Honor and Dishonor

Some Greatest Generation

2010-06-24T11:06:00.000-05:00

This really upsets me. By a large margin, those over 65 dislike national health care. they've got theirs so screw everybody else.

The Despicable is Working

2010-05-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

The retirement of Congressman David Obey, and his reasons for it, discourage me tremendously. The nihilistic, obstructionist strategy and behavior of the Republicans this term is working. The "throw the bums out" temper of the electorate favors the minority party. The more destructively the Republicans behave, the better for them at the polls it seems, at least so far. I hold out hope that as the elections come closer and as the voters pay more attention to what is going on, light will shine on what has been happening and why the government is so gridlocked. Needless to say, I am not holding my breath.

So Much for Libertarianism

2010-04-19T06:58:00.000-05:00

This is a great take-down of a bankrupt set of beliefs. It all boils down to "I'm keeping more than I need or can use and screw you." This is just the start of a devastating litany:

Ah, the 1880s. I can hear people getting wistful from here.

A golden age in which people kept all that they earned. Of course, what they earned in the absence of those debilitating minimum wage laws could be nothing more than worthless tokens from the company store. What they earned from twelve hours of work seven days a week could be actually be a bigger debt to the company that sent you into a mine or factory and made you pay for the wear on your tools, the water you drank, the fuel for your lamp, even the blasting powder you used.

Another Way to Argue for Global Climate Change

2010-03-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

When you look at it this way, it makes the deniers look even sillier. It is worth relisting here:

The following groups say the danger of human-caused climate change is a ... FACT:
U.S. Agency for International Development
United States Department of Agriculture
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Energy
National Institutes of Health
United States Department of State
United States Department of Transportation
U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution
International Arctic Science Committee
Arctic Council
African Academy of Sciences
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias
Cameroon Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of Canada
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Académie des Sciences, France
Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina of Germany
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Accademia nazionale delle scienze of Italy
Indian National Science Academy
Science Council of Japan
Kenya National Academy of Sciences
Madagascar’s National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academia Mexicana de Ciencias
Nigerian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of New Zealand
Polish Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
Academy of Science of South Africa
Sudan Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Tanzania Academy of Sciences
Turkish Academy of Sciences
Uganda National Academy of Sciences
The Royal Society of the United Kingdom
National Academy of Sciences, United States
Zambia Academy of Sciences
Zimbabwe Academy of Science
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American College of Preventive Medicine
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Medical Association
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
American Public Health Association
American Quaternary Association
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Society of Agronomy
American Society for Microbiology
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Botanical Society of America
Crop Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Federation of American Scientists
Geological Society of America
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Society of American Foresters
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America
Australian Coral Reef Society
Australian Medical Association
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Engineers Australia
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Geological Society of Australia
British Antarctic Survey
Institute of Biology, UK
Royal Meteorological Society, UK
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
European Physical Society
European Science Foundation
International Association for Great Lakes Research
International Union for Quaternary Research
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
World Federation of Public Health Associations
World Health Organization
World Meteorological Organization
The following groups say the danger of human-caused climate change is a ... FRAUD:
American Petroleum Institute
US Chamber of Commerce
National Association of Manufacturers
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Industrial Minerals Association
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
Great Northern Project Development
Rosebud Mining
Massey Energy
Alpha Natural Resources
Southeastern Legal Foundation
Georgia Agribusiness Council
Georgia Motor Trucking Association
Corn Refiners Association
National Association of Home Builders
National Oilseed Processors Association
National Petrochemical and Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association
^{["FACT" organizations come from "Is There a Scientific Consensus on Global Warming?" at SkepticalScience.com. "FRAUD" organizations are petitioners v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.]}
Something liberals, especially non-scientists among us, often ask for is a place to visit to learn how to respond succinctly to the ever-changing claims of the climate-change deniers, particularly when those deniers are neighbors or somebody encountered at a party. One good spot is Skeptical Science.

It's not Obama's Deficit

2010-02-22T12:05:00.000-05:00

Nothing like some facts and a chart to blast away all the BS arguments that pin the exploding budget deficit on Obama and the Democrats.

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.
While President Obama inherited a dismal fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s long-term deficit problem. But we should not mistake the causes of our predicament.

Bad Idea: Selling Health Insurance across State Lines

2010-02-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

Ezra Klein explains very patiently the consequences of the Republican idea to bring down health-care costs by letting families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines. What a rip it would be. Can't the Repubs ever have a genuinely positive idea that would benefit all or most citizens?

Insurance is currently regulated by states. California, for instance, says all insurers have to cover treatments for lead poisoning, while other states let insurers decide whether to cover lead poisoning, and leaves lead poisoning coverage -- or its absence -- as a surprise for customers who find that they have lead poisoning. Here's a list (pdf) of which states mandate which treatments.
The result of this is that an Alabama plan can't be sold in, say, Oregon, because the Alabama plan doesn't conform to Oregon's regulations. A lot of liberals want that to change: It makes more sense, they say, for insurance to be regulated by the federal government. That way the product is standard across all the states.
Conservatives want the opposite: They want insurers to be able to cluster in one state, follow that state's regulations and sell the product to everyone in the country. In practice, that means we will have a single national insurance standard. But that standard will be decided by South Dakota. Or, if South Dakota doesn't give the insurers the freedom they want, it'll be decided by Wyoming. Or whoever.
This is exactly what happened in the credit card industry, which is regulated in accordance with conservative wishes. In 1980, Bill Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, made a deal with Citibank: If Citibank would move its credit card business to South Dakota, the governor would literally let Citibank write South Dakota's credit card regulations.

Climate Change Links

2010-02-21T16:23:00.000-05:00

A commenter to a Bad Science posting pulled together these overpowering links on climate change. Good to have them all in one spot:

1. NASA http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_wa ... dbook.html http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Featur ... mingQandA/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif (The graph)
2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
3. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) http://www.wmo.ch/pages/about/wmo50/e/w ... ing_e.html
4. American Meteorological Society http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
5. National Center for Atmospheric Research “How do we know Earth is warming now?” http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php
6. Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division “Climate Forcing” http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/climate.html
7. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp
8. Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology “Global Climate Change” “How do we know?” http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/
9. American Geophysical Union (world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists) “Human Impacts on Climate” http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/clima ... ition.html
10. American Association for the Advancement of Science “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now” http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/cli ... tement.pdf http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/
11. The United States Energy Information Administration “Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy” http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochu ... apter1.htm
12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Report: Human activity fuels global warming” http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/climate.html
13. California Institute of Technology “How We Know Global Warming is Real” “The science behind human-induced climate change” http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/paper ... c_2008.pdf
14. Atmospheric Sciences - University of Illinois - Champaign “Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.” http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/research/01climate.html
15. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “Global Warming” http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457
16. The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre “Climate change - the big picture” http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/p ... index.html http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
17. The UK’s Royal Society “Climate change controversies: a simple guide” http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229
18. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland) “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report” http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-repor ... yr_spm.pdf
19. Japan Meteorological Agency “Global Warming Projection Vol.7” http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/produc ... dex-e.html
20. The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society “Our climate has changed substantially.” “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable.” http://www.amos.org.au/publications/cid ... blications
21. Royal Society of New Zealand “The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.” http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/new ... m0708.aspx
22. National Geographic Magazine http://environment.nationalgeographic.c ... l-warming/
23. Scientific American Magazine http://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=globa ... ate-change

So Much for Reaganites and Small Government

2010-02-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

This chart says so much. The Republicans are simply full of crap when they talk balanced budgets. Manifestly, their fiscal recklessness has been obviously the case for their last 20 years in power (Reagan-Bush-Bush).

Data on Income Inequality from the IRS

2010-02-20T11:39:00.000-05:00

The story is the same no matter who tells it. The rich have been making out like bandits over the last 30 years.

Following recent analyses confirming that income inequality in the United States has reached record levels, noted tax journalist David Cay Johnston summed up the new data, "The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low. The numbers tell the tale of the widening chasm between the rich and everyone else:
In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16...
Adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars, the top 400 enjoyed a 27 percent increase in their income, or nine times the rate of increase for the bottom 90 percent...Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with an increase of 399 percent for the top 400.
Unsurprisingly, the public disclosure of the top 400 report first introduced by the Clinton administration was halted by President Bush (only to be reinstituted by the Obama White House last year). Unsurprising that is, because the sheer size of the massive windfall for America's rich due to the Bush tax cuts would make a Warren Buffet blush.

Us vs. Them and Human Rights

2010-02-14T19:04:00.000-05:00

This is one of Greenwald's better columns because he takes a perfectly framed situation -- the Baptists arrested in Haiti for kidnapping vs. those the US picks up as terrorism suspects -- to nail the blazingly obvious point that wingers are simply bigots, pure and simple.

The only thing worse than someone completely indifferent to human rights abuses when committed by their own government is someone whose concern for such matters is dictated by the religion or other demographic attributes of those whose basic rights are being denied. That's the same mentality that leads our media to treat American journalists held by Evil Foreign Governments for a few weeks under dubious circumstances as screeching headline-making news, while ignoring almost completely those foreign (Muslim) journalists held by the U.S. Government for years without charges. How many Americans know and are outraged about Iran's detention of Roxana Saberi, all while being completely ignorant of the numerous Muslim journalists held for years by the U.S., including a Reuters photojournalist, Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, finally released last week after being held by the U.S. military for 17 months with no charges and even after an Iraqi court ordered him released? It's the same mentality that allows the U.S. Government, with a straight face, to issue reports condemning as "torture" the very techniques we used, to protest indefinite detention, extra-judicial killings and lawless eavesdropping when engaged in by other countries, and to demand that other countries prosecute their war criminals and torturers in the name of "the rule of law" (while our own are feted on TV shows and given regular newspaper columns to glorify the torture and other war crimes they implemented).

Batocchio's The Persistance of Ideology

2010-02-11T07:51:00.000-05:00

I came across this old post from Batocchio, the Vagabond Scholar, and think it hits many nails on the head. I have such a hard time understanding conservatives. Just what is it that they are thinking? How can they be so blatantly wrong, and unapologetic, about so many things for so long? The post explains a lot -- and has great links to back up the arguments. It is blogging at its best.

This is the introduction to his analysis of three areas of policy -- economics, foreign policy, and human rights:

If conservatism at its best involves sticking with policies that have proved effective, at its worst it entails sticking with policies that have proved unsuccessful or even disastrous. It's not as if some pure, beneficent strain of conservatism is common, though, to the degree it exists at all. Movement conservatism has long consisted of policies that benefit a select few at the expense of the nation as a whole. In many cases, conservatives are still obstinately pushing ideologies and policies that have yielded horrible results – sometimes even for themselves. Admitting error is rare among this ideological crowd, taking blame is rarer still, and actually changing approaches is seen as anathema.

A Top Ten Worst List

2010-02-10T20:56:00.000-05:00

Read-em and weep: Juan Cole's Top Ten Worst things about the Bush Decade. His intro:

Here are my picks for the top ten worst things about the wretched period, which, however, will continue to follow us until the economy is re-regulated, anti-trust concerns again pursued, a new, tweaked fairness doctrine is implemented, and we return to a more normal distribution of wealth (surely a quarter of the privately held wealth is enough for the one percent?) It isn't about which party is in power; parties can always be bought. It is about how broadly shared resources are in a society. Egalitarianism is unworkable, but over-concentration of wealth is also impractical. The latter produced a lot of our problems in the past decade, and as long as such massive inequality persists, our politics will be lopsided.

Defense Expenditures and the War on Terror

2010-02-10T18:28:00.001-05:00

We dwarf the defense expenditures of all other countries by far. Can this be justified on the basis of defending ourselves against a bunch of third rate middle eastern countries? This means the terrorists are winning by ruining our country as we turn it over to the proverbial military-industrial complex.

Why There Can't Be "Bipartisanship"

2010-02-06T07:05:00.000-05:00

In an excellent, but so far unrecognized by our crack media, observation James Fallows cites the point that: "Bipartisanship consists of getting ENOUGH members of the minority party to join the (incomplete) majority in voting for major legislation. It can't happen if the minority party members vote as a block against major legislation."

Even Sullivan Can See What's Happening Clearly

2010-01-31T08:32:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, Andrew Sullivan nails the situation eloquently and clearly. I believe this is exactly right and why none of us should buy that shiny-object crap about "the past doesn't matter":

Clive Crook writes:
What does it matter who caused the problem? Obama's job is to solve it.
This with respect to the crippling fiscal legacy bequeathed by the Bush administration and the appalling recession that subsequently wiped out revenues. Yes, he actually wrote the words:
What does it matter who caused the problem?
Let me try to explain: it matters who caused the problem and why because if we do not understand the causes we cannot fix the problem and it matters because any adult judgment of a politician's first year that does not take into account the inheritance he was bequeathed is impossible.
It matters because the most important fact in American politics is the worst presidency in modern times that preceded Obama.

Two failed, unwinnable wars that continue to destroy lives and cripple our finances, a massive splurge in entitlement and discretionary spending, a huge increase in defense spending and massive tax cuts: this we now have to forget? This context should be removed from the picture?
It matters too because the very people who gave us this mess are now adamantly refusing to do anything to get us out of it, and pledge to return to exactly the same policies that got us there in the first place: more tax cuts, more war, more entitlement spending, more debt, no health insurance reform, no action on climate change. Clive acts as if there were some viable alternative out there. There isn't.
I'm not saying that Obama should not be held responsible for actions he has taken; I am saying he should not be held responsible for actions he did not take and an appalling inheritance he was forced to grapple with. Removing that context, as the GOP has largely done, and Crook now endorses, is to rig the entire debate so that Obama cannot win. It is a function of the kind of punditry that is, in fact, far more of a problem for the country than anything Obama has done - because it bases political judgment on unreality, and distorts the body politic's capacity for reasoned argument. It treats all of this as a game.

Absolute Proof the Military-Industrial Complex Rules

2010-01-27T13:42:00.001-05:00

Matt Yglesias spotted the following chart and draws the obvious conclusion. Combat aircraft? We are nuts...all of us for either asking for it or for going along with it. More proof that the fear card always works. You can't even go after this stuff without being called soft on security. Per Attackerman:

I got this chart from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s Todd Harrison’s brand-new paper on the imminent Fiscal 2011 defense budget. (Conveniently released today!) As you can see, all this chart details is spending on aircraft. In last year’s budget, that spending represented 5 percent of the budget, or between $38.6 billion and $40.1 billion, depending on whether you want to include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in your calculation or not.
You see that bright green line? The one at the top? The one that’s way higher than all its colorful competitors? That represents procurement funding for combat aircraft.
Has it sunk in yet?
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say we don’t use combat aircraft in the wars we’re fighting. You have to come up with a baroque set of Michael Bey-esque geopolitical calculations by which we would use combat aircraft in any conceivable war. The U.S.’s area of combat-aircraft dominance is called Planet Earth. No Air Force is going to challenge ours. No actual U.S. adversary has an air force, and the list of real-potential U.S. adversaries that do starts with Iran and ends with North Korea, neither of which are remotely stupid enough to test us in the air. The most likely scenario for using combat aircraft in a U.S. war is an alien invasion.
What is relevant to the wars we fight are (a) remotely-piloted aircraft like drones, (b) surveillance aircraft like drones, (c) helicopters, and (d) especially airlift, to get our ground troops from Point A to Point B. And as you can see from the chart, we don’t spend nearly on that stuff what we spend on combat aircraft.
But by all means, freeze spending on school lunch programs and Head Start and shit like that.

Yikes! Watch What You Eat

2010-01-19T07:37:00.000-05:00

This could be very important. It's not some chain email -- it's the Scientific American, no less, saying so. The plastics and POPs all around us are getting into our bodies and even causing low level disease, such as obesity. Use only glass and metal containers and cooking gear whenever possible. Also, avoid farm-raised seafood. This will change how I cook and eat. It may also explain why cancer is so much more common now than it was 50 years ago.

Researchers have for the first time found a connection between exposure to certain chemicals and insulin resistance, according to a study published in the online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives.
A group of European scientists examined whether exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) contributed to insulin resistance, which has been increasing around the world. More than 25 percent of U.S. adults suffer from metabolic conditions stemming from insulin resistance that include fatigue, obesity and difficulty regulating blood levels of fat and sugar.
Researchers fed rats a high-fat diet of either crude or refined fish oil from farmed Atlantic salmon over 28 days. The crude fish oil contained average levels of POPs that people are exposed to through fish consumption, while the refined oil contained none. Both had equal fat levels.
They found that rats exposed to the crude fish oil developed belly fat and could not regulate fat properly. They had higher levels of cholesterol and several fatty acids in their livers. Those exposed to the refined fish oil experienced none of those symptoms.
Researchers said the findings provide "compelling evidence" of a causal relationship between POP exposure common in the food chain and insulin resistance, and highlight the need to understand the interactions of POPs and fat-containing foods such as fish, dairy products and meat.
How to deal with POPs is particularly challenging because they persist in the environment for long periods and can build up in animals' tissues.
The 2001 Stockholm Convention, which the United States has ratified but not signed, lists and bans numerous POPs from manufacture and use. The researchers say their evidence reinforces the need to have international agreements aimed at limiting the release of POPs into the environment in an effort to protect public health.

Greenwalds's Analysis of What's Wrong with the Press

2010-01-14T08:32:00.000-05:00

Glen strikes again and his points, and evidence, are all to the mark. There is no doubt the press has failed in the last decade. This describes why and how, especially when coupled with the fact that big corporations run the news operations and those working in those operations want to please their bosses by playing the access game this way.

Aside from falsity -- and the fact that they become irreversibly lodged in our political culture as fact -- what do all of these deceitful reports have in common? They're all the by-product of granting anonymity to people and then repeating what they claim as fact, with the falsehood-disseminators protected by "journalists" from any and all accountability for their falsehoods. It's exactly the same process that caused our leading media outlets to tell Americans about Iraq's massive WMD program and Al Qaeda connections; Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight with inhumane Iraqi devils and her "rescue" by our Marines; Pat Tillman's death at the hands of Al Qaeda monsters; and government tests that "confirmed" the presence of bentonite in the anthrax used to attack the U.S., which meant it was likely that Saddam was behind the attacks.
Unjustified anonymity -- especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret -- is the single greatest enabler of false and deceitful "reporting." Despite (or, really, because of) its unparalelled record of producing lies, it will never stop, because agreeing to it is how "journalists" end up being selected as favored message-carrying servants for the powerful. This falsehood-producing method isn't ancillary to American journalism but central to it; the book which is occupying the attention of America's political and media class is based exclusively on unattributed, shielded sources, and that seems to bother none of them.

Becoming an Aristocracy

2010-01-11T18:31:00.000-05:00

The data doesn't look good for Americans as far as having the economic success of each generation be independent of their parents. I was surprised at how much worse on this the US is than most other developed countries. I expect this will get even worse as the expense of a college education continues to rise faster than than national income.

Bhashkar Mazumder, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has a paper which says that “Using administrative data containing the earnings histories of parents and children,the IGE is estimated to be around 0.6. This suggests that the United States is substantially less mobile than previous research indicated.” And, “estimates of intergenerational mobility are significantly lower for families with little or no wealth.”
He also points to CAP’s research on the subject:
By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.
And you don’t need to take my word for it either, the Economist—an outfit with right-wing views on economic matters, but that’s also international in its outlook and thus not blinded by the solipsism of the American right—has covered this in detail.
This one stat isn’t the be-all and end-all of mobility. One nice thing about the United States and social mobility is that compared to most European countries (but not Canada or Australia, or for that matter Sweden in Europe) it’s easier for foreigners to move here and make their way. Still, the facts are the facts. The ex ante level of inequality in the United States makes social mobility hard, and we’re not doing anything like the kinds of investments in child nutrition, early education, etc. that could make up for it ex post.

Taxes and Growth

2010-01-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

Another conservative belief proven wrong with the facts. Are they ever right? I would hope so, but with this era's conservatives, it never seems to happen.

For the record, however, the most-taxed countries on Earth (i.e., the countries where revenue is the highest percent of GDP) are in order:
Denmark
Sweden
Belgium
France
Norway
In terms of per capita GDP these are, respectively, the 4th, 9th, 14th, 15th, and 3rd richest countries on earth while the United States is 17th. Of course in part that’s an exchange rate phenomenon and if you use PPP adjustments rather than market exchange rates, the U.S. looks better. On the other hand, if you peer into the future it seems to me that exchange rate comparisons are likely to make us look even worse in years to come. The high-tax five also do very well on things like the U.N. Human Development index.

MoDo Fails Badly

2010-01-10T18:47:00.001-05:00

Nice evisceration of a particularly awful MoDo column. Note my comment (20. from Down Goes Pecksniff):

When I saw MoDo this morning, I fumed. She is occasionally clever, and certainly better than the neo-con crowd over at WaPo, but this was pathetic.
Matt has nailed what gnawed at me — that, according to her, Obama should treat the electorate as children. None of that wimpy, analytical, fact-finding stuff for her. AUTHORITY is what’s needed from our leaders. We had that for eight years and look where it got us. She has gone to the dark side, or maybe just the dumb side, and I’m done.

Unemployment vs. GDP Growth

2009-11-01T12:55:00.000-05:00

It's slow and lagging. Don't buy in to the conservative line that the Obama administration is not performing on jobs.

Presidential Popularity

2009-10-12T11:15:00.002-05:00

Great chart.

Our Failed Economic Model

2009-06-16T03:57:00.003-05:00

These are telling charts, from the Congressional Budget Office, showing the increasing disparity of income and wealth distribution over the last three decades. The time series above is the most telling of the bunch. Is there any question about what has been wrong with the economy? We are turning into a banana republic. Has there ever been a clearer picture that "top-down" economic theories don't work for those who are not at the top?

Collecting All the Arguments for Torture

2009-06-04T19:43:00.006-05:00

Here is the link and following is the chart. Is anybody impressed with any of these arguments? Of course the fact that torture is ILLEGAL is determinative!

Charitable Giving

2009-05-19T20:34:00.002-05:00

This chart is frankly shocking. And this result is before the cut in charitable giving write-offs for those above $250k. I guess they weren't so generous in the first place.

More Data Comparing Economic Performance

2009-04-18T06:10:00.004-05:00

Some "eye-popping" charts comparing economic performance of Republican vs. Democratic regimes. Tell me again why the Republican Party is the party of economic growth and success? There are more references at this site. The conclusions don't change no matter how you look at it.

Putting the Absurd Tea Parties in Perspective

2009-04-18T05:53:00.003-05:00

No matter how you look at it, the tax rates in the US are not high on a global scale. We can always bitch about taxes, but they are not out of line, especially when you consider that we have by far the largest expenditures on defense, over 20% of the federal budget. By the way, this stuff comes from Forbes, hardly a bunch of raving progressives.

More on Growing Income Inequality

2009-04-18T05:37:00.004-05:00

I fail to see how this is "fair". The usual argument for rewarding the rich is that they are the ones who create wealth with all their drive and creativity. If they aren't rewarded they will testily sit on their asses, screwing us all (per Ayn Rand). Well, they have been getting more and more for 30 years. Where are the great results? Not so much. A failed experiment. We're turning into a banana republic with no bananas.

Federal Government Expenditures: Waste

2009-04-15T16:06:00.004-05:00

Of the three biggest chunks of spending, we know that both Defense (still fighting the cold War) and health care (higher delivery cost than any where on earth) are loaded with waste. I conclude that by being smart, probably an impossibility, we could take care of the pension and health needs of our "advanced" civilization without significantly higher taxation. It will take years of chipping away at the mix strategically. By the way, aren't education and research ridiculously low given our bleak future in energy and the environment?

Out-of-Control Spending by Dems -- Not!

2009-04-15T08:02:00.003-05:00

I've covered this before, but it is another classic example of rampant Rovism: acuse the Dems of what you yourself are doing worse. In this case, much worse. This data should stop any righty during a rant on out-of-control spending by Dems -- but it won't because facts don't matter.

The Tax "Crisis"

2009-04-14T12:49:00.002-05:00

The latest Gallup poll measures whether American consider their taxes too high. Surprisingly, the number saying yes has fallen from historical levels. Let's have a tea party!

Older Workers Frozen Out

2009-04-13T07:18:00.002-05:00

It is a fact that older workers are at a competitive disadvantage versus younger workers for any given open position. This article gathers responses from a "panel of experts" as to why that is so. A lot of the ideas seem ridiculous (tougher to manage?), but the ones that strike me most forcefully are: the expectation in the future of decreasing productivity of an older worker vs increasing for a younger, and (perceived) higher health care costs.

The Myth of 60% Required in the Senate

2009-04-08T13:32:00.005-05:00

Norm Ornstein points out in this essay that obstructionist use of the filibuster in the senate has gotten out of control. Don't believe the malarkey that the senate has always operated this way. Not true as clearly shown above.

Comparing Stock Market Crashes

2009-04-07T14:31:00.004-05:00

Krugman referenced this paper which compares the tracks of various economic indicators of the current "recession" to those same measures of the Great Depression on a world-wide basis. The above chart of the index of stock market performance by month after the peak is not so hot, as we all already know. Overall, we are in deep stuff. Check out the other charts at the link.

Catholics: Not So Conservative

2009-04-05T11:04:00.003-05:00

This recent Gallup poll shows that Catholics, claimed by many on the right to be in alignment with the social agenda of the Republican Party, reflect the viewpoints more closely of the average American, which in turn are more liberal than the corporate press or repub politicians would have you believe. Stubborn facts strike again.

No Housing Bubble in Detroit

2009-03-25T21:09:00.005-05:00

This chart shows that the housing bubble is certainly bad nationally, but it never even existed in Detroit. Oy.

Income Inequality

2009-03-21T11:01:00.010-05:00

A primary driver of the economic situation today in the US is increasing income inequality. See this:

United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg‎ (SVG file, nominally 1,000 × 400 pixels, file size: 14 KB)

Another way of looking at it is from Krugman:

This is for households so a significant making feature is the increasing numer of women in the work force over the same period. Another way of looking at the data, adding the top 1% group:

Even the Wall Street Journal acknowledges the facts, including this chart:

During this same period, it is hard to argue that the increasing inequality has fueled an overall higher GNP growth rate:

Restarting

2009-03-21T10:29:00.003-05:00

I have taken a hiatus from blogging since the election. Also, some personal issues have absorbed my time recently. However, I am restarting this blog with a new emphasis: posting data and charts that clearly explain and analyze the greater economic, social, and political issues we all face. Too often the issues, analyses, and prescriptions put forward by our political leaders and, even more discouragingly, by our "independent" national press, are incorrect, misleading, or diversionary. When I see a chart or data-based analysis that clarifies or illuminates a supposedly debatable point, I will post it so that over time, this blog will become a repository of solid data to counter much of the pervasive blather and bullshit. By using the Labels feature, it will be easy to collect the key data by subject, such as Health Care.

Let's see how this goes over time. There will be some backing and filling for a while as I reconnect with information I have noted over recent months.

The Healthcare Disaster

2008-11-23T19:26:00.002-05:00

Today's article in the Post sums up well. I was a little surprised to see the authors don't expect much from reducing admin costs. Lots of good links. We are screwed up.

The United States is No. 1 in only one sense: the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag behind many developed countries on virtually every health statistic you can name. Life expectancy at birth? We rank near the bottom of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just ahead of Cuba and way behind Japan, France, Italy, Sweden and Canada, countries whose governments (gasp!) pay for the lion's share of health care. Infant mortality in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 births, more than twice as high as in Japan, Norway and Sweden and worse than in Poland and Hungary. We're doing a better job than most on reducing smoking rates, but our obesity epidemic is out of control, our death rate from prostate cancer is only slightly lower than the United Kingdom's, and in at least one study, American heart attack patients did no better than Swedish patients, even though the Americans got twice as many high-tech treatments.

Jottings on the Election Results

2008-11-09T07:08:00.003-05:00

I love this quote this morning in the Times from a woman in Levittown, NJ on her fellow voters: “They had to ask themselves if they wanted a really smart young black guy, or a stodgy old white guy from the same crowd who put us in this hole."

In thinking back on the election and the longer arc of what happened, Obama grew and broadened during the campaign while McCain shrunk and narrowed.

Obama got better at debating and by the time of his final debate performances, the public became "comfortable" with him and more confidant that "yes he can". He continued to draw huge crowds and kept building a vast ground organization. He never had to change his team of advisers and organizers; they just kept getting more experienced and confident. He kept the dialog at a higher level. He ran some negative ads, but only to the issues, not to the opponents personally. He avoided responding angrily and emotionally to unfair and distorted attacks. He gained the endorsements of Powell and other moderate Republicans. Always better and broader as the too long campaign ground on. And, he was always true to his core message best captured in his great line, "We are the ones we are waiting for."

McCain retreated further and further to the fear mongering and racially charged attack mode of the far right. In fact, by the last day, he blanketed the cable channels with a Reverend Wright ad, too late to have to account for it given that he said he wouldn't do it. The Palin choice was designed to appeal primarily to the narrow Republican base, which by the end, is all who supported her sorry persona. His behavior during the debates was distinctly non-presidential with the eye-rolling, lack of eye contact, and seething, hot responses with the phony grimacing smile. He turned on the buddies he had cultivated in the press and assumed the classical Republican position of attacking the "liberal" press, which is demonstrably untrue these days. He in the end seemed mostly a small, angry, old man, certainly not the bearer of a positive, forward-leaning, inclusive vision for the future. Good riddance.

John Dean's Election Analysis of Authoritarianism

2008-11-03T12:31:00.002-05:00

John Dean wrote the book book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, in which he set forth the facts regarding the consequences of the Republicans' controlling government for too many years. His latest column summarizes those facts and uses them to analyze McCain and Palin. Some will think it over the top. I don't. There is too much evidence that must be faced unflinchingly.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.

The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide no true, specific proposals to address America's needs. Rather, they simply ask voters to "trust us" and suggest that their opponents - Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden - are not "real Americans" like McCain, Palin, and the voters they are seeking to court. Accordingly, McCain and Plain have called Obama "a socialist," "a redistributionist," "a Marxist," and "a communist" - without a shred of evidence to support their name-calling, for these terms are pejorative, rather than in any manner descriptive. This is the way authoritarian leaders operate.

Cell Phones and Polls

2008-11-03T07:01:00.002-05:00

One more day to go until the election that people around the world are watching. I have been posting lightly down the stretch. I've been almost too wired, searching for the latest info, about this election to take the time to post. However, this one regards a great little analysis form Nate Silver, a baseball sabermetrician (their term for baseball statisticians) who has been applying his statistical methods to the election polls. His conclusion regarding use of cell phones exclusively by many these day -- it's distorting the polls by around 4%. Check it out.

The polls in the Cingular-y orange color include cellphones in their samples; the polls in gray do not. The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points.

An Outside View Calling It as It Is

2008-10-27T07:13:00.002-05:00

Max Hastings is a British writer of military history, no soft tree-hugger. I like the way here that he describes how McCain would be the extension if the dunderheaded ways of the Bushies. The Republican Party is stuck in an incompetent, simple-minded "brutishness" that will lead to nothing but further disaster.

So badly have the Republicans handled this campaign and, indeed, their recent governance of America that they have herded themselves into a corner. In their intolerance and aggressive religious fervour, they have pushed out of their own ranks most voters with minds, or with a shred of liberal social conscience, or who realise that however little they like government and taxes, they need these things, especially in a global financial crisis....
To put it bluntly, the Republicans have become the party of America's stupid people. That is not abusive, but a statement of fact. Most of the whites who will vote for McCain next week are demographically among the nation's least-educated: rednecks; drivers of big, tough pick-up trucks with flags on the hoods; Johnny Cash fans; and deer hunters.
Sure, in upmarket city suburbs there are still some McCain/Palin boards up, among people who simply vote with their wallets. In the Bush years, the Republicans have justified their reputation as the party which looks after rich people.
But a shrewd political reporter said to me: 'The real fault line in America is no longer geographical, between north and south, the middle and the coasts; it's educational.'
Lawyers now back the Democrats by 4 to 1; with doctors, it is 2-1; investment bankers, 2-1; executives in hightech businesses, 5-1.
The blunt, happy truth is that today there are not enough dumb people in the United States to elect John McCain and his hockey mom Veep.
A formidable majority of Americans perceive that George W. Bush's pretty brutish presidency has been a disaster. They are painfully conscious that he has made America more widely disliked in the world than at any time since Vietnam....
The choice before Americans on Tuesday next week is more stark than most of us would have imagined possible a few months ago.
If, by some implausible twist of fate, Americans turn back to McCain, they would vote for more of the same - bungled economics, breaks for the rich, blundering foreign policy, perverted religion and foolish folksy values, a moral arrogance which has led America in to military quagmires abroad.
If instead - and thankfully most likely - they choose Obama, they will take a soaring leap into the unknown. Electing him will be the bravest thing the American people have done for many a long day.
The world is holding its breath, full of fervent hopes that they will not lose their nerve.

Powell's Endorsement

2008-10-20T05:32:00.003-05:00

Juan Cole has a thoughtful post up about Colin Powell's thoughtful endorsement of Obama. Both are unusual in their careful reasoning, expansiveness, and rationality -- qualities too rarely found in our political discourse. The two made me realize that one of hte things about Obama that I am sure he will do is take the long view and try to do the right things for the right reasons. In the heat of battle in a dirty campaign, finally something positive.

Powell then signals his discomfort not only with what the Palin pick says about McCain's lack of judgment but also how it positions the future of the Republican Party. That is, he reads Obama and Palin as harbingers of the future of their respective parties, since they stand for youth in each one.

Palin's Republican Party is "becoming narrower." He does not initially spell out what he means by this charge, but it can be inferred by his later comments and by reverse-engineering what he says about Obama. Palin's Republican Party is rural or rurban, small-town, and ethnically homogeneous (i.e. "white")--also, it might be said, largely Protestant. She does not bring along with her many of the youth, or ethnic America (which is heading for 51% of the population in a couple of decades), or urban populations. Rural conservative white Protestantism may be a backbone of the Republican Party, but it is not a sufficient basis for ruling a dynamic, diverse country such as the U.S.

In contrast, he says, "Mr. Obama . . . has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values. "

Clarity on Republican Debt in a Great Chart

2008-10-05T16:23:00.002-05:00

This chart is another way of looking at what I have noted before about the performance of the economy under Republican vs Democrats. Recall that the line has been, "cut taxes to choke the government beast." In practice, not so much -- more a disaster of debt leading to the choking of the national economy, not the government.

Tom Wolfe on Fighter Pilots (Think McCain)

2008-09-26T16:14:00.004-05:00

A commenter to a Slate article came up with the full context of the great quote about the McCain campaign: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!" Does this not explain all-over-the-place McCain? It's fighter-pilot-ish but is it presidential? Be ready for many more wild ploys before this election is over. Don't forget, John Boy also crashed five planes.

Being a fighter pilot... presented a man, on a perfectly sunny day, with more ways to get himself killed than his wife and children could imagine in their wildest fears. If he was barreling down the runway at two hundred miles an hour, completing the takeoff run, and the board started lighting up red, should he (A) abort the takeoff (and try to wrestle the monster, which was gorged with jet fuel, out in the sand beyond the end of the runway) or (B) eject (and hope that the goddamned human cannonball trick works at zero altitude and he doesn't shatter an elbow or a kneecap on the way out) or (C) continue the takeoff and deal with the problem aloft (knowing full well that the ship may be on fire and therefore seconds away from exploding)?...
Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!" And then that truly spooky click on the machine. What do I do next? (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff.
-Tom Wolfe, "The Right Stuff," 1979

Update: This profile of John Boy in the Rolling Stone provides much more insight and detail. He is not a good, or even competent, guy.

A Guiding Principle that is Obvious but Too Often Ignored

2008-09-23T17:24:00.002-05:00

Krugman observes a great truism here and links to a fuller discussion that is worth following as well. Credibility really matters. The principle: Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. Think Iraq, Sarah Palin, the current bail-out proposal, and, as a matter of fact, just about anything involving Karl Rove or his disciples.

A Chart Is Worth...

2008-09-17T07:21:00.002-05:00

I have seen this chart in several different forms and this posting does the best job of laying it out.

Two points are especially important. Where is McCain going to get the money to pay off the rich even more? Second, Obama's plan is better for lower and middle classes than McCain's, even though McCain's campaign keeps lying about it and says that Obama would increase their taxes. Facts, please. By the way, when I saw a McCain spokesman confronted with this data vs. his lie, he said, "Well they always raise taxes." His argument is based on mythology not the detailed, documented policy. This is what Republicans do now. Lie pure and simple. And they seek to run the most powerful nation on earth.

Funny and Tragic for Us

2008-09-08T12:44:00.002-05:00

Jon Stewart and crew outdid themselves with this one. You first smile and then cringe and cringe and cringe. What is wrong with this country? What is wrong with our press for not communicating this record to our citizens? These aren't words and promises, this is what actually happened.

Can We Get over Race?

2008-08-23T16:33:00.002-05:00

Jacob Weisberg of Slate has a disturbing post up that makes a pretty good case that there is still a substantial element of racism in the American electorate and that itis holding back Obama's poll numbers. How can we still be hung up on race? Does anybody out there really think Barak Obama is not a legitimate candidate based on his abilities and total experience? We probably all sense this vestigial racism and we even see it in too many people, but it's the 21st century is it not? Get over it. Tell me why it matters? Give me one argument.

Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election. That warning is written all over last month's CBS/New York Times poll, which is worth examining in detail if you want a quick grasp of white America's curious sense of racial grievance. In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.
Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.
Then there's the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama's white mother always preferred that her "mate" be "a man of color." John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book.
Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.
Choosing John McCain, in particular, would herald the construction of a bridge to the 20^th century—and not necessarily the last part of it, either. McCain represents a Cold War style of nationalism that doesn't get the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics, the centrality of soft power in a multipolar world, or the transformative nature of digital technology. This is a matter of attitude as much as age. A lot of 71-year-olds are still learning and evolving. But in 2008, being flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer, seems like a deal-breaker. At this hinge moment in human history, McCain's approach to our gravest problems is hawkish denial. I like and respect the man, but the maverick has become an ostrich: He wants to deal with the global energy crisis by drilling and our debt crisis by cutting taxes, and he responds to security challenges from Georgia to Iran with Bush-like belligerence and pique.
You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change. To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline.

Our "Watchdog" Press

2008-08-21T08:11:00.002-05:00

Glen Greenwald has a particularly good post that nails a common practice of our national press -- being sycophantic and subservient to its government sources. I have given up watching, for example, David Gregory's show at 6 PM on MSNBC because invariably at some point duing the show he will say "from my own reporting, the McCain campaign tells me..." from which he proceeds to essentially read their press releases. And he thinks this is "reporting". He doesn't even see that he is being a tool, just as Tim Russert was as Greenwald documents clearly.

There are many revealing episodes during the Bush presidency illustrating how the media functions, but there is none more revealing than the disclosures from the Lewis Libby criminal trial. Documents prepared by former Cheney Communications Director Catherine Martin (wife of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin) boasted that Tim Russert's Meet the Press was the best venue for Cheney to answer questions because he was able to "control message." Martin also testified at trial that she "suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used. It's our best format" (Dana Milbank: "Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you"). Russert himself subsequently testified that "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record" (Dan Froomkin: "That's not reporting, that's enabling. That's how you treat your friends when you're having an innocent chat, not the people you're supposed to be holding accountable").

Just think about what that meant: the single greatest source of government disinformation and corruption in America -- Dick Cheney's office -- viewed Tim Russert as the most pliable and effective instrument for disseminating their propaganda to the country. That's not media critics or rabble-bloggers saying that. That was the view of Russert which Dick Cheney's office had -- and understandably so.

I don't think these people are stupid or even ideological. They are playing their corporate game. Their management wants them to get access, not accuracy or the rational truth, so they can claim a "scoop". But what kind of a scooping is it to be a stenographer?

Kelly O'Donnell of NBC is another classic. Every time she is on air, she is passing on what someone in the McCain campaign told her, as if that is all there is to her job -- no context, no comparison to previous statements, no checking against established facts or studies, just regurgitation. Then these are the people who are promoted to the plum assignments, not the diggers and fact-checkers. It seems obvious that this type of reporting is exactly what the corporate management of the media want.

Loose Cannon

2008-08-20T04:10:00.005-05:00

The recent Georgia crisis brought on some heavy breathing by McCain that seems to be benefiting him by highlighting his foreign policy "experience". But that experience is really one of mouth-breathing belligerence and fear-mongering regarding every "crisis" that comes along. This is not a cool head that should have his finger on the U. S. military buttons. He has one solution, it seems, for everything -- send in the troops or bomb the hell out of "them". This is "judgment"?

On Thursday of last week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that Russia's invasion of Georgia was "the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War." This is most certainly not true, at least according to the last two decades' worth of foreign policy assessments from one John McCain.
In December 1990, two months after Germany reunified and four months after Saddam Hussein did unto Kuwait far worse than what Vladimir Putin has so far done unto Georgia, the Arizona senator asserted that "the peace and security of the world for future generations [demand] that the world community act decisively to end the Gulf Crisis now." Pretty serious stuff.
In January 1994, he described North Korea's nuclear weapons program as "the most dangerous and immediate expression" of "the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today," and warned that "there can be no serious doubt that our vital national interests are imperiled." Serious!

In an April 1999 speech that everyone considering voting for McCain should go read now, the rogue-state rollbacker said that "America's most important values—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—are under vicious assault by the Milosevic regime," requiring "an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo," including mobilization of "infantry and armored divisions for a possible ground war." Très sérieux!
And of course, during the current campaign, he has repeatedly reminded voters that he's running for president to confront "the transcendent issue of our time: the battle and struggle against radical Islamic extremism." Which, he argued at a Republican debate in June 2007, "is a force of evil that is within our shores.... My friends, this is a transcendent struggle between good and evil. Everything we stand for and believe in is at stake here." If that isn't a "probably serious crisis internationally," then the phrase truly has no meaning.

UPDATE:

This editorial from the Atlanta Journal Constitution makes the same points.

In the Republican primaries of 2000, the hard-line conservative foreign policy “experts” who later pushed hardest for an invasion of Iraq did not support George W. Bush. Their candidate was McCain, because they believed he would be most likely to conduct the sort of militarily interventionist policy they advocated.

More recently, McCain’s aggressive instincts have been apparent in his policy toward Iran. There too he has been more eager than most —- including many in his own party —- to talk of military solutions to a problem that to many experts defies a military approach.

The question for the American voter, of course, is whether a candidate of such instincts is well-suited for the White House in times such as these. At rare moments in history, a military response is essential and required, as it was in World War II, and as it was in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11.

But more often, the choices offered by history are more complex, requiring judgment and wisdom. Choosing confrontation and war too quickly when other options are available can prove disastrous, as the example of Iraq should have taught us.

McCain’s instinct, demonstrated time and again and most recently now in Georgia, is to cast America as a global policeman. In the next few months, American voters have to ask themselves whether they share that vision and instinct.

The False Elitist/Stupid Dimension

2008-08-10T10:41:00.002-05:00

Paul Krugman put up one of his best columns up Friday. this is the best line and is oh so true: "The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”" Don't we all hear it all the time that "common sense" is all you need, not facts, analysis, science, "thinking things through"?

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.
Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”
It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.
What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.
Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

To Be Clear on the Records

2008-08-03T15:08:00.002-05:00

Mark Kleiman does a good job of pulling together several good sites on the comparative legislative records of Obama and McCain. At the very least, it is clear that Obama does have a solid record of legislative performance. Follow the links for the full details.

Obama has several substantial bi-partisan accomplishments. In Springfield, he sponsored successful bills for children's health care, an earned income tax credit, ethics and campaign finance reform, and videotaped police interrogations (an anti-torture measure). In Washington, it was ethics reform again and work with Richard Lugar on loose nukes. That is not a thin record. (Charles Peters has the details on Springfield, and Hilzoy has two long posts on Obama in the U.S. Senate and on Obama's style of bipartisanship.)

Against that , Williams cites two items only from McCain's 25-year career: campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform. McCain did indeed co-sponsor McCain-Feingold, which his campaign is currently violating by exceeding the primary election spending cap after having agreed to take matching funds and gained both financial and ballot-placement benefit from that agreement. McCain also worked on immigration reform, which crashed and burned in the Senate because he couldn't get his own Republican colleagues to stand by him, and which he has now abandoned in favor of an enforcement-only approach that is not bipartisan at all.

Also, you often hear the canard that Obama has no specific proposals, even from "professional journalists" who should at least have done their homework. Go to this site, read it, and try to say Obama had no specific proposals. There is nothing comparable at McCain's site or anywhere else.

Great Chart on Carbon Emissions

2008-07-28T17:29:00.003-05:00

I had seen this chart in Business Week (March 10, 2008, it turns out) some months ago then could not find again despite herculean googling. I finally came across the magazine itself while cleaning my desk and now offer it here. It is from a McKinsey study and what I found most interesting about it is that greater and more cost-effective gains are to be made in buildings that in transportation. Slide 4 of this is a great chart. (The reason I couldn't find it is because it is one slide of an embedded slide show. Jeesh. I tried cutting and pasting it in, but it's too detailed to be readable that way.)

The Pattern Continues

2008-07-12T12:05:00.002-05:00

The carpetbagger lays it out so clearly here -- the press is covering up for McCain and going after Obama. It soesn't take much of a mental experiment to conclude that if the Mccain adultery story was reversed, Obama would have hell to pay. For Golden John: crickets and tumbleweed. This is the sam thing that happened regardiing Boy George and the National Guard, drunk driving, and sweetheart Texas Rangers deal -- no digging, no priority, and and no followup.

There are lies in McCain's book that have been now documented. How much more obvious can it be? This is clear proof that the MSM is covering for the old man.

The Los Angeles Times did some solid investigative reporting and published a very damaging item yesterday on John McCain’s personal background, which is of course a key part of his campaign. We learned that McCain turned his back on his wife after she was seriously injured in a car accident, committed adultery, and left the mother of his children when he found a younger, wealthier woman.

Worse, we also learned that McCain didn’t tell the truth about this in his own memoir. McCain insisted that he was separated from his first wife before he began dating his second wife. That’s not true. McCain also insisted he’d been divorced for months before remarrying. That wasn’t true, either. (In fact, the LAT reported, “McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.”)

Clearly, this is the kind of salacious story reporters just love. A presidential candidate, running on his personal background, is found to have a messy past. The story has sex, drama, and fairly obvious lies — everything a news outlet needs for wall-to-wall coverage. What does this tell us about McCain’s character? Will voters care about a conservative Republican’s adultery? What will the “family-values” crowd say? How do we reconcile McCain’s untruths with his alleged proclivity for “straight talk”? Will the revelations hurt McCain in the polls? It’s the kind of story the media can obsess over for months.

Not so much.

Clark's Gaffe

2008-07-02T06:57:00.002-05:00

This is a particularly insightful analysis of the Clark gaffe, which is, by definition, accidentally speaking the truth. I like the "old inter-service rivalry" angle. It's probably quite true, especially when it involve an arrogant ass like McCain.

Interservice rivalries are not nearly as fierce as they once were. One reason is the Goldwater-Nichols reform of 1986, which among other things required officers to serve on a "joint" (i.e., multiservice) command before getting promoted to general. Another has been the experience of the past two decades' wars, especially the ongoing Iraq war, in which the services have conducted joint operations to an unprecedented degree. Finally, the military budgets have lately been large enough for everybody to get what they've wanted: There hasn't been much need for rivalry.
Still, tensions persist. Some soldiers and Marines resent the Air Force and Navy for shouldering so light a burden in Iraq, bearing only 4 percent of the fatalities and 2 percent of the injuries in this war. (See chart below.)

Professor Cole Sums Up the Iraqi Disaster

2008-06-22T08:33:00.002-05:00

Juan Cole takes time today to review the results so far in human costs to the Iraqis. Just read this and think about it. One clear point is that this is so disastrous that we, as Americans responsible for the debacle, simply cannot face up to the consequences of our actions. We protect ourselves from being accountable. This is an all-to-human, self-justifying response; not right or responsible, just human.

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters....

In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years....
As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.

In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them. Please read this excellent piece of reporting, which points out that the US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to. Please write the Senate and the Congress and demand that something be done for these, our victims.

40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

Freedom.

McCain Imploding?

2008-06-13T11:44:00.005-05:00

This was recorded in 2005. Since then, McCain has voted with Bush over 90% of the time and has, as documented before, flipped on many issues to align even more perfectly with the Bushwacks.
He cannot possibly win unless there is a truly an over-the-top, wag-the-dog event. We may be in the beginning of a real collapse for McCain.

Keep an Eye on This One

2008-06-09T12:19:00.002-05:00

The Carpetbagger makes a good point here. The press is starting to make a point about how similar McCain and Obama are on issues. Except, these articles from Bloomberg and the LAT downplay many of the issues where there are significant differences and simply err on many of those cited as being similar. The purpose of doing this: see, McCain is just as much for change. Presto, he really is different than Bush! Also, bullpucky.

Another Well-Placed Nail in the MSM Coffin

2008-06-06T17:31:00.002-05:00

This is just too good to not post. Read it all. The Scott McClellan book makes two major points, neither one of which is new: the Bushies lied us into the war and the MSM played along, mostly passively and sometimes actively. But the excuse of both camps has been: we could only state what we all knew at the time. The Knight-Ridder, later McClatchy, reporters, however, were pretty much correct in their scepticism all along as documented in the link. The correct information was there from the beginning if you opened your eyes and cleared your ears. Disgusting.

Glenzilla Strikes Again and the MSM Goes down

2008-05-29T11:02:00.002-05:00

Glenn Greenwald is the most withering and comprehensive blogger I read. He assembles an avalanche of historical video and documents to make his points like nobody else. It is like footnotes on steroids in this the era of the internets, The Google, and Nexus/Lexus. In his legally trained hands, it's a powerful and particularly persuasive method that must take him hours each day.

Here he takes on the self-justifying reaction of the biggest of the media's talking heads to Scott McClellan's digs at the compliant and complicit mainstream press during the run-up to the war.

Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan's revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government -- criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a "tell-all" Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems -- unwittingly or otherwise -- to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda.

I have little doubt that they would be telling the truth if they denied what Yellin reported last night. People like Williams, Gibson and Gregory don't need to be told to refrain from reporting critically about the war and the White House because challenging Government claims isn't what they do. And amazingly, they admitted that explicitly yesterday. Gibson and Gregory both invoked the cliched excuse of the low-level bureaucrat using almost identical language: exposing government lies "is not our job."

Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees -- far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists. It's just as simple as that. David Halberstam pointed that out some time ago. Unlike Yellin, Donahue and Banfield, nobody needed to pressure the likes of Williams, Gibson and Russert to serve as propaganda handmaidens for the White House. It's what they do quite eagerly on their own, which is precisely why they're in the corporate positions they're in. They are smooth, undisruptive personalities who don't create problems for their executives. Watching them finally describe how they perceive of "their role" leaves no doubt about any of that.

Baghdad Hillary

2008-05-22T19:02:00.002-05:00

Hillary lost me a while ago when she started adopting the actions I've abhorred from the Repubs: endless spin and manipulation, selective memory, dishonest argument, and continual moving of the goalposts. For many months I had been agnostic on Hillary vs. Obama. Her irrationality and dishonesty now threatens the run against McCain (I still think Barack is going to win comfortably), but it also tarnishes the Democratic brand as the clear-thinking, honest party. I'm not the only one. Yukkk.

Huff Post:

"Every time she claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever ceasefire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters stay home come November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the media and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable."

Bittman Aligns with Michael Pollen

2008-05-19T21:29:00.002-05:00

This video of a lecture by Mark Bittman, food columnist for the NYT and TV food guy on PBS, makes most of the key points made by Pollen in his book In Defense of Food. Watch it and read the very short and prescriptive book. I like to think it's changing the way we eat. I hope so, but 60 years of mostly bad habits are hard to break. The politics of this is that we are in the grips of agribusiness, to the detriment of our health and environment.

Historic Economic Performance

2008-05-03T08:17:00.003-05:00

There have been several studies and essays comparing the economic performance of the nation under Republican and Democratic administrations. The Republican argument is basically for trickle-down economics -- providing tax benefits for the rich encourages investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking to the benefit of all as the economy then grows. Nice theory but what does the data say. The answer: not so much.

This compendium of measures over time shows a clear pattern of superior results under Democratic administrations over the last 40-60 years even when lag times are comprehended to account for the time for policy changes to take effect. Clear advantages for Democratic administrations show in GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, growth in government spending, and average stock market return.

These articles and essays comment on and go inside the numbers: Kinsley in the Washington Post, Forbes.com, and the Washington Monthly. More recently these issues are again coming up along with the sister issue of income distribution (not just overall performance). See Bartels, more Bartels, Krugman, and a column in the Washington Post. Here is the detailed Bartels paper with all the latest tables and charts. I have not found any serious rebuttals from conservatives or Republicans. The data are the data. I challenge you to scan/study these long-term results, which will only be magnified by the disastrous performance of the Boy George administration, and argue for Republicanism being better for the nation's economy.

Perfect!

2008-04-28T16:45:00.002-05:00

Glenzilla (Glen Greenwald) strikes again. I could not help but notice the right-wing talking heads lately rushing to Hillary's defense, dispensing all this heartfelt advice to her on how to beat Barack. You know it is a load of crap, but Greenwald comes up, as usual, with the perfect hypocrisy, in quotes, to show how the game is being played. (He is the king of Lexus-Nexus.) Hilarious.

Karl Rove, The Financial Times, December 2, 2007: "Memo to Obama":
First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.
Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.
Karl Rove, Newsweek, May 5, 2008: "Dear Senator Obama":
Stop the attacks. They undermine your claim to a post-partisan new politics. You soared when you seemed above politics, lost altitude when you did what you criticize. Attacks are momentarily satisfying but ultimately corrode your appeal.
So absurdly, both the political and media class -- including many Democrats -- insist on taking seriously Republican assertions like this about Democratic candidates, as though they're engaged in some good faith, generous, honest effort to critically evaluate them and are trying to help Democrats decide who the better candidate is. Is there anything less relevant than what Karl Rove thinks about the Democratic candidates and what his "advice" is for how they could be better? The fact that he offers completely contradictory "advice" to Obama in a matter of a few months ought to reveal what he is about....

None of this is to be taken seriously. Karl Rove's army, including those in the media who revere him, aren't objectively evaluating each Democratic candidate to decide which one is strongest, which one is best, what they ought to do to win, etc. Their goal, instead, is to demonize and weaken whomever the nominee is going to be. There's a preexisting media narrative that will be fulfilled no matter who the nominee is; it's the same one that is applied in every national election.

What Is the Matter with these People?

2008-04-21T12:02:00.002-05:00

Condi sticks her foot in her mouth for no good reason. Arrogance x stupidity = disaster. This is really smart:

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran."

Of course, George is on the front-lines in Iraq himself, and Condi issued this taunt from the fortified green zone that she sneaked into.

Network Journalism: No More

2008-04-21T11:46:00.002-05:00

The blockbuster NYT report on the corrupt military experts the networks and cable stations constantly trot out is summarized well here. There is some question that this Pentagon project is even legal (improperly funded propaganda), but it is certainly deceptive and dishonest on the part of the ex-officers and, probably, by the news organizations; they had to know. Note that none have even responded to or mentioned the story, circling the wagons of course. Nobody should be surprised at this mainpulation of the press, it that it is clearly and inarguable documented now. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. We have now advanced to the military-industrial-media complex, practically the definition of fascism:

The article has at least three tracks: One, the Pentagon deploying the analysts (some 75 in number) and the TV outlets happy to run with them; two, the analysts' further conflict-of-interest in being tied to defense contractors with billions of dollars invested in the war effort; three, the complete lack of interest by the TV outlets in either of the first two connections, or ignoring what they did know. In fact, the networks raised no objections to the Pentagon paying for trips by the analysts.

The Three "Terrible Traditions" of Attack Politics

2008-04-18T16:34:00.002-05:00

Robert Reich, a member of the Clinton Cabinet, is endorsing Obama. But what is especially insightful is his reasoning, which is that Hillary has adopted the methods of the Republican attack machine:

So what's changed? I asked Reich.

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past twenty years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

A Perspective on Obama and Wright

2008-04-15T18:56:00.002-05:00

Lanny Davis wrote an op-ed in the WSJ of all places picking at the scab of the Wright controversy and took a lot of criticism for it. Here, however, Davis highlights a letter he got from a black lawyer in response to the op-ed that puts the black church experience into some perspective. Well done.

I think much of the debate over Rev. Wright and his statements overlooks the unique role of the black church in the black community. I’ve never been to Trinity in Chicago, but I’ve been to many churches like Trinity. Historically, the black church is the one place for blacks free of any white influence, something blacks can call all their own. It’s the fraternity, the funeral director, the marriage counselor, the lawyer, the tax preparer, the therapist, the AA anonymous. Black churches such as Trinity are often the center of the black community, the one place where people of different economic classes come together to see each other, worship God, engage in community service and outreach, and it is about much more than the pastor....
In the course of my own life, I have encountered many very militant and angry elements of the black community, much of them as formative for me as the large corporate law firm in which I am now a partner, the Clinton Administration, or growing up in Wappingers Falls, New York. But, it would be an act of sheer hypocrisy for me to try to renounce any of this. For example, at Morehouse many educated teachers and invited speakers blasted the white man, black men who acted like the white man, and condemned our whole society as fatally racist.

When I graduated in 1979, Louis Farrakhan was our baccalaureate speaker and Joshua Nkomo, leader of the armed struggle to liberate Zimbabwe, was our commencement speaker. With Coretta Scott King sitting near the front row, I vividly recall Nkomo preaching “the only thing the white man understands is the barrel of a gun.” I certainly didn’t agree with that then, and I don’t now. But I love Morehouse and would rather quit all involvement in public affairs before I had to sever my ties of support to the school. Morehouse is part of what makes me a proud African-American.

A good friend to me from my parent’s generation, a retired ivy-league professor who is like an uncle to me, was branded a dangerous radical and subversive by our government in the 1960s. J. Edgar Hoover wiretapped his conversations with Dr. King. But, if someone combed his books and found something he wrote with which I disagreed, I’d rather disassociate myself from my right arm than publicly renounce this man.

The reality is this: Those of us who participate in both the white and African-American experiences will very likely have a Jeremiah Wright in our lives - it could be our teacher, our uncle, our brother, our father, or our pastor. It is simply part of the American experience.

But, here I am, a patriot who - I can honestly say - harbors no “anger” or racial animosity toward anybody, including my white law partners, my white neighbors, or my white family members. I can’t guarantee much about anything in life, but I can guarantee, from what I know about Barack Obama, that he feels the same in his heart and soul.

Juan Cole is Ticked

2008-04-12T11:43:00.002-05:00

Juan Cole makes the obvious, but generally unobserved, point that Bush has allowed the US to become largely a military government. He rubber stamps whatever Petraeus wants. Which one is the Chief Executive?

War turns Republics into dictatorships. The logic is actually quite simple. The Constitution says that the Congress is responsible for declaring war. But in 2002 Congress turned that responsibility over to Bush, gutting the constitution and allowing the American Right to start referring to him not as president but as 'commander in chief' (that is a function of the civilian presidency, not a title.)

Now Bush has now turned over the decision-making about the course of the Iraq War to Gen. David Petraeus.

So Congress abdicated to Bush. Bush has abdicated to the generals in the field.

That is not a Republic. That is a military dictatorship achieved not by coup but by moral laziness.

Ironically, what officers like Petraeus need from Bush is not deference but vigorous leadership in the political realm. Bush needs to intervene to work for political reconciliation in Iraq if Petraeus's military achievements are to bear fruit. But Bush seems incapable of actually conducting policy, as opposed to starting wars. Bush happened to Iraq just as he happened to New Orleans. He cannot do the hard work of patiently addressing disasters and ameliorating them. He just wants to set people to fighting. Crush the Sadr Movement, perhaps the most popular political movement in Iraq? He's all for it. Risk provoking a wider conflagration in the Middle East by worsening relations with Iran? Sounds like a great idea to him. Bush campaigned on being a 'uniter not a divider' in 2000. In fact, he is the ultimate Divider, and leaves burning buildings, millions of refugees, and hundreds of thousands of cadavers in his wake. He is not Iraq's Brownie. He is Iraq's Katrina itself.

Just as New Orleans's Ninth Ward will still be a moonscape when Bush goes out of office, so will Iraq.

Eugene Robinson nails it: "It's time to acknowledge that Bush has run out the clock. The nation's only recourse is the ballot box."

65% of Americans either want US troops out of Iraq immediately or sometime in 2009, up from 61% in February of this year. Only 31% want to keep them there 'as long as it takes,' and that percentage declined in the past couple of months from 34%. In other words, whatever the success of the troop escalation and COIN techniques in the past year, they have had no impact on the rapid decline in the popularity with the American public of the US presence in Iraq. Most Americans don't seem to care whether the situation is better or worse in Iraq, they just want out.

In part these statistics show you don't need a degree in economics to figure out that the Iraq War is having a negative impact on the US economy. Americans are being hurt where it hurts.

Oh Oh. Waistline Target: 33.5"

2008-04-09T16:54:00.001-05:00

OK everybody, tighten up. In Japan, more than talk about obesity.

The War Has an Expiration Date

2008-04-07T08:49:00.002-05:00

I did not understand why the Bushies have been pushing for a long term security agreement with Iraq. This op-ed explains why:

U.S. military intervention is authorized under the second prong of the 2002 resolution. This authorizes the president to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." This has allowed the Bush administration to satisfy American law by obtaining a series of resolutions authorizing the United States to serve as the head of the multinational force in Iraq.
But here's the rub. The most recent U.N. resolution expires on Dec. 31, and the administration has announced that it will not seek one for 2009. Instead, it is now negotiating a bilateral agreement with the Iraqi government to replace the U.N. mandate.

Whatever this agreement contains, it will not fill the legal vacuum. That's because the administration is not planning to submit this new agreement to Congress for its explicit approval. Since the Constitution gives the power to "declare war" to Congress, the president can't ignore the conditions imposed on him in 2002 without returning for a new grant of authority. He cannot substitute the consent of the Iraqi government for the consent of the U.S. Congress.

There's always a slippery angle with these people.

Bush Era Performance

2008-04-06T16:25:00.005-05:00

I have been seeking actual performance measures under the Boy George administration and hit the jackpot finally. Here's a documented summary from the Democratic Caucus.

Here's another from Academy Computer Services.

Here's a final twist from Krugman on the same jobs data above:

The Bush jobs record

Changes in nonfarm employment since inauguration under the last two administrations:

Feel the boom!

Points to notice:

1. The official recession may have been short, but the employment recession of 2001-2003 was anything but

2. The administration’s habit of counting job gains since August 2003 is revealed for the cheap trick it is

3. Even during the good years, job growth under Bush was slower than the average under Clinton

Add: I may have been unclear: this is the total number of jobs added, in thousands, since January 1993 and January 2001 respectively. So the Clinton years ended with a net gain of about 23 million jobs, whereas the Bush years so far have seen a net gain of about 5 million. That’s not to say that either president deserves credit/blame for everything that happened on his watch; it’s just about the real facts of the case.

Let the numbers speak!

A Useful List to Start

2008-04-05T06:17:00.002-05:00

Slate ran a series of articles this past week asking various experts to prescribe what they think ought to be done to clean up the many piles of crap the Bushies have left. I don't find some the solutions proposed very impressive (How smart is it to reduce the mortgage deduction at a time when housing prices are in free fall?), but the cumulative magnitude of the many disasters that must be addressed is beyond sobering.

I Wish I'd Said That

2008-04-05T05:57:00.002-05:00

This post crystallizes the thoughts and sense I have of the presidential election. If I were going to set down my analysis, this would be it, if I would have done it well. Thanks to Mike Lux; he has saved me the tough job of writing it all down with clarity and brevity. I think it's going to be a blowout for the Dems, but it can be screwed up by the final candidate or the party. And the press is in the tank, so far, for McCain. On the other hand, how can the country possibly vote in for four more the party that has completely screwed up for eight years?

With the economy in the toilet, the situation in Iraq flaring up again, 81% of Americans thinking we're on the wrong track, a dispirited and uninspired Republican base, and with only a quarter of the country willing to call themselves a Republican, McCain should be easy to beat.

Of course!

The Shocking Incompetence and Dishonesty of the Yoo Memo

2008-04-04T11:55:00.002-05:00

Looseheadprop of Firedoglake has just begun to critique the Yoo memo on torture, but in this introductory posting, he makes a series of cutting comments based on the simple, basic principles of how to write a legal briefing. Yoo doesn't even come close to meeting the standards and, in fact, is deliberately misleading. For example:

Last item for this post: citation placement. When you place a footnote at the end of a sentence, the reader is meant to assume that the footnote supports the ENTIRE sentence. If you have two clauses in the sentence (or several examples listed in a sentence) then you are required to place your footnote at the point in the sentence where the clause you are supporting ends. If your footnote only supports the second half of a two clause sentence, the wording of your footnote should make that clear, so the reader will be alerted that the first part of your sentence lacks support.

In the Yoo memo, there are repeated examples of multi clause (or multi item) sentences in which the first part of the sentence contains a statement that is unremarkable and clearly well settled law, but the second half is an outrageous claim, yet the footnote appears at the end of the sentence falsely implying that the entire sentence actually has support.

Here's an example out of the Yoo memo:

"It is well settled that the President may seize and detain enemy combatants, at least for the duration of the conflict, and the laws of war make clear that prisoners may be interrogated for information concerning the enemy, its strength and its plans" footnote 9"

This is what footnote 9 says:

Although Article 17 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, August 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3517, places restrictions on interrogations of enemy combatants, members of al Qaeda and the Taliban militia are not legally entitiled to the status of prisoners of war under the Convention. See generally memeorandum for Alberto R.Gonzales, Counsel to the President and William J. Hayes, III, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from Jay S. Baybee Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees (Jan 22, 2002) ("Treaties and Laws Memorandum")

This is what the entirety of Article 17 of the Geneva Conventions says:

Every prisoner of war, when questioned on the subject, is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information.

If he willfully infringes this rule, he may render himself liable to a restriction of the privileges accorded to his rank or status.

Each Party to a conflict is required to furnish the persons under its jurisdiction who are liable to become prisoners of war, with an identity card showing the owner's surname, first names, rank, army, regimental, personal or serial number or equivalent information, and date of birth. The identity card may, furthermore, bear the signature or the fingerprints, or both, of the owner, and may bear, as well, any other information the Party to the conflict may wish to add concerning persons belonging to its armed forces. As far as possible the card shall measure 6.5 x 10 cm. and shall be issued in duplicate. The identity card shall be shown by the prisoner of war upon demand, but may in no case be taken away from him.

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. Prisoners of war who, owing to their physical or mental condition, are unable to state their identity, shall be handed over to the medical service. The identity of such prisoners shall be established by all possible means, subject to the provisions of the preceding paragraph.

The questioning of prisoners of war shall be carried out in a language which they understand.

So, the legal authority Yoo is citing to support his stunning assertion "that the laws of war make clear that prisoners may be interrogated for information concerning the enemy, its strength and its plans" not only DOESN'T SAY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO ASK FOR THAT INFORMATION, IT SAYS THE EXACT OPPOSITE. Sorry, didn't mean to shout. What Article 17 says is that you can only ask for name, rank/regiment, birthdate and serial number, period.

Oh yeah, and it also says specifically that you can't torture.

How to Think and Work

2008-03-27T17:32:00.002-05:00

I post this for general interest. It's from MIT's Technology review. I came across it and like it a lot. I do only some of it regularly and need to do more. How about you? Here is all of it:

How to Think

Managing brain resources in an age of complexity.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.

4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.

5. Make contingency maps. Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.

6. Collaborate.

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.

9. Document everything obsessively. If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.

10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."

Two practical notes. The first is in the arena of time management. I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes...)

The second practical note: I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.

^{Cite as: Boyden, E. S. "How to Think." Ed Boyden's Blog. Technology Review. 11/13/07. (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/boyden/21925/).}

The Clinton Campaign, a "Useful Tally"

2008-03-27T10:16:00.002-05:00

I am sure a similar tally could be put together based on the Obama campaign, but I doubt it would be as cumulatively so negative and ruthless as this one.

Delegate Math

2008-03-27T09:09:00.003-05:00

Many of our dumbest pundits (Joe Scarborough, et al) sneer at the"the Math" of the Democratic nomination like it is some nerdy inconvenience. This analysis is the best I've seen that clearly demonstrates that it's over for Hillary. Shut up and sit down already.

I also wonder, and haven't seen much on this, if the money-raising is starting to dry up for her. I suspect it is, which will be another big factor in finally ending this bloodletting.

The best point in the analysis -- it's not close:

According to the best available count, Obama currently leads among pledged delegates 1,415.5 to 1,253.5, a margin of 162 with 18 delegates currently for Edwards and 566 left to be determined. In terms of percentages, this translates to Obama 52.7%--46.7% Clinton, with 82.6% reporting. In any other campaign, if a candidate led by 6% with 83% reporting, all major news outlets would project that candidate as the winner. 6.0% is greater than the margin by which Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, and also greater than the margin by which Republicans won the 2002 midterms. I don't know anyone who follows politics who considers those close campaigns.

Enough to give One Pause

2008-03-25T16:07:00.002-05:00

The following is from the Financial Times, perhaps the top financial paper in the world and certainly no progressive outlet. This opinion piece today predicts what a McCain presidency would be like for Foreign policy. The author predicts more belligerency than under Bush. It may be overstatement for effect, but, again, consider the subject and realistically wonder. The key point is McCain's temperament, which by all accounts is volatile. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran -- heh, heh." I include the whole article because I'm not sure how long access will last.

Why we should fear a McCain presidency
By Anatol Lieven
Published: March 24 2008 19:12 | Last updated: March 25 2008 16:27
It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.
Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.
The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.
Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy adviser is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”
Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.
Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.
Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”
For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?
Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.
Not just US voters, but European governments, should use the next nine months to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations.
The writer is a professor at King’s College, London, and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation. His book, America Right or Wrong, analyses US nationalism
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

A Humorous McCain Quiz That Is Really Not So Funny

2008-03-22T10:21:00.003-05:00

The New Yorker every week has at least one humor piece. This is a recent one that is based on John McCain's actions and statements. It's a very clever head-shaker. But by the time I completed it (and realized it is based on facts), questioning this guy's suitability to be President is absolutely necessary. By all means, take the quiz!

More on Ambassador Peck and Rev. Wright

2008-03-21T16:00:00.004-05:00

CNN has caught on too. Here's more on the Wright sermon quoting Ambassador Peck.

After the quote, the Rev. went on to say:

“Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay. This is a time for social transformation.”

See also evidence that Wright helped treat LBJ during surgery.

Doesn't sound like a "black militant" to me....

Rev. Wright was QUOTING Ambassador Peck of the Reagan Administration

2008-03-21T11:07:00.004-05:00

This is amazing to me. The Rev. Wright "chickens coming home to roost" speech which is the focus of so much controversy is actually Wright quoting from Ambassador Peck of the Reagan Administration, who himself was referencing Malcom X.

Watch the speech, particularly the 3 minute mark.

"Fox News LIED about Rev. Wright. See 9/11 video in context watch!

youtube.com — Rev. Wright's message is quite different from what Fox News reported it to be. His "chicken's roost" comment, for example, was a quote from a white US Ambassador who annoyed the Fox News commentators with his remarks concerning 9/11. Wright said the attack on the US was an unthinkable act of violence, and urged Americans to realign with God."

Now Obama needs to disavow Peck too, I guess? Can you say, "manufactured controversy?"

Detroit through the Lens of Obama's Speech

2008-03-19T07:08:00.003-05:00

Juan Cole, the U of M Professor now well-known for his blog on the Middle east, comments here on Obama's speech referencing the tragic collapse of Detroit as evidence of the result and as the necessity for the promise. This, in particular, hit home to me (Read the whole thing.):

Obama says we have to stop hiding the incompleteness of our struggle with race inequality from ourselves. We have to recognize how traumatized African Americans are by the memory of Jim Crow. We have to recognize how whiteness shapes the working class's perception of blacks. Most importantly, he argues that we should not be hobbled by the past, that we have to see how fluid and dynamic American society is, such that things can change. Attitudes can be transformed on a large scale, with macro effects.

Living where I live, I could not agree more. Race shapes the Detroit area very powerfully. It is the most segregated area in the country. The Detroit News did an excellent series on the Cost of Segregation to the area a few years ago. Our white suburbs are very white. In Livonia it is 96%. The African-American neighborhoods in Detroit are very black....

What Barack Obama is saying is that Detroit is not doomed to be America's most miserable city. The white suburbs and the African-American neighborhoods can come together in new synergies. But only if we face up squarely to what is driving our social pathology and economic doldrums. We have been stuck in a paradigm of insuperable difference.

Oh Oh. McCain is Flunking Middle East 101

2008-03-18T16:31:00.002-05:00

McCain made such a fundamental error in describing the situation in the Middle East yesterday that just it cannot be overlooked. He apparently has more than once cited that Iran is helping Al Qaeda, which would be Shia helping Sunni, a laughable combination. No expert agrees. Is he dumb, senile, or pandering to the knee-jerk anti-Muslim crowd? None of the choices are pleasant to think about. This bears watching carefully.

Thankfully, with increasing frequency, McCain reminds us that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about most of the time.

Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

All of this is, of course, wrong. Al Qaeda is Sunni; Iran is Shiite. This is “common knowledge.” McCain was speaking with authority about the basics in the Middle East, and getting the regional dynamic backwards.

This happens quite a bit with the Republican candidate.

The WaPo’s Michael Shear added, “The mistake threatened to undermine McCain’s argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.”

A View of Obama from a Legal Colleague

2008-03-16T07:56:00.002-05:00

Cass Sunstein is a well-known and prolific legal scholar and author who was a colleague of Barack Obama's at the University of Chicago Law School. Today he writes a commentary on his friendship with Obama and I offer it here to provide insight into Obama's cool, analytical, and open-minded style. Interesting nugget: "Those of us who have long known Obama are impressed and not a little amazed by his rhetorical skills. Who could have expected that our colleague, a teacher of law, is able to inspire large crowds?"

This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and evenhanded analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view.

The University of Chicago Law School is by far the most conservative of the great American law schools. It helped to provide the academic foundations for many positions of the Reagan administration.

But at the University of Chicago, Obama is liked and admired by both Republicans and Democrats. Some local Reagan enthusiasts are Obama supporters. Why? It doesn't hurt that he's a great guy, with a personal touch and a lot of warmth. It certainly helps that he is exceptionally able.

But niceness and ability are only part of the story. Obama has a genuinely independent mind, he's a terrific listener and he goes wherever reason takes him.

The Fifth Anniversary

2008-03-16T07:13:00.002-05:00

This week we celebrate (using the verb usually associated with anniversaries is itself sad and ridiculous) the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq. What has it brought us? McClatchy, the one major newspaper chain that never drank the cheer-leading Kool Aid, summarizes where we stand five years on, and it is a litany of losses and costs.

From the perspective of five years, it is easy to see the severe damage to America's prestige, military and economic power, reputation for competence, and, most importantly, credibility. We are seen as musclebound, mendacious, and stupid. What we say is simply not to be believed. This is seen every day in domestic politics, but it is even more pronounced overseas. The giant has lost its way and its not clear how a new president is going to find it any time soon.

"The winner of the 2008 elections will command U.S. forces still at war in Iraq, Afghanistan and against elusive terrorists with a deadly reach. The U.S. economy will remain burdened. ... America's moral leadership and decision-making competence will continue to be questioned," begins a study of foreign-policy choices for the next president, which a Georgetown University task force released last month.
"Restored respect will come only with fresh demonstrations of competence," the study said.
The numbers don't inspire confidence: Oil prices are at an all-time high, the dollar at new lows against the euro. Surveys find the United States' popularity and respect slipping in every part of the globe except Africa. A poll of 3,400 active and retired U.S. military officers by Foreign Policy magazine found that 88 percent agreed with the statement that "The war in Iraq has stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin."
"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism. Suspicions of American power have run deep," Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under Bush, and Joseph Nye, a Pentagon official under President Clinton, wrote in a December report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"At the core of the problem is that America has made the war on terrorism the central component of its global engagement," they wrote.

Some Good Questions on the Spitzer Case

2008-03-13T18:58:00.002-05:00

Scott Horton is a really good on ethics issues in Department of Justice. Here he asks sharp questions about the Spitzer investigation. The issue is not that Spitzer hired a prostitute or that he should have stepped down. He did and he should have. The issue is: did the DOJ go after a person, not a crime. Clearly they did, as Horton lays out. Here is the money quote:

The report of the investigation shows that prosecutors and investigators had assembled their case against the prostitution ring by mid-January. But they held back. They were waiting for their true prey, which was not the prostitution ring. They were out for Eliot Spitzer. He apparently booked another transaction on the eve of Valentine’s Day. The allocation of resources for this operation again was massive, and included a stake-out of Spitzer’s hotel room and comprehensive surveillance. Again, the prosecution team was not out after a crime, it was out after a person.

The key questions that need to be asked go to the extraordinary allocation of resources and manpower for this operation and the application of level standards. Here again, the Bush Justice Department has one set of standards when Republican officials fall into a prostitution ring, and an entirely different set when the target is a Democrat who is threatening the Republican Party’s power base in Albany. We just need to look over the “D.C. Madam” case, which caught in its snare a high-level official of the Bush Administration and a Republican senator. But the Bush Justice Department’s attitude towards that case couldn’t be more different. It is deferential towards the customers and has shown no interest in bringing charges against any of them. It has also engaged in extraordinary somersaults to keep the names of the Republicans caught up in the case out of the media. The two cases, compared with care, point convincingly to a partisan political double standard.
The Bush Justice Department complains it has no resources to investigate or deal with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, a woman from Houston who was gang-raped, brutalized and held hostage by American contractors in Iraq. It claims it has no resources to deal with dozens of similar cases involving rape and assault by or against U.S. citizens. It has no resources to deal with hundreds of cases involving massive contract fraud, tallying into the billions of dollars, in Iraq. Its prosecution of white-collar crime across the country has fallen through the floor. But this same Justice Department allocates millions in resources to ensnare a prominent Democratic politician in a sex tryst at the Mayflower Hotel. This evidences an extremely curious set of priorities—priorities which are suspiciously driven by a partisan politics, not a sober and responsible interest in law enforcement.

A Good Summary of Where the Democratic Race Stands

2008-03-13T16:42:00.004-05:00

The Carpetbagger has put together a very useful summary of numbers vs. spin in the Democratic race. You can't help but conclude that it is over. Clinton can't conceivably win, unless Obama some how blows up, as in the old political saw, "is caught in bed with a dead woman or live boy." But Obama is not going to blow up with race-baiting, experience-touting slurs. He's way too cool. It's over, Hillary. Be classy and fold your tent.

There are still eight states and two territories yet to vote. Couldn’t Clinton yet claim the popular vote lead? There are multiple reports explaining why that’s highly unlikely.

I suppose different Dems will have different priorities in terms of metrics, but if I were a superdelegate, I’d rank the data points in this order:

1. Pledged delegates
2. Popular votes
3. States won
4. Money raised
5. Polls

If one candidate has most, or all, of these metrics wrapped up, then it’s time to end the nominating process, start bringing the party together behind the winner, and get ready for the general election.

If Clinton can’t catch Obama in the popular vote totals, then we’re getting pretty close to that point.

Great Chart on Measures to Reduce Global Warming

2008-03-12T17:40:00.003-05:00

I came across this chart (Chart 4 of the linked slide show) in Business Week (!) and thought it told an important story. Two major conclusions:

Huge, and cost-effective, emissions savings are available in the technology of residential and commercial buildings.
Hybrid vehicles are not cost effective, by a long shot.

There is a lot of work to be done, and we're not doing much of it.

That Mocked Obama Speech of 2002

2008-03-08T06:47:00.001-05:00

Hillary has said repeatedly, in concert with her famous 3 AM phone call ad, that she has "been there" and all Obama has done is give a speech in 2002. Here is that speech. Meanwhile, Hillary answered the call to war with Iraq by giving Cheney and Rumsfeld a blank check. And we're supposed to feel more secure with her?

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

Numbers vs Myth

2008-03-07T14:11:00.002-05:00

Myth has it that Republicans hold a distinct traditional advantage over Democrats, as a brand, in the areas of morality, taxes, and the economy. Apparently the American people are not buying it. They are choosing to believe their own lying eyes instead, based on the pathetic performance in all these areas by the wing-nut wizards and company over the last seven years. The tracking Pew poll reflects the numbers, not the myth. For example:

Please tell me if you think the REPUBLICAN Party or the DEMOCRATIC Party could do a better job in each of the following areas. Which party could do a better job of [see below]?"
Foreign policy: Democrats +5

Immigration: Demorats + 5

Iraq: Democrats +10

Taxes: Democrats +12

Morality: Democrats +10

Economy: Democrats +19

Education: Democrats + 29

Health care: Democrats +30

Reforming government: Democrats +25

Energy: Democrats +34

Environment: Democrats +44

McCain and Iraq

2008-03-06T19:12:00.002-05:00

Nobody has ever called Steve Chapman a progressive liberal. Even he , however, has had enough of Iraq and McCain's promises to keep on going as we have. This is his summary, but read the whole thing:

McCain says the current "strategy is succeeding in Iraq." His apparent definition of success is that American forces will stay on in huge numbers as long as necessary to keep violence within acceptable limits. We were told we had to increase our numbers so we could leave. Turns out we had to increase our numbers so we could stay.

Five years after the Iraq invasion, we've suffered more than 30,000 dead and wounded troops, incurred trillions in costs and found that Iraqis are unwilling to overcome their most basic divisions. And no end is in sight. If you're grateful for that, thank John McCain.

The Straight Talk Express Derailed?

2008-03-05T18:05:00.003-05:00

John McCain cultivates the image and reputation of being the unusual -- a straight-talking politician. He's gone a little wobbly on this since he has been running for President, trying to woo the conservative "base". David Brooks wrote a column last week, defending his somewhat more crooked talk of recent years, that required ignoring or discounting a lot of evidence that even Brooks cited.

The Carpetbagger has updated a running list of documented flip-flops by St. McCain. Any politician is going to have a record of flip-flops to some degree. Any thinking person will change his or her mind on some things over time, of course. McCains's lengthy recent record, however, should at least disqualify him from his status, according to Brooks, of one who "has also battled concentrated power more doggedly than any other legislator." Oy.

Some Facts on Halliburton and Iraq

2008-03-02T09:55:00.002-05:00

Tomdispatch notes some facts about the value of contracts awarded to Halliburton, and its spin-off KBR, since the Iraq war began. Of course, we all know who ran Halliburton before becoming Vice-President, but I'm sure there is no cause and effect relationship (cough!). Also recall that although Cheney has put all of his investments into trust while he holds office, he knows perfectly well that his stock options are tied to Halliburton's financial performance. The spin-off of KBR was due in part to try to insulate, by obfuscating, Halliburton and Cheney, from the total size of this largess from the US government.

Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR): Until April 2007 a subsidiary of Halliburton, KBR garnered $20.1 billion in Iraq contracts from the Bush administration. The company reported a $2.3 billion profit in 2006. According to a Center for Public Integrity investigation, KBR was the single biggest corporate winner from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of the dollar value of its Iraq contracts, it received nine times as much as the second largest Iraq contractor, DynCorp.

Halliburton: In 2002, Halliburton was number 37 on the Pentagon's list of top 100 contractors with $500 million in contracts. By 2006, it was number six, with $6.1 billion in contracts, an increase of more than 1,000%.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Peter W. Singer puts this in context, noting in a September 2007 policy paper that "the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR for just that period is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War. When putting other wars into current dollar amounts, the U.S. government paid Halliburton about $7 billion more than it cost the United States to fight the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish American War combined."

Another Disastrous Consequence of the Bush Years

2008-03-01T05:32:00.003-05:00

The Carpetbagger, along with Talking Points Memo, connect the dots on the consequences of all the unfilled appointments piling up for Executive branch appointments. This is the result of taking seriously Grover Norquist's famous comment about "shrinking government until it is small enough to drown in the bathtub." One way to do it is to essentially shut down the government for lack of leadership. This is certainly an impeachable offense, not enforcing the laws of the land, but the Bushies assume nobody will take them on for not executing their sworn responsibilities with less than a year left.

This is the modern Republican Party, dedicated to not running the government because, as Reagan taught them all, "government is bad". If these guys get in again, the toll of disasters unattended and services deteriorated will increase exponentially. McCain, as the de facto leader now of this bankrupt and corrupt party, signs up for the whole philosophy of drowning the shrunken baby.

The Response to "Tax Cuts Generate Tax Revenue"

2008-01-21T11:58:00.000-05:00

Every one of the Republican candidates is bringing out the old canard (supply-side economics!) that tax cuts generate growth that produce tax revenues that in turn are even greater than the cuts. This sounds too good to be true, is in fact false, and is not supported by any responsible and professional economist. Here, Krugman lays out the data for all to see. You decide, and don't fall for the discredited, but still repeated, Republican Reagonite myth.

Actually, federal revenues rose 80 percent in dollar terms from 1980 to 1988. And numbers like that (sometimes they play with the dates) are thrown around by Reagan hagiographers all the time.

But real revenues per capita grew only 19 percent over the same period — better than the likely Bush performance, but still nothing exciting. In fact, it’s less than revenue growth in the period 1972-1980 (24 percent) and much less than the amazing 41 percent gain from 1992 to 2000.

Is it really possible that all the triumphant declarations that the Reagan tax cuts led to a revenue boom — declarations that you see in highly respectable places — are based on nothing but a failure to make the most elementary corrections for inflation and population growth? Yes, it is. I know we’re supposed to pretend that we’re having a serious discussion in this country; but the truth is that we aren’t.

Update: For the econowonks out there: business cycles are an issue here — revenue growth from trough to peak will look better than the reverse. Unfortunately, business cycles don’t correspond to administrations. But looking at revenue changes peak to peak is still revealing. So here’s the annual rate of growth of real revenue per capita over some cycles:

1973-1979: 2.7%
1979-1990: 1.8%
1990-2000: 3.2%
2000-2007 (probable peak): approximately zero

Do you see the revenue booms from the Reagan and Bush tax cuts? Me neither.

On a Permanent War Footing

2008-01-04T13:15:00.001-05:00

This Glenn Greenwald post lays out the painfully obvious with some devastating charts thrown in. the US is an Empire and a warmongering one at that. Let's not keep kidding ourselves. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about has in fact taken over. Even the major Democratic candidates are all proposing to increase the size of the military over the already incredibly bloated levels of today. We have no powerful enemies other than ourselves. Do read his whole post.

In indisputable sum, we are the world's empire, in a state of permanent war readiness. In American politics and policy, there is no distinction between "peacetime" and "war." We're the most militarized country in the world by far, on permanent war footing, far beyond what anyone could ever remotely argue is necessary for "defense" or a "strong defense," no matter how broad a definition one wants to adopt for those terms.