the Ba'athi regime have wrought in Iraqi society and political culture. The havoc wreaked upon Iraq's socioeconomic system will take years to heal. The total castration of the political system will not be easy to repair either, even in the very unlikely event that a liberal-democratic regime were to come to power in Baghdad. Finally, the mending of the fragmented Iraqi polity now divided between a rump state controlled by the Ba'ath and two fractious Kurdish administrations in the north, will not be a simple matter.

Even more importantly, the "biology" approach ignores Saddam's own plans and preparations for Iraq's future. Saddam is determined to ensure that his legacies and the system he has built are perpetuated after his departure from this life. In this regard, several questions are pertinent: Is Saddam Hussein walking in the footsteps of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Asad, as well as other leaders in this region, in preparing a "hereditary presidency"? If so, what would such a regime be like? In specific institutional terms, what would be the fate of the three pillars on which the regime has been based for the last 33 years: the Ba'ath Party, the security services and the army?

"Saddam After Iraq: Couldn't Be Worse?" Ofra Bengio, The National Interest, Winter 2001.

Being Bound by Political Accountability and the Rule of Law Is Totally Poopy

2007-06-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

Former interim U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin tearily announced Thursday that public service is, "not worth it."

It turns out you can't just do whatever you feel like in government. Nothing in the VRWC that produced this guy, where extremism and incompetence are no vice, would prepare him for the cold, cruel world of accountability.

The Coming Liberal Crack-Up

2007-06-08T19:09:00.000-04:00

I disagree with Atrios about the agreement on the left, with disagreement over priorities. I'm a huge fan of Atrios and the like, but I am almost certainly further to the right than most liberal bloggers.

It's easy for the left-most 70 percent of the population to be in agreement right now. The most important issues are curtailing government the catastrophic war in Iraq, the abuses of constitutional rights, and a delusional foreign policy.

When I was in college, an expert on Indonesia came and spoke to our class. He spoke highly of Megawati Sukarnoputri, but with few specifics. I asked him about her, and his, vagueness, and he gave an insightful, wry response. "That's like the questions I get from Western journalists," he said. "'Well, what's her position on the middle-class tax cut, and partial-birth abortion?' But she stands for the rule of law. And that's what's important right now."

That's how I read things today. When the time comes to make policy, not just resist excesses, we're going to get a little more fractious.

Crisis and Credibility

2007-06-05T10:18:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan's interlocutor warns of the catastrophe that will result if we withdraw from Iraq-- al Qaeda will align with Iran, Pakistan will be absorbed into the caliphate, lions will lie down with lambs, a great king of frightfulness will come from the skies, etc.

He is correct that there are no good options.

That said, the people who planned and sold this war were the people who said we'd be greeted as liberators, we'd be done in a few months, and the war would be entirely funded by a modest tax on Iraqi oil profits.

(I supported the war, BTW).

These people traffic only in extremes-- delusional optimism, or paranoid fearmongering-- and they are ALWAYS WRONG. About everything, all the time.

Remember, the "occupation today, occupation tomorrow, occupation forever" crowd are the folks who were on the wrong side of this debate:

"Point: This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism."

"Counterpoint: No It Won't."

Expect to See this Ignored or Used as an Occasion to Mock Liberals in Wingnuttia

2007-05-29T20:16:00.000-04:00

Valerie Plame was covert when the Bush adminsitration outed her.

Does DeLay Matter?

2007-05-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

Steve Benen writes that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay still matters. Benen relates what indicted has been up to since leaving elected office, and concludes that "DeLay, for reasons that defy comprehension, continues to be a major right-wing player."

Of course DeLay is relevant to the extent that he manages some success in recruiting fundamentalists to his culture jihad.

But he's also important for the window he provides into the conservative id.

I've always been inclinlately that it's a bit delusional to judge a proposal, or a movement, by any plausible rationale a PR group can come up with-- particularly when the GOP has been so hostile to empiricism and so committed to opaque, pork-laden bills that make no sense in terms of public policy.

What's more, Tom DeLay was no obscure back-bencher; he was the most powerful Congressman in Washington for the better part of a decade. His snarling, take-no-prisoners amoralism and hyperpartisanship earned him many rewards from the Republican Party.

His antics, and his off-the-wall pronouncements, are a peek into what the GOP leadership is thinking when they're not uttering carefully crafted, sensible-sounding, intentionally irrelevant talking points-- and into the mindset of the culture jihadis who compose "the base" (or, in Arabic, "al qaeda").

Evil and Eternal Return

2007-05-29T20:11:00.000-04:00

Rick Perlstein writes on the pernicious history of the NAM.

Even taking his post to be 100% true, in substance and tone, it's not obvious to me that sins from five decades past are of any particular meaning today, other than a reminder that powerful interests are willing to spend lots of time, effort, and money to dishonestly skew debates over public policy.

I have long been skeptical of efforts to divine the "historical roots" of this or that ideology or organization. In college I tended to hear more of these arguments from the left than the right, but folks on the right are perfectly capable of making them too, it turns out.

If it were established tomorrow, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the pro-life movement was hatched in 1920 at a secret meeting of five white male Protestant physicians in order to prevent the "outbreeding of the superior race," it's not clear to me that it would matter much.

The fact is, many people today genuinely believe that abortion is a moral evil.

Now, the cabal would be very worth knowing about, if it were true, and it would be worth reflecting on who gains and who gained by spreading this view, but it wouldn't change the fact that the view is deeply held.

Fishing for objectionable "historical roots" generally seems to me to be a substitute for engaging others' views on the merits.

Richard Cohen punditry

2007-05-29T11:21:00.000-04:00

If you became a liberal because you love fuzzy-headed thinking, wasteful, feel-good programs, symbolic actions over policy gains, and expansion of government regardless of cost or effectiveness... you should love "neoliberal" George W. Bush!

Wow! How counterintuitive!

OK, my turn.

He may be regarded as a liberal... but he cheated on his wife with the secretary, he plays golf, and he makes a lot of money! Conservatives, meet your new standard-bearer, Bill Clinton!

The Good Old Days Weren't Always Good and Tomorrow Ain't as Bad as it Seems

2007-05-20T12:39:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein just can't seem to get past their nostalgia for an era that may or may not ever have existed.

Andrew yearns for a John McCain who stands up to torture. McCain opposed it in the Republican debate last week, but when it counted, he caved in to the administration. McCain had criticized the conduct of the war, but when the flaccid surge plan came out-- one that has produced scarce results to this point, despite the assurances of Republican leaders like John Boehner-- he jumped on board.

All evidence indicates that in matters of war and peace, and of whether America should torture suspects and prisoners, McCain is much more attuned to burnishing his "maverick tough-guy" brand than the altering actual policy that the country pursues.

For his part, Joe Klein thinks that a Democratic president who takes office in 2009 should be sure to appoint loads of Republicans to his cabinet. That's a fine idea, in theory, but we live in the US in 2007, not in "theory."

Klein's plan is akin to pointing out that there had been some rancor between Democrats and Republicans over how to handle the issue of the US Communist Party in the 1950s, so President Truman should have appointed Roy Cohn to a high-level position in the State Department.

I agree with the idea in theory-- hyperpartisanship is, in fact, bad for America. But as Klein himself pointed out the other day, McCain lost the GOP presidential debate because he said sane words sane about torture. The other leading candidates "won" by trying to out-do each other in appealing to the bloodlust of GOP values voters.

Who are these Republicans that Klein thinks should be appointed? Jim Leach, and Dick Lugar, maybe. But beyond that? The sad fact is that the GOP is a debased, spent party.

Klein's moral compass, the moral relativism of fetishizing bipartisan centrism, is useless to him now. Hopefully he will figure that out soon.

Jon Chait on the netroots

2007-05-01T20:32:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Chait writes on the netroots in the latest TNR (free link via Yglesias). Chait gets some things right, but mischaracterizes the netroots as mini-Norquists, and misses the importance of the Iraq War.

The fundamental aspect of the rise of the netroots that Chait misses is the context. Chait compares the mindset of the GOP in 1964 with the mindset of the netroots today in that both thought that being true to one's party would mean winning. He might want to compare election results from those two years to glean the importance of political context to this analysis.

The president's unerring instinct for the errant and the unpopular makes it pretty easy for netroots-influenced Dems to agree on policy these days. All we have to do is stand athwart the administration yelling "stop." It's good policy and good politics. But all we've heard from the media-- including its stand-ins for liberals, like Joe Klein-- is that opposing the president's deeply unpopular, deeply wrongheaded and dangerous actions will be seen as shrill and partisan by the voters. It's not true.

Context for the rise of the netroots: Over four years ago, we stumbled unprepared into an unnecessary, catastrophic war, because the right wing message machine-bred GOP thought it might be fun. The centrism-uber-alles Democratic Party went along, and the lazy mainstream media, cowed by attacks from the right, failed to even try to report the facts on Saddam's WMD program. The Iraq invasion was the product of a debased, one-sided, rhetoric-over-reality political culure.

Context for netroots-backed prescriptions today: This county hates this war and does not trust this president, with good reason. Opposing the president is, therefore, both good policy and good politics.

Chait writes, in a view anticipated this morning by Yglesias's MSM Rules, that "[w]hat they consider treasonous is any criticism of any part of the Democratic Party or its activist base from the right. You can attack the Democratic leadership in Congress for failing to force a troop withdrawal from Iraq, but you cannot attack it for opposing a troop surge." Chait overlooks the fact that the troop surge is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, a purely political move guaranteed to produce little or no serious effect strategically, but certain to draw the US presence in Iraq out for longer. The public views it as such. Therefore, opposing the surge is good politics and good policy.

The netroots have provided rhetorical and moral support for newly assertive Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid despite endless heckling from an MSM on issues such as choosing an Intel Committee chair, use of a military airplane, a bipartisan visit to Syria, and stating that the president's policy guarantees a loss in Iraq. The MSM, unaccustomed to assertive Dems, has a knee-jerk tendency to cast GOP actions as "assertive" and Democratic actions as "shrill"-- ie, Joe Klein warning against investigating the president's unlawful warrantless wiretaps. This timid, unprincipled mindset, unattached to reality and politically ineffective, is combatted by the netroots.

Chait, miscasting the netroots as preoccupied with fealty, misunderstands what it is to be a "wanker." Wankers are not the ideologically deviant, they are rather those such as David Broder who are willing to lie and to treat Democrats unfairly. Chait's mischaracterization makes the netroots look more like the anti-heterodoxy Right than the anti-distortion force they really are. Throughout his article, he miscasts the netroots as being concerned with ideological correctness, when they are in fact concerned with factual accuracy and representing huge majorities of people. He goes particularly awry when he describes the netroots as not believing in the concept of fairness, when in fact they are working for a fair, conscientious, and diligent MSM-- which we haven't seen during the Bush administration.

Kos's statement that "I'm all about winning" can only be understood in the context of the rule of the Bush adminstration and, formerly, the lapdog GOP Congress. Chait sees the netroots as unequivocally unconcerned with ideas, and every bit as bloodthirsty, hostile, and dishonest as Grover Norquist. This is premature, and I believe it will turn out to be wrong.

We don't know how the netroots will behave if/when it is in the majority, not the opposition. The New Right wanted to cut taxes, remake the law to be more hospitable to social conservatives, and claimed to want to shrink government. The netroots want to end our involvement in Iraq's civil war, expand health insurance to more Americans, and stop running up huge deficits. The netroots do not have the encompassing worldview that the New Right had; it is unlikely that they will give into the dark side and deliberately deceive the public, like Bush the compassionate conservative, about how extreme their desired policy prescriptions are once they are near power. Admittedly, though, Chait could prove to be right-- a sense of grievance that outlives underdog status can lead to overreach.

I think it's more likely that the impact of the netroots will dissipate after the urgent need to oppose the current administration fades away. I think it would be much better for America if President Obama appoints Jim Leach and David Iglesias to positions in his administration that pursuing the Bush route, but I don't know how widely held that view is.

Chait's most sound observation is that we're long overdue for a left-leaning counterpart to the right-wing movement. Because the right has such an effective message machine, it gets heard, and it seeps into the public consciousness and begins to sound respectable merely through repetition. Left-leaning ideas are instantly dismissed as unserious, while wild-eyed right-wing ideas about launching a democracy jihad throughout the Middle East are treated as sober and thoughtful. Brian Williams launched a fusillade of Limbaugh-friendly questions at the Democratic presidential candidates the other night-- unimaginable from the other side.

The dominant narratives of the past fifteen years have been pro-GOP in the face of truth-- truth about the popularity and effectiveness of programs like Social Security, truth about the GOP's efforts to appear more centrist than it intended to govern, truth about the downside of failure in a war of choice. The media was cowed by the right, and the Democrats instinctively tacked to the right out of an unsupported belief that this was tantamount to "seriousness" on issues like the war, the president's illegal wiretapping, privatization of Social Security, huge deficits to enable tax cuts for the very wealthiest, and just about every other issue. The netroots, by providing support for reality-based views that got little to no expression in the MSM, is fighting for truth and justice.

Dan Shaughnessy Watch

2007-05-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

Shaughnessy asserts today that the problem with Boston fans is their irrational, unconditional love for anyone in a home uniform. He wrote yesterday that by trading for Randy Moss, the Pats were abandoning their positive image.

On the other side of the debate, former Moss teammate Cris Carter says, "People are going to be pleasantly surprised. He does need structure, and he's got that there. Randy is not going to have a problem because of what they have as far as structure with the players and the front office and the coach." Tom Brady restructured his contract to allow cap room for the trade.

And safety Rodney Harrison said, "When Corey Dillon came in, everyone thought he was an outlaw. He proved otherwise. When I came in, everyone thought I was an outlaw, ruthless. I think I proved that otherwise. Let's get a chance to know the guy before we make any judgments. If he comes in and is selfish, there are going to be problems. But if he has the right attitude, it will be huge for us. I've always said, if he comes in, doesn't work hard, and acts like a prima donna, it's not going to work. [Moss, unlike, say, Terrell Owens, is making just $3 million and joining a team with a clear identity. He could easily and painlessly be cut if he misbehaves--E.E.] But if he puts the team first and works hard, he has the talent to do special things for us. It comes down to the small things, and buying into what we're all about here."

Obviously Shaughnessy is incapable of doing any reporting-- he just formulates an obnoxious opinion, then types it out with as much condescension and self-involvement as he can cram in.

But would it kill him to read the paper? You know, the one he works for?

Tenet interview at Time

2007-04-29T21:32:00.000-04:00

[This is a slightly altered version of a comment currently pending at Swampland. I'll resubmit it in a bit, because their tech guys haven't distinguished themselves.]

This guy will get the Robert McNamera treatment by history.

So NOW he writes a book, NOW he describes the pathology of the White House's decisionmaking process (see James Fallows at the Atlantic on how we've long known that there was no discussion about whether to go to war).

Tenet was worse than merely spineless when this all happened for real, back when he could have done something about it. He was a willing participant in the deception. He sold the Agency out to get to be part of the in-crowd.

God only knows why, by the way. Is there something about President Bush's personal magnetism that doesn't translate over the TV? Would we, too, go weak in the knees like Tenet did when Bush called him "Mr. Intelligency" or whatever the hell happened? And where was the media? Where was the opposition party? Why did everyone roll over?

The bit in that interview about how "Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions," is disgusting. You're a friggin' grown-up, George. You were the Director of the goddamn CIA. PUSH BACK IF THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING COMPLETLY UNTETHERED! "Yessir, Mr. President, there are WMD there! Or at least, we can make a slam-dunk case on TV! Who'll know the difference?"

That there was contant pressure on the CIA analysts, on the WMD issue, and that Tenet sold them out, has been publically available knowledge for about four years, at least.

I remember reading that TNR article about the pressure on the CIA-- as a war supporter in 2003-- and just thinking, "my God, this is going to be everywhere." Just like I felt about the Boston Globe article breaking the news in 2000 that then-Gov. Bush had gone AWOL from the National Guard.

I was wrong both times. I still don't understand fully what the media's been up to all this time.

[Edited: slight rewording, typo-fixing, deleted the note at the end of the Swampland comment intended for the poster there]

Death Star

2007-04-29T19:06:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan sees Sen. McCain "again saying what he believes" by coming out against torture on today's Fox News Sunday.

It reminds me more of the final scene of Return of the Jedi, when Darth Vader's long-assaulted last vestige of humanity leads him to rise up against the Emperor.

Actually, come to think of it, that's giving him too much credit.

Given how McCain caved when it mattered in the torture debate, I think he views his nominal anti-torture stance, like his support for the war, as part of the McCain Brand. There's ample evidence that he's willing to lie and straddle when it comes to these issues; this is merely a continuation of his empty, duplicitous (but oh-so-courageous and straight-talking!) stand.

(Andy McCarthy takes a different view. Unmoved by a lack of evidence or experience, he constructs a fantasy world version of how torturers opreate and calls it "common sense" that torture works. A typically Republican outsized sense of self-love and self-involvement leads him, again typically, to disregard informed opinion from people who know anything about the issue at hand, in this case the military).

Can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding

2007-04-29T17:05:00.000-04:00

Digby has a fine post, as usual, on the anti-reality delusionals that comprise a non-negligible number of GOP elected officials in Texas. It turns out, abortion and Jews are the result and cause of evolution and child abuse. Or something, I can't quite grasp the subtlety of their logic. She goes on to critique the bizarre, infantilizing logic of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Carhart II, and a recent PR decision of pro-lifers to trumpet the regrets of some women who have had abortions.

But I want to focus on a phrase near the end of Digby's post, where she writes, "When Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton call abortion a tragedy in order to make common cause with these people they are bringing the day closer when women will be crawling out of back alleys gushing blood again."

This is both unfair and incorrect.

It's unfair, because it adopts the mentality common among conservative "love-it-or-leave-it" types that any concession to the imperfection of our side is morally treasonable. Yes, there are idiots who are pro-life; but it is not the case that a pro-choice politician pointing out that abortion isn't fun means adopting the worst arguments of the most delusional folks on the other side.

Digby's statement is incorrect because, while I think it's fair to say that more Americans consider themselves pro-choice than pro-life, this is a divisive issue, with feelings both genuine and insincere on both sides. (Though I think the insincerity on the "conception-to-birth only" pro-life side outweighs it on our side).

Here's some polling on the issue. According to a February WaPo poll, 43 percent of those surveyed believe abortion should be illegal in some or all cases (versus 55 percent on the other side). And the bulk of views are in the middle, with onle 16 and 12 percent favoring abortion always be legal or illegal, respectively.

A pro-choice politician, such as Sen. Clinton, articulating the belief that abortion is not the greatest thing that happens in a woman's life is a reasonable, honest way to reach out to those many people in the middle.

[some typos fixed]

Sectarian Conflict in Iraq: Inevitable?

2007-04-28T22:47:00.000-04:00

A point I've made elsewhere, but wanted to recapture, came to mind on reading this terrific Daniel Larison post.

Larison continues to hold unaccountable, deceitful war supporters to account, in this case Christopher Hitchens for his unconscionable, blithe assertion that Iraq's sectarian conflict was inevitable. In Larison's counterargument, he highlights part of Riverbend's final post:

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn’t know what our neighbors were- we didn’t care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

This description from Riverbend raises an important point about our culpability for the situation in Iraq today.

Imagine if we removed all civil authority from, say, Washington DC, or New York, or Cleveland.

I submit that race would rapidly become a much more salient issue in the minds of the city’s residents. When there is no civil authority, and crime becomes rampant, you turn to whatever you can to try to achieve some measure of security. And it’s not that hard for such a situation to spiral into an escalating series of reprisals, making tension among groups all the more intractable.

Of course, if this happened in the post-civil authority US, you’d be able to go back and point out that the US had always had racial tensions, and assert that this unpleasantness was all just their natural conclusion.

That would be false.

Not all social conflict, as Larison points out, escalates to its “natural conclusion,” i.e., an all-out bloodbath.

Of course there were fissures in Iraqi society– show me a society without any! Our failure to plan for the aftermath guaranteed that there would be chaos in Iraq. Chaos in Iraq, unsurprisingly, led to escalating tensions among ethnic groups.

The self-serving slander of Iraqis tossed about by some unrepentant war supporters, that Iraqis want, deserve, and were predetermined to live in the cauldron they endure today, must be challenged and refuted wherever it emerges.

As to what to do about it now that the genie of violence is out of the bottle, I would support a continued, open-ended US presence if it were preventing a civil war and hastening a political accommodation. There is scarce evidence, however, that either is the case.

Multiculturalism = cultural conservatism = bad

2007-04-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

A Nigerian woman reported to have "married" four women last weekend in Kano State has denied the allegations. ...

Under Sharia law, adopted in the state seven years ago, homosexuality and same-sex marriages are outlawed and considered very serious offences. ...

For a married woman the offence would be considered adultery for which the punishment is death by stoning. A single woman would be caned.

The next six months will be a crucial period in the Iraq War

2007-04-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan writes this morning that "September is the moment that a critical part of the Congressional Republican party abandons this war."

But why?

We've been hearing all along that right now is the turning point, and we're either winning or about to be winning, from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, GOP Congressional leaders and propaganda organs like the National Review, and formerly Tom Friedman.

In September, won't they all still be saying the same thing?

Someday, we can assume, the GOP will not be led by delusional, combative, expertise- and knowledge-averse philistines. But there's no evidence that that time will come in the next six months. I sure hope that Sullivan is right, but Boehner, McCain, Pence, Chambliss, et al., despite walking through the worst parts of town with hundred-dollar bills dangling out of their pockets, all seem to have avoided the mugging by reality that they so richly deserve.

Talkingpointsmemo's David Kurtz has a fine post on the Bush administration's "surge" being more like a "punt," a feint devoid of strategic meaning, designed to deposit this mess on the desk of the next president.

Could Rivera be done?

2007-04-28T12:39:00.000-04:00

There's a 5 percent chance that Mariano Rivera is done as a useful reliever.

Last night, I'm told by a friend in the NY area, Al Leiter remained silent on Rivera as his partners in the booth tried to minimize what was going on (1/3 IP, 3H, 1 BB, 4 ER, failed to get out of the inning against Boston, at home). That's telling. Leiter is a good announcer, and knows something about pitching. Rivera is not intimidating anyone, and is throwing a very hittable cutter.

It's most likely that Rivera is still a very good closer this year, but more mortal.

The reason that there's a possibility that this is the end, though, is that he has been so dependent on one amazing pitch.

Ordinarily, a guy like Rivera, who's been very good and very tough for such a long time, is able to outthink hitters even as his stuff becomes less dominant-- think Pedro Martinez or Curt Schilling. But if Rivera's cutter deserts him entirely-- which I don't think will be the case, not this abruptly-- then that could be it.

Meanwhile, rumors are, in the Post and the Times, that Torre's job might be in jeopardy if the Sox take another couple from the Yanks this weekend. So, there's some extra incentive to root, root, root for the good guys and get Torre fired.

Now, I've felt since seeing Beckett and Matsuzaka in spring training, and since they moved Papelbon to the pen, that the Sox are the favorites in the AL East this year.

That said, it's April. The Yankees are 8-13. They've overcome poor starts to win the division recently. Their pitching staff this season will never be great, but right now, it's really banged up. Neither of those things are Torre's fault.

The Yanks are the highest-scoring team in baseball. Once their pitching is somewhere near average-- which will happen-- gravity will reassert itself, and the Yankees will be a top AL team for the millionth year in a row under Torre.

Or, the Boss can hit the panic button, and make it that much more likely that the wheels will come off.

Will any potential presidential candidate have the courage to stand up to Big Pacifism?

2007-03-15T15:35:00.000-04:00

Fred Thompson will!

The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

And an invocation to Hitler, the patron saint of conservatives when it comes to foreign policy.

Ignorance in defense of extremism is no vice

2007-03-14T12:46:00.000-04:00

On the US Attorney firings scandal, Jonah Goldberg opines, "I haven't followed it closely enough to make up my own mind on the merits. I really suspect that this is much ado about not much. But I could be wrong."

Keep that analysis coming!

He goes on to complain about how AG Gonzales is too in-your-face Hispanic for his tastes.

Orin Kerr has a bit more to say. Highlights:

I haven't written about the U.S. Attorney's story because I'm having a hard time figuring out just how big a deal it is. Parts of it are obviously very troubling: I was very disturbed to learn of the Domenici calls, for example. ... At the same time, several parts of the story seem overblown. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President, and the press seems to overlook that in a lot of its reporting.

Translation: Any Republican conduct that fall short of violation of a statute isn't of interest. Gonzales (or Rove) could call a US Attorney today, say, "indict a Democrat, any Democrat, by Thursday, or your ass is grass," and Kerr wouldn't bat an eye.

On a more serious note, as Josh Marshall explained, "The issue here is why these US Attorneys were fired -- a) because they weren't pursuing a GOP agenda of indicting Democrats, that's a miscarriage of justice, and b) because they [Gonzales and others in the AG's office] lied to Congress about why it happened." My emphasis. Kerr is, whether deliberately or by dogged incuriosity, missing the point.

Back to Kerr:

Also, I know one or two of the Administration figures named in some of the stories, and based on my knowledge of them and their character (although no secret details of the story — I have not spoken with anyone about it) I have a feeling that they're getting a bad rap.

Translation: I don't want to learn, much less write, anything negative about my friends. So, with my ignorance studiously maintained, I'll just assume all is well.

No one expects anything different from Jonah; but it's disappointing to see Kerr stick his head in the sand on this.

Tribalist identity politics

2007-03-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

The criticisms of US News & World Report's college rankings may or may not be valid. What's more, the political views of the college presidents making the complaints are irrelevant and unknown.

But why bother with time-consuming fact-gathering, right, John Podhoretz?

if the magazine's college survey has worthless academic whiners in a full-throated tizzy, it has to be doing something right

That's right-- every single university president is a "worthless academic whiner," and everything they say is automatically wrong. Wow, being conservative is sure a great substitute for learning and thinking! Thanks, J-Pod!

Washington Nationals blogging.

2007-02-23T17:34:00.000-05:00

First off, Manny Acta gets it (via). He's open to being persuaded by data from millions of at-bats, even if it cuts against conventional wisdom. How about that. "It's been proven to me that a guy at first base with no outs has a better chance to score than a guy at second base with one out. That has been proven to me with millions of at-bats," he explained.

I've never felt much more than contempt-tinged fanataical apathy for the Nats since Jim Bowden spent Fort Knox to bring the mediocre and decrepit Cristian Guzman and Vinny Castilla to the left side of the infield. But a manager who takes facts into account rather than folk tales... that's pretty intriguing.

Second off, Chad Cordero says that he was pressured by the union not to take the deal he'd been offered b the Nats, even though he liked the deal. "I don't know why I didn't sign [the two-year deal]," Cordero said. "I wanted to. The Players Association thought I had a good case and they wanted see how it turned out. Even if I lost my arbitration case, I wasn't going to lose. It's still a lot of money. It's still more money than I ever would have thought [I'd make]."

The MLB players' union is run with a determined animosity toward management, regardless of the well-being of the players. See, e.g., the union's refusal to take drug testing seriously until Congress raised hell. The bulked-up superstars got huge deals, and anyone in AAA struggling to make it, well, let them eat steroids.

The union's all-encompassing animosity and mistrust was well-founded three decades ago. Now that the union has the upper hand, winning every dispute with the owners in that time period, that attitude has outlived its usefulness. Cordero-- who deserves some blame here for going along-- didn't sign a deal he liked, because the union wants to stick it to management every time they possibly can, consequences to players be damned.

Scrutiny for Giuliani's record on terrorism response

2007-02-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Alter expresses some concern over Rudy Giuliani's temperment. Alter, who covered and praised Giuliani in the wake of the terror attacks on 9/11, worries that Giuliani's petulence, self-regard, and thin skin wouldn't serve him well as president.

That makes sense. Stubbornness and unwarranted self-regard may not be the best attributes in a president.

Another issue, though, that has really not been discussed in mainstream news outlets, is questions about Giuliani's record in the area of terrorism response.

Now, I knew some people in NYC who had really disliked Giuliani, and who came, in the hours and months after the attack, to respect and admire his dignified presence. He handled the situation he faced maybe as well as any political leader has faced any situation in our country's history.

Those responsibilities at the time were largely stagecraft, not policy decisionmaking.

Policy decisions that Rudy had made-- involving, particularly, the location of the city's terrorism response center-- may be valid targets of criticism. Some scattered news outlets have raised questions about Giuliani's decisions-- particularly his decision to locate the terrorism response center in a building that had been a target for terrorists and the flaws in communications systems that provoked an irate, but relatively obscure, response in a book penned by a former NYC firefighter.

Now, it might turn out that the location of the terrorism response center, and the poorly operative communications systems, were not at all the fault of Giuliani. It had never seemed, to me, to be a great use of time or energy to have a huge public discussion about the pros and cons of Giuliani's decisions and leadership. But now he's not just helping NYC get back on its feet, he's running for president, counting in part on the good will that we have for the way he handled himself after the attacks.

There has to be reexamination of his record, and accountability for mistakes he may have made in setting up NYC terrorism and emergency response before the attacks happened.

I'm just not sure that his overall performance-- even on the terrorism issue-- is one that would make us want to make him president. Certainly he's a person with some great skills, and it's great for everyone if he is able to be an effective public figure. But as president? It's just not clear to me that that's where he's best utilized.

The world still looks to the American people for guidance in their views

2007-02-08T23:26:00.000-05:00

AP: Poll shows Arabs don't like Bush.

Homosexuality and conservative decline-- symptom or cause?

2007-02-08T17:31:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan writes that Republican anti-gay actions and rhetoric might be counterproductive:

The accelerating pace of social acceptance, whether you like it or not, is an empirical fact. I wonder how many Republicans realize that the Rove strategy of appealing to fundamentalist faith as the critical political ideology of the right could eventually destroy the conservative movement. It might have secured a few short-term victories, but at the expense of medium-term coherence as a coalition and long-term collapse. And I have a suspicion that the collapse could come sooner than some might imagine.

I think he's probably overestimating the long-term impact of the GOP's actions, though.

After all, William F. Buckley defended segregation. President Nixon used the Southern Strategy to convert white racism into Republican votes. But by the 2000 election, the GOP ran as many black people as they could find up on stage at their convention. As Jesse Helms said to Chuck D, "the times changed, and I have changed with the times." By 2020, we'll probably see a GOP event featuring the Scissor Sisters. Well, maybe Clay Aiken.

The UK's Labour Party has also changed with the times. It once stood for public ownership of the means of production, but now it stands for... something else. Or, at least, it doesn't stand for that.

The coming destruction and collapse of the conservative movement, if it is to come, will be based only in part on the Republican treatment of gays. It will be based, more largely, on conservative hubris, and its consequent indifference to facts and competence.

Cheney's vetting of intelligence in the runup to the Iraq War, Bush's position on intelligent design, Michael Brown's qualifications for FEMA, the administration's political appointees to DA positions, the Rove-Norquist-Abramoff dream and goal of GOP dominance forever-- all were grounded in conservative political correctness, on how it made people feel, and not on morality or reality. And the GOP rank and file didn't resist until the day after the 06 elections.

The disdain for gays is a mere microcosm of this pacification of prefered interest groups without regard for morality or policy.

I'm inclined to say that this high level of tolerance for immorality in pursuit of power was a consequence of the partisanship and Clinton-hatred of the 1990s, and the previous feeling of conservatives that they were the thruth-telling underdogs, but I'm open to other theories.

My natural home as a small-government, socially tolerant, fiscally conservative voter may well be with the GOP, but it's a party that no longer exists. In fact, I wish that Snowe and Collins would jump ship and stop enabling torture, indifferently pursued war, massive debt, etc.

UPDATE: It didn't occur to me how silly this headline was till after I'd posted. Oh well. Maybe I'll get some hits from Bill Donahue or somebody out of it.

Everybody cryin' "civility" when they don't know the meaning of the word

2007-02-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

The liberal internets are alive with mockery today at the expense of Jonah Goldberg.

On this day two years ago, he offered a bet to Juan Cole that "Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it." He magnanimously declared that he would donate his winnings to the USO, and allowed Cole to "give it to the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or whatever his favorite charity is."

Because only terrorism-lovers thought we'd encounter anything bad there. The only reason to have expertise in the Middle East, after all, is in order to hate America.

Anyway, the bet (which Cole refused) would have gone poorly for Goldberg. And he's learned his lesson. "[W]hen I see the nasty stuff now, on both the left and the right, my first reaction is to think how easy — and therefore uninteresting — it is," he writes. Cheap insults "bore me more than they offend me because they are precisely the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from a living cliche who can't imagine the other side might be worth listening too."

A few hours later, in a post helpfully titled "Loving Failure," he reprints an email from a conservative well-wisher, who writes of "the perverse satisfaction that lefties continue to take from what is basically the current failure to bring liberty and democracy to one of the most troubled regions of the world." The writer pegs "political strategy of the left these days [as] 'America has to lose in Iraq.' Whether it's the cynical response of people trying to embarrass the current President (and who would be fully behind the war if a Democrat were running it) or the depressing self-righteousness of those who think their own country must be humbled... the result is the same: a political movement dominated by people who want to see not only Bush fail, but to see America fail, to see the ideals of liberty and democracy fail."

Sigh. Where to even begin.

The Iraq invasion's archetects certainly, in some abstract sense, hoped that liberty and democracy would sprout in Iraq. But they didn't plan or work to make that happen-- they just hoped. Good intentions and a nickel will get you a small amount of paving material.

War opponents did not cause Iraq to go poorly. They just told us that the Iraq war would result in lots of people getting hurt to no particular end. People told war supporters (of which I was one) that we were wrong; some war supporters (like Goldberg) said or hinted or joked that their assessment of reality was rooted in admiration for terrorists like Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades because of it.

Now, it turns out Goldberg and I were wrong, and Juan Cole was right.

And this guy says that the problem is that war opponents weren't cheering loudly enough. And Jonah throws the red meat to the lummoxes.

As for "embarassing the president," if accountability results in embarassment and a productive change of course, that's Good for America.

By this nationalistic "logic," Winston Churchill was rooting for the Nazis to start World War II. After all, he predicted it beforehand, and counseled against England's stated policies. What a democracy-hater that guy was.

Unusually despicable commentary from the Plank

2007-02-08T00:58:00.000-05:00

A writer named James Kirchick opines:

It is not the United States that founded this millennial hatred; it is not the United States that arms and equips Sunni death squads; it is not the United States that supports Iranian backing of Shia factions in Iraq. As Hitchens writes, we had a "rendezvous in Mespotamia that could not have been averted."

TNR was once thought to be a journal of intellectual liberals and centrists. This post is astnoishingly stupid and conservative/nationalist. Let's count just a few of the ways.

(1) Invading was not the only way to resolve the humanitarian crisis and WMD issue in 2003.

The inspectors left because we started bombing. There was no historical inevitability to bombing in March 2003.

As to the sanctions, changing the regime to lessen its impact on the Iraqi people was a cause of some small left-leaning groups. They were mostly ignored, until people like Kirchick realized they were a useful talking point in advocating an invasion of Iraq-- not that invading was in any way calculated or intended to improve the lives of Iraqis. We the invaders certainly hoped that Iraqis' lives would be improved, but there was no planning or preparation, or even acknowledgement of what might be involved, to advance that hope. If the war planners' good intentions can be assumed, certainly the maxim about intentions of that sort has been proven in Iraq.

(2) Once we invaded, we failed to provide basic security.

Try removing all services and law enforcement from New York or DC for a week or four years or so. Would there be violence based on racial animus? (Hint: Yes). Would that violence be traceable in some sense to historical conflicts? (Clue: Yes). Would it have been inevitable? (A: No. It would be due to the absence of a government, which causes people to turn to clannish groups to try to survive).

Full disclosure: I supported the invasion of Iraq.

Unusually despicable commentary from the Corner

2007-02-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

The attorneys working pro bono for the accused (or not accused, but detained anyway) in Guantanamo are "helping terrorists avoid providing life-saving intelligence to our war fighters," writes Andy McCarthy, in the latest salvo of a continuing debate over just how evil it is not to take the government's word for it and allow them to indefinitely detain and mistreat whoever they want for no publicly expressed reason.

Mainstream conservative punditry, casually and lazily defending torture and refusing to acknowledge any facts that might suggest fallibility when it comes to our treatment of Guantanamo detainees, would be perfectly at home defending Stalin. It's a fragile, through-the-looking-glass patriotism, based on knee-jerk defense of any action taken in the name of national security, regardless of efficacy or morality.

Oh, how nice, Cliff May stops by to advance a General Theory of Wingnuttery: "perhaps the reason you have seen only innuendo regarding the various law firms at Gitmo derives from the fact that the MSM is highly selective about which issues are worth investigating."

So, any imagined scandal or dastardly act is plausible, because the MSM loves evil and hides it from us.

Cliff May could be on the take from al Qaeda, advocating actions that diminish American capability and moral standing in the world, but the corporate-owned MSM wouldn't tell us that.

So, because my fantasized version of the world with Cliff May accepting payments from al Qaeda allows me to hate more people and be pleased with my own righteousness, it's almost certainly true.

We have met the enemy...

2007-02-01T16:01:00.000-05:00

... and it may well be our pals in Iraq.

Two Senior Iraqi Generals Eyed in Brazen Attack on U.S. Soldiers
Thursday, February 01, 2007

Several Iraqis have been detained for questioning in the ongoing investigation of at least two senior Iraqi generals suspected of involvement in an insurgent attack that killed five American soldiers on Jan. 20, U.S. officials told FOX News on Thursday.

The attack occurred at a provincial government security compound in Karbala where the Americans were meeting with local Iraqi security officers. Gunmen stormed the facility dressed like American soldiers and driving SUVs, military officials in Iraq said.

The Pentagon has called this a sophisticated and troubling assault and much more orchestrated than the usual attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Because of that, military officials say they have strong suspicions that the Iranian government or elements of it may have been involved. Four of the five American soldiers were abducted before being shot execution style.

Why we're feeling the need to introduce a middle man when we've reliably been able to function as our own worst enemy over the past five years is quite beyond me.

Our four-year-long failure to provide basic security and services has led to a level of chaos and resurgent sectarianism that no mere surge can suppress. Gen. Petraeus is as capable a human being as exists on this planet, but he doesn't have magic powers.

Nothing would be better than for me to be proven wrong, but there is no reason beyond wishing and hoping to believe that we're about to turn the metaphorical corner in Iraq.

Crystal ball failure

2007-01-31T13:48:00.000-05:00

OK, I'll admit that I wouldn't have predicted this, from the AP.

President Bush took aim Wednesday at lavish salaries and bonuses for corporate executives, standing on Wall Street to issue a sharp warning for corporate boards to "step up to their responsibilities" and tie compensation packages to performance.

... The president acknowledged people's continuing nervousness about their financial picture, despite a string of similar reports that provide some reason for optimism. He said some workers are being left behind in the booming economy and the disparity between the rich and the poor is growing.

"The fact is that income inequality is real. It has been rising for more than 25 years," the president said. "The earnings gap is now twice as wide as it was in 1980," Bush said, adding that more education and training can lift peoples' salaries.

Comity, Comity, Uber Alles

2007-01-29T17:41:00.000-05:00

David Broder is shocked, shocked, that a senator would give a speech during a hearing. Joe Klein comes to his defense, praising Broder's common-man character. It's the Komity Korps in full effect.

Civility is good, and all, but it's not the only virtue under the sun. "Civility" has become a code word for "the determined, and by definition unprincipled, obsequeousness to whatever line the two parties are peddling."

Klein seems to have some resentment towards the blogosphere. A big part of the reason that the blogosphere has greatly different views on civility, I think, is that younger bloggers remember no GOP but the GOP of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Mitch McConnell, Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, et al.

I don't doubt that, say, Everett Dirksen was a lovely man with whom Democrats justifiably loved to compromise. But that's NOT WHAT WE'RE FACING TODAY.

Today's GOP that gives a fond hearing to radical and unpopular ideas-- replacing Social Security, engaging in a democracy jihad, eliminating environmental laws, banning all abortions, ignoring the Eighth and Fourth Amendments, accusing those who express doubt about the efficacy of our foreign policy as "emboldening the enemy," etc.

Their message machine was until recently led by Frank Luntz, a man who literally tried to REDEFINE "ORWELLIAN" AS A POSITIVE ATTRIBUTE. I mean, life just keeps on imitating satire with these guys.

The Democrats are a much, much less radical, more moderate party. This is not an eternal principle; it's just how things happen to be right now.

So we're faced with a radical right wing party and a centrist party. In that context, people like David Broder who preach comity, comity uber alles are MISSING THE POINT.

By treating Frank Luntz and Peter Beinart as the two opposite poles of Respectable Opinion, people like Klein and Broder are (1) way outside the mainstream of what most Americans think and (2) enabling the consistently wrong, counterproductive, and amoral views of the Bill Kristols of the world.

Chicks aren't serious

2007-01-28T14:44:00.000-05:00

Surely there's some rational explanation for what Andrew Sullivan is trying to say here about Sen. Webb's response to the State of the Union, but this doesn't sound too different from Biden's take on Obama:

[The Democrats are] Their choice of Webb proved it. Yes, they have the first woman Speaker in American history. But they gave the response to a navy man from the South. They know what they’re doing. Which is more than can currently be said for the White House.

Shocking GOP stonewalling tidbit

2007-01-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

Sen. Rockefeller is claiming that Vice President Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on then-Intel Committee chair Sen. Pat Roberts to avoid completing Phase II of the investigation into the administration's use and abuse of the intelligence available to it.

This is an astonishing bit of information.

Who would have thought that it would have taken constant pressure to get Pat Roberts to roll over for the administration?

You'd've thought that "a polite suggestion," or "a knowing glance," or "promises of fresh baked goods" would have sufficed.

Right up there with old sitcoms as a bottomless source of inspiration for Hollywood...

2007-01-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

Just saw a poster for a movie called "Blood and Chocolate." In light of this, we've got a trend going here. Can we expect to see a "Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind" movie in the next few years?

Sometimes it's easier to feign outrage than to defend your children against personal attacks

2007-01-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

Dick Cheney stares down Wolf Blitzer, pretending that it's "out of line" to ask for his reaction to conservative criticism of his (gay) daughter's pregnancy.

He's either lying or deluding himself, of course.

Mary Cheney is a public figure. She worked for the Cheney-Bush campaign and for gay Republican organizations. She wrote a book. Just recently, the citizens of her home state, Virginia, have amended the constitution to curtail the legal rights of Mary Cheney and her partner. Reports of-- and reactions to-- her pregnancy have been widely available public knowledge for over a month.

Despite all these inconvenient facts, "If It Feels Good Do It" Dick knew that it was more politically beneficial to feign outrage than to defend his own daughter against personal attacks from his political allies.

Sickening.

death by caricatures

2007-01-24T12:20:00.000-05:00

Interesting post on the Corner just now, dealing with Sen. Webb's statement that “the majority of our military” does not support “the way this war is being fought,” and addressing his past statements about the lack of public support for the Vietnam War.

The “professional GOP web toiler” quoted in the post has the better of the argument versus Sen. Webb on the "majority" point. The poll showed a small level of support for the way the war is being fought, but it was non-scientific, and didn't show majority opposition.

The interesting part of the discussion comes in Sen. Webb's discussion of opposition to the Vietnam War. Webb wrote:

The majority of the American people never truly bought the antiwar movement’s logic. While it is correct to say many wearied of an ineffective national strategy as the war dragged on, they never stopped supporting the actual goals for which the United States and South Vietnam fought... [In Sept. 1972,] By a margin of 74 percent to 11 percent, those polled also agreed that “it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control of the communists.”

This cannot be a surprise. Of course we would rather that South Vietnam not fall to communists-- they were our allies, and communism was bad. We'd all rather win than lose in Iraq, too. But you don't get to just check a box and win. The relevant issues are, (1) is our presence making things better for most Vietnamese/Iraqis, and, (2) is the cost that we are paying proportionate to the benefit to our national interests and the security situation in Iraq.

One common path to misguided opinions is to ground your own views in opposition to a straw man version of what you perceive your political opponents to believe. Another is to learn one lesson from one moment in history, and perceive every single moment thereafter as a reenactment of that precise moment.

The fact that some people opposed the Iraq War or the Vietnam War for unsound reasons (ie, anything the US does is always wrong, or Bush is just as bad as Saddam, or the Magic 8-Ball said so) does not mean that the best arguments against the war should not be engaged. Who cares what the noisy, or fantasized, or caricatured antiwar activists have to say? They have roughly zero public impact in this country.

All that administration apologists want to talk about now is the downside of failure. Woulda been worth considering five years ago.

Why does it matter?

2007-01-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

So, Scooter Libby is arguing that he is just a scapegoat, as the White House defended Karl Rove but not him.

Why doesn't this fall into the "bitch set me up" category of external circumstances that, while unfortunate, do not amount to a valid legal defense?

Is the theory that all of the government witnesses the prosecution is going to call who are going to say that Libby knew of Plame's status long before he told the FBI he did are all lying to protect Rove? That's quite a theory.

UPDATE: Here's another theory.

Mary Cheney: just a private citizen?

2006-12-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm inclined to be sympathetic to the argument that Mary Cheney ought to be left alone. What kind of weirdo wants to run for office when your whole darn family is going to be subjected to scrutiny?

The thing is, though, Mary Cheney's status was on the ballot in Virginia last month. It already is a political issue.

Plus, she wrote a book about her experience earlier this year.

So this isn't the same thing as excessive scrutiny of the Bush twins, or Chelsea Clinton.

I think that stressing "this is a private matter" is the only way for Republican supporters to play this. It's pretty easy to cast the Cheneys as hypocrites, cynical exploiters, etc. And it's easier to advocate denying rights to a vague class of citizens than to deny rights to an individual, the VP's daughter.

Sometimes people forget that the whole blessed world needs us to get our act together

2006-12-07T17:18:00.000-05:00

The leading contender for world's most influential country, as we throw away lives, strength, money, and prestige in Iraq like we had them all in infinite supply, is China.

The Chinese authorities secretly executed a man who took part in violent protests against a hydroelectric project in 2004, his lawyer said.
Chen Tao was among tens of thousands who demonstrated against the Pubugou dam in Sichuan province. Locals say the dam will displace 100,000 people.
The protests turned into a riot which left a policeman dead. Mr Chen was found guilty of killing the policeman.
Mr Chen's lawyer, Ran Tong, said he had not been allowed to attend his appeal.
'Tricked us'
Mr Ran said he heard about the execution when he went to the high court in Sichuan to ask about progress in the case.
"I am extremely angry about this because since the first trial (in April last year) I have repeatedly asked them for an appeal date and they have always told me that the case was being worked on," he told the French news agency AFP.

The first rule of comity is timing

2006-12-07T16:01:00.000-05:00

... and once you can fake that, you can fake anything.

Or something.

But this sort self-satisfied back-patting is just appalling while there's a war on. We don't need "A Study in Comity." We need something approaching a miracle.

Gradualism is really the worst of all possible options right now-- much less this gradualism for gradualism's sake.

Let's either go all-out right now, boosting troop levels by probably 50,000 plus, or let's get out.

Centrism, centrism, uber alles

2006-12-06T14:32:00.000-05:00

Cynthia Tucker vs. reality:

"The simple fact of the matter is, every serious Democrat who was in the Senate at the time, voted for the war--or voted to authorize the president--and Al Gore was one of the few Senate Democrats who voted in 1991 for the first Gulf War."

So, by definition, everyone who was right was frivolous. It's tough work, maintaining this faux seriousness in the face of all reason and experience, but Cynthia Tucker is up to the task.

This is bizarro-world political correctness, where it's considered gauche to have voted against the war even though 90 percent or so of Americans now agree with that point of view. And I supported the war. But obviously, people who argued the other way look an awful lot smarter than me, in retrospect.

I used to buy into this fetishization of centrism, this out-of-hand dismissal of "liberal" views. It seems pretty clear now that this was a poor framework for evaluating whether to support sending American troops to invade a country.

Is there any set of facts that would cause someone like Tucker to (1) question her assumptions, or (2) be held accountable for her mistakes? Another 3,000 dead American soldiers? Another 300,000, dead Iraqis? Another 3 million? Another $50 billion? Another billion people in the world who say they dislike and mistrust the US?

Or would she still consider whatever she might expect to come out of the mouths of Broders to be the lodestar for political analysis?

Glasnost II

2006-12-04T17:07:00.000-05:00

Rich Lowry writes: "you should put your faith in principles not in men. It was always weird that so many conservatives stayed so vested in Rumsfeld—mostly because they liked his style and he was attacked by the left".

Admittedly, Lowry is writing (in a flip-flop) that we need to put more troops in Iraq. He's wrong because chaos is too far ahead of us now, and the president is considering adding 20,000 troops, which is not enough to do anything but prolong the agony for Iraq and for US servicemen.

But at least the Republican commentariat seems to be coming to a recognition that there is such a thing as principles, which might be worth defending over cults of personality, in some circumstances.

Partisanship, like nationalism, blinds us to the flaws of our own side. As things are, because Republicans shied away from honest assessment of his actions, they will be struggling to distance themselves from the disasterous domestic and foreign policy of the Bush administration for at least a decade.

A party winds up getting judged on its actions, not its principles. "Small government conservative" is an oxymoron to people under 30.

The incompetence of the Bush administration-- coupled with the unprincipled acquiescence of the conservative commentariat-- may have ceded some principles, such as cognizance of our own limitations in fiscal and foreign policy, that Republicans mostly defended for a half century prior to the Bush administration.

Why Democrats don't need libertarians in their coalition

2006-12-04T14:30:00.000-05:00

Brink Lindsey writes (also found here) that liberals should look to libertarians to form a coalition. Liberals and libertarians will be able to work together from time to time-- maybe more now than ever due to Republican lawbreaking on civil liberties issues, and abandoning of any pretense of restraint or rationality on spending.

But it would be a mistake for liberals and libertarians to try to form a coalition. Happily, it will never happen. Here's why:

(1) We have different beliefs. Exhibit A: the minimum wage. We want to raise it; libertarians want to abolish it. Same with Social Security and antitrust laws, which we want to fortify, and libertarians want to destroy. We also, unlike libertarians, support the continued existence of fire codes and zoning laws.

Democrats and libertarians take vastly different lessons from the voters' frustration with the catastrophically expensive, confusing prescription drug benefit. That the Republicans have heightened frustrations of inefficient governance with their incompetence doesn't mean that voters or Democrats share the libertarian view that government is always the problem.

(2) I'd be surprised if more than 5% of voters consistently vote libertarian. They're fine for collaboration on certain issues, but not ripe for coalition-forming. Even folks like Bill Maher and Glenn Reynolds, who claim to be libertarians because the word has more syllables and fewer connotations than "Republican" or "Democrat," will rationalize their party-line voting by any means necessary, however implausible.

If libertarians want to be a major part of a coalition, they have to convince more people of their views.

Most Americans want the government to do good and to prevent bad. The two parties have different views on which things are good and which are bad. Even the supposedly libertarian business interests favoring the GOP have really been seeking handouts from GOP-led DC, not getting it off their backs.

(3) I'm still holding out hope that once libertarians turn 25, or treat their OCD, or read the scholarship of Mancur Olson, they'll realize that the correct answer to every question isn't "no."

Lindsey's plaintive cry for "a new politics" at least recognizes that the current politics are bad.

But the answer isn't to form different unweidly coalitions than the one currently blowing up on the GOP. It's to deal with issues honestly, one by one. It's to de-emphasize party allegiance as an aspect of people's identity on par with religion or sexual orientation.

Lindsey makes a few peripheral distortions worth addressing. Jim Crow wasn't a "great libertarian breakthrough," in terms of who did the breaking through. It was liberals, using the machinery of the federal government, who dismantled longstanding public and private discrimination against blacks. It is revisionist history to claim LBJ-era successes as a triumph of libertarian political organization.

He also wrote that "progressives remain stubbornly resistant to embracing capitalism." He provides no examples of this, of course, because beyond perhaps an odd copy editor at the Nation, Democrats don't think that. An awareness the fact of the collective action problem and of multiple equilibria, and a humble, historically grounded view of the role the government can play in addressing them, does not amount to "resistance to embracing capitalism."

Andrew Sullivan writes of Lindsey's piece, "can the Democrats really find a place for lovers of liberty?" I think he meant "fetishizers of the term liberty" at the expense of empirical analysis. Libertarians will like what Democrats do more than what Republicans have been up to of late, and they can help Democrats along on many issues. But we shouldn't, and we won't, yoke ourselves together.

New rule of rock criticism: no more than one comparison per sentence allowed

2006-12-02T22:57:00.000-05:00

Actual headline and teaser in the WaPo:

Hinder Rocks the House: A band that sounds like Aerosmith covering Nickelback, while misbehaving like Motley Crue.

Donald Rumsfeld, speaking truth to power

2006-12-02T22:41:00.000-05:00

So, Donald Rumsfeld left a nice going-away present for the Bush administration: a memo urging us to change course in Iraq, on the grounds that we're not winning.

Three years late, hundreds of billions of dollars short.

Oh, and hundreds of thousands of lives.

None of the ass-covering, none of the fig leaves matter anymore. We can't keep peace while we're there; we might not have enough troops to move in there to restore stability; and that the Bush administration's plan to "go big" involves a paltry 20,000 troops means that our political leadership is not serious about responding to conditions on the ground, prefering instead to save face.

We need to get out, and we need to get Iraqis out as George Packer recommended.

I supported the war, and I supported sending more troops till this summer or early fall. But events are ahead of us now.

And I was wrong from the beginning to support this war of choice.

I thought we had learned, as a country, from Vietnam that we had to be honest about this sort of thing, and that if we fought a war, we had to be extremely serious and cautious about it.

I was wrong.

Actually, what we learned from Vietnam is that political leaders lie about matters of war, and that conventional wisdom might have nothing at all to do with the truth.

With a little fairy dust and some psychokinetic skills, I could kick John Micklethwait in the nuts over the Internet

2006-12-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

Connoisseurs of inane and unsupportable contrarianism must read this John Micklethwait offering on the Bush presidency in 2007.

First off, if you want to engage in "maybe the president will do something postive someday" contrarianism, you must mention immigration reform. It's the only area in which President Bush might be considered to have consistent principles over his career in public service (with the possible exception of decreasing government revenue regardless of context or expenditures). And those principles on immigration-- more realist than punitive-- are closer to those of most Democrats than Republicans.

Unwilling to attempt to square the facts of the previous six years with his unwarranted notion that Republicans favor what used to be called "fiscal conservatism," Micklethwait writes that Bush can now courageously stand up to overspending now that "the Democrats [are] likely to lavish ever more on boondoggles." This assertion, of course, has zero to do with anything that Bush has ever done. The Republican Congress had zero restraint, to be sure, but the biggest budget busters have been Bush initiatives, like the precription drug benefit and that inconclusive experience in Iraq.

The end of the article is jaw-droppingly non-reality-based. Micklethwait lists a bunch of seemingly intractible problems that Bush has shown little or no inclination to address in any meaningful fashion (the Doha trade round, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the environment), asserting that he could preserve a legacy by solving them. "With panache and a little cunning," Micklethwait writes, "Mr Bush could start to fashion a replacement for Kyoto." Technically a true statement, like the title of this post. But does anyone think that's a likely event?

Glasnost

2006-11-30T15:12:00.000-05:00

Chester E. Finn Jr. at National Review.

today’s GOP doesn’t really want gays — and it yearns to supervise everybody else’s bedroom and reproductive behavior as well as (implicitly, at least) their relationship to God. The second is that Republicans are no longer really in favor of limited government. Besides having their own version of a nanny state, they want to spend and spend, start program after program, ladle out the pork, make deals with influence peddlers, and spin the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. Yes, they still pretend to favor low taxes but that’s an illusion; they pay for limitless government via huge deficits that will mean high taxes for my granddaughter.

The Mentality of a Moderate Christianist

2006-11-30T12:49:00.000-05:00

So, there's a controversy about whether Barack Obama should be allowed to walk into a church with Rick Warren to discuss AIDS prevention. Some say Obama should be shunned because of his beliefs on abortion; but maybe cooler heads will prevail. Here's one moderate Christianist's take:

It's OK to include people who disagree with you on some issues in a forum about AIDS, but only so that you might change their minds. Our minds must be made up before we come to the discussion, impervious to facts and arguments that we don't like.

This in the context of AIDS prevention in Africa. It doesn't matter whether or not stressing abstinence works in countries with AIDS; what matters is that abstinence is important to me, and must therefore be imposed on others-- or at least, must be supported at the expense of programs that work better.

And this is a moderate voice, someone not calling for the excommunication of Obama.

The facts are that Warren can invite to his pulpit whoever he sees fit, and that Christians are not monolithically opposed to abortion.

So he's a Reaganite after all...

2006-11-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan plucks an interesting quote from Ronald Reagan.

The president didn't get to be the decider by stooping to nuance. He just cut out some of the unnecessary words from the quote and to make it the motto of his administration: "self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts."

Abuse of language to serve fuzzy thought

2006-11-17T16:28:00.000-05:00

John G. West writes about the debate among conservatives over evolution, which he refers to as "Darwinism." This is an imprecise term, probably intentionally so.

Charles Darwin was a natuarlist who formulated the theory of evolution, now universally accepted among biologists.

The theory of evolution contains no more ideology than the theory of gravity or the heliocentric theory.

Regarding science, "Darwinsism" is usually employed today by nonexperts in science to personalize the theory of evolution. People who are predisposed to have their feelings hurt by what they see as the political implications of the theory of evolution utilize the term "Darwinism" to cast aspersions on science. Marxism was a political theory; Freudianism was... well, a scientific theory, maybe. Darwin, though, did not compose a theory of everything like Freud and Marx did; he offered a scientific theory to account for observed phenomena, a theory that has been refined and accepted over time.

Of course, the philosophical and religious views of scientists such those that West quotes of paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (“Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind”) are disputable.

Regarding social theory and policy, "Darwinism" is the view that those who achieve the most money or success did so as a result of their intrinsic worth. Even assuming one can profitably analogize biological processes to social policy, Social Darwinism is a highly contestable application of the theory of evolution-- unforeseeable disasters seem to play quite an important role. The political power of Social Darwinism, and the resulting moral disaster of state eugenics policies, serve to illustrate the dangers of scientism and state infringement on the most personal decisions.

I am comfortable with the philosophical idea that evolution happened because that is how God saw fit to work his will. That is, I believe, the view of the Catholic Church. I am uncomfortable with the idea that observed phenomena that science cannot fully account for at a given moment in time is what God did. If we create a God who is an image of our own scientific ignorance, we will diminish him over time.

What Jonah's unfuniness tells us about society

2006-11-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

People are puzzling over Jonah's Bush-as-bear-hunter comment yesterday. It was obvious, to me, that he was making an effort at teh funnay, but I've evidently read enough of his stuff to appreciate his allusive (or maybe elusive) rapier wit.

His post did for humor what K-Fed did for rap, of course, so that's not really worth commenting on in itself.

But it wouldn't be liberal punditry if I didn't make an effort to explain that his supposed individual failing wasn't actually the fault of society. So here goes.

Goldberg, like the president, is a product of the liberal spare-the-rod, if-it-feels-good-do-it culture. Their political opinions were determined, and their career paths smoothened, for them before they were born. They’ve been spoiled for life, isolated from the consequences of their actions by the system of patronage and lowered expectations that comprise today’s conservatism. So after all this time, how could either be expected to look at his own body of work and realize it's drivel?

It’s not their fault.

Blame their permissive conservative upbringing.

And Stanley Kurtz says nothing good comes out of the Netherlands

2006-11-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here's one way to come up with an intellectual defense of Supply Side Christianity: just cut out all those wrongheaded passages about helping the poor!

THE NETHERLANDS — A new Bible translation produced in Holland that aims to be more attractive and market-oriented is causing controversy after it cut out difficult parts surrounding economic justice, possessions and money.
...
Chairman W. R De Rijke said the foundation has reacted to a growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive.

"Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don't need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn't study economics, obviously," he said.

De Rijke said no serious Christian takes these texts literally.

"What if all Christians stopped being anxious, for example, and started expecting everything from God? Or gave their possessions to the poor, for that matter. Our economy would be lost. The truth is quite the contrary: a strong economy and a healthy work ethic is a gift from God."

This makes me laugh

2006-11-09T17:13:00.000-05:00

This Makes Me Furious [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Bolton unlikely to win Senate approval
By Anne Plulmmer Flaherty Associated Press

Posted at 3:57 PM

What Makes a Lie "Pathological"?

2006-11-05T12:40:00.000-05:00

Lying about something that (1) everyone thinks you're probably lying about, (2) can easily be checked by about .02 seconds of Googling, and (3) doesn't really affect your credibility within your target audience probably meets the definition of "pathological."

Gleen Greenwald catches Michael Ledeen asserting that he "opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place." Wow, that doesn't sound like the conventional wisdom coming from AEI in the runup to the war, does it? How had everyone missed Ledeen's voice in the wilderness on this one?

Of course, we didn't.

As Glenn points out, in a 2002 article in which Ledeen flashed his trademark blend of snarling condescention and ad hominem attacks, calling the coming invasion "the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein." In another 2002 interview Glenn cites, Ledeen argued that "yesterday" was the proper time to invade.

Ledeen digs a deeper hold for himself today, responding by pointing to a passage in his book favoring support for an Iraqi revolution rather than an invasion. This establishes that Ledeen's ideal approach might not have been an invasion, but does nothing to establish that, in the actual world that exists, he "opposed" the invasion.

The only assertion in the passage that Ledeen quotes today that could remotely be taken to "oppose" the invasion is that "we do not want to pulverize the country." But no one except John "rubble doesn't make trouble" Derbyshire, and maybe whoever the guy is who articulated the "Ledeen Docrtine" would ever believe that we should act so amorally. And when it counted, in the real-world run-up to the war, Ledeen was an outspoken proponent of the invasion.

The strangest thing is that Ledeen's support from his target audience depends not a whit on whether anything that he said in the Iraq invasion debate was true. He's a card-carrying member of the VRWC. In conservative circles, it's not like you lose face by virtue of having been wrong about, say, the impact on the economy of the tax hikes of the early 1990s. The view that they'd send us into an economic tailspin was was completely wrong, of course, but it doesn't impact anyone's credibility among conservatives, because it fits conservative myths and prejudices.

All Ledeen had to do today was apologize for his bluster in asserting that he had "opposed the military invasion," which he evidently did not do. But just as his ideology depends on assertions and drive for American omnipotence, his psychology cannot account for his own infallibility.

Ledeen was wrong, and lied about being wrong, about the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. Prediction: he will remain an A-list conservative foreign policy "intellectual."

What kind of editor allows this sort of thing? "[D]esperately-needed and long overdue war"?

Haggard's role

2006-11-04T17:29:00.000-05:00

This seems to me to get it almost right. Haggard isn't as big a figure in the Republican coalition as Grover Norquist, say, or James Dobson.

Scandals involving sex and drugs are a reliable way for fringe-ish public figures to get a lot of attention. Plus, Haggard makes himself a target by campaigning to deny equal rights to gays. His hypocrisy, extremism (Jonah Goldberg, Barbara Walters, and Mahatma Gandhi are going to hell), and bluster make him an easy guy for progressives to dislike.

So he's sort of like Ward Churchill is to the right.

Except he led a group that claimed 30 million members, and made weekly calls to the president or his advisors.