Plame-gate

Is it possible that the WH is really in trouble? It seems that the prosecutor is fixin' to issue some indictments.

But of course, it's not like the WH is new to this game, or suddenly stupid or something.

Little said the Senate committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.

So there it is then. When the prsocecutor starts to sling the slime, the WH will point to the ogoing investigation of the investigation to throw up its traditional smear-the-messenger defense.

I suspect that in their usual fashion they will say Americans had enough of politicially charged special investigators with Bill Clinton, and want no more Clintonian scandal mongering. In other words, it'll all be Bill Clinton's fault. Again.

Guess I Better Post Something

I've been busy posting on other sites, but not here. But the nomination of a S.Ct. Justice is a big enough deal to cross-post here.

My thoughts on Roberts are the same as Leader Reid's: seems OK on paper, let's see what we learn. Open mind.But I can't help but look at this politically. I am offended to the core that Bush's pick is touted on the front page of the NYT as being based on Roberts' "fairness and civility."

My problem is not with Roberts as much as it is with Bush's ongoing lack of candor. If Bush was looking for fairness and civility, I've got dozens of liberal jurists who would fit the bill. In conflating his real reasons for picking Roberts (really conservative, really reliable, really thin record, past confirmations) with these fake reasons (man of character, fairness, etc.), he is making a not-too-subtle rebuke to us libruls: we lack civility, lack fairness, don't know from character, etc.

All of which, I suppose is to be expected from this punk. But why oh why must our press go along with this nonsense? They bear a heavy responsibility for the terrible road we're now on.For ourselves, let's not lose sight of the victory we can make if we're smart.

Forget filibustering. They've got the votes. Period. Roberts is in.

Let's make sure that we use this process to let the American people know first that even a conservative kook like Roberts largely subscribes to the basic liberal core of our modern jurisprudence, and secondly, where he is out of the American mainstream, let's make sure people know just how he is out of step, and what it will mean for our fellow citizens.

The Intrepid Travellers in the Badlands 

Just a Few Short Months Ago 

"Where are you going, Grandpa?" 

Handsome Boys. 

Last Day Assembly 

Final Middle School Assembly 

Oh Me Oh My!

I seem to have discovered how to post photos. Beautiful children now on-line. Enjoy!

Terrific Tom. 

William. Wonderful William. 

The Fantastic Four 

Handsome, long-haired James 

Beautiful Caitlin 

Ygleias Asks is America #1?

Over at TPM Cafe, the amazingly talented Matt Yglesias reports on some research that says most Americans believe that "America is the Greatest Country in the World," but less than half think "Democrats believe that America is the Greatest Country in the World." Matt wonders if the poll isn't reflecting correctly that many on the left are uncomfortable with the idea that America is "the Greatest." Here's my comment, cross-posted at the "Matt Yglesias" section of TPM Cafe:

From what I hear, most of the Left's discomfort with the "America, the Greatest" idea derives from concern about what the Right has been doing here the last 10-15 years or so (with the growing support of a majority of Americans). From that perspective, I am certainly in the "not comfortable" category regarding America #1.

But if I take a step back, and think about the many things we still do right in this country (at least until the Repubs push us back even more), I get totally comfortable. No country on earth embraces diversity and tolerance to the extent that we do. No country on earth values free speech more than we do. No country on earth has higher hopes and dreams for itself and the other nations on the globe.

Now, I know the Right is hacking away at this. But our day will come. We will stop their effort to take us back to the 19th century (or even further), and will reverse the damage they have done. I know we will even re-start the progressive march our society had been until they made progress their sworn enemy.

How do I know this? Because no nation on earth has a better system for allowing its people to work out their differences. Corrupt media blocking voters from real information? Well, our good old American ingenuity and spirit is devising ways around that. Corrupt politicians gaming the system and stacking the courts? We are starting with local school boards and working our way up. One way or another, we will overcome adversity. We always have, and I believe we always will.

Boiled down, I see us as suffering a crisis of leadership. I love Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as much as the next America-hating liberal, but they are not leaders in any transcendant way. I'm not sure we've had real leaders since Kennedy. The right's veneration of W shows how much people want strong leaders. He's an idiot and they worship him.

Carville said sometime in the last year or two that our next great leader probably isn't even in politics at this point. He or she may be 17 years old right now, or working as an inner city math teacher. What I do know for sure is that without Ronald Reagan the Right wouldn't be where it is today. (Nor would we have had the success we did without FDR.) The next leader of that stature is coming -- I have enough faith in my fellow Americans to believe that such a person will rise up in due course. And that that leader will restore our confidence that America is indeed the greatest nation on earth.

Until then, we'll just continue with the business of finding political cannon fodder.

Being Poor

Cross-posted to Senator Edwards' guest blog at TPM Cafe. (Yay! -- So far it seems great!)


Senator Edwards, you are a) my hero, and b) spot-on, but still nibbling around the edges. I was raised upper-middle class, briefly had an upper-middle class lifestyle, then faced real poverty and financial need for several years before crawling back to lower-class.
While the ridiculous costs imposed on poor people solely because they are poor are an important part of the problem, the deeper evil is in society's current mindset that the poor deserve to be poor. As Denzel Washington's character in Cry Freedom, Steven Biko, explained about the grinding-down of apartheid, the genius of the belief system is in convincing poor people themselves that it is their own fault.
Far too many poor people get the idea that they don't deserve better than they've got. Government seems to have exited the business of helping poor people and gone into the business of humiliating them. Everything the government does is heavily dosed with the idea tha you have failed and need remedial life help. Plus, if we help you too much, you won't have learned your lesson about just how horribly you have failed.
Here's a newsflash: the poor New Yorkers I've met are not any smarter or dumber, harder-working or lazier, taller or shorter, than the rich New Yorkers I once worked with. Like Americans generally, they are people of infinite variety, strength and weakness.
When Ronald Reagan asked, "are you better now than you were four years ago," he started us on a path of "me-ism" which has wrecked our Great Society. Our society shouldn't be "every-man-for-himself," nor should it be about which government programs can be shown to be the most efficacious; rather, our society should reflect our Judeo-Christian-Islamo heritage and be premised on the belief that until we are all doing well, none of us are doing well enough.
Senator Edwards, let me know what I can do to help you in 08! Can't wait to see you as a blogger!

Ronald Reagan – Father of the “Me” Generation

Twenty-Four Years Ago candidate Ronald Reagan launched our society on its present course when he asked Americans, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

I am increasingly convinced that this marks a decisive turning point in the public life of our American society. From this remark to the present day, our society has been defined by a single-minded emphasis on this one question: “How am I doing?” While this insight is by no means original to me, I am struck more and more every day how much it explains about the sorry state of our national civic life.

WARNING: OFFICIAL CURMUDGEON MATERIAL FOLLOWS.

When I was a kid, the news would report on how we as a society was doing. Our average income was up! For the 24th year in a row! Our standard of living, already undeniably the highest in the world, was up again! Our literacy rate had achieved near-impossible levels of success. Our government was focused on improving the lives of what we called the “less fortunate.” It seemed to matter how the least amongst us were doing, and what those who were called “fortunate” worried about doing enough to give back to society.

Today, of course, under the insidious guide of personal responsibility, poor people are poor because they have made bad choices: either they failed to get the education they should have, or they took jobs in shaky businesses, or they failed to prevent terrible injury, or whatever. Any reason that someone might be poor today comes back to one thing in our modern era of personal responsibility: the individual involved must have made a mistake at some point.

And of course, the happy people of means have much to be proud of: their entrepreneurial spirit, their hardwork, their brains their innovation, whatever. Rich people are rich because they deserve to be. Money has become an almost perfect substitute for human and/or moral worth.

The pre-Reagan era of collective responsibility was an easy target. To hear the Republicans tell the tale, nothing was ever anybody’s fault. Can’t get cable tv? It’s the government’s fault, the right would have their strawmen cry. Can’t get a job, the strawman would ask? Blame corporate America.

To make this new paradigm work, the right needed to disengage government from a decades-long reliance on social science. Social science promised to use the best methods from the world of hard science to help us discern and alleviate the problems of society. Data collection was of course central to the enterprise. For the right, this meant playing the left’s game.

So we chucked social science in favor of anecdotal evidence. Reagan’s welfare queens. Militant gays. The rise of the living proof in the form of an ordinary person attending the State of the Union.

And so, the social scientists have continued to labor in obscurity, collecting data that the right deems irrelevant. What’s important they say is not the world as is exists (the derisively named “Reality-based world”), but the world as we imagine it should exist (a world they might like to call the “Leadership World”).

I’m a big believer in the productive power of balance – proportional levels reality and imagination. And I do believe that we on the left have forgotten the power of imagination and thought leadership, and relied too heavily on the value of measuring and managing reality as we find it. But while we may be weak, we at least are on the side of angels. And we do not spurn outright the other half of these particular paired opposites. The right rejects the notion that data and reality is even relevant. I’m not sure why they even fund the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation. I’m sure there are people on the right who would turn the funding off on these tomorrow.

My formulation of our “brand DNA” has been “Community. Responsibility. Opportunity.” And the phrase that typifies it for me is, “Are we better off than we were four years ago?”

If the never-varying cycle of generational partisan shifts is 36 years, the question is whendo we start measuring. If we take it from 1980, we've got a ways to go. But I'd be excited about helping to build a movement that culminates with our candidateushering in the "We" generation. I just hope it won't take til 2016 for it to happen.

To my thousands of readers:

I haven't posted in some time cause I haven't felt like it. Too bad. Buy a comic book. Read the newspaper. Get a life.

From Josh Marshall:

Add to this the fact that the president is clocking in at under 30% support on Social Security and most Americans now understand that he wants to dismantle the program and the whole thing really becomes a no-brainer.

In fact, Dems should really start making the point now that they are the ones who stopped President Bush from phasing out Social Security this year.

Be loud, be proud.

Here's a chance to take a negative (opposing the idiot President) and turn it into a positive: Democrats, the people who saved Social Security. Again.

How come if this is so easy for me it's darn near impossible for the likes of Joe Biden?

When will we ever learn?

When we learn that fighting the fight on the battleground of the enemy’s choosing is a dumb idea?

Surely Sun Tzu or von Clausewitz or somebody pronounced this idea memorably enough for us to learn it. Grant? Lee? Patton? Ike? Anybody?

Today I read that my friends are fighting the culture wars staged by the Republicans. I think it has something to do with filibustering and judges. Maybe faith, too.

In any case, it is a classic case where we have taken their bait, hook, line and sinker. Maybe even the pole.

The sole discernible purpose of Justice Sunday (or whatever they called their revival meeting this past weekend) was to paint us as Godless, amoral and out of touch with real American values. And boy, have we risen to the occasion!

If I hear one more Air America personality/caller (Randi excepted, of course) whine about how the red-state evangelicals are crazy, I’ll scream. If I read one more post on Kos or Atrios about how the red-staters are crazy because they keep voting against their own interests, EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE PATIENTLY EXPLAINED THIS TO THEM 3,000 TIMES, I’ll scream.

The red-staters, evangelicals, blue-collar voters, etc. (let’s call them swing voters) are not following us because we are not leading. The only people pulling the lever for us are people who aren’t likely to vote for the other team no matter what. Except of course for the future swing voters who will swing away from us if we don’t start to lead.

Today, Kos wonders what’s wrong with the D-Brand of “Democrats are the party for people who work for a living.” In the ad biz, this would be positioned as a campaign tag, not an actual tag line. In other words, it’s the key insight for all our thinking about the brand, but not necessarily the framing that’ll be used in speaking with consumers.

My own view is that Kos’ line is too limiting. It also still resonates in a negative way with now-ancient-but-not-forgotten communist bashing. (Remember, the hatred spewed by the right will be ricocheting around our culture for decades!) I do, however, think the general direction is about right.

We need to come up with an even bigger idea. I’ve been thinking that the campaign tag line is something like “Community. Responsibility. Opportunity.” What’s missing is the emotional subtext to turn this into our equivalent of “smaller government” or “lower taxes.”

I think our framing must tap into our core strength, which is that we all believe that by collective action we can as a society improve our lives significantly. Which includes things besides letting market forces sort everything out. (Every time we try this market-rules-all approach, we get total crap. Like now.)

This is in contrast to the Republicans’ core strength, which is identifying and voicing all of the potential problems of our program for progress. We should never forget that this is a useful and important role, which deserves just as much credit and weight as our “change-or-die” approach. Our society works best when these two forces are in balance. And right now, we are terribly out of balance.

I suspect that the Republicans never dreamed they’d have the kind of success they’re having. In their general tirades about us, they touched on the nerve of taxes being too high. This, despite any evidence to that effect.

But plenty of swing voters bought into it, 100%. Of course, not based on any real evidence, but based solely on the reports of their own two eyes, gazing at their pay stubs every two weeks, with a seeming fortune going to the government. Hell, with that much money most of us could buy a car. (This anecdotal approach to analysis persists, flourishing, in our current society. Terry Schiavo, for example.)

Ben Franklin’s principal objection to a republican form of government was that it would collapse as soon as the people figured out they had the power to raid the treasury. It may be that the Republicans have unleashed that exact genie, never again to be returned.

For my part, I’m with the overwhelming majority of founding fathers who thought the constitution was not worth having for very long. I think many of them thought that whatever they crafted, time and changing circumstance would moot before too long. And I think they were unassailability right in this.

But instead of chucking it out every half century or so, we developed this fluid notion of what the constitution meant, and resorting to amendments from time to time. But as I read the current tea leaves, we are embarked, irrevocably I believe, on a course which will lead us to a new constitutional order.

Republicans (conservatives, really) object that we Democrats have stretched the constitution beyond all recognition in pursuit of our (worthy) goals. There may be truth in this. (There may not.) But I think the right has drawn fault lines in our country that will lead us to re-visit the basic deal on which our civil institutions rest.

We have had small-minded, bible-thumping intolerant jerks from the day after the Mayflower arrived. (By the sheer power of genealogical mathematics, I am a Mayflwer descendant. In a few more generations, every human will be.) They were in Massachusetts Bay colony (Rhode Island, any one?). They were present in Philadelphia in 1775-6. They were certainly around for abolition, and for temperance.

But we have had to, from time to time, re-visit our deal with these (American) folk. I live in New York, which from the start celebrated its diversity (OK, not when it jailed Quakers, but come on), and every day continues to show the inherent strength of the proposition that we are better together.

The time is nigh when we must once again re-new our deal: we let them have intolerant, closed communities where they feel sanctimoniously superior, they let us have the rest as an open, tolerant and secular society.

For us to be able to strike this deal anew, we need to be in touch with our own ideas. Tolerance. Secular government. And right now, we can barely remember these ideas.
So to begin our journey back to our roots, we need to re-visit first principles, convince each other of their continued value, then go about selling them to the swing voters. And all of that is likely to take some time. But to the extent that I am permitted a megaphone for cheerleading purposes (George Buch and Trent Lott, fellow Cheerleaders, of course in college), I urge us to develop a clean emotional pitch for our values. The formula is easy: authenticity + cultural relevance = emotional resonance. But filling in the equation’s values can be daunting. So we better get started.

Lead, dammit!

So, Mr. DeLay thinks we need to re-think judicial review, does he? Not too comfortable with judges having lifetime appointments? Wants to define “good behavior” (the condition of judges’ tenure) as “agrees with me,” does he?

Well, let’s of course unleash the full fury of the academy on him.

But as for a political response, I think this is clearly an instance where we should employ the “Don’t Take the Bait” strategy I’ve been advocating for quite some time.

What are supposed to do, argue in favor of judges ignoring the will of the people? Make the case that judges shouldn’t be concerned with the will of the majority? Once again, for the millionth time, argue in favor of the rights of the minorities?

Can’t we see this one coming and avoid it? Are we truly Wile E. Coyote?

Let’s launch the “sore losers” meme, if you will. But let’s put it in a frame that has broad, unassailable support. For example, when discussing Mr. DeLay’s ideas, we can say,

“Judicial review and independence is part of our shared traditions as Americans and we certainly want no part of meddling with the system of checks and balances that has served us so well for over two centuries. Just because things don't go your way is no reason to cry foul and try to change the well-settled rules that all Americans support.”

Now, was that so hard? And no matter what they say, just keep saying those words over and over. Let them explain Marbury to the American people.

At the same time, in the event there are other progressives who want to regain power, let me suggest that we need to demonstrate leadership on this. I’d like some enterprising politician out there (paging Democratic Congressmen, ambitious Democratic Congressmen) to propose a new federal initiative to adequately fund the courts in this country. After years of Republicans starving the courts, the time has arrived to provide the courts with the funding they need, for amongst other things, security. I believe we’ll have no trouble getting a whole gaggle of Republican judges on board this program. It should specify a large, inspiring amount of money ($5 billion, for example, over 3 years), and direct that the funds be used as directed by the US Judicial Conference, which is an administrative body within the judiciary. We should suggest that the funds be used of course to provide adequate security to all judges and judicial branch personnel, but also to allow for judges to study, to hold conferences, to get continuing judicial education, to hire and train adequate staff, and finally to computerize and open up technologically the US courts. Hell, I’d even mandate that we put cameras in the courts and make C-SPAN add C-SPAN IV. But that’s me – I actually like democracy.

If we got the Democratic machine on board, we could start to give reporters something to talk about besides how wonderful dear leader is. We could elevate judges at just the time the other side wants to reduce them formally to the role of lapdog. We could move off of the ridiculous “activist judges” meme, which is so ridiculous even I won’t bother explaining it again. At least not today.

Now there are potential pitfalls here. We might end up packing the federal courts with a whole bunch of newly created judgeships held by kooky Bushies. So be it. Isn’t that about where we are already? And when we regain control of the government, we can pack it right back. Truth is, judges are cheap in the scheme of things. We can always hire more.

So here’s the bottom line. Let the academy handle the defense of Marbury. They love that stuff. Democratic politicians should chastise Republicans for being sore losers and trying to re-write the rules that are part of our shared heritage thathas served us so well for over two hundred years. And some ambitious Democratic Congressmen should propose an initiative to save the judiciary by providing it with enough funding to Keep Our Judges Safe.

Easy, huh?

Another New Idea.

I have long advocated the need for Progressives to start controlling the agenda by proposing wholly new and original ideas. I’ve proposed advocating for a cap on CEO salaries, for example, or pushing for a real national pension system.

Here’s a new one.

Remember how the Repubs made so much hay from the idea of a “balanced budget amendment” years ago? Of course it was nutty from a policy perspective, but it enabled them to portray themselves as being in favor of fiscal restraint and discipline, and quite opposed to the free-spending Washington spenders (which were thought in those days to be Dems, since we controlled the Congress).

I have an idea for something similar. How about a constitutional amendment prohibiting any state from receiving more in federal benefits than it pays into the federal treasury in taxes?

This would allow us to portray ourselves as in favor of state-level fiscal responsibility, and against free-loading states whose grip on the federal treasury allows them to take advantage of the hard working folks of the states that pay their fair share.

Now, one problem with this strategy is that it doesn’t do much to bolster the confidence and stature of red-staters, given that the main point is to show these folks that without help from their blue state neighbors, they wouldn’t be able to afford stop signs. But I wonder if there’s a way to re-work this idea so that it would serve the purpose of showing how detrimental it would be to the Repubs’ base if they actually got their wish – a federal government that only spent on defense, and also of showing how re-distribution of wealth is not evil or inherently unfair (as we will no doubt be hearing when the Pres chucks Soc. Sec. “reform”/phase-out in favor of “tax refom”/middle class tax increases.

Just throwing this one out there.

A correspondent to Eric Alterman's blog says of Al Smith's 1928 run:

In 1928 Hoover carried 200 Southern counties for the first time in Republican history. The 1928 election showed that with the right cultural issue (Prohibition, anti-Catholicism, something along those lines) the GOP could court the white South.

In short 1928 marked a shift toward the urban/rural partisan split we see today.

I will therefore add anti-drinking and anti-Catholicism (reprised in 1960) to the the incredibly lengthy list of shibboleths the right has used to cajole people into voting against their own interests (states' rights, anti-ERA, bussing, school prayer, flag burning, pledge of allegiance, gay marriage, killing the brain dead, etc., etc., etc.). I'd love for someone to pull them altogether and just list them. I think the sheer fatuousness of the list would do some damage...

I recently posted a comment on Kos a post on Ed Kilgore's piece about the Civil War. I said

I think this piece speaks to our current situation today quit directly. This strain in our culture is very much alive in our current political debate. And for my money, we're not going to get power back until we acknowledge that people who cling to the romance of their lost cause do so because they are otherwise totally and utterly beaten. Fought a war for an evil cause. Fought bitterly, and won nothing but heartache. It reminds me too of some of the folks in Germany following WWI -- defeated, but not broken, nursing a wound.

We need to support and help our red-state brethern see that we share the same dreams and hopes for the future, and that the past is both glorious and terrible for us both.

I was asked if I meant the Civil War as an analogy or as an actual ongoing issue.

I think the Civil War riffs is no mere analogy but very much alive and at the heart of the division that still afflicts us. It is most emphatically NOT about getting people in the South (and parts of the West) to understand anything. It is about getting us Yankees to understand that the res states operate with a deeply ingrained inferiority complex. Where are the Academy Awards? Does J. Lo. live in Indiana? Where the hell is Harvard?

Red staters are trying to do nothing so much as make themselves feel better about their generally second-class status. To help our nation progress, the best thing we blue-staters can do is to first recognize that sense of inferiority (which fuels all the senseless lashing out -- at femininsts, secularists, judges, etc.) See, if your problems are everybody else's fault, you're probably just trying to protect yourself from the hard reality that the problems are mostly your own damn fault. So piling on, constantly pointing out what maroons and rubes these folks are is terribly
counter-productive. No one is going to join with someone who makes them feel even worse about themselves when they are already struggling.

So to the second thing we need to do. We need to help red staters see the wonderful
strengths they have, and we need to help them address their very real problems.

Finally, we need to convince them that we are on their side, that we want them to succeed, and that we harbor no animosity or condecension toward them whatsoever.

Easy, huh?

Our Mantra

There’s a mini-cottage industry of people trying to figure out the Democratic version of “smaller government, lower taxes.” Lord knows I’ve tried. Here’s the thought of the day, a version of What We Stand For:

Peace, Freedom and Hope.

If we hammer all of our wonky positions into this frame, we’d get somewhere. No? Try it yourself and see.

Missing the Point on Schiavo

I don't think we'd be going down this road if Rove & Co. hadn't figured out the "win" strategy. And I think it's this: all the judges who rule "against life" will be used as the reason that the public has to get behind the upcoming slate of judges "who respect life."

And the media will promote the heck out of it, and the public will be herded into Rove's desired belief-print.

The other point that I think is strangely absent is the Bush brothers aspect: W is surely impelled by a sense of family loyalty to Jeb, who stuck his neck out (and perhaps pledged his honor to those poor parents) for this.

From Liquid List, this pretty much says it all...

From Liquid Listvia Eschaton, this CNN.com screen grab pretty much says it all...

These Guys Have Some 'Splainin' To Do

Somewhere there are about 65,000 people in Ohio who have some 'splainin' to do.

We've witnessed a flurry of unwise and unpopular policy moves in just the last few days. We've decided that drilling in the acrtic wildlife preserves really is a good idea after all. We've decided that Amtrak is a useless drain on the taxpayers' resources and should be cut off. We've decided to saddle the UN with a US ambassador who is openly hostile to the UN's mission. We've decided that the World Bank should be led by a senior defense department official who'se judgment about foreign affairs has been startlingly bad for decades, and who has never shown the slightest interest in helping poor people around the world. We've decided that Americans who face financial ruin should be punished more, not less, except of course if they were previously very rich. We've decided that the rights of America's corporations are too important to leave to state-by-state experimentation when it comes to potential class liability for their screw-ups. We've found out that those injured by the negligence of America's corporations and wealthy individuals have been getting a free-ride and must stop. We've also discovered that the best source of judicial nominees is the pool of already-rejected nominees.

And that's just in the last week or two.

Now, almost all of this stuff is wildly unpopular. And, almost all of this stuff is what the losers of the 2004 election said would happen if they lost. And yet, some 65,000 people in Ohio (and, oh, many millions more elsewhere) voted for this any way. Maybe they thought it was like voting on American Idol, where it didn't really matter. Or viting for a favorite flavor of ice cream. Or student council president. Or something else where the vote was disconnected from real world consequences.

Who knows what millions of voters "thought." What I know is that our country has been betrayed by nothing so much as its own citizens giving themselves permission to ignore reality.

Before too long, the Social Security debate will devolve into something about tax fairness, and then Bush will drop the other bomb, as he promised he would in the election. He will propose a tax overhaul that will place more of the burden of paying for government on those that can least afford it, while giving those with the most means even more wealth and even less responsibility for taking care of their fellow citizens. And it will be deeply unpopular. Just like Social Security Benefit Cuts has been.

And the press will all scratch their heads wondering why so many people voted for the president and then are diappointed when he acts as he said he would. Is it their desire for "split government" (a fabled cunard that we had to deal with while the Dems held the WH). Is it they trust him on the big issues, and don't really object all that much to these policy choices? Is it that they are really conservative in name only? Oh, Timmy R. and company will really scratch their heads. But the answer seems to me quite simple: too many Americans are uninterested and self-deceiving about what's happened to this country, and are unwilling to admit that the political leadership of this country is deeply corrosive and serves only the interests of the very rich.

Meanwhile…A Cure for What Ails Us

I’ve taken a break to deal with some serious personal stuff the last few weeks. If you knew, you’d understand (which you will any way – I hereby command you as the World Most Reasonable Man to do so).

Any hoo…

I’ve spent a non-trivial amount of time thinking about politics and government. I even joined my local Democratic “club.” (A dangerous step on the road to Actual Action, I know, I know.)

As anyone who has read my stuff knows, I am passionately convinced that the key to our electoral failures lies in our failure to provide meaningful leadership. Of course, we’ve been correct in all our arguments (well, most of them, any way). We’ve presented bright, experienced and appealing candidates (OK, just go with me here). But we have wholly failed to demonstrate enough voters that we have real leadership ability.

Right now, we are as reactive as Republicans ever were. We have an agenda free of meaningful ideas and littered with half-measures on the margins, the political equivalent of pushing peas around on your plate. We are tied down with preserving our past victories against the onslaught of the Evil Repubs. All of which is, of course, fine by them.

To break the current cycle (which I’ve thought of as our “wondering in the woods” period, which seemed to do Jesus a world of good), we need, of course, a charismatic leader or two. Our Ronald Reagan as it were (but hopefully not evil).

The other thing we need to move forward is to get off of defense and go on offense by staking out issues that lead us forward. Rather than chasing voters with issues we think they’ll they like, we need to unveil new ideas that we think voters will gravitate toward, both from the left and the right. We have to make them want to like us. We can’t talk them into it.

For us to be the rulers, we must convince people that we are real leaders. Think about where we are today. Bush’s ideas are unquestionably out of step with a majority of voters. (So says the NY Times in a recent poll). Logically, for Bush to have won re-election, he had to have millions of voters vote against any rational definition of their own self-interest.

And yet they did. Think about that. Why would people do that? One part of the explanation, no doubt, is the extent to which people are horribly misinformed about what Bush actually has done and has said he’ll do. But what I heard over and over in the run-up to the election is that Bush is resolute, says what he means and means what he says, and won’t waver in his commitment.

And in fact, that is the Bush campaign’s own meme. Not that if Bush is elected he’ll find Osama. Or he’ll whack your social security benefits. Or raise your taxes (he will, just wait). Or embarrass our Canadian friends. Or bully our European allies. No, those things weren’t front and center.

Character. Strength. Resolute. Won’t waiver. Straight-shooter. All these things are what they wanted to telegraph into voters’ skulls, and they were (by my lights) plenty successful.

In fact, though a reasonably hard-core progressive liberal, I have found myself attracted to Bush’s aura of strength. And why not? It’s appealing. Too bad it’s in the cause of evil and not good.

John Kerry was certainly by any measure a strong man. Downright muscular for a 60 something year old guy. And I think in many ways he did project leadership.

But I think he was ill-served by his party’s agenda (and here we can put aside the notion that he likely had it in his power to redefine that agenda). His agenda was primarily that Bush is a failure (which of course he is), and if elected, I (Kerry) will be successful.

But he did not stake out any bold new ideas that voters connected with. What would we as voters get if we voted for Kerry? A more accommodating posture viz. our allies? Many more incremental government programs to help address our loss of economic competitiveness? Lower deficits? Higher taxes on the rich?

None of these are things voters can relate to on a gut level. (And watch out, because here’s the other Big Insight.) To succeed, we need to take positions that voters connect with on a basic emotional level. I can just about hear John Kerry saying, “How about sending your kid to college? Can you connect with that? Because I’m going to help you do that.” Or, “How about affordable health care? Is that something basic enough? Because I’ve got a plan to make sure we cover most of the Americans not currently covered by health insurance.”

Blah. And I’m one of his most ardent supporters!

Bill Clinton used to talk about the need to understand “gateway” issues. In his book he writes eloquently (the whole thing is quite eloquent in my view) about how the voters would never take him seriously about the 1001 government programs he wanted to implement until they were convinced he wasn’t going to spend them out of house and home. And that meant convincing them that his #1 priority was getting the federal budget deficit under control. And in office, he made sure to produce a plan that would deliver on that promise from the get-go. And deliver he did (over the screaming protests of the (almost-always-wrong) Repubs).

Now the federal deficit is back. And the winner of our next presidential election will surely promote his or her plan to reduce that deficit. I’m not sure if this is the issue we should put at the center of our agenda, but it’s certainly up there.

But the larger point is that we will surely be losers if we don’t build the emotional subtext to support that (or any other) policy position. The Repubs subtext is so clear that it ain’t so “sub” any more: bad people who are different than you think you’re a boob and want to take your freedom away because they think they know what’s good for you better than you do.

What’s ours? It seems to me that it ought to be something like, “Hey, we’re all in this together, and we need to make some decisions and share some resources so we can be there for each other when we need it. And someone has to watch the bosses.” Of course, I’m sure there are professionals who could do much better. Actually, at age 44 and a varied career across several industries, I’m pretty sure a professional would do no better. Either way…

Repubs have developed a talking point around taxes that is in many ways the defining issue for their subtext. All taxes are bad, because they allow evil government bureaucrats in far away places to decide what’s best for you. Besides, they just piss the money away on fraud and waste, and payments to people too stupid not to need help.

So I think I’ve come up with an issue that will allow us to start telegraphing our position. (Can anyone say, “drop the dead donkey?”)

Civil service reform.

This issue has been a fruitful area for well over a hundred years. If we don’t grab it, they will. Here’s how it would work. We would be appalled, shocked and appalled I tell you, at the amazing inefficiency of the government at all levels under the Repub’s watch. (We should probably just own up to, or ignore, our own role in devising the system.) Can anyone else hear Professor Harold Hill’s song about “Pool with a capital P” in their head?

We would then get every single Democrat in the country to start espousing the need for the following simple program: introduction into the civil service of the basic evaluation tools of private enterprise at all levels. We would call for bonuses for the top, say, 5% of performers, and remedial action leading to termination for the bottom 10%, with raises and promotions for everyone else depending on their reviews.

I can’t see how anyone could really be against this. Of course, I can imagine constituents on our side, notably those who in fact labor for the taxpayers, being anywhere from deeply concerned to outraged by this. OK, so right there, that’s benefit one. Having corps of civil servants righteously mad at us will get us at least a million new net voters. Don’t forget, as much as this proposal may irk these government worker-voters, we are likely to keep a lot of them any way. And those we lose we may well have lost in any case.

But to me this position has many additional benefits. First of course is the introduction (OK, a lot of this may already be place), of the same system of sticks and carrots that so many voters face in their work lives -- the direct policy benefit. Second, it equates government workers with all other workers, a door which swings both ways. In other words, if the government workers should be managed the same as me, maybe they are not in fact evil aliens from planet Tax’n’Spend who want to take my gun or my bible. Maybe they're just a bit like me after all.

Third, it massively shifts the discussion onto territory that is good for us – the government. It puts the working of the government at the center of our thinking. And that is a good thing for our society, and not half-bad for the Dems. We should be all about making the government deliver real value for the voters. That is, after all, what it is for. Plus its terrific politics.

Finally, it would put us on the offensive while putting the Repubs in the not-very-enviable position of having to argue against it. And, heaven forfend if they join us, we will have improved government while showing leadership. Nothin’ wrong with that. Declare victory and move on to the next one.

I would introduce another similar issue. Call it “Salary and Wage Fairness.” (Add/delete some synonyms, play with the initials and maybe we can get a catchy acronym out of it.) The idea is to call for legislation requiring that in all companies, the total pay of the CEO may be no more than 20 times the total pay of the least compensated employee.

There are probably about a thousand sharp edges to this one, maybe some fatal. We'll see. First, as one who at least completed law school, there are likely jurisdictional limits on what the government can do here. But surely we could get at federal and state contractors and others who receive direct government benefits. In fact, why couldn’t we reach the same companies who are reached by the minimum wage law? Just askin’.

Second, there will undoubtedly be problems with figuring out what any given individual’s pay actually is. Options, health club fees, employee cafeteria’s, etc. So many challenges, so little time!

A third concern is the very real prospect that potential CEO talent will refuse to serve in companies affected by this law. Actually, I’m not troubled by this one at all. I don’t think our current CEO class has performed all that admirably, do you? And in my experience, most CEO’s come to the job rich as Croceus in the first place. Maybe some CEO’s who actually need the money is exactly what our businesses need.

There are universities and governments all over the place that labor under this kind of wage ratio restriction. For all I know there are companies too who already live by this.

I’d think we’d be able to get a bunch of shareholder rights types like TIAA-CREF on board. Most importantly, it’s hard to see the downside here. I love the prospect of putting Repubs in the totally-not-enviable position of defending astronomical CEO pay. Or, conversely, horribly underpaying our lowest paid people. Either way, we win.

These are the sort of “wedge issues” we should be exploring.

Two more quick thoughts:
We on the left
1. need to start a dialog with the business community about globalization, focusing on two main points. One is health care. We should make the lack of access to affordable health care a key point in our thinking about globalization. Our competitors in Europe and Asia are beating us on this, one of the largest costs most businesses face.

The other point we need to start to talking to businesses about is energy independence. American businesses are too dependent on cheap foreign oil, and that has got to stop.

2. Which leads me into #2. We need to develop our next technology-leading businesses, and the area most ripe is alternative energy, which is already attracting billions of investment capital. We can be the world leaders on this, giving us not only lots of jobs as this industry grows and prospers, but giving all American businesses a leading-edge advantage in the use of cheaper and better energy supplies.


All of these issues, however, have to be positioned into a narrative that the government is not some far-away foreign influence, but is our chance to do the right thing for ourselves and for us to be the boss for once.

Another post coming soon on Things We Agree On. (Hint: there are more than you think!)

And While We're At It

And while we're reframing the debate, here's a meme I never hear, and I don't know why.

According to the President's party, the economy is "strong and getting stronger." Things are going great, economically, for our country. Jobs, investments, wages -- all good.

So what's with the austerity budget then? Why in the middle of such a great economy are we looking at drastic cuts for virtually everything not going to Halliburton?

The President has proposed what can only be called an auterity budget, of the type one might expect to see in particulaly tough economic times. Why? Are we not doing as well as he says? Or is he just mean? Timmy, what say you -- wanna ask a question?

Real Talking Points -- All Aboard!

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh surely has the right idea:

Shouldn't his critics just be saying over and over: level with the public? Tell
them what you want to do to Social Security.

So, bloggers, let's get on it.

By not demanding that the President put his cards on the table, aren't we taking the bait on this one? Anyone remember Wiley E. Coyote on the branch of the tree, sawing away? All our constant and detailed deconstruction of "privatization" is just giving the President a roadmap to success.

Here's a thought. How 'bout we shut up, and start demanding that Mr. Bush level with us. What is he proposing, exactly? Stop playing games, Mr. President, with our hopes and fears for the future, and come clean.

Here's an oratorical hint: imply that the President is hiding something (he is). Words/phrases that we should use: come clean, level, tell the truth, stop hiding, playing games, whack-a-mole, secret, hidden, agenda, deceptive, scare tactics, etc.

Our frame, if you will, is that this is another instance of the President taking a position which proves controversial, then reverses himself in face of political pressure. The flip-flopper. The poll-follower. (Back story: Providing health insurance to needy Texas children, nation building, stretching military too thin, Department of Homeland Security, 9/11 Commission, Condi Rice's testimony, finding bin Ladn, will seek UN vote, deficits are good/bad, etc.) Bush is weak, without principles, inept, hapless, utterly without a clue.

Surely this would be a great deal more fun than another 2,500 words on why the latest revisions from the Association of American Acturarials show that the trust fund won't hit the cashflow breakeven point 'til 2024, and not as we had thought 2018? We are totally bogged down in fighting a plan that the President can disavow, and can use to pivot to something else that he has clearly indicated he will pursue: raising taxes on the poor (which he calls "tax reform," a phrase we should be allergic to).

So from here on out, no more 'splainin' about how horrible the President's plan is. Mission accomplished, folks. Let's have a single meme out there on SS: Tell us the truth Mr. President: What are you proposing?

Let's use the power of the blogosphere to focus our fire on a single thing, and maybe we can move the debate (and our society) forward a bit.

Defeat on Page A8

The Washington Post lets everybody know that the President’s idea to invade Iraq was a bonehead move, as predicted by everyone with a brain:

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

In this Era of Accountability, it’s nice to know that when the President stakes his reputation on something, it doesn’t really matter because if he turns out to be tragically and needlessly wrong, it’ll go straight down the memory hole.

Thanks, So-Called Main Stream Media! Hope you guys sleep well!

Here’s the Reasonable Man Headline:

“Iraqi Election Results Doom US Goals for Military Intervention.”

And CNN could scroll: …Iraqi election results in Shiite government…Shiites aligned with Iran against the US…Iran already possesses nuclear weapons…US intervention appears to backfire grievously…

OK, that last one may be a bit over the top…But the rest? I don’t think so… You tell me!

Most Lucid Man on the Planet Speaks

Matt Yglesias, the Most Lucid Man on the Planet, devotes another zillion words to proving to even the most unwilling mind that the President's Social Security Privitization scheme is bunk.


Read if you must.


My own view is that we have so thoroughly debunked the scheme, it's time to move into the "real agenda" phase. In other words, let's treat this like an investigation following what is an obvious cover-up. What is the President's real motive? What is he trying to do? Is it simply the destruction of a popular program that tends to create Democrats by the million? Is it an effort to destroy the creditworthiness of the United States of America so he can just legislate his debts away?

The President clearly did not like Saddam Hussein, and wanted to teach him a lesson for the benefit of all the guys the President did not like. That's my surmise of the President's "Real "Agenda" in Iraq. But here, for me at least, the jury is still out.

And I think it is way past time our discussion moved off the question of "just how bogus is this plan" to "why are our elected officials promoting a clear and obvious lie?"

Dean's In -- Kos says Let's Get His Back.

If we're serious about victory, we need to give Dr. Dean a lot of money. If you have any, please give it to him. He'll use it to make Republicans appear as they are -- ridiculous.

It's the reasonable thing to do.

Contribution amount: $

Richard Clarke's Al Quaida Warning To Rice

What jumps out at me from Clarke's memo is his resisting the new administration's plan to review the threats to the US on a region by region basis. Clarke points out that this very template will be the cause of Al Quaida slipping through the cracks.

The reason this pops out at me is that it is indicative of the Bush administration's approach to its entire rule: they have a template for analysis, and we will make everything conform to that template, experts and evidence be damned. In their minds, it is how strong leadership is implemented, and to them (and me), the American people want just one thing from GWB: strong leadership. Policy and results be damned.

If you look carefully, you'll see this same approach over and over again. It is a way of being out in front of issues, rather than responding to them, which in Bush land is the weakest form of leadership -- and sadly for us, the Democrats specialty.

Bush & Co. figured out a while back that the public wants a government that seems to know what it's doing. When all we can do is react to unfolding events, they are setting a positive agenda. Until we start to do the same (but obviously in the name of good, not evil), we will remain in the opposition.

Maybe Not So Bad

It's a bright spring-like day here in NYC, enough to make one think that hope is indeed not gone.

Bush has got to be the worst financial advisor ever

From today's Krugman:

[T]he logic of Bush-style Social Security privatization: it is, in effect, as if your financial adviser told you that you wouldn't have enough money when you retire - but you shouldn't save more. Instead, you should borrow a lot of money, buy stocks and hope for capital gains.

There. That's pretty easy to understand, isn't it? Protect your future by buying stocks on margin.

Dear Dr. Dobson

Dear Dr. Dobson,

I am writing to let you know my views about you and your organization.

I take you to be a purveyor of hatred and bigotry. Your entire agenda depends upon protecting children and families from various threats. You set yourself up as victims of a press attack against “those of us who care about defending children.” Are there people somewhere that don’t care about defending children? Why would anyone attack you or anyone else for defending children. Obviously, you use phrases like “defending children” and “Focus on Family” to obscure your real message.

Which is a message of fear and hatred. You should be ashamed of yourself.

You claim to be unfairly maligned by being accused of saying SpongeBob is gay. And of course, that’s not what you said. Nor is that why you’re being vilified. You’re being vilified because you preach of philosophy of hatred – hatred of gay people, hatred of people who support and defend their fellow humans’ right to live as they wish, hatred of those who wish to ensure equality of the sexes, hatred of those who do not share your radical views on reproductive health, people who in general are full of love and respect.

Instead, you seem to embrace those who enforce a rigid ideology that can only be described a Puritannical. Dr. Dobson, we have had to live with fools (charlatans, really, as I bet a vow of poverty is not in your lexicon) since we left Europe 500 hundred years ago. Your kind have enjoyed intermittent periods of ascendancy, typically during dark periods where fear was prevalent. Unfortunately, our leaders have discovered how profitable it can be to spread fear, and there is quite a bit of it about.

But in the end, hope always prevails. If you look at our history – indeed human history – you cannot help but see that in the end, the forces of hope and love always triumph over the forces of fear and hatred. And the reason is simple: God’s love is in each and every one of us, and no matter how much you try to convince your followers that God doesn’t love gay people, or people who stand against oppression and unfairness, or who stand up for the least amongst us, your mission will fail. Indeed, I know that in your heart it is already failed: deep down, you know the truth. Gay people aren’t evil. Children raised by two loving moms or two loving dads will be fine, and our society’s need for population growth will be satisfied. Why, that’s what MTV’s all about!

I wanted to write you because, come the judgment day, I do not want it to be said that I sat idly by while the Pharisees peddled their hate. I want the world to know that at least I tried to call you to account.

For all the unhappiness you have created and brought into this world needlessly, I hope you reap what you sow.

Neocons Make me Crazy! My Letter to the Editor

There's a review today of something called The Neocon Reader. It sounds like its worthwhile reading, since I find the exact ideas of the neocons remain something of a mystery.

The review was written by someone who is a self-proclaimed neocon, even though she voted for Gore (can't quite figure that one). As I understand their idea, they seem terribly opposed to terrorists and dictators possessing WMDs, which they seem to think distinguished them from others, somehow. I'm not sure who. Even terrorists and dictators tend to think that other terrorists and dictators shouldn't have WMDs -- only them.

Any hoo, I wrote a letter to the editor, and thought I'd share it here. Here the link to the review (Salon is usually pretty good about keeping things up for quite some time) http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/02/04/neocon_reader/index.html

Dear Editor:

I feel much better about liberalism in the US after reading this review. Ms. Marlowe's praise for the neocon philosophy confirms to me its inherent emptiness. The entire point of view depends on slamming imaginary strawmen (e.g., the left wing pundits so upset about not stopping the Afghan war -- all 4 of them). The fact that she seems to have a mostly emotional connection to politics and policy (Kerry tedious and boring, Bush somehow rebellious and punk) just shows that the current ascendenncy of the neocons is a hiccup -- if we're so convervative as a nation, why did Bush just deliver a speech as his SOTU that any Democrat could have given.

It's OUR ideas that lead the way forward. One may think our spokespeople dull (no real argument from me), or one may find the business of harnessing the power of collective action to better all our lives (i.e., governing) to be tedious. One may even find it really fun to lambaste those whose earnestness and sincerity seem so humorless. But the truth is that one side is interested in moving our society to forward to ever greater heights, while the other is content to take pot shots for kicks.

Attack Ad

Over at http://attackadoftheday.blogspot.com/2005/01/social-security-attack-ads-average-guy.html#comments, (Attack Ad of the Day), I've posted my effort, which I'll post here as well:

OK, here's my attack ad of the day.

We open on a beautiful shot of an attractive older woman, probably close to 80. She's sitting in her lovely garden, on a lush spring day.

Grandma: Of course I remember! How could I forget. My parents, they worked so hard, and scrimped, and just tried to scrimp and save and put a little bit aside. But then, almost over night -- nothing. They lost everything. Wiped out.

We cut and see that she is talking with her 20 something granddaughter, who's holding a baby.

AVO: The Democrats created Social Security to ensure every worker would have a secure future no matter if they were winners or losers in the stock market.

We're cutting to the face of Granddaughter, and then Baby.

Grandma: I think it's crazy to take that away. Why would Bush want to jeopardize something we've worked so hard for?

Shot goes blurry. We see vaguely that Grandma is getting up, granddaughter is passing baby, Grandma is playing with baby, etc.

Title card comes up "Tell President Bush not to gamble with your future," with a URL, "Save Social Security.com" and an 800 number, "800-SAVE-SOC"AVO: Tell President Bush that our future is too improtant to gamble [play games] with.That's it. I'd put it on the air tomorrow. We have got to start an emotional conversation with our fellow Americans.

And I have a Message for You

“I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way.” -- SOTU

Is there a journalist in the house who can ask the obvious question: Isn’t that another way of saying that Social Security is definitely going to be changing for everyone under 55? And not in a good way?

Just wondering…

It’s the Accountability, Stupid

I continue to believe that one of our core values has to be accountability. The current administration seems dedicated to creating a 100% accountability-free environment, where the broadest promises can be freely ignored without consequence. What’s our mission in Iraq? To disarm Saddam. Pre 9/11, is terrorism important? No, not really. What’s the best way to stave off recession? Tax cuts. The best way to get out of a recession? Tax cuts. The best way to create jobs? Tax cuts. Best way to trim the deficit? Tax cuts. Most comfortable chair to sit in for the Super Bowl? Tax cuts.

In the end, accountability is a form of credibility. When congressional candidate Bush swore on a stack of bibles that Social Security would be flat-broke, busted in just 10 years, and 1988 sailed by with no actual bankruptcy, this should diminish the guy’s credibility when he starts crying wolf 25 years later.

I can think of no more apt literary reference for the boy-president than the boy who cried wolf. Saddam! Gay marriage! Social Security collapse!

To say nothing of No 9/11 inquiry! No Condi testifying! No Me testifying! No increase in death benefits to those killed in combat! And so on.

One of these days, this guy is going to need us to believe him for real, and a whole bunch of us will have a hard time putting aside our oft-vindicated skepticism.

An Hour with This Guy

I don't believe I will be able to get through much of the President's SOTU tonight.

I can recall getting my kids around the TV for President Clinton's SOTU's, telling them that this is an important and historic ritual in our nation's history.

Now, it seems obscene to observe this utterly and completely corrupt charade, brazenly designed to manipulate the electorate to increase the party's grip on power.

I used to think we were nearing a state like 1930's Germany. I now think we are undeniably there, and the road to normalcy will be a long and arduous one, which sadly is likely to lead through a horrible and bloody conflict in the Middle East.

I wish my fellow Americans could/would understand that the actions we are taking today are shaping our future, whether we think so or not. And that we won't have a happy future just by wishin'.

Hurrah! Democracy in Iraq!

The habit of reacting negatively to anything the Bushies tout as good is so ingrained that many on the left seem to be unhappy about the elections in Iraq. The security is terrible, the risks are great, many of the Sunni minority may boycott, the Kurds may think it an irrelevancy – the list of problems could go on and on.

And yet, there is no reason not to celebrate this turn of events. Destroying a tyrannical dictatorship in favor of a democracy is a good thing. Reversing the usual roles, many on the left believe that the price we paid for this is simply too high, and cannot get over the undeniable fact that we were out and out misled into this war.

Few wars are ever about what the people who started them thought they should be about. WWI had something to do with Serbia’s failure to prostrate itself 110% in showing proper deference to the wronged Austrian empire, whose heir had just been killed in Serbia. Well, I guess those Serbians are really, truly, extra sorry now.

WWII would not have been fought at all if the prize were the liberation of Europe and the stopping of the Hitlerites. The thing went on for two years with a solid majority of our fellow Americans perfectly happy to let those foreigners duke it out.

And we have paid a heavy price to keep China at bay, in Korea and Viet Nam. Given the utter futility of trying to stop, let alone delay, China’s ascendancy to the role of the world’s first power, could any one say it was worth it?

America’s experience in Iraq today reminds me so much of Viet Nam. We were intensely interested in every little tidbit of news from this far away and tiny beacon of hope for freedom and democracy. A new defense minister? Why, front page news. The capture of a rebel leader? Time to break into Bewitched for an urgent update.

We all turn our attention today to Iraq’s terribly flawed elections. NBC will undoubtedly take us to some polling place and interview voters who will assure us that Iraq is finally on the road to freedom. With a bit of luck, CNN will find the Iraqi’s who are prepared to chant, “Thank you America!” on camera. And thanks, on some level, we are owed.

But soon our attention will wander. We’ll forget all about the ongoing battles between the Shii’as and and Sunni’s (which one, we’ll wonder, is aligned with Iran?). The troubles of the newly elected Iraqi government in keeping the peace will be forgotten. Even the efforts to keep terrorists – real actual terrorists, not just Bush-imagined ones – will fade without new terrors perpetrated on American shores.

Today, most Americans have returned Viet Nam to the place of obscurity they reserve for virtually all places not in the continental US. It is a distant, irrelevant place, the name only meaningful as a reminder of the terrible cost we incurred so many years ago, for gains that we can no longer even articulate or remember.
Sure, we were duped into this war by a President far too comfortable with bad faith. President Bush repeatedly and without any equivocation laid out that the sole reason to go to war was to disarm Saddam. Period. Any intimation that there was any other reason was blasphemy, not to be even entertained.

Since it appeared that Saddam didn’t actually need disarming, and that that fact should have been apparent to all who weren’t trying – really, really hard – to avert their gaze, we’ve embarked on a crusade to justify our incursion. (“Never mind” just won’t seem to cut it.) For now, we’ve settled on the notion that bringing democracy and freedom to the oppressed people of Iraq is what made this all worth while.

I welcome the right wing of the Republican party to the left’s long-standing campaign to bring freedom to everyone on the planet. When the tables are turned (as they will inevitably be), and we are back in power, I wonder how many of today’s ruling party will remember how much they were prepared to pay to secure the freedom of the great Iraqi people?

How many will support us as we seek to bring freedom to the great people of Saudi Arabia, where they are not voting today? Or Egypt? Or Pakistan? Or the Sudan? Or Russia? Did I mention Ohio, where the right to vote seems to be unavailable to those who would use it against our rulers?

I’d like to think that a deeply conservative President has been able to do a deeply liberal thing – use US military might to secure freedom for a people oppressed by a terrible dictator. And perhaps he has. But I suspect that the President’s people are in fact not on-board with the current justification for war, but are rather signed on to the traditional right-wing foreign policy: we’re OK with dictators who play ball with us, and those that seem prone to aid our enemies, well, if they keep that up for a decade or two, they’d better watch out.

I think celebrating the liberation of an oppressed people is something we shall not see again any time soon. We have paid far too dear a cost for this unilateral madness -- let us at least savor the fruits.

Everything in Timmy Russert’s Mind…

...would fit in a thimble. Or his navel, which he seems so fond of contemplating.

Somehow or other, Russert occupies a place of high esteem as an analyst, especially amongst those who work for NBC. (What is that saying about how it is impossible to convince a man of something if his livelihood depends upon not believing it?) Pretty good for someone who is 100% insight-free.

Over at MSNBC, Tim is holding forth on What the Iraqi Elections Means. He hasn’t the first clue. His opinions have less insight than a steaming bowl of NY Times Conventional Wisdom.

Here’s a few of my favorites from this MSNBC Interview of Timmy R.:

America’s entire exit strategy in Iraq is based upon a successful and legitimate election, where an Iraqi government could take hold and then create its own security and armed forces, so that Iraqis would be willing, frankly, to join the military and die for their new country. That’s the only thing that’s going to allow Americans to leave.

…

[E]verything rests on this Sunday – a successful election – as the first step. A year from now, perhaps, a lot of other people might share Senator Kennedy’s sentiments (that we should discuss a timetable for withdrawal with the winner, with an eye toward withdrawing substantially by the end of next year), but I do not see a lot of bipartisan support for an immediate withdrawal.

MSNBC: The longer the American troops stay; won’t it be harder to get them out?

Russert: No doubt about it. We have seen occupations that have lasted years and years and years. [Ed: We’ve also seen occupations that lasted just a few months.]The key is for the Iraqis to have an armed forces that is capable of defending their country. Unless and until that happens, Americans are there.

There you have it, folks. we won’t go “unless and until” the Iraqis “have an armed forces that is capable of defending their country. And, "everything rests on this Sunday."

Except that we will leave whether or not the Iraqis can provide their own security, just as soon as our willingness to keep losing soldiers runs out, and/or we’re distracted with something else.

And we'll all forget about Sunday in 6 weeks when President Bush tells us to.

I remember when people used to say that we wouldn’t leave South Viet Nam unless and until the South Vietnamese people were capable of holding the North Vietnamese at bay all by themselves. And then we did. Leave, I mean. With the South utterly and completely exposed. Thirty years on, it's harder and harder to see what we accomplished in Southeast Asia. I remember it had something to with freedom...

Saying “never mind” is an awfully painful thing to do. Let’s hope we say it sooner rather than later, for the sake of the many dead people we are in the process of creating.

One last tidbit, this from the “questioner” (probably Timmy’s secretary):

MSNBC: Afghanistan is something of a success story. Is there a possibility the
problems of Iraq are overblown and there is enough spirit toward democracy in
Iraq that might gain some momentum as a result of Sunday’s elections and we
could see more rapid progress than anyone expected?

Success story? Sheesh.

Shameless Piling On

I'd like to formally join the list (pile) of people urging a no vote. I'm sure my dozens of readers will find it no surprise that I am urging a strong "NO" on the Gonzales nomination, for reasons I've already covered at length (which are, in short, torture, jury duty, and unbelievably bad memory).

I'm finding the idea of a whole bunch of political bloggers joining together to state the obvious a peculiar one. Blogs tend not to have penetrated the SCLM in any significant way, other than as a brand extension of Drudge (i.e., "on-line crazies"). And I can't imagine our pile of anti-blogs will be any larger (and probably smaller than) their pile of pro-blogs. All in all, an interesting exercise in the power of community, which regular readers know is the #1 core value of the left.

For you newbies, welcome to the World's Most Reasonable Man, telling you What To Think.

You can check out the definitive pile of pilers-on at Kos (http://newsfare.com/no-to-gonzales/).

Turning a Corner?

I believe I detect the first notes of a new, more assertive tone from the D.C. Dems. The confronting of Condi, the lack of support for Al G., calling Condi and the administration a “liar.” I believe this is a new day dawning, where establishment Dems begin the process of joining with the rest of their party to resist tooth and nail the evils perpetrated by the other side.


At some point, every journey in the desert must come to an end. Is this the end of ours?

This Guy Knows Why Republicans Win. Now You Do, too.

Here's post from blog called "Forest Through the Trees" (via Oliver Wills). The best graphs are these:

The Republicans win because the modern Right has developed around the core idea of persuading people to support their ideology, which then leads to support for their issues and candidates. In other words: marketing. The Right developed this ersuasion capability in reaction to the dominance of the existing "liberal establishment." Because of this, most of their organizations are designed as advocacy and communications organizations, with the mission of reaching the general public and explaining what right-wing ideas are and why they are better for people.

Today's Progressives, on the other hand, think there already is a public consensus supporting their ideals and values, so they have not developed a culture that is oriented around persuading people, and their organizations are not designed at their core to persuade the public to support them.For example, everyone used to think that it is moral to help the poor or protect the environment, so there are organizations that are designed to do that. Then along comes the right, funding organizations designed to convince people it is wrong to do these things. The result today is that on one side you have organizations trying to help the poor, protect the environment, etc. On the other you have organizations telling people what those organizations are doing is wrong. But now you have no one explaining to people that it is GOOD to help the poor and protect the environment so over time support for helping the poor obviously will erode and eventually the organizations that help the poor will be in trouble and have little public support.

Here's the link: http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_

seetheforest_archive.html#110584065281446220

Well worth reading in its entirety.

I Know Why Senators Should Oppose Al Gonzalez

Many people point to Gonzalez’ role in crafting a legal structure to facilitate the government’s policy of torture as grounds for denying him the AG job. Others point to his dismissive approach in presenting clemency pleas to then Governor Bush. Myself, I’ve always like his rather unlikely hairdo as a reason to stop him from taking the nation’s top law enforcement job.

But now I’ve got a new one. He has some sort of memory problem. Can’t remember what he thought about a Justice Department memo explaining that the Geneva Convention wasn’t anything to worry about after all. Doesn’t remember using Texas taxpayers’ money to get his friend out of jury duty. Doesn’t remember a whole ton of things.

Like we need more reasons to vote no on this guy, here’s another one: You can’t run a large governmental agency if you have no functioning memory.

I Know Why SS is Team Bush’s #1 Priority

In all of the commentary I’ve seen about the latest, manufactured, fake, emergency crisis, I’ve seen precious little discussion of what agenda does this issue serve for the right. Like most on the left (which is becoming pretty synonymous for “those with a brain”), the President’s stated objectives have never seemed particularly likely to be true: to let workers have more control, to let retirees live better, to avert the disaster that will strike in 2042 when we may actually have to – gulp! – raise taxes a bit to cover the SS obligations.

No, this is all of course utter nonsense. But I think I’ve got the answer. If Iraq was about changing the landscape of the Middle East, SS “Reform” is about changing the political landscape of the US – for the next 50 years.

I saw the President’s remarks yesterday that he made to one of his patented “town-hall” events. On the stage with him were young workers who were worried that SS wasn’t going to be there. One after another, these poor deluded youths brayed, “I was raised to believe in personal responsibility, and I’ve taken responsibility for my life. I went to school, I worked hard, got married, and I want to know that when I retire, the money I put in for SS will be there for me.” And so on.

Then the President stood up and tried to make the case for the urgent nature of the crisis. (I always think of the comment of my friend, the litigator, on the case for Iraq: it just doesn’t take six months to argue exigent circumstances.) His basic point was that we owe to to today’s younger workers, whose future are so clouded by this crisis, to resolve it today, so that they can get on with their lives. Today’s young workers need to know that SS will be there, that we’ve honored our commitment to them, …etc., etc., etc.

And then I saw a Repub-robotron, Mr. Toomey, come on The Newshour to deliver the day’s Talking Points. And guess what? No matter what was asked, no matter what the other person said, all wind-up Toomey said was that all he knew was that today’s younger workers need to know that we will take the steps needed to protect their futures, and that the only way to do this was to let these young workers have their own private accounts that because they are private will be worth at minimum several hundred thousand dollars – dollars they will be free to use as they please once they get old. Oh, and by the way, these ideas are the purview of the ultra-wise Republicans, because the liberals are tied to the old failed ways of doing things.

And that’s when it hit me: the whole point of this exercise is to establish the right as the party of youth. This whole issue is meant to wed younger workers to the right the way retirees are wed to the Dems. The game is all about shifting the demographic so that as new voters enter the body politic, they will flock to the right, because that’s where the hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-for-them-to-use-as-they-please are. Democrats will be the party trying to steal these young people’s future to squander it on governmental spending for special interest groups like old people.

If their anti-labor tax program is class warfare, this is age warfare. And by getting young voters on their side, they need only wait for the doddery old generation of liberals to die before there will be nothing but Republicans left, right and center.

After that, I can’t imagine what they will do, since there only real value seems to be the acquisition and retention of power. They don’t seem too terribly interested in improving anyone’s lives – hell, even rich people can only use so many homes and airplanes after a while.

So that’s the big insight. And it just confirms my own instinct that the way forward here is NOT to become the party of the old and just defend the New Deal wonder that is SS. No, the way forward here is for us to propose our own young worker retirement program, so that young workers can see that some of us actually want to improve their retirements, while others of us would be just fine if they’re eatin’ ALPO in their dotage.

Teach ‘Em Creationism – What do We Care?

In Dover Pa., local school board officials are planning to teach students a about “intelligent design,” which is somewhere between Genesis and the Prime Mover (i.e., the idea is that the universe is so totally awesome that it could only possible be the product of some intelligent designer.”

And like moths to a flame, liberals are rising in outrage. See, this would be a good chance to avoid “taking the bait.” This nonsense about where we came from seems rather obscure to me from virtually any standpoint. But the purpose of positing that we were created by God’s own hand, and that Mr. Darwin is a silly old poopy-head, is not to really argue the point about our origins. It’s their way of saying, “You pointy-headed intellectuals who think you know it all, you all are, are…poopy-heads.”

One of my favorite bumper stickers from Bible-land is “Evolution is just a theory.” As is the idea that lower taxes spur economic growth. Or that free markets are efficient distributors of resources. Or, for example, gravity. How about a counter-bumper-sticker saying “So’s Gravity (Just A Theory, I Mean).” (OK, OK, I’m not likely destined for a career in the automotive décor field. Shut up.)

On the range of issues that matter even a little, Were We Monkeys is way, way down the list. Let’s let the right play with themselves on this one. Instead of marveling at their stupidity, let’s applaud their deep interest in biology, philosophy and high school science in general. Sure they’re completely nutty – let’s let their nuttry collapse of its own weight.

Sheesh. Yikes!

Watching/hearing clips from the Alberto Gonzalez hearings, plus the circus of the formal selection of the President in the Congress, I’m struck by the pathetic awfulness of our situation.

Sheesh.


And then, when I thought about it, I had the faint, creeping and totally unmistakable conviction that we have gone too far. That our society has been corrupted so deeply and thoroughly that there will be no return to normal.

Yikes!

I can’t find the transcripts, but I heard an exchange with between Senator Spector of Pa. and Alberto. Senator Spector lobbed a softball: Are you against the kind of torture we saw depicted in the widely publicized Abu Greib pictures?

Now, the only correct answer to this questions is yes, of course. But that wasn’t Alberto’s answer. First, he responded that as a human being, he reacted with shock and horror to what was depicted in those infamous photos. And then he unwittingly revealed everything you need to know about this guy.

He said “but.” “But.” As in "in contradistinction to what I've just said."

But, he said, as someone who might be involved with the ongoing criminal investigation of the individual acts depicted, he thought it best if he did not condemn the acts. He thought it best for the legal processes against the people involved to run their due course.

So pretty cheesy-weasely, right? You bet.

Senator Spector then came to the rescue (presumably his job). He thanked Alberto, then went on to what started out as a chastisement: Sen. Spector said he had some experience as a prosecutor, and that in his judgment a prosecutor could condemn something without expressing a view as to whether or not something was criminal or not.

So, I thought, Senator Spector seems to be calling Alberto on his complete lack of candor and courage.

Not so fast. Sen. Spector then went to to say that in light of that, he was going to thank Alberto for his strong condemnation of the acts depicted.

Which Alberto had carefully not given. But which Sen. Spector pretended happened, right there, in front of all the TV cameras, senators, the world and God, pretended that Alberto hadn’t weaseled, had forthrightly and unequivocally condemned those acts.

It was when I heard this that I thought that we may have allowed things to get so far gone that there will be no return. (Yikes!) Sen. Spector figured he would just brazenly lie in front of everyone, and that no one would call him on it. Not only was he so divorced from his own conscience that he would be happy to lie, he knew his people so dominated the media that the men and women in the room would go along with it.

The checks and balances of our system are only as good as the men and women who operate them. If the people running our government, our businesses, our schools – hell, just the ordinary men and women of our society – are so corrupt that we no longer mind when the government lies to us, or are pretty much OK when companies scheme and deceive their way into the market, well, I’m not sure I see the way forward. Our government will only ever be as good as we are. If we are corrupt, so too will our government be. And more and more, it seems to me that we are terribly corrupt.

Are Canadians as bad as we are? Can we find salvation in the North? Is there any refuge for those of us who want to live in a society where we value community? Value intelligence, reason and analysis? Who abhor the hatred and violence that the US is coming to represent?

OK, So What's Up Since November 22?

OK, this whole regular/frequent updating thing has gotten past me, rather spectacularly so. But rather than continue to acquiesce in failure, I’m turning over new leaf with the new year.

Probably last a week or two, tops.

Let’s chalk it up to an extended holiday period, and move on, people.

First, the holidays. Bittersweet, overall, as is so often the case following the loss of a loved one. Well, that plus lots of other items that continue to conspire to provide me with a rich broth of depression, resentment, despair and plenty of doom and gloom.

But let’s accentuate the positive, shall we? And blather on about politics in a half-informed, sort-of-coherent manner.

On the positive side, I have resolved that 2005 will see me getting involved in owning my own business. Hopefully one that produces scads of revenues. Also, considering letting my hair grow a bit. We’ll see.

Now, turning to the main event: the tragedy of our nation’s politics. Over the last month or two, I have become despondent over the failure of so many Americans to openly embrace the progressive philosophy. November provided us with the clearest possible choice, and we clearly made a decisive choice against progressivism and in favor of stupidity, vulgarity, greed, and cynicism. Sheesh. Hard to pull the silver lining out of that one.

In fact, my pessimism over losing the election so clearly has spread and grown to a rather dark view of our society as a whole. The day after Christmas, a sub-oceanic earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami that killed 150,000 people. In virtually the entire world outside the US, this was seen as a human catastrophe and relief emergency of the first order. In the US, it played like an infomercial for Save the Children – lots of shots of wailing women in colorful exotic garb, and scenes of villages that could have been the “before” pictures in urban development schemes. The only news coverage was of the “news-for-budgies” variety – “White Child Feared Lost, Found,” “Europeans Find Vacations Cut Short by Asian Disaster,” and so on.

I didn’t see a single Hollywood mogul hop on the phone to organize a relief concert, or the NFL commissioner wonder how his league could help, or the Senate out front of the Capital singing Amazing Grace. Just didn’t see that.

And I couldn’t help but note the stark contrast between our rather pitiful reaction, and the reaction of the world on 9/11, when people all over the planet pured into the streets, the churches, mosques and temples, to show their solidarity.

We, on the other hand, enjoyed a spirited round of college football playoffs.

When I consider this against the backdrop of 50-something percent of my fellow Americans actually voting for GW Bush, I see broader problem far deeper than any single election, or the failure of our political system. I see a society that has collapsed, that may or may not revive.

I am an innately optimistic person, and continue to believe against all the evidence that the righteous shall prevail. But on November 2 I thought we were beginning the long journey back to a society that valued human communities. I’m now concerned that our long march toward the forces of greed and cruelty is not yet over, and that in fact things will get considerably worse before they get any better.

“The Bush administration yesterday pledged $15 million to Asian nations hit by a tsunami that has killed more than 22,500 people,” sayeth a right-wing paper on December 28. On January 1, the AP reported that the President’s Inauguration committee “planned to raise $40 million to $50 million for the inaugural events, scheduled for Jan. 18-21.”

Of course, the outcry over the initial $15 million pledge has resulted in a large increase in that amount being promised, though as a New Yorker I’d advise the nice people of Asia not to spend anything until Uncle Sam’s check clears. And the latest news is even more bizarre: President Bush has enlisted his dad and Bill Clinton to lead a fund-raising drive amongst American citizens. I’m having a hard time seeing what Bill Clinton is doing consorting with these bastards, though I suspect he in anxious to play a role in helping our fellow humans who have been hit so terribly hard. It’s just that it smacks of enabling these punks who feel the government has no role to play in disaster relief – except in doling out dollars to prospective voters in Florida.

I also read today that Senator Kerry is so far not releasing his core team members from their loyalty to him, holding the group together in contemplation of an ’08 run. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I was as convinced as could be that John Kerry was going to make a fine commander in chief, and possibly help Southern people understand that We Do Not In Fact Hate Them (which is the key in my view to getting them back on our side, where they belong – hell, where everybody who’s not a billionaire belongs).

On the other hand, he is not someone that many working class or red-staters warmed up to, nor did he strike me as combative enough. I’d like a newer, tougher, far-less mealy-mouthed John Kerry to show his fighting spirit and rally for a crushing victory in 08. But I suspect that’s not what I’m going to get. John, call me!

As we head into what looks to be another year of Anti-Robin Hooding (taking from the poor to give to the rich), as well as a year of utter coarseness and cynicism, it’s hard not to be depressed. Where are the bright lights of hope? Where are the beacons of sanity? When I look back over our nation’s history, I see a disturbing and ultimately tragic pattern playing itself out yet again: we indulge our childishness by engaging in these flights of fancy that what goes on politically doesn’t really matter and it’s fine to use politics to make all manner of silly statements, all the while letting fester wounds that ultimately erupt in carnage. I sure as hell hope I’m misreading these particular tea leaves, but more and more, that’s what it looks like. We seem to be drifting helplessly toward a conflagration with the extremist Muslims, which is unnecessary, but which I fear will come at some point, perhaps much sooner than anyone could possibly guess.

And on that happy, note, Happy New Year Everybody! Happy 2005!