Month: January 2008

Silly Voters

by digby

Regardless of whether you like Clinton or Obama, does anyone think it’s a good idea for MSNBC to be rude, snide and dismissive about more than a million and a half Democratic voters in Florida (more than double the turnout from 2004)? Isn’t there a little unpleasant history of votes not counting down there?

Now I realize that there are no delegates being awarded and maybe there won’t be at the convention either. There are people talking about holding a new caucus later in the process so they do a mulligan in the state. And I also know that many people think Clinton is running some sort of scam and that she’ll unfairly try to seat her delegates and that it’s inappropriate for her to have a rally in Florida to celebrate “winning” etc, etc. Fine. That’s all party politics and it’s not what I’m talking about. It will be worked out one way or the other.

My point is that actual human beings voted today. If it is inappropriate for Clinton to declare victory it’s also damned inappropriate for every gasbag on television to say that all these votes are completely meaningless. They may not add to the delegate count, but they were cast in good faith by American citizens and they should be treated with respect by these jackasses.

I have no idea how it would have come out with a full presidential campaign in the state — probably differently in a dozen different ways — but that doesn’t mean the media are allowed to act as if the people’s vote isn’t worth taking seriously, even as they explain why there are no delegates being awarded.

I understand why the Obama campaign is saying that it was only Clinton’s name recognition that propelled her higher vote tally. They may certainly be right about that. This is politics and it’s fair for them to make that charge. But the Florida Democratic party actually worked to get their people out to the polls even if there wasn’t a presidential campaign down there and they deserve at least a little bit of credit for getting so many people out under those circumstances. It’s not the news media’s job to make a judgment about whether they were right to do so. I have been voting for presidential primary candidates for decades where there was no primary campaign run in my state and while my vote may not have been decisive, I don’t recall the news media derisively characterizing the primary voters of California as being dupes and fools for bothering to cast a vote in a state that wasn’t being contested.

The contempt these elites hold for the people of this country is unparalleled. They are smirking and laughing and practically rolling their eyes, even as they report that more than a million Florida citizens cast their votes today. Who do they think they are?

Update: Just to be clear: I am not commenting about any of the party machinations, merely that I don’t think it’s right for news organizations to be dismissive of actual voters. They were rude and obnoxious tonight, not just toward Clinton, which is a legitimate part of the business, but they also acted as if it didn’t matter that a million and a half Democratic voters cast votes.

It’s just not a good idea to let the media be the arbiters of when voters matter and when they don’t. The party will settle this and it’s unlikely that Clinton will benefit either from Michigan or Florida unless she wins many more delegates than Obama in other states. It just won’t happen. Judging from the coverage it’s also highly unlikely she will get any mileage from the “victory” either, so I think everyone can probably relax on that count. Clinton will get no benefit from this and I’m not arguing about this on her behalf. I would say exactly the same thing no matter who was involved. Even Republicans. I am a big believer in voters being respected from way back.

It’s not a good idea to have MSNBC gasbags scoffing at any legally cast votes in this country for any reason. It’s bad for our democracy — they tend to be just a teensy bit untrustworthy and stupid when it comes to this stuff. CNN managed to do it quite well tonight, even with various partisans opining on the meaning of it all. MSNBC could have easily reported the thing straight, including that there were no delegates awarded and that there had been no campaign in the state. The alleged journalists and pundits didn’t need to get derisive and snidely say things like “I don’t even know what to call this thing the Democrats in Florida did today.”

I say call it an election, explain what it means and then STFU.

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The Plan

by digby

I have no idea if Bloomberg will get into the race, but it’s quite obvious that he is seriously considering it. This article in this week’s NY magazine is a fascinating profile of his top aide and the plans that are being laid if he decides to make the jump:

Sheekey was miserable during the first term, adrift without a real role, until Bloomberg put him in charge of the city’s end of the 2004 Republican convention. One fringe benefit was getting to know Mark McKinnon, the Democrat turned Republican political consultant who helped make George W. Bush president…

[I]f Bloomberg runs for president, the money he spent in 2005 will look like a wise, cheap investment in research. All political campaigns attempt to target persuadable voters, but Sheekey created a cutting-edge “microtargeting” data-mining system. Where the money really helped, however, was by providing the ability to conduct repeated, fine-tuned phone polling. “It was not done on conventional norms—race, ethnicity, Democrat, Republican,” says Doug Schoen, who did Bloomberg’s campaign polling in 2001 and 2005. “It was tied in to psychographic and demographic variables. We called every voter in New York City two or three times. It was all part of a multimonth, multistage communication effort that largely operated under the radar, worked out by Kevin and us almost a year in advance.”

Sheekey’s other pet project in 2005 was recruiting a huge volunteer army. He hired Patrick Brennan to put it together. Brennan, a 32-year-old former Brooklyn public-school teacher and the gregarious son of a legendary NYPD chief, had become a savvy field organizer for SEIU 1199, the labor union. The next year, when five Bloomberg staffers went to Connecticut to help Joe Lieberman fend off Ned Lamont, Brennan oversaw their efforts. “Bloomberg’s people essentially took over Lieberman’s campaign,” one of Sheekey’s associates says. The victorious Connecticut Senate race was a test of whether Bloomberg’s staff could quickly affect the outcome in a contest outside New York.

[…]

Brennan now works at the Parkside Group, a political consulting firm on Nassau Street. For most of the past year, he’s traveled the country researching ballot requirements in each state. In mid-December, Brennan met for three hours in an Austin hotel with a partner in a major ballot-access firm, a company with broad experience in gathering thousands of petition signatures in a hurry.

“The Bloomberg people came to the meetings exceedingly well prepared,” says the executive, who asked for anonymity because his company has yet to sign a contract with Bloomberg. “What’s impressive about Bloomberg’s plan is they know how to segment the states. They know exactly what they’ll be doing on day one and what they’ll be doing on the last day, the filing deadline, and every day in between.” Lawyers and accountants have been lined up to fight the inevitable legal challenges to the 1.9 million valid signatures needed nationwide; the signature drive is expected to cost between $11 million and $20 million. Brennan met a second time with a representative from the petition firm in mid-January, this time in his New York office. “We’re ready,” the ballot-access operative says. “All we need is to hear a two-letter word: Go…”

In both mayoral campaigns Sheekey subscribed to a nonviolent version of the Colin Powell doctrine: Use overwhelming force. So he’d most likely start big, with Bloomberg’s announcement; Sheekey has told acquaintances he’s picturing a rally in the Rose Bowl. Maybe it’s merely Sheekey having a laugh, maybe not. What’s completely serious are his plans for an unprecedented media blitz. “The way Kevin sees it,” a Bloomberg insider says, “the major-party nominees will pretty much be in place by early March. Yet just as people’s political appetites are peaking, the spending of the major-party candidates will crater. They need to regroup and raise money for the general. A well-financed independent could get in when interest is high and seek to define himself.” Bloomberg’s advertising—on TV, on radio, on Websites, in mailboxes—wouldn’t be a brief March blast, either. “It would be inescapable, all the way until November.”

It does seem they are thinking this through very thoroughly and laying the groundwork. Bloomberg is obviously an egomaniac. (Somebody points out that there’s a reason he’s splashed his name all over every single thing he’s ever done.) While the article says all he cares about is whether he can “win,” since such things are always risky, I would suspect that he can be talked into believing that he can. At the end it says this:

“The more he hears Jeb Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger say, ‘You could be president,’ the more it sinks in.”

So Jeb Bush is telling him he could be president? I guess it’s possible that the Bush family is leaving Republican politics (more likely being asked to leave.) There are a whole bunch of allegedly post-partisan Republicans mentioned in this piece — Schwarzenneger, Powell, Mark McKinnon, Maria Shriver, Lieberman.

Apparently this idea of getting past all the bickering really is sweeping the political class. Last night the Democratic rebuttal to the SOTU was a (mild) scold of partisanship and both Obama and Clinton discuss their respective skills in terms of being able to “get things done” through bipartisan cooperation. The Republican candidates aren’t doing this at the moment, but they are fighting for the heart of their base and so worry they will turn them off by being anything but true blue conservatives. But they will have to tack to the middle as well, which both front-runners McCain and Romney are well positioned to do. Mr Straight Talk already has a reputation for being a maverick (and he has post-partisan Lieberman already out there stumping for him) while Romney’s very existence is a testament to partisan “flexibility.”

So, from the looks of things we may very well have a race with three candidates who will try to out non-partisan each other. And perhaps that’s what the people really do want. After all, it is unpleasant to be fighting all the time. Maybe people really are clamoring for the congress to just stop ceomplaining, start compromising and pass legislation that the president can sign.

Of course, we had that for seven years. The Democrats mewled ineffectually from the sidelines but they didn’t actually “fight” anything, and the president advanced his agenda nearly unimpeded. The rational I recall at the time was “elections have consequences.”

The country finally rejected everything the Republicans had so smoothly accomplished and elected a Democratic majority in 2006. And the Republicans have responded by completely obstructing any kind of Democratic agenda, protecting their unpopular president from having to make unpopular vetoes and projecting a new argument that everything is stymied because of “partisan bickering.” In other words, the Republicans created the illusion of a bipartisan disease and are now touting a “cure” that will only benefit them. They’re good at that sort of thing.

Bush is out there today setting land-mines for the next administration and taking credit for making a decision that supposedly hurts both parties. Mitch McConnell is decrying the bickering Democrats for failing to be properly bipartisan by refusing to give tax “rebates” to billionaires to stimulate the economy.

I’m not criticizing Obama, here, so all of you passionate partisans don’t get your knickers twisted and waste your breath sending me angry emails. I’m saying that the Republicans issue calls for “bipartisanship” (and use them to their advantage) when they are out of power. I’m sure that if either Clinton or Obama win the presidency that both of them know very well that Republican politicians do not operate in good faith and that they must be dealt with appropriately.

(As a matter of fact, I very much like the idea of the Democrats campaigning on behalf of “a new American majority” as Kathleen Sebelius was saying last night. That’s powerful. But when Sebelius discussed this last night she forgot to explicitly brand this as a new progressive majority and I think that’s a lost opportunity. If you want people to identify with your big ideas, you have to give them a label to call themselves.)

The media are incredibly corrupt, silly and self-centered about virtually everything and once Democrats are in power, they will take the Republican party line across the board that “the country put the Democrats in charge to stop all the bickering and they failed to do it. Look at all the fighting!” Of course, they will be the ones doing it, but that will not matter.

The Bloomberg candidacy is potentially interesting for two reason. The first is that he advances the theme thatt he big problem in Washington is that the two parties are equally to blame for the failures of the last few years because they couldn’t “get anything done.” That is very untrue, as we all know, because the Republicans got a whole lot done, it’s just that none of it was good. This is not good for Democrats because there will be far less likelihood that anyone will be able to hold the Republicans accountable, which I think is a necessary aspect of this campaign in order to set up the mandate properly. None of the Democrats are doing a very good job of that, and since they won’t go out on that limb even in the primary, I am not very hopeful that they will do so in the general. So, there isn’t going to be a mandate to open the book on the Bush administration’s past transgressions and to do so will break the so-called bipartisan agreement to “get something done.” That’s disappointing.

The other reason his candidacy is potentially interesting is the fact that we don’t know from whom he’ll take votes. On the surface, all those post-partisan Republicans make it appear that he’ll take more from disgruntled Republicans. But considering that he’s a divorced, pro-choice New Yorker I’m not so sure that true. If John McCain is having trouble with conservatives, it seems to me that Bloomberg certainly would. So, he must be looking to court independents and hoping to peel off a few moderate members toward the center in both parties. Unity ’08!

It seems to me that this would scramble the decks significantly for both parties, but would ultimately do nothing more than ensure that whoever wins of either party only gets a plurality rather than real working majority.

Third parties don’t win presidential elections. But they affect them, by forcing their issues into the debate, splitting up the coalitions and denying a true majority. If Bloomberg gets in I think he’s nearly guaranteed to ensure that the new president doesn’t get a mandate for much of anything but the status quo. And that is likely the point. The aristocrats don’t want anybody messing with the system.

I still think it’s highly unlikely that he will do it. I seriously hope he doesn’t. But it’s not all good news for Democrats if he does. We’re already going to have to deal with the bad faith Republicans cleverly managing the bipartisanship angle with the press, and likely succeeding. Not having a mandate will make it much harder to do what needs to be done.

Florida Watchin’

by dday

Most of the polls have closed in Florida (the Panhandle is in a different time zone, so they close at about 8pm ET). So far the Republican race is as close as can be, within about 13,000 votes or so between McCain and Romney at last count. The Democratic beauty contest will be called for Clinton at the top of the hour; the drama there is whether or not Clinton breaks 50% (she’s at 52% as of 4:51pm PT).

Considering that the Republican race is this close, could events like this be decisive?

In northern Coral Springs, near the Sawgrass Expressway and Coral Ridge Drive, David Nirenberg arrived to vote as an independent. Nevertheless, he said poll workers insisted he choose a party ballot.

“He said to me, ‘Are you Democrat or Republican?’ I said, ‘Neither, I am independent.’ He said, ‘Well, you have to pick one,”’ Nirenberg said.

In Florida, only those who declare a party are allowed to cast a vote in that party’s presidential primary.

Nirenberg said he tried to explain to the poll worker that he should not vote on a party ballot because of his “no party affiliation” status.

Nirenberg said a second poll worker was called over who agreed that independents should not use party ballots, but said they had received instructions to the contrary.

“He said, ‘Ya know, that is kind of funny, but it was what we were told.’ … I was shocked when they told me that.” Nirenberg said he went ahead and voted for John McCain.

Maybe the primary wasn’t as “closed” as we were led to believe. Also a number of voters were told that there wasn’t a Democratic primary today.

There’s a property tax measure on the ballot, and the exit polls seemed to favor the economy as the top issue, and both of those points seem to favor Romney. However, my gut tells me that McCain is going to pull this one out. And he really has to, because he’s broke.

Digby or I will check in later…

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Whatever Happened To “We Do Not Torture”?

by dday

John Negroponte, the King of All Salvadoran Death Squads, spills the beans and says the obvious.

Negroponte: I get concerned that we’re too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago. We’ve taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years. It wasn’t used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even for a few years before that. We’ve also taken significant steps to improve Guantanamo. People will tell you now that it is a world-class detention facility. But if you want to highlight and accent the negative, you can resurface these issues constantly to keep them alive. I would rather focus on what we need to do going forward.

It’s an interesting new legal argument. Not guilty by reason of “yeah, we’re guilty, but we fixed it!” I’ll have to consult the Court to see if that holds.

By the way, if you want to know how to responsibly engage in interrogation, you can give this a read.

Piro says no coercive interrogation techniques, like sleep deprivation, heat, cold, loud noises, or water boarding were ever used. “It’s against FBI policy, first. And wouldn’t have really benefited us with someone like Saddam,” Piro says.

Why not?

“I think Saddam clearly had demonstrated over his legacy that he would not respond to threats, to any type of fear-based approach,” Piro explains.

“So how do you crack a guy like that?” Pelley asks.

“Time,” Piro says.

(This interrogation eventually revealed that Saddam didn’t have WMD, was wary of Osama bin Laden and viewed him as a threat. Clearly that was the WRONG kind of intelligence. Maybe they didn’t do enough zip-bam Jack Bauer work on him so they got the wrong answers.)

Negroponte simply revealed what everyone already knew, and it’s not like our country’s been averse to coddling dictators and torturers for years. But there’s something different in reading a public official say, in the most nonchalant matter possible, “Yeah, we tortured, so?” It’s really wounding. It’s one thing to know that your country has betrayed its supposed ideals. It’s quite another to have that betrayal confirmed in the most putrid manner possible.

I have a bit more at my place.

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Iraq 4-Ever

by dday

When Bush vetoed the Defense Authorization Bill because he was so concerned about this abstract issue of reparations for those who were tortured and killed at the hands of Saddam Hussein, I wondered if the real issue was a ban on permanent bases in Iraq, which was also in the bill. Well, it turns out that the Prez dusted off his signing statement pen to take care of that bit of unpleasantness:

Today, I have signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The Act authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, for military construction, and for national security-related energy programs.

Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

These provisions include: 1) the establishment of a “Truman Commission” to look into war profiteering, 2) protection for contractors who become whistleblowers by disclosing information about profiteering and contracting abuse, 3) the need to share information with Congress (in particular the Armed Services Committee) about intelligence assessments, and finally:

SEC. 1222. LIMITATION ON AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES RELATING TO IRAQ.

No funds appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act may be obligated or expended for a purpose as follows:

(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.

(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.

In the end, this relates to the setting of a long-term “status of forces agreement” between the United States and Iraq. Obviously there will be some permanent long-term installations for troops associated with that. But I’m trying to figure out how this works. The President is nullifying restrictions on funds for permanent bases and control of oil. But Congress provides the funding. So it would be illegal to use Iraq funds in the appropriations process toward these ends, as long as they are expressly given other functions in those bills. Otherwise, it’s an illegal appropriation. However, I suspect that there are enough loopholes in those funding bills that voiding this ban is enough for the executive to impose his will on the process.

Of course, that’s only true for another year. So the Democratic candidates need to make statements about whether they would uphold or repudiate this signing statement and commit to a total ban on permanent bases in Iraq and control of Iraqi oil. We know that George Bush is never going to change in his megalomania. But we deserve to know whether this will spill over into the next Administration.

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Pillaging Every Last Penny

by digby

The president must have dropped a page or two of his speech tonight because he didn’t mention this at all:

While thousands of Mississippians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina remain in FEMA trailers, the federal government on Friday approved a state plan to spend $600 million in grants earmarked for housing on a major expansion of the state-owned port — a project that could eventually include casino and resort facilities.

[…]

The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing.

When it became clear that homeowners, who had to meet specific criteria on damage and insurance, would not tap all of the grant money, Barbour instructed the state development agency to seek a waiver from HUD to redirect $600 million for work on the port.

Mississippi, with the highest poverty rate of any state by several measures, already had won HUD waivers of rules that require the funds to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Critics see the waivers as a product of the unparalleled influence with the Bush administration enjoyed by Barbour, a former Reagan White House political director, Republican National Committee chairman and legendary fixer who continues to receive checks from the Washington lobbying shop that still bears his name.

[…]

After the storm, an update to the master plan found that Katrina had “accelerated redevelopment of port areas and opened new opportunities for the growth of the maritime and gaming markets.” The plan raises the prospect of new casino-resort development on port land as part of a public-private partnership, financed separately from the CDBG money.

It wasn’t until early December, six months after the update was adopted by the port authority, that the state development authority sought a waiver from HUD to divert $600 million of the housing grant money to the port — more than double the net dollar damage reportedly sustained by the port from Katrina.

[…]

Barbour’s current position that part of the housing grant pool was always intended for the port is at odds with his March 2006 testimony before a Senate committee, in which he emphasized that the CDBG money was mostly committed to housing and sought new funds for the port. A year later, Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, did not mention port funding in testimony before Congress about the use of grant funds a few months before the new port master plan was adopted.

[…]

Port Executive Director Don Allee agreed to an interview with msnbc.com, then canceled it and did not schedule another despite repeated requests.

Cindy Singletary of Living Independence For Everyone, one of 50 nonprofit, religious and social advocacy groups that make up the Steps Coalition, sees the move to divert the housing funds as a bait-and-switch maneuver. “I have nothing against the port itself,” she said. “The main thing I’m against is the priority of it. … We have jobs on the coast. There’s ‘help wanted’ signs everywhere. But we don’t have homes, we don’t have apartments. … That, to me, should be the No. 1 priority for Mississippi.”

Sorry Cindy, this isn’t about jobs and it isn’t about building a port. It’s about paying off Haley and his rich friends. There are priorities and then there are priorities. They’ll be stealing from the taxpayers and the poor until the very last minute they’re in office.

And then they’re going to sit back and trash talk Democrats for trying to clean up their godforsaken mess as they count their ill gotten gains.

H/T to BB
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Game Of Chicken

by digby

So the good news is that the Democrats more or less hung together today on cloture and successfully filibustered the lousy Senate Intelligence FISA bill. However, the outcome of all this is still uncertain.

Here’s Greenwald:

The vote on the Motion for Cloture on the 30-day extension (i.e., to proceed to a vote on it) just failed — 48-45 (again, 60 votes are needed). All Democrats (including Clinton and Obama) voted in favor of the Motion, but no Republicans did — not a single one. Thus, at least as of today, there will be no 30-day extension of the PAA and it will expire on Friday.

Reid, however, indicated that it was certain that the House will vote in favor of an extension tomorrow, which means it will be sent to the Senate for another vote. It’s possible, then, that the Senate will vote again later in the week on an extension, but it’s hard to imagine any Republicans ever voting in favor of an extension since Bush has vowed to veto it.

By blocking an extension, Republicans just basically assured that the PAA — which they spent the last seven months shrilly insisting was crucial if we are going to be Saved from The Terrorists — will expire on Friday without any new bill in place. Since the House is going out of session after tomorrow, there is no way to get a new bill in place before Friday. The Republicans, at Bush’s behest, just knowingly deprived the intelligence community of a tool they have long claimed is so vital. Is the media going to understand and be able to explain what the Republicans just did? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.

It now appears to be a game of chicken. Will the Republicans allow this law to expire, will they pass the extension and have the president veto it, or will they pass the extension, let it stand and then come back to fight this again next week? And, as Greenwald asks, will the media try or even be able to explain this to anyone?

It’s a little weird that the Democrats had to filibuster a bill when they have a majority, but at least they were able to do it. I guess that’s progress?

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Forgive and Forget

by digby

In case anyone wonders why so many people don’t respect Democrats, here’s a perfect example. From K-Drum:

Former California governor Gray Davis, who was taken out to the woodshed and beaten bloody five years ago during our last fiscal crisis, takes to the pages of the LA Times today to make nice with the folks who were doing the beating:

So why is California suddenly faced with a $14-billion budget shortfall? Is it because the governor (or the Legislature) did something terribly wrong? No, the governor of a nation-size state like California can affect the economy, but only on its margins. The reason this deficit is looming is because no one can repeal the business cycle….Believe me, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t want to close 48 parks, reduce education funding or release prisoners. Like all governors, however, he is required to bring expenditures in line with revenues.

For chrissake. No wonder Davis got so much sand kicked in his face back in 2003. Look: I’ll concede the obvious. California’s last budget crisis was partly (though not entirely) the result of a Democratic legislature that refused to rein in spending and a Democratic governor who went along with it. And yes, the business cycle is responsible for a substantial drop in revenue this year, just as it was five years ago. But absolving Schwarzenegger of blame for our latest budget crisis? Is this some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or what? When Arnold came into office after demonizing Davis’s attempt to be an adult by restoring the vehicle license fee to its 1998 level (it had been temporarily reduced thanks to good economic times during the dotcom boom), he immediately cut the VLF and then issued an enormous bond to make up the resulting shortfall. Today, the combination of the reduced VLF revenue plus payments on the bond is about $7 billion a year. Depending on whose numbers you believe, this accounts for somewhere between two-thirds and 90% of next year’s projected deficit. Are Arnold and the California GOP to blame for this? Who else? Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to respond to our last crisis with nothing but a toxic combination of demagoguery and tax-cut jihadism. They did it all on their own

I don’t know why Kevin is so upset. This is SOP. It’s what’s known in Democratic establishment circles as “healing the wounds” and “putting the past behind us” to “get things done.”

Republicans, on the other hand deal with crises by getting their rich friends to recall or impeach duly elected Democrats through lies and misrepresentations. That’s how they “heal the wounds” and “put the past behind them” to “get things done.”

It’s what you might call a different theory of governance.

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Stop The Insanity!

by dday

When, oh when will the partisan bickering end?

Testifying in Albany, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today that Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s state budget unfairly shortchanges New York City out of millions in promised financial support for health care and education, among other things. If not reversed, he said, the broken promises could force the city to further squeeze taxpayers and deepen cuts in programs.

“This year, as we do every year, we’ve made budget decisions in the city based on the expectation, and even the expressed assurances, that Albany will honor its commitments to us,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his testimony at a joint legislative budget hearing in Albany.

I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, and I don’t care. I just want everyone to stop fighting so we can listen to the obscenely rich guy and move forward to wherever he wants us to go!

Doesn’t Eliot Spitzer know his place?

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The State Of Our Union

by dday

I’m going to miss tonight’s State of the Union address, but I don’t think I’ll be missing much. It’ll be the same propaganda on low taxes and “good progress” in Iraq that we’ve heard for years now, as well as churlish demands for more money for endless war ($70 billion worth) as well as a complete evisceration of the Fourth Amendment. Apparently he’s also going to fight the war on earmarks, not the ones he casually slips into every bill imaginable, of course. The address is not a document about policy but purely about politics, and the lines of attack Republicans will use in November.

I know that Kathleen Sebelius will be delivering the Democratic rebuttal, but I have an idea for her. Rather than reading her prepared remarks, she should just open the New York Times and recite this story of the loss of American power in the age of Bush. It’s a bit long but maybe she can summarize it in parts.

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.

It’s a dark and pessimistic view, but one that the public deserves to hear in full. The European Union and China are not bogged down in multiple wars, they are not stricken by failed leadership on the economy, energy, and global warming. They do not have a dollar that is almost as useful as tissue paper. They are finding room to maneuver in a time of an America adrift, and they are not entirely likely to give up the advantage they are pressing. While we refocus to Afghanistan after seven years, China and Europe are moving forward. While we appear unable to get anything done on major issues, China and Europe are moving forward. Instead of nation-building, they are alliance-building. And we face serious risk of being left behind.

And Europe’s influence grows at America’s expense. While America fumbles at nation-building, Europe spends its money and political capital on locking peripheral countries into its orbit. Many poor regions of the world have realized that they want the European dream, not the American dream. Africa wants a real African Union like the E.U.; we offer no equivalent. Activists in the Middle East want parliamentary democracy like Europe’s, not American-style presidential strongman rule. Many of the foreign students we shunned after 9/11 are now in London and Berlin: twice as many Chinese study in Europe as in the U.S. We didn’t educate them, so we have no claims on their brains or loyalties as we have in decades past. More broadly, America controls legacy institutions few seem to want — like the International Monetary Fund — while Europe excels at building new and sophisticated ones modeled on itself. The U.S. has a hard time getting its way even when it dominates summit meetings — consider the ill-fated Free Trade Area of the Americas — let alone when it’s not even invited, as with the new East Asian Community, the region’s answer to America’s Apec […]

Without firing a shot, China is doing on its southern and western peripheries what Europe is achieving to its east and south. Aided by a 35 million-strong ethnic Chinese diaspora well placed around East Asia’s rising economies, a Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere has emerged. Like Europeans, Asians are insulating themselves from America’s economic uncertainties. Under Japanese sponsorship, they plan to launch their own regional monetary fund, while China has slashed tariffs and increased loans to its Southeast Asian neighbors. Trade within the India-Japan-Australia triangle — of which China sits at the center — has surpassed trade across the Pacific.

We are in a very difficult spot and it’s important for us to remember that a new Democratic President will get blamed for all of this. It’s the Republican way. George Bush, however, has fundamentally changed our position in the world, and it’s going to take a supreme effort to counteract that, probably over decades.

This is a dispiriting, yet must-read, article.

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