Cogitamus

Send the 82nd Airborne Parachuting into the Crotch of Each Mohammedan - Stat!

Or I shall piss my pants.

The cognitive dissonance of the right is sometimes too much for a mere mortal to endure.  These brave and manly men who are reduced to a puddle on the floor by one wackjob with a rocket in his pocket are really too much.  And the baying for Obama to do something - anything - to reassure them (as if he ever could) is such a pathetic spectacle.

A couple of things stand out.  One, on an objective level, Obama has been rather militarily aggressive in terms of battling Al Qaeda.  He has escalated the war in Afghanistan, increased the use of drone attacks in Pakistan (while pressuring its government to also increase its level of aggressiveness), while also taking the drone war to Yemen and other parts of the Horn of Africa.  In short, this Administration has been far more serious about killing Al Qaeda members than its predecessor, which authored the debacle of Tora Bora, while essentially creating a whole new branch of AQ in Iraq.  

So what would the boys in the yellow-stained shorts have our President do differently?  Have you seen any serious policy proposals by them (and by serious, I mean something that doesn't make you spurt coffee on your monitor -- soft bigotry of low expectations and all that)?  It seems to me that upon reading their rants that they want rhetoric, Dirty Harry-like threats against the Mussulman -- things like "smoke 'em out and kill 'em", or hunt 'em down and kill 'em  or "blind 'em, burn 'em, and blast 'em," (It's very important to leave off the "th" in "them" for some reason) or other such sweet nothings that they whisper when they are playing with their little soldiers.  It strikes me as rather ironic that what they really crave are big words from Obama -- which I thought they criticized him for in the past -- to make themselves feel better.  They want to hear about war, they want to to hear about terror, and mostly they want everyone to share their feelings of terror.  Obama is giving them war -- in my opinion probably too much war -- but he is depriving them of the soundtrack, which is what they really crave.  Coldly killing our adversaries without appropriate chest thumping and cries of "make my day" just doesn't satisfy them.   

The reality of our situation is unfortunately more prosaic and disturbing.  Demented assholes like the crotch bomber or Richard Reid or Doctor Hasan can come from anywhere, not just Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Al Qaeda can recruit and train people in many parts of the world or simply "inspire" the fanatical and dim-witted to act on their own in the cause of "jihad."  Another 50,000 or 100,000 troops in Afghanistan isn't going to make a difference because we are dealing with a political tendency that can take root anywhere among a small group of apocalyptic idiots.  In short, when candidate John Kerry described Islamic terrorism as largely a police and intelligence matter he was absolutely correct, despite the contempt flung his way.  (Kerry, having actually been on a battlefield or two, might have gleaned some insight in these matters.) 

Clearly, we have a long way to go to get the intelligence capability and coordination down.  This guy was handed to us on a silver platter by his own father and we still couldn't get it together to keep him out of the country.  That is genuinely disturbing.  

But let's face it, human error is going to occur.  Sooner or later one of these shit-birds is likely to succeed in some way, form, or fashion.  I dread that day, not only for the casualties that may occur, but also for the test that it will put this country to, one I am not confident that we will pass with flying colors. 

Adventures in Self-Parody: Robert J. Samuelson, Still the Truth-Seeker After All These Years

Robert J. ("If he were Paul, he'd be dead now") Samuelson looks back on his four decades in journamalism, and falls in love with himself all over again:

This was a common conceit among journalists of my generation. We would reveal what was hidden, muddled or distorted. The truth would set everyone free...I started with the naive notion that, by exposing and explaining how the world worked, I would in some small way contribute to better government and a saner society. What I discovered firsthand is what I already knew intuitively: Democracy is a messy, often shortsighted, unreasoned and selfish process. People have interests, beliefs and prejudices that, once firmly entrenched, are not easily dislodged -- and certainly not by logic or evidence...Good information does not inexorably lead to good government.

Robert J. Samuelson's firmly entrenched belief that the solution to most of our fiscal ills is to cut Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements is, of course, a perfect example.

Offended by many liberal and conservative dogmas, I aspire to the "sensible center."

The "sensible center."  Uhhuh.  No, I have no idea what he thinks the "sensible center" is between those who want to use government to improve the lives of Americans, and those who are willing to torpedo government.

Whether I succeed, I'm still trying to do what I've always done: Explain things to myself and my readers; provide enough information so that even people who reject my viewpoint and values will emerge knowing more.

Epic fail.  One emerges from a Robert Samuelson op-ed more ignorant (of everything except his axes to grind) than one started. 

In a democracy, information is power, but you can never know whether it will make us better or worse off. Journalism's contribution, though not always constructive, is essential. At our best, we do serve as watchdogs at all levels: Watergate is but one spectacular example.

And then there's the target-rich environment of the Bush Administration that provided the potential fodder for a dozen Watergates and a hundred lesser -gates, while establishment journalism looked the other way. We haven't seen much of your 'best' lately.

We do illuminate crucial facts and clarify popular confusions.

But it's hard to think of many recent examples.

But too often, our conformist and crusading instincts make us complicit in episodes of collective folly, delusion or vengeance.

Can't argue there.

For me, there remains the personal pleasure of discovery and a faith that the unfettered pursuit of truth -- no matter how contentious or futile -- has stand-alone meaning. It's called freedom.

!

Christmas in Washington

"Christmas in Washington" - Steve Earle

A personal favorite by a personal favorite. 

Hope your day was great and that all is well.  A nasty rain is falling on our nation's capital, melting the snow and leaving quite the mess on our streets.  An excellent night to stay put, keep the family close, put on a movie or grab a book -- I'm finishing up Ian Kershaw's second volume on Hitler, 'cause nothing say Christmas like der fuhrer -- and pour a tall one.

Merry Christmas to All

"Elf's Lament" - Barenaked Ladies

A big Christmas hug to kathy a. for sharing this one with me.  I'd never heard it and, of course, love it -- even if these guys are Canadian.  (I kid, eh -- hi John!)  So I want to wish merry Christmas to all of you from all of us here.  I also want to especially say happy holidays to Deborah and Stephen and hope that all is well and that we will see more of both of them back here in 2010.  We miss you both. (And we'd love to see Sara and Voice o' Reason also pop their heads in from time to time as well.) And it's been wonderful to have low-tech cyclist join us on this side of the miracle of Typepad.  

I wanted to say a holiday hello to Amanda Marcotte, newly ensconced in Brooklyn.  Amanda has been very kind with links and favorable mentions of things posted here and that means a lot.  I am a big fan of her writing and Pandagon generally and it's nice to be appreciated and to get some extra traffic.  After all, we write in the hopes of being read, of connecting with people, and maybe giving them a new look at something, a new argument that they haven't heard or a new fact or historical precedent of which they were unaware.

I want to say a special happy holidays to our regular commenters here.  You make doing this feel very rewarding.  I learn a lot in the process, often refine arguments or approach things slightly differently because of things you've said, and I get many laughs in the process.  This is a slightly dangerous endeavor because inevitably I am going to leave someone out and it will hit me later and I will feel badly about it.  Please understand that if I inadvertently omitted you it is a flaw of the head and not of the heart. 

So without further ado, I'd like to say a special happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to big bad wolf, the aforementioned kathy a., Corvus, Jim Benton, MR Bill, oddjob, Eric Wilde, ari, ikl, minstrel hussain boy, Calvin Jones (and the 13th apostle), Steve Balboni, Delicious Pundit (who I think wrote the first nice thing about me in all the blogosphere -- not that I check), Gene O'Grady, Davis X. Machina, Nelson, crissa, janinsanfran, Off Colfax, and anyone else who posted a comment or even read and lurked.  We hope you're out there.  Also I'd like to say hi to new friends, Mandos, KN (sorry man, there's just no way I'm going to spell that right at this late hour), and News Nag among others.  We'd love to have you stick around.  I like to think we have the best commenters in all the internets. 

Well, must walk the beloved little mutt (the Christmas gift that came early) and then turn in for the evening.  It's been a long day, having just finished wrapping my gifts, a skill at which I am remarkably deficient. 

Have great and safe holidays all of you. 

  

More Vitriol Toward my Fellow Lefties

I am in the process of working on a broader piece regarding the split between the so-called activists versus the more incrementalist wonks on the health care bill (focusing particularly on the ludicrous notion of a possible netroots and tea party convergence -- holy fucking dimestore Marxism, Batman!). In this narrative, it's the true-blue lefties as embodied by Jane Hamsher and others at Firedoglake, the kosacks, Glenn Greenwald, the Huffpost, and (maybe) Atrios versus the more tepid and technocratic -- Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Josh Marshall, and Nate Silver, among others.  

Now although I read and enjoy to varying degrees each of the above, I have always identified a bit more with the activists group -- largely because of my own propensity for hot rhetoric and a certain visceral pleasure in the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of outrage.  But I have to say, my frustration with large aspects of the activists group continues to grow, not simply because we have come down on a different side on the merits of the current health care bill, but because I have found their arguments to be fanciful, evasive, and extraordinarily badly reasoned on both practical and policy grounds.  (And let me repeat -- I am in favor of single payer and think it would be the best outcome -- but it is not going to happen now or in the foreseeable future -- there are not even close to 50 votes for it in the Senate.)

Recently, both Nate Silver and Ezra Klein have posted pieces in which they pretty much eviscerate the arguments of the activists.  Read them both -- I can't add much.  I was ready to move on to the broader issue above, when I read this piece by Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake and it made me cringe anew.  It's just filled with disinformation and demagoguery and completely disconnected from reality. 

Wheeler (whose work during the Scooter Libby case I quite liked) rips the Senate Health Care Bill for requiring the American peasantry to pay feudal tribute to our insurance company overlords.  The offense -- a hypothetical family of four with a total income of $66,150 would be expected to pay $540 a month for insurance.  Now, I am not minimizing the burden of this, but what the fuck does Wheeler think said family is paying now for insurance?  I was just bargaining a contract today where the health care provided to union members on a composite basis (under a self-insured non-profit plan) is $12,500 a year, which is oddly enough, a good deal.  As an employer, I can tell you that my law firm is shelling out closer to $1,500 a month to cover our employees through private insurance.  In other words, being able to get insurance for a family of four at approximately $6,500 a year is a substantial improvement over the status quo. And it's the status quo to which the bill needs to be compared.  Because if the "kill-billers" have their way, that's where we will be -- not in some future health insurance utopia, but the ugly reality of now, with 45 million or so uninsured and costs pressuring our employer based system to its limits.

Similarly, Wheeler's fulminating about out of pocket expenses and copays is also misplaced.  Right now, there are simply no legal limits on these items -- under the Senate bill there will be such limits, even if they are not as low as one ideally would like. Once again, the comparison needs to be to the actually existing world if no health care bill is adopted. 

Wheeler also claims that insurers would make profits of up to 15 to 25% on the premium dollars of our hypothetical family.  She does not show her work.  Her assumption seems to be that every dollar not spent on reimbursing health care providers is "profit" to the insurer.  I hope that isn't the case, because it would be tragically stupid.  All insurers, including not for profits, have certain overhead costs that are associated with paying claims.  For instance, the salaries of the people who pay the claims, the people who audit the claims payments, the people who open the mail, sweep the floors, sign up doctors and hospitals, negotiate discounts with same, process appeals, process premium payments, keep the highly sophisticated claims payment computers and software up and running, insure compliance with privacy regulations, process COBRA notices and premiums -- well, you get the idea.  Ah, you say, well with "Medicare for all" we could avoid these costs.  Um no -- who do you think pays Medicare claims?  Well, the same private insurers who act as government contractors to process Medicare claims.  (No, government employees do not do this.)

I have worked with self-insured, union health plans for 25 years.  They do not make profits, they do not pay exorbitant CEO salaries, they don't advertise -- nonetheless they typically have administrative costs that are at least 10 - 15% of the premium payments.  It's just that labor and information intensive an endeavor. 

Now I am opposed to for-profit health care insurance.  I consider it a waste.  But it is not an industry in which 25% profit margins are being made.

Wheeler also conflates out-of-pocket expenses to payments to the insurance companies.  But such payments go to providers, not insurers.  They may be part of the overall health care burden an individual faces, but they are not profit to the insurers.

Lastly, Wheeler objects to the fact that health insurance payments for these subsidized families will exceed what they are paying in federal income taxes -- up to 9.8% of their gross income -- what she describes as a "tithe" to private insurers.  Again, what percentage of income does Wheeler think such families are paying now?  The workers with whom I net today are paying roughly 25% of their income for health insurance.  (Well, their employers are paying it, but to most employers this money is fungible -- if they have to pay it for health costs, they don't pay it in wages.)  To allow the uninsured to obtain coverage for between 2% and 9.8% of income is a huge net plus to these people.  Similarly, the massive expansion of Medicaid (government run health care) and community health care facilities (government provided health care) under the bill should be viewed as a major victory for progressives.  

It's depressing to see so many good people react to their understandable frustration with the Senate and the power of industry by resorting to magical thinking and inaccurate arguments.  The ability to count to 60 and to think in a linear fashion should not be deemed the qualities of a sell-out, but rather essential components of anyone who wants to fight in this arena. 

Killing this bill would be an enormous disservice to tens of millions of our fellow Americans who desperately need relief.  We will regret it for decades to come if it happens.   

Here's one for low-tech cyclist

Matt Yglesias makes his contribution to the end of the decade lists, with the "Ten Worst Washington Post Columnists of the Aughts."  (My title not his.)  And what a treasure trove it is:

10. Michael Kelly
9. David Broder
8. Jim Hoagland
7. Robert Novak
6. Michael Gerson
5. Fred Hiatt
4. Robert Samuelson
3. George Will
2. Robert Kagan
1. Charles Krauthammer

It personally prompted what may have been my meanest comment ever:  "Michael Kelly almost single-handedly redeemed the Iraq War."  

I argued with the selection of the almost super-humanly bland Jim Hoagland over the execrable "liberal" Richard Cohen:  "As for Hoagland, I'll have to take your collective word for it;  I don't think I've actually remained awake through one of his columns.  I would go with Cohen"

Please feel free to join in, quibble, or engage in more gratuitous trashing of the dead.  Hey, it's fucking Christmas time!

In Which I Sacrifice a Small Dog to the Angry Snow God

What is "The Iraq War," Alex?

The WaPo has a piece in its Outlook section about "The Worst Ideas of the Decade."  This horrible idea cost hundreds of thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars (and counting), but didn't make the top (bottom?) ten, even though trivialities like  "The TV Dance Craze," "Endless Sports Seasons," "'We're All Connected' Movies" and "Your Blackberry" did.

Oh, and David Broder thinks Obama's been "abandoned by his party," per the header on today's column.  If getting 60 Senate votes (all from members of the Democratic caucus) for his signature domestic initiative constitutes being abandoned, they should abandon him more often.

The Next Great Conservative Movie (and other thoughts)

- I saw Avatar today, a visually interesting film, with a fairly ham-handed story line.  James Cameron has always struck me as a guy of rather limited intellect who is convinced that he's a genius, and has the knack of convincing others of this as well.  (I loathed Titanic -- I kept rooting for that fucking boat to go down and to go down fast.)  Anyway, Avatar has a less than subtle pro-environmental, anti-imperialist, anti-military/industrial complex narrative with cartoon heroes and villains to go with it.  I assume it will make the guys at Big Hollywood crazy -- already happened I guess (and their readers) -- and the Weekly Standard, naturally, which characterized it as idiotic, banal, and humorless [a pretty good description of the Weekly Standard too] -- except for the creative souls on the right who will see it as supportive of religious faith and tradition.  

(My 16-year old turned to me at the end and said "AI Gore could have written that script.")  I prefer movies about real live human beings myself, but it was an amusing enough way to spend a snowy day.

- Did anyone else think Frank Rich's column was a piece of crap today?  I generally like Rich, but it just seemed like a weird, jury-rigged mess, with a wholly gratuitous shot at Tiger Woods (he's a god-damned golfer, not a banker, not a politician, and not a moral leader -- who gives a damn) and a classic main stream media smear on Obama -- some say he's "a covert anti-American radical," others says he is a spineless corporate whore -- to which Rich bravely concludes "the truth may well be neither."  Well for fuck's sake -- isn't Rich at least willing to stick his neck out and suggest that Obama is not a covert anti-American radical?"  I am generally a pretty big fan of Rich's column, but this reminded me of the fact that he kind of sucked during the Gore-Bush campaign.  I hope that this isn't a sign of things to come.  

- Speaking of crappy columns, is there any major newspaper columnist with poorer writing skills than Thomas Friedman?  He is completely in love with his half-assed metaphors -- today's is "Earth Race" -- isn't that a new reality show? -- with which he bludgeons us repeatedly.  His thinking is uniformly sloppy and banal.  It amazes me that this man is held in such high regard by so much of the Beltway elite, where he is seen as something of a visionary intellectual.  I don't know whether to laugh or vomit at such sentiments.   

What are we Reading (Part Dos)

Let us leave the world of politics for a moment -- I have more to say about the health care debate and its implications, but I can't bear to write anything further about it today.  So to the world of literature for a respite.

Just a few days ago I finally finished the enigmatically named "2666" by Chilean writer Roberto Bolano.  It was a long haul, taking me about five months to get through its mammoth 900 pages.  I believe I've only read two novels that were longer -- "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace (which I read when it came out in 1996, when the "juice box mafia" were still reading S.E. Hinton novels) and Robert Musil's unfinished magnum opus "The Man Without Qualities -- which even in its incomplete state weighed in at about 1200 pages -- or, had it been a health care reform bill, would have been about 4800 pages.

Bolano actually did not live to see "2666" published either, having died of liver failure (likely brought on by a history of heroin abuse) in 2003 at the age of 50.  The book, fortunately for us, was in a finished state at that point. 

It is an unusually structured novel, consisting of five discrete parts that are largely independent of one another.  The sweep of the novel, both in terms of its milieu and its concerns, is impressive.  The novel begins with a section devoted to four European academics, three men from respectively France, Spain, and Italy, and an English woman, each of whom becomes an aficionado of an obscure German writer, improbably named Benno von Archimboldi.  They befriend one another through their common interest, travel around to various academic conferences on the Continent, and, naturally, fight with academic enemies who have differing interpretations and approaches to the novelist's work.  Thus, for about 160 or so pages the book is a classic novel of the academy.  At that point, the professors embark on a quest to Mexico where the reclusive author, (who would make J.D. Salinger seem like Paris Hilton) is rumored to have been spotted.

At this point, the novel shifts to three different stories set within Mexico, one dealing with another academic, a Mexican literature professor, then an African-American writer visiting to cover a championship fight, and then lastly, and most powerfully, the largest section of the novel, a nearly 300 page depiction of hundreds of murders of young Mexican women that continue on unsolved.  These crimes are set around the fictional city of Santa Theresa, a stand-in for Ciudad Juarez, although with a fictional locale similar to Nogales.  Santa Theresa is plagued with corruption, violence, poverty, and a kind of hopeless ennui.  The crimes themselves are not shown, just the series of bodies discovered, the identity of the victims where the police can figure that out (many victims remain nameless), the cause of death, and a brief description of the futile efforts to solve the crime.  Bolano repeats these stories over and over with only minimal diversion as they are seen largely through the eyes of one police detective.  The impact is cumulative, with the horror gripping you as one after the other after the other of the bodies of these poor anonymous women and girls are found.

Then finally, when you are starting to feel a bit bludgeoned yourself, the novel turns at last to the German author whose writings began the story.  A large part of this portion of the book is a war novel set on the Eastern front, later following the soon to be Archimboldi to post-war Germany and his life as an anonymous and relatively obscure author.

Throughout its epic length, Bolano shows himself to be a novelist who can convincingly portray everything from elite academics, to Mexican detectives, to German foot soldiers, and Russian Bolsheviks. He's got a great and controlled voice, coupled with an uncanny feeling for large swaths of the world and the people who inhabit it.  

Give it a shot if you've got some long airplane flights coming up or something else that will allow you to give it your undivided attention for an hour or so.  It will be well worth your time.    

Saturday Night Song of Obsession

"Follow You all Over the World" - Marti Jones

Truly one of my favorite songs ever.  Great melody, great lyrics, and great voice.  I saw her and husband Don Dixon open up for Marshall Crenshaw more years ago than I care to think about (I think 1988 but can't quite remember).  An evening of tremendous song craft and fun.

So we here in our nation's capital have just been rocked by a pretty amazing early winter snowstorm, the kind we don't often get.  The snow finally appears to have subsided after falling for more than 24 hours and it appears that we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 18-20 inches.  I just got back in from walking my fairly small dog -- it's a challenging environment when the snow is higher than you are tall.  It was astonishingly beautiful out.  The snow is brilliant white and very powdery and on my street at least, completely untainted by snow plows, leaving it shimmering under the street lights.  It's eerily quiet too, with almost no cars passing on the main street near me and just a handful of pedestrians on a usually busy Saturday night, the little sound muffled by the snow.  It's a rather pleasant interlude although I imagine local retailers are tearing their collective hair out with the last weekend before Christmas effectively wiped out.

Hope you are all staying warm and having a fine evening.  

I've got Friends in High Places

You nay-sayers beware, I have a crack team of historians available at my beck and call to provide the intellectual heft to back up my vituperative utterances.

New Deal stud Eric Rauchway (the "anti-Amity Shlaes") of the indispensable "Edge of the American West" explains FDR's 1938 campaign to try and purge conservative southern Democratic senators who opposed his legislative agenda.  FDR failed miserably and his defeat signaled the death knell of the New Deal.  (Noted liberal ally Hitler helpfully began making additional mischief in Europe around this time thereby giving FDR a new raison d'etre.)

Why is this relevant?  [Because I fucking well said so and you don't want me to have to stop this blog, mister!]  But in addition to that good and sound reason, it is illustrative of the limits of the power of even the most popular president, in the most difficult of circumstances, in terms of being able to impose party discipline on a sitting senator, particularly in places such as the southern U.S. (or say Nebraska).  Those who are calling on Obama to bring the hammer down on the party's mushy middlers are just not being clear-headed about the leverage that Obama actually possesses in places like Nebraska, Arkansas, or Louisiana, i.e. more or less none.  

And that's one of the reasons that the original Social Security Act passed under FDR "sold out" huge chunks of the southern, African-American work force by exempting agricultural and domestic workers from its coverage.   Even our most vaunted liberal president, blessed with huge majorities in both houses, winner of a crushing landslide victory that gave him a mandate to tackle the Great Depression, still had to count votes.  

Again, let's give Oama just a little bit more time before we denounce him as a sell-out and failure. 

   

Sweet Jesus, I Hate Ralph Nader

Some things never change -- Ralph Nader is shooting his mouth off about health care reform in a most un-constructive fashion (torpedo the existing bill and after a big public relations campaign simply ram through single payer via reconciliation -- yeah that will happen), threatening a third party run for the Senate in Connecticut against Christ Dodd, and has the balls to inquire at to whether Obama is going to be an "Uncle Tom" to corporate power in the process (the second time he has phrased the question in this offensive fashion that I've heard.)   

What a fucking piece of garbage he is.  This is a man who shouldn't show his face in public, so filled with shame should he be about the debacle that he facilitated in 2000. 

Ironically, Nader reminds me of no one so much as Joe Lieberman -- so completely convinced of his own rectitude that anyone who disagrees with him is automatically morally suspect.  I've really grown to loathe the bastard.

(h/t (I think) to Jeff Fecke.    

In which I am Descriptive and not Prescriptive

So our old blog mate Nick Beaudrot and I were discussing his latest post on the political dynamics of health care reform and I was giving him my thoughts and just decided to post this to give a somewhat more complete sense of my feelings on all of this:  

Nick,

I think there is just enormous inchoate rage that after we have all worked so hard these last two election cycles and seemingly accomplished our goals, we are being held up by and fucked over by Lieberman of all people, not to mention those worthless assholes Landrieu, Lincoln, and Nelson, while also having to fear the perfidy of Bayh, Baucus, and Conrad, among others.
 
Progressives made these victories possible -- it was our money, our advocacy, and our footsteps that brought about this huge sea change and yet, we don't hold the cards.  And because of the unprecedented fuck- headedness of the Republicans including those two worthless skanks from Maine, Holy Joe holds the trump card every fucking time.  Our fate is in the hands of a sanctimonious sociopath, a man with no moral compass other than his own self-regard and his deep sense of grievance and bitterness towards the left.
 
It ain't exactly a recipe for happiness. 

I fear it is making us lose our collective minds.  As you know I have tried to stake out the "fucking grown up" position, but it is wearying. 
 
Right now I am watching Keith Olbermann and Markos Molitsas trash the Senate bill and basically issue a call to blow things up -- which I think is a disaster.  (kos is being a lot more tempered than Olbermann, who is in full-on rant mode.)
 
But what is so frustrating is the Blue Dog Senate douche bags have forced bad policy and bad politics on us.  This should have been a signature moment for us all, an historic moment on par with the passage of Medicare and Social Security.  Because of Ben Nelson and Lieberman, we are stuck with a bill that is hard to sell, not nearly as good for average people as it should be, and may actually be an electoral liability.  It's inconceivable in a way.
 
Possibly the worst thing that happened was getting that 60th Senate vote.  It created unrealistic expectations -- those of us who have long known Nelson, Landrieu, Bayh, and Lieberman knew they would never adhere to the party line.  Not for any decent substantive reasons, but because they are people who reflexively believe that splitting things down the middle is always a sign of wisdom.  (Oh and they are corporate whores too.)
 
So our compatriots rage and despair.  I despair and rage.  It's pretty much a fucking gut punch to find ourselves at this pass.  But that's where we are.
 
Merry Fucking Christmas to you and yours!

Sir Charles

 

"Up in the Air" - Two Sell-out Thumbs Up

[Time for a non-HCR post.]

Saw "Up in the Air" on Sunday and was deeply impressed.  There is a lot more weight to it than you might expect and an unusual balance between humor and melancholy.

At the center of the movie, of course, is George Clooney, who is a real movie star but with the soul of a character actor.  Clooney looks ridiculously, effortlessly, criminally handsome.  He's got that Cary Grant quality -- an easy masculinity, confident of his presence but without any sense of vanity.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, the most rootless of characters, a hired gun who specializes in firing people for companies run by people who don't want to be the trigger-men.  Bingham is most comfortable on the road, a world of first class flights, Admiral's Club lounges, Hilton Honors suites, and Hertz #1 Club full sized sedans.  (This is possibly the most shameless product placement movie in history and yet it sacrifices no artistic integrity in the process.)  When not terminating the redundant, Bingham also doubles as an "inspirational" speaker, a kind of glib, low rent Tony Robbins.  His ethos is entirely based on having no baggage, literally or figuratively, and avoiding the saps in coach.  His ambition in life -- to reach his 10 millionth frequent flier mile with American Airlines.

The few days a year in which Bingham is home in Omaha, he spends in a stunningly non-descript hotel suite, where he has no spouse, significant other, kids, pets, or even pictures on the wall.  He is a character who cannot even commit to a color scheme.  (Although he is touchingly loyal to his corporate brands of choice.)

Without revealing anything, Bingham meets two women, one professionally and one romantically, and complications ensue.   Clooney has terrific chemistry with co-stars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, both of whom play intelligent, driven, appealing women.  

Although in no way an overtly political movie, the view of early 21st Century capitalism portrayed is jaundiced to say the least. 

Clooney somehow humanizes this seemingly distant detached character -- under all of his easy charm, Bingham has a kind of knowing sadness that permeates him, which Clooney conveys in very subtle strokes.  It's an enjoyable movie, but not necessarily a feel good movie.  

If you've seen it or see it, let me know what you thought.

Calling BS on Markos

Because somebody has to.  Might as well be me.

Markos, today:

No one is arguing that Democrats shouldn't turn out. We're terrified that they won't. And whether they vote or not is dependent on what Democrats can deliver in DC. Right now, it's not much of anything, and if this keeps up, Democrats are in deep shit.

Markos, yesterday:

Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.

You can't have it both ways, Markos.  With 40 filibustering Republicans in the Senate, and another half-dozen 'centrist' Dems, each looking for a reason to kill one bill and water down another, the best the rest of the Democrats can do is pass a bunch of half measures.  It sucks, but that's the best we can do in this Congress.

So you're either for the Dems' passing a bunch of half-measures, or you'd prefer to get nothing at all instead.  You've chosen nothing.

Then you, by your own admission, are advocating the circumstances that will discourage Democratic voters from voting.

I guess it doesn't terrify you that much after all, or you'd be encouraging the Dems to pass what they can, rather than go into next year's elections empty-handed.

Because whatever else the Dems do or don't pass, it's going to look a lot more meager without a health care reform bill in there.  Then our folks really won't show up next November, we'll lose some Senate seats, and that'll be the end of Obama's domestic agenda altogether.  We won't even be able to pass the half measures that we're able to pass now.

We'll still be in the majority in Congress, so people will still wonder why the Dems can't pass anything, and we won't have anything to run on in 2012, 2014, or 2016, so even that majority will just slowly trickle away.  Boy, won't that be fun.

Look, you've put in a lot of work over the past several years to advance Democratic and progressive prospects.  I personally believe it's made a big difference: we wouldn't even be in as good as a position as we're in (such as it is) without your having done as much as you have to turn the lefty netroots into a political force.  And you're right - Dems need to produce some results between now and next year to get people to go out and vote.

But you can't say that, and then turn around and tell people that we should kill health care reform.  Because if we don't have that, you're right: they'll stay home.  And the work you've done over the past few cycles will be so much dust in the wind.

My Life as a Corporate Whore Apologist

Man, am I getting the shit kicked out of me over at Amanda's place.  Yikes. 

Health care dies in the dark

In The Strange Death of Liberal England, a lot of ink is spilled over a constitutional matter -- then of much importance, now largely forgotten -- involving the privileges of the House of Lords, and whether the Aristocracy had the right to indefinitely suppress the will of the elected government. The Conservative Peers had violated all precedent and traditions to put a halt to a Liberal government's policies, and the Liberals responded by threatening to create, en bloc, several hundred new Liberal peers in order to force their agenda through.

The Conservative peers, when told that the King would eventually accede to the elected government's wishes, were despondent. They could either give in to the Liberal government's demands, or irretrievably alter the Chamber they loved so much -- and the Liberals would still get their way. The choice, they said, was whether to be killed in daylight or die in the dark of their own hand. The Tories decided to die in the dark -- they eventually passed the Liberal budget and the government got its way.

The political crises of 1910-1913 were swept away in 1914, so you don't spend a lot of time learning about the People's Budget, or Home Rule, or Suffragism's impact on British politics. (Unless you're a giant nerd. Ahem.) But to put it briefly, any number of things threatened to spiral out of control in British politics in the immediate pre-war period, and in a lot of cases you found elected politicians deliberately throwing fuel on the fire -- up to and including encouraging Army units to mutiny -- in order to do anything to cripple the Liberal government of the time. Attention to these events was closely paid in places like Berlin and Vienna, and grasping powers looking for their place in the sun began to believe they saw daylight through the fissures in British power. Strange Death tiptoes up to, but never quite says, that the opportunists of 1910-1913 as good as brought on the war by making Britain look weak in the years leading up to the war.

Instead, of course, everybody basically shook hands and threw their petty concerns out the window when the war came, and a United Kingdom became a terrible enemy indeed.

As bleak as I may be sometimes, I don't actually think a world-straddling conflagration is actually going to erupt in the next 18 months, so if I were a member of the US political class, I'd be really concerned right about now about not pushing the system to a crisis. I'd be really concerned that people already question the basic legitimacy of this political system after the clear abuses of the Bush era and their all-too-sad continuation in the Obama era. I'd be really concerned that in a well-armed country of 300 million, statistics alone argue in favour of trying to comfort the afflicted, even if it means afflicting the comfortable.

But then, I'm not a member of the US political class. Joe Lieberman is.

The Online Left Embraces the Cleavon Little* Strategy

At the risk of being embarrassingly repetitive, I have been looking on with greater and greater despair at the incredibly vituperative denunciations of Obama going on throughout the community of web sites that I frequent.  (And yes, I blame low-tech cyclist for asking that most devastating of questions to me a couple of weeks ago -- words to the effect of "who is doing this and how big are their followings."  Since then, as I noted to him -- the deluge -- Hamsher, kos, Greenwald, even to some extent Atrios, and of course, that historical illiterate, Matt Taibi.)

So today Yglesias ventures into the fray, with the admonition to the disaffected left to grow up.  Matt, bubby, it's "grow the fuck up."  And, in this context, I own that phrase. 

Matt's advice is pretty much common sense stuff, meaning it's in line with what I was saying in my initial post.  More worthy of attention again are the comments, which are generally scornful, angry, dismissive, and impossibly immature -- among those critical of Master Matt there is not a realistic road map or remotely plausible path to legislative success suggested.  It's as if none of these people actually have any clue what it takes for a bill to become law in the United States -- hint, it is not a manifestation of will (which I won't be so indecorous to point out is kind of a fascist concept in governance.)

Let me reiterate my point of a few days ago -- Obama has gotten through what many would have thought was a preposterously large stimulus package, even if it was not big enough.  There is still much of this money to be spent and its impact will be felt.  We are agonizingly close to health care reform.  It will not be perfect, it will not be everything we wanted by a long shot.  And yet, Obama will have gotten where FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton never got.  Please remember that.  The House has passed a climate change bill and the Senate may well yet.  Again, it won't be perfect, but it will be a very important start.  Financial reform has passed the House and heads to the Senate.  Hopefully next year will continue with some version of labor law reform (probably without card check) and immigration reform. 

So if at the end of a two year period, Obama can show the following accomplishments:

Stimulus (and the avoidance of a total financial meltdown);
Health care reform;
Financial regulation reform, including consumer finance agency;
Climate change legislation;
Labor law reform;
Immigration reform;
Substantial drawdown of Iraq troops;
Closing of Gitmo and the end of torture as policy.

Add to this the likely emergence from recession, a substantial repayment of the TARP, the rebound of the job market, and diplomatic progress with Iran, and I would suggest that this would be a rather impressive first two years in office -- historic really.  And all of this is within reach -- albeit dependent in many respects of being able to pull together 60 Senate clowns at a time to avoid the continued obstacle of the filibuster. 

Would this be enough for our holier than thou left wing compadres?  Or will the fact that bankers still make millions, insurance and pharmaceutical companies continue to exist, card check does not pass, troops remain in Afghanistan, Bush and Cheney aren't in the dock in the Hague, and Joe Lieberman draws breath forever sour them on what has been accomplished?  One wonders.  (Well, not really.) 

*See "Blazing Saddles" -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2o4ifVlMG4

Not Even The Problem From Heck (Sorry, Kevin)

Kevin Drum says of climate deniers:

This, of course, gets to the nub of the problem: climate deniers claim that the scientific community is engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy (or, more subtly, "groupthink") designed specifically to keep them out of the literature.  The fact that their stuff isn't peer-reviewed has nothing to do with its quality, only with the fact that they aren't part of the community.

At first glance, there certainly appears to be something circular going on here: nobody knows if the climate change deniers' arguments are any good, because the scientific establishment is shutting them out, and won't let them make the argument.

A few years ago, we were hearing the same line from the intelligent design theorists, and I get to say the same thing now that I said then:

Go create your own scientific journals. Publish them online.  Peer review each other's stuff.  This isn't 1979 anymore.  The gatekeepers are still there, but they can't stop you from publishing anymore; they can only stop you from publishing in journals they control.

If you aren't doing this, then quit whining about being excluded, and create your own community that won't exclude you.  If you aren't doing this and you keep on whining, then the rest of us can assume that you've got nothin'.  (OK, the rest of us are already assuming that, but this gives us a better argument to make to anyone still on the fence.)

And if you do choose to go this route, just remember that people can still look at your journal and tell whether it's publishing science, or publishing crap.  But if you're publishing crap, it'll at least mean that nobody has to check up on every last piece of denialist nonsense anymore: the quality of the journal as a whole can be evaluated, and if it's crap, then there's no reason anyone has to look through the entire cesspool to see if one gold nugget slipped in somehow.

If by some miracle you're doing science, it'll take a little while for the rest of the world to realize it.  But eventually it will, so don't give up hope.  But the main thing is, if you're really doing science, you want to do science and publish it.  So get crackin'.  And if you're just a bunch of coal industry shills who are trying to generate quick publicity, with no science behind your words, that'll become apparent even faster.

Singers in the Hands of an Angry God - Have Mersey

"My Before and After" - Cotton Mather

Okay that post title is some sort of weird mixed pun.  Anyway, this is the late, great, Austin Texas band, Cotton Mather, sounding uncannily like the "Revolver" era Beatles. I really love this song -- hopefully it is good enough to make up for the lack of visual interest.  

What's Everyone Reading? (and I don't mean fu#*ing blogs)

I was feeling pretty burned out on politics tonight. I caught a little of Jane Hamsher ranting on MSNBC and popped by our friend Jamelle's blog and found this post also dealing with our own little left wing crack up -- but Jamelle's title was so much better than my crude admonition of the other day to my fellow lefties -- "Sanctimony is a Force that Gives us Meaning."  Priceless. I was really depressed to click on the attached article and find that it was an attack on gutless liberals from the left written by Chris Hedges, author of "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning," a book I recently read and greatly admired.  Hedges chides liberals for their sterile posturing then boasts of how when he was going to divinity school at Harvard, he lived in Roxbury and belonged to the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team and hung with the real peeps, while learning to hate them Sandinista loving liberals over in Cambridge.  Oy, it's a tiresome piece, written by a guy with issues -- and one who admits to voting for Nader and Cynthia McKinney with no hint of embarrassment, no sense that he is a poseur with a u in it himself.  

Anyway, it depressed me because "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning" is actually a pretty incredible book, a reminder that truly good journalism does exist and carries a profound weight.  In a nutshell, Hedges trots around the world looking for trouble, finds it, loves/hates it, really understands it, and writes well and insightfully about it.  Don't be put off  by the tripe I linked to -- the book seems like it was written by a different man.  Oh he too is a bit sanctimonious -- but he seems in the book to see his own heart of darkness pretty well too.  I recommend it unhesitatingly.

Another book of extraordinary journalism that I would urge you to read is "Methland" by Nick Reding, the depiction of the incredibly devastating impact of methamphetamine in a small Iowa town, a scourge prompted in large part by the incredibly devastating impact of globalization, deunionization, and deindustrialization. Reding doesn't just report -- he really becomes a part of this town, living there for months and getting to know its citizens on a very personal level, including quite a few tweakers.  He describes in amazing detail how the meth trade was established and the human and environmental devastation it brings.  He also notes its connection to work, particularly the way the drug is used to allow people to work inhuman hours at back breaking, poorly paid jobs.  It is, as Reding describes, the most American of drugs.  The book is not totally unrelentingly bleak -- there are good people in the community battling the problem and Reding gives us an affectionate, yet fully human rendering of them and their struggles.  There even appears to be a glimmer of hope by the end of the book, although one has the sense that these small towns -- always held up as the exemplar of the "real America" -- are critically ill with a poor prognosis.  

Anyway, turn off the computer and turn off cable news and pick up either of these volumes and you will be better for it.

I'll try my hand at my most recent fiction read tomorrow, but for now must say goodnight.  Tell me what you're reading that is worth the effort.

Afghanistan isn't Vietnam (or is it?)

I've been pondering how I feel about Obama's decision regarding the next step in Afghanistan and trying to assess what it means, both there and here.  Inevitably, the touchstone for viewing any military commitment of this kind to an American of my age is the Vietnam War.  Glib analogies to Vietnam are never far from anyone's lip, it seems, be they hawk, dove, or somewhere in-between, with respect to both Afghanistan and Iraq.  I think in both cases such analogies have limited utility, although there are aspects of the Afghanistan fight where they seem uncomfortably close.

The first and, to me, most obvious distinction is that Barack Obama's presidency will not be sunk by Afghanistan the way that Lyndon Johnson's was by Vietnam.  In large part this is because of the absence of the draft and the fact that very few Americans will actually bear the burden of carrying the fight.  Troop levels in Vietnam peaked at nearly 540,000, roughly four to five times the maximum level of troops in Afghanistan will be.  Moreover, the way that troop rotations worked then versus now radically narrows the scope of the exposure to the Afghan War -- over the course of the Vietnam War, some 2.1 million Americans saw action in the war zone.  To date in Afghanistan, approximately 150,000 Americans have served -- of course, as a percentage, many more of them have seen multiple tours of duty than did during Vietnam.  [This does not factor in the huge numbers of professional soldiers of fortune serving there.]   In other words, 14 times as many Americans served in Vietnam as have served in Afghanistan and did so at a time when the U.S. had about 100 million fewer people.  And because of the draft, the threat of having to serve hung over the heads of tens of millions during the war's seemingly endless course.

The narrowness of the group from which troops will be drawn, the absence of a draft, the discomfort that many Americans feel post-Vietnam with protesting a war, and the fact that many people initially supported the war as a proper response to the September 11 attacks, means that public demonstrations against the war in Afghanistan will likely remain small and receive relatively little attention.    Thus, Obama, unlike Johnson, has essentially no fear that public disapproval will result in social turmoil that will drive him from office a la LBJ.

Moreover, I do not think Obama will let the Afghanistan War control and obsess him in the way that Vietnam did Johnson.  This has something to do with their differing temperaments -- Obama is cool and self assured in a way that Johnson could only envy -- but also has much to do with their formative political experiences.  Johnson came into the Senate and attained real power right at the time when Truman was facing the double blow of having "lost China" and then having been stalemated shortly thereafter in the Korean War.  Truman was subject to vicious right wing attack on both of these issues, with public dissatisfaction with Korea ultimately causing him not to seek reelection in 1952.  (The parallels with Johnson are a little eerie -- Vice President assumes office upon death of more charismatic predecessor, each shows himself to be more than up to the task of the job, but then has his presidency crushed by involvement in an Asian land war.)  Johnson drew the wrong conclusion from Truman's Korea experience and found himself continually doubling down in a losing effort.

The formative political event for people of Obama's age (like me) was, in many respects, the debacle of Vietnam.  Even though we were only children, the war in southeast Asia was so ubiquitous in our living rooms and lasted so long that it simply permeated the consciousness of even young children.  From about the time I was four until I was thirteen, the daily reports from the battlefield and its body counts were a part of every television newscast you would hear.  Indeed, when American involvement there ended, the absence of those reports was a very strange thing for teenagers of the era.  It had literally been the background drone of our young lives.  This is to say nothing of the period of intense opposition to the war, which lasted a good many years as well and tore the country apart in ways that are hard to adequately convey.  The end result, though, is that someone of Obama's age and sensibility cannot help but have drawn the conclusion that a president cannot and should not continue to raise the stakes in such a war and try to do so indefinitely.

More Condescending Words on the Essence of American Politics

I wanted to continue the discussion that began with this post by me and was continued by Ballgame and others over at Ian Welsh's site.  In sum, I concurred with Nathan Newman's view that Obama has done a great deal to further the liberal cause over the last ten months, others suggested that I was a delusional sell out or worse.  

I am writing further not to settle scores (well not entirely) but because I think that this is an incredibly important issue and one that is cosmic in its implications.  I was pretty amazed at the quickness with which some of my fellow lefties are writing off Obama -- some, of course, had written him off in advance, so I guess they are feeling that peculiar form of schadenfreude that has been our specialty for oh, the last forty years or so.   To these folks there is not a dimes worth of difference between Obama and Bush, one is simply a corporate whore with darker skin and smoother rhetoric.  Hope lies only in the prospect that Obama will bring such disaster upon us that the 98% of people who are getting screwed over by Wall Street will wake up, join hands together, sing a chorus of the Internationale, hang the board of directors at Goldman, and proclaim the workers' state.  Being a tepid, incrementalist cynic, I guess I'm not holding my breath -- that and maybe the fact that I've dealt with working class white people every day of my 25-year professional life and have a pretty good sense of how ready they are to man the barricades. 

The question I keep raising with those who are advocating writing off Obama and the Democrats generally is what then?  How do we then go about creating a country where the things we putatively care about can be achieved.  The response to this is that I'm a deluded sell out if I think any of this can be done with Obama.  Okay, I respond -- and how are you going to make it happen?  Well, everything needs to crash and burn and then we will have our moment.  (I always enjoy tragedy being turned into an abstraction.)  Or, well we can work locally on progressive issues and bring about change one step at a time.  Or we can use primary challenges and third party insurgencies to make the Democrats see the error of their ways, with heaven on earth soon to follow. 

These responses demonstrate a kind of self-deluded onanism on an impressive scale, one that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics and power work in the United States.

The U.S. is the very opposite of a parliamentary democracy.  The dispersal of power among the President, the two legislative branches, and the federal judiciary makes any grand programmatic approach to change difficult under the  best of circumstances.  The Senate, where a disciplined minority, representing a small fraction of the country's population, can thwart almost any initiative, is an enormous structural obstacle to progressive change.  Only in circumstances when we have achieved super majorities in that body, from 1932-38 and 1964-66, have liberals been able to push through the defining programs of our limited social democracy.  It is a bit odious to say that we need to not only re-elect the Blanche Lincolns and Ben Nelsons of the world, but that we need a few more (not to mention some pretty decent folks like Paul Hodes, Lee Fisher or Jennifer Brunner, and Robin Carnahan), but it's true.  Third party challenges or insurgent primary campaigns from the left -- a popular suggestion from my true blue brothers -- would be completely self-defeating in states such as Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Indiana, and Montana, the sources of our dilemma.  (We could imitate the tea baggers success in NY-23.)

Well then -- we can always think purely and act locally.  The only problem with this strategy is that it ignores the essential fact that truly meaningful social democratic policies like universal health care or labor law reform can only be achieved on a federal level.  States and localities have no ability to engage in deficit spending and have limited revenue sources.  Moreover, they have a tendency to be dragged into the kind of beggar thy neighbor strategies -- right to work laws, tax breaks for businesses to relocate, lower or non-existent income or corporate taxes -- that facilitate a race to the bottom, not bold progressive innovation.  Yes, states can do things like enact marriage equality laws, but then they can't provide the full benefits of such recognition, e.g. equal tax treatment, entitlement to pensions and health benefits, etc.

We need programs with the sweep and durability of Social Security and Medicare, bold transforming change that create a decent life for all Americans.  And the irony is, the way to get there is sometimes through the patient cultivation of electoral majorities encouraged by steady, rational, and pragmatic leadership.  It's not all that psychologically satisfying, but then again, the truth seldom is.   

For how long?

Steve Benen writes at WaMo:

Based on estimates from the International Monetary Fund, five years from now, China's GDP is expected to grow considerably faster than America's, but by 2014, the U.S. economy is still expected to be double the size of China's.

There's a lot more the U.S. can and should do to position itself for the future, and it's going to take some real leadership (and perhaps a majority-rule Senate) to protect the country's global leadership role.

But is China the world's leading economic power? Not yet, it's not.

This is all in reaction to the news that a plurality of Americans believe China is now the world's leading economic power. In terms of "whose economy is biggest", Steve is correct that China isn't anywhere near the throne yet.

But of course, that's not the only definition of "leading". Long before it was the world's largest economy outright, the US was seeing incredible new inventions flourish in their economy while they languished in the larger but also more staid economies of the Old World. (See telephones, electricity, etc.) Of course, this also depends on whether one counts the entire British Empire as one economy, and all of this gets cloudy when trying to compare historical data.

Example: This wikipedia page (use at my own risk, I know) states that by 1870, the US economy was still smaller than that of the United Kingdom alone, and much smaller than that of the broader British Empire. But by 1870, which country would you have bet on in the next 50 years? (The Civil War was over, the expansion to the west was spreading a human wave over the Great Plains, and the US had just purchased Alaska.) Even more intriguing, Qing China was still larger economically than that of the UK or US -- which of those three had a better time of the future?

Now, it's true that a lot of interesting stuff still happens in the US, and it still has a dynamic economy. But I don't think anyone thinks that the last 2 years have been good for American dominance. And Americans could certainly be forgiven for thinking that somewhere, a baton has been passed.