Month: January 2008

The Long War

by digby

I’m taking a lot of criticism lately for fighting old wars and refusing to see that we are on the cusp of major change and that the Republicans are old news. I actually fervently hope that is correct. But if you want to know why I’m not so sanguine, and why I think progressives are just fighting one more bloody battle in a long political war, read Greenwald’s post today.

All day long, in response to Mukasey’s insistence that patent illegalities were legal, that Congress was basically powerless, and that the administration has no obligation to disclose anything to Congress (and will not), Senators would respond with impotent comments such as: “Well, I’d like to note my disagreement and ask you to re-consider” or “I’m disappointed with your answer and was hoping you would say something different” or “If that’s your position, we’ll be discussing this again at another point.” They were supplicants pleading for some consideration, almost out of a sense of mercy, and both they and Mukasey knew it. Mukasey can go and casually tell them to their faces that the President has the right to violate their laws and that Congress has no power to do anything about it. And nothing is going to happen. And everyone — the Senators, Bush officials, the country — knows that nothing is going to happen. There is nothing too extreme that Mukasey could say to those Senators that would prompt any consequences greater than some sighing and sorrowful expressions of disapproval.

Democrats may very well win the election. And they may have a large working majority. Hopefully they will get some good things done for the country. But if they do not run on and then act on these constitutional abuses, they will be used again the next time a Republican is in office (if not sooner) and we will have to fight this battle all over again, having lost a tremendous amount of territory in the meantime. What we will have lost in terms of morality and decency is uncountable.

This stuff should not be brushed aside. And my biggest worry is that neither Clinton, due to the structural and institutional loathing for her in the political establishment, or Obama, who is running as a uniter not a fighter and will have little political capital for “looking backwards,” will make this a priority.

Here’s why I take nothing at face value about these people:

Harper‘s Scott Horton, who was a law partner of Mukasey’s and originally endorsed his confirmation — on the grounds that he would be more likely than other potential nominees to exhibit independence (an assessment I shared) — had this to say after watching the hearing yesterday:

Watching Mukasey was a painful experience. . . .The Senate Judiciary Committee put Michael Mukasey to the test yesterday. And he left the hearing room as an embarrassment to those who have known and worked with him over the last twenty years, and who mistakenly touted his independence and commitment to do the right thing, come what may.

Ask yourself what kind of political movement and party can induce a highly respected former federal judge to publicly destroy his reputation and his soul to justify torture? Are those the kind of people who give up?

I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now, why someone like Mukasey should ever get the benefit of the doubt. America gets screwed every. single. time. So everyone is going to have to excuse me for not being entirely caught up in all the primary hooplah and continuing to fight the last war instead. Watching that hearing yesterday it was pretty hard to conclude that the Republicans have surrendered.

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But They Have Editors!

by dday

Looks like we’re going to hear about this zombie lie for a long, long time. Jake Tapper ran an insipid article where he claimed that Bill Clinton said “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.” I’ve heard Clinton at least twice say exactly the opposite in long speeches, about how economic growth practically DEPENDS on scaling back greenhouse gas emissions and building a green economy that can be an engine of growth. Turns out that he actually said this:

“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”

This is perfectly consistent with what Clinton has been saying in speeches for years. But Jake Tapper falls asleep mid-speech, somebody taps his shoulder and he wakes up hearing a fragment and decides he has a news story he can run with. It’s already at the top of Drudge.

You’re going to hear about this for YEARS. The new false choice that conservatives will ask voters to make is between keeping the global warming status quo or losing your job. And predictably, when Tapper was called on this foolishness, he arrogantly refused to acknowledge the error. Because he’s a very serious person who couldn’t possible have made a mistake.

Instead of apologizing, Tapper is now defending his egregious post by insisting that addressing global warming will in fact slow the economy, whether Clinton said it or not:

“This is the much more important issue here. Any serious effort to reduce greenhouses gases will have an impact on the economy and, initially, that impact could be negative.”

Actually, the important issue here is that most journalists not only have a misunderstanding of the issues, but are perpetually convinced of their own brilliance despite all efforts to the contrary. Admitting that they’re wrong is like exposing themselves to kryptonite. And so journalistic standards brush up against arrogance and intransigence. The funny thing is that, despite claims that they are objective purveyors of the facts, it’s ALL personal when it comes to these guys. They’d rather peddle a lie than be seen as wrong.

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Shortcuts

by digby

Small investment, big reward:

Don’t you love how we’re spreadin’ democracy ‘n freedom? It’s inspiring.

I wonder if they handed out hats that said “Corrupt Bastards Club” on them, just like they do in America’s oil state.

Actually, this sum of money is quite substantial compared to the chump change they spend here to arrange for the United States to invade Iraq, but it still isn’t much. This is a very cheap investment.

h/t tanbark
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Obama At LA Trade Technical College

by dday

Hey all. Sitting here in the spin room at the Kodak Theater prior to tonight’s Democratic debate. The place is kind of swamped with media, and I guess Blitzer’s doing his live show just outside, so there are a lot of sign-holders afoot.

Earlier today I was down at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, a community college near downtown, to watch a townhall meeting with Senator Barack Obama. A lot of his Southern California supporters were on hand, including Assemblyman Ted Lieu, labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, Congressmen Xavier Becerra and Adam Schiff, LA City Councilmembers Yvonne Burke and Bill Rosendahl, and State Senators Dean Florez, Gil Cedillo, and Majority Leader Gloria Romero. I have as much respect for Senators Cedillo and Romero as anyone in the State Senate. They have been at the forefront of taking on tough issues; in the case of Sen Romero, prison and sentencing reform, and in the case of Sen. Cedillo, immigration measures like driver’s licenses and the DREAM Act (which Obama said he would sign). It means a lot to me that they are on board Obama’s campaign.

After a pre-program which included all Spanish-language music (LA Trade Tech is a heavily Latino and black college), the overarching them was one of unity. The very first thing Obama stressed in his opening remarks was the black-brown divide. There were several signs passed out by the campaign that said “Si se puede.” And he again talked about how he abhored the divisive tone of the immigration debate, where we “let lawmakers turn us against each other.” He talked about helping the struggles of the middle and lower classes as “the cause of my life” (a pull from John Edwards?), and told the crowd that “you are determined to make something of yourselves – you just need the government to provide a little help so you can realize your dreams.” The podium carried the sign “Reclaiming the American Dream,” which is new messaging AFAIK.

After remarks which covered health care, education reform, relief for homeowners caught in the mortgage crisis, and making college affordable, Sen. Obama took questions. The first was about the Iraq war and yielded familiar comments; the second, about homelessness, was a completely new topic to hear in this campaign. I think Obama’s answer was key. (paraphrase):

“We must build more shelters, but we also need to look at how we prevent more homeless. A quarter of the homeless are veterans who come back from war with PTSD or brain trauma, they don’t get the help they need, and they self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. So we need to fix that. But we have an issue with mental health services generally in this country. I want to see mental health parity. Insurers need to cover mental health the same way they do physical health. Because depression can be as debilitating an illness as a broken arm, and probably more. It will save us money in the long run, because all types of services come into play when you deal with homelessness – police, EMT, the judicial system, our jails, etc. Another thing you’re seeing is more homeless families on the street, because the government has gotten out of the affordable housing business. We need an affordable housing trust fund so that people of modest means can find a place to live in their communities.”

I don’t think you can read the response to that question and say that Obama is somehow a Reagan disciple. His State Senate district in Chicago faced these issues head-on. This is not typically a plank in someone’s platform. Politicians don’t often talk about homelessness for whatever reason. But he showed an understanding of the issue and it really appeared that he would take it seriously were he to become President.

Other questions included Darfur, making college affordable, immigration, K-12 and early childhood education (which Obama stressed as very important), and the economy. Another question that jumped out was about racial profiling. The questioner was very animated about it, and apparently there was a recent incident on campus. Obama said that he was the only candidate who’s ever passed a racial profiling bill, which got the support of both parties in the Illinois State Senate. Police departments learned to work with the law and believed that it aided their performance and showed areas where they needed to improve.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a political system, and certainly not a political media, that pays attention to these issues. But I do believe that this is how regular people want to make their choices. They get a load of crap tossed at them about superficial issues and there’s a lot of clutter to cut through. But people have real questions and real values they want to see expressed in a President, certainly more than they’re getting now. If the media listened for a change to what answers people were actually seeking, perhaps they would provide them.

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Orcinus

by digby

Dave Neiwert is running a fundraiser this week and could use your support. As someone who does a yearly fundraiser myself, can I just say how important these things are to bloggers? This is mostly a labor of love, but love doesn’t pay the bills. Neiwert’s doing some important work at Orcinus, work that is going to be more and more relevant as the conservatives lose institutional power and begin, once more, to rely on their subversive elements to revitalize the movement. There is nobody who understands that aspect of conservatism better than Dave and his co-blogger Sara Robinson.

So, if you’ve got a couple of extra bucks, Orcinus is a good place to put them.

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Losing Mittens

by digby

I can’t tell you how odd it was to be watching the Romney people being worked over by the McCain fanboy club on MSNBC last night. It’s a rare occasion when a Republican is as openly loathed as the average Democrat on these shows, but the press loathes Romney and they don’t mind who knows it.

From last week:

CARLSON: See, everybody, obviously, in the press despises Mitt Romney. STODDARD: No. CARLSON: No, I‘m not saying you. I‘m just saying, everybody — STODDARD: I love when he—CARLSON: You must be the only person who does. Every single person I know who works in the press just hates Mitt Romney, almost as an aesthetic matter, like ew.

(Typical Tucker to say “like ew” as if he were a seventh grade cheerleader. )And Tucker really, really loves St John the Flyboy, so perhaps he’s not a good judge. But I don’t think he’s wrong. The press loves McCain and they loathe Mitt Romney.

And once again, I don’t get it. Sure, I can see why people like McCain. He’s got a good sense of humor (if a little bit jock/frat mean for my taste.) And he’s sort of an irascible coot who seems like an actual living human being. Except for the bloodthirsty warmongering, abject hypocrisy wingnut thing, I might even like him myself.

Romney is a stiff personality and a typical Republican phony, but I can’t figure out what it is about him that brings out such visceral loathing. He just seems like an average plastic pol to me, no worse than most.

But the press hates him and they are not going to give him an inch. Tucker told Romney’s spokesman last night that he couldn’t figure out why Romney would fight McCain on this timeline business. After all, even though McCain is obviously lying about this, he is seen as a strong leader and straight talker and Romney is seen as a flip-flopper. Doesn’t it hurt Romney to be seen flip-flopping like this? The spokesman, who is quite good, was sort of gobsmacked but carried on bravely despite the fact that the eye-batting, guileless Tucker had just planted a disingenuous mudpie right in his face.

I’m not Romney fan, but he doesn’t seem to me to be substantially worse that McCain or any other Republican. And no matter what, I don’t believe that members of the press have the right to skew election coverage simply because they think a candidate is “ew.” We can hope that the voters see through it, or pay no attention to it, and elect someone for their own reasons. But if one of the “ew” candidates gets the nomination they end up fighting an uphill battle that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with a bunch of spoiled little media brats who think they have veto power over who should win simply because they don’t “like” them. There can be grave consequences:

MARSHALL (8/10/02): I think deep down most reporters just have contempt for Al Gore. I don’t even think it’s dislike. It’s more like a disdain and contempt. KURTZ: Why? MARSHALL: That’s a good question, and I’m not sure I have the answer for it entirely, or at least not one that you’d let me run on long enough to make clear here. KURTZ: He’s never been successful in the courtship of the press. MARSHALL: No, not at all, and this was, you know, a year-and-a-half before the election, I think you could say this. This wasn’t something that happened because he ran a bad campaign. If he did, it was something that predated it.

In some ways, Fox has more integrity than the mainstream press. They wink and nod about being fair and balanced, but everyone knows they aren’t. They are a Republican party propaganda arm and as such you know exactly what to expect. It’s ideological and partisan.

The rest of the news media, however, aren’t advancing their partisan or ideological views (at least not consistently.) They seem to view politics through a personal psychological prism. Indeed, it’s gotten so bad that Chris Matthews is now regularly featuring a body language expert to “interpret” for us what the candidates are “really” saying. Chris finds it fascinating how often these psychological profiles adhere to his impressions. Imagine that.

Their group think and feeding frenzy mentality is detrimental to our politics and our country, regardless of whether your preferred candidate is their idol this week. They damaged Al Gore enough that a Republican halfwit was in a position to steal the election. Last night, between the commentary about the “hallowed ground” of the Reagan library and the naturally ensuring worship of St. John McCain as the successor to the Great Man, we got a preview of what’s to come in this cycle.

Here’s a guy who did what they all wistfully seem to wish, looking back, that they had done. (You saw this yearning when they gushed over the codpiece, too.) By backing McCain they will be able to seize a little piece of his manly glory, and transfer all that Big Russ, greatest generation love right back on to themselves. Romney, on the other hand, is just like the guys they went to college with. Handsome, rich, boring. In fact, he’s a lot like them. No wonder they hate him.

You’d think that after George W. Bush they would have taken a look at their role in where we are today, but there is absolutely no evidence that they have done that — or are even capable of doing that. And whether we like it or not, they do have influence:

Luckily, the internet is creeping up. But I wonder how much of that “news” is coming from the CNN, MSNBC sites too, which feature all the usual suspects too.

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Suicide Watch

by dday

We can now put a number on it, the next President is most likely to have 130,000 troops in Iraq on Inauguration Day.

Senior U.S. military commanders here say they want to freeze troop reductions starting this summer for at least a month, making it more likely that the next administration will inherit as many troops in Iraq as there were before President Bush announced a “surge” of forces a year ago.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, will probably argue for what the military calls an operational “pause” at his next round of congressional testimony, expected in early April, another senior U.S. military official here said. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and top military officers have said they would like to see continued withdrawals throughout this year, but Bush has indicated he is likely to be guided by Petraeus’s views.

Bush trumpeted the success of his Iraq strategy during his State of the Union address this week. But if he agrees with Petraeus’s expected recommendation, the administration will not be able to reduce troop levels much below what they were in early 2007, when Bush began to deploy additional forces.

It sounds like they’ll get down to pre-surge levels and then go into a full-bore Friedman strategy until the end of Bush’s term. Democrats in Congress have no strategy for any opposition, so they might as well be invisible. The risk, of course, is that a worn-down Army, which wants tours of duty to be reduced back to 12 months from the current 15, simply splinters. And that’s not an abstract concept. It’s revealed in this stunning article by Dana Preist.

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I’m very disappointed with the Army,” Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. “Hopefully this will help other soldiers.” She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

There were 121 soldier suicides last year, and 2,100 cases of self-inflicted injury or attempted suicide. And this is bucking the historical trend.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 — the lowest rate on record — the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

Last year, twice as many soldier suicides occurred in the United States than in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What’s breaking is not necessarily revealed in Iraq but when these psychologically scarred men and women return home, without adequate medical care or mental health treatment at their service. It’s as big a landmine as the next President will have to face; being handed an Army that is withered to the core, and then if he or she attempts to pull out of Iraq to save the military, being chastised by the neocon faction about hating the country and loving to lose, etc., etc.

Quite a tragedy.

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It Depends On What The Definition Of Conscience Is

by digby

Remember this?

Whether they voted for Mukasey or not, Democrats widely want him to examine the interrogation tactic designed to make the subject think he is drowning, and answer definitively: Is it illegal torture?

“I do believe he will be a truly nonpolitical, nonpartisan attorney general; that he will make his views very clear; and that, once he has the opportunity to do the evaluation he believes he needs on waterboarding, he will be willing to come before the Judiciary Committee and express his views comprehensively and definitively,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, one of the six who voted with the majority for confirmation.

Well, here he is, testifying that, basically, that the ends justify the means:

TPM reports that this way:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said that he’d been getting the impression that Mukasey really thought about torture in relative terms, and wanted to know if that was so. Is it OK to waterboard someone if a nuclear weapon was hidden — the Jack Bauer scenario — but not OK to waterboard someone for more pedestrian information?

Mukasey responded that it was “not simply a relative issue,” but there “is a statute where it is a relative issue,” he added, citing the Detainee Treatment Act. That law engages the “shocks the conscience” standard, he explained, and you have to “balance the value of doing something against the cost of doing it.”

What does “cost” mean, Biden wanted to know.

Mukasey said that was the wrong word. “I mean the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value…. balanced against the information you might get.” Information “that couldn’t be used to save lives,” he explained, would be of less value.

It’s really hard for me to believe that someone who used to be a federal judge can blow that sophistry in a congressional hearing with a straight face. If you don’t know what they know, then you can’t know in advance if what they know might save lives, right?

I honestly don’t know why everybody’s so hung up on waterboarding specifically at this point. If this is their legal understanding, then they can use the rack, they can break arms and legs and they can pull teeth out with a pair of pliers. There is no logical difference between any of that and waterboarding if the only moral and legal guideline is that “it might be used to save lives.”

I’d like to once again thank all those who voted to confirm Michael Mukasey and those who didn’t bother to vote. It was an excellent demonstration of leadership. (My recollection is that many of the Democrats felt they had already “won” by forcing out Alberto Gonzales.) But maybe next time, we could just have a a little baseline that the Attorney General of the United States can’t believe that torture can legally be used if it might save lives. I think that might be considered a basic qualification going forward.

Update: Kelli Arena says the good news is that this is a very cordial hearing, without the “apoplectic fits” one is accustomed to from this committee. I don’t think Kelli has ever heard about the “banality of evil.”

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The Legitimate Change That Should Come From This Primary

by dday

I want to thank Senator Edwards for running a tremendous campaign. He moved the policy in a progressive direction and matured far more than in 2004. He was just up against two juggernauts and couldn’t wedge himself into the media spotlight. (the media, by the way, picked the nominees. Again.)

I have been very dismissive of California’s moving up their primary, and I’ve taken a lot of heat for that at Calitics. But Edwards dropping out and last night’s events, I think, prove two things.

CHANGE THE PRIMARY SYSTEM. If 1-2% of all voters can whittle the field down to two candidates, and deliver a nominee on the Republican side, we have a serious problem and everyone knows it. My degradation of California moving up was a focus on the PROCESS, not some animus against California. The process sucks. It needs to be reformed in a big way. The fact that Florida broke the rules, moved up, delivered no delegates on the Dem side, but obviously succeeded since they PICKED THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE, should tell you something. We need a spread-out process and maybe earlier conventions to end this bad front-loaded system. It’s terrible for democracy.

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING. So many Democrats threw their vote away by voting early for Edwards, and for other candidates who dropped out before the election in other states. We’re moving toward a model not of election day but of election month, and in primaries where candidates drop out, those voters are disenfranchised. To the extent that voters have remorse, their vote should go to their second choice, which would be completely simple if we just used IRV. If they have no second choice they don’t have to fill in those bubbles.

Or, if you prefer media-driven candidates foisted on the bulk of the country, then go ahead and keep this wonderful primary train going! Maybe within a few cycles we can vote for the nominee and the nominee four years hence on the same day! It’d make things so much easier.

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Laying Landmines

by digby

Dday wrote about Bush pulling out his trusty pen earlier today and issuing yet another signing statement, this time saying the congress has no right to tell the president he can’t build permanent bases in Iraq. A reader reminded me that Bush was a busy unitary boy today. He was also issuing executive orders about what the congress is and isn’t allowed to appropriate money for:

As legislators and federal officials prepared to leave town for the Christmas recess last month, Congress hurriedly passed a massive 3,400-page spending bill to keep the government running for the next fiscal year. Tucked inside the report language of the omnibus bill, and not technically bound by the force of law, were nearly 9,000 congressional earmarks worth an estimated $7.5 billion.

Fiscal conservatives and government watchdogs immediately urged President Bush to remove funding for the pet projects, while some high-ranking lawmakers warned the White House to steer clear of the legislative branch’s appropriations process. On Monday night, Bush offered a compromise to both constituencies and appeased neither.

The Congressional Research Service concluded in December that the president had the legal authority to eliminate all earmarks that appear in committee reports or managers statements.

But Brian Riedl, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, said the president may have feared that such a tactic would be viewed as “declaring war” on Congress and that compromise was his only option.

[…]

Meanwhile, avoiding a presidential veto for proposing too many earmarks may be as simple as appropriators sitting on their hands for a few extra months. The majority leaders in the House and Senate could delay passing spending bills — possibly funding the government through a temporary continuing resolution — if the they believe a Democrat will be occupying the White House in 2009. In that case, it would be up to the next president to decide whether to honor the executive order.

So this is a landmine set to explode in the next administration. (Expect a lot of these. What else does Bush have to do with his time right now?)

The truth is that a line-item veto has been found to be unconstitutional, and the only thing that allows him to do this is a technical loophole (which the article shows can be very easily circumvented.) This is for show.

It helps sell the astonishing hypocritical Republican line that the Democrats are creating earmarks at an unprecedented clip, which they are going to use in this campaign, but more importantly, against the next congress and administration. (Just because they couldn’t plan for the occupation of Iraq doesn’t mean they can’t plan when it really matters to them.)

While Bush has chided Democrats for failing to reach his goals, some critics see a level of hypocrisy in the president’s message. Lilly said Bush allowed earmarks to soar when Republicans controlled the Congress but discovered his sense of fiscal discipline only after Democrats took over last year.

“This president has the worst record of any president in history in terms of permitting an explosion of earmarks,” Lilly said. “Very few people that have the record that he has would have the brass to try and pull this off. But I don’t think he can … It doesn’t pass the laugh test.”

Let’s hope the Democrats aren’t laughing. They’d better figure out a way to deal with this because if they don’t they’re going to be wearing earmarks around their necks once they have a majority and a Democratic president.

Here’s the reaction in the press from earlier today:

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The American people expect there to be transparency in the process. They expect the people to be — here in Washington to be wise about how they spend their money. And this executive order will go a long way toward sending that signal to the Congress and at the same time earning the trust of the American people. So, Mr. Director, thank you for your leadership on this issue. It’s the right course of action to take and I am proud to have signed the executive order…

PHILLIPS: And hopefully protect the American taxpayers from government spending on wasteful earmarks.

No word on why he waited seven years to do it.

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