Month: September 2009

Hair Trigger

by digby

Get this man a clean diaper and a bottle and put him to bed:

Last night, ABC News reported that authorities believe Najibullah Zazi’s may have co-plotters who are still at large. (The NYDN has reported the same.) Question #1: Doesn’t this seem like something approaching the “ticking time bomb” scenario that constantly bedevils debates about interrogation techniques? How hard are the feds working Zazi for information about possible would-be terrorists inside the U.S. right now? How hard should they be working him? I keep leaning towards one conclusion–then imagining how I would feel about that conclusion if a bomb kills someone I know on the New York subway next week.

What the hell is wrong with Americans? The police are arresting more people in this plot every day. They had had him in their sights for months. The plot is broken up. And the first thing that comes to this guy’s mind is the proverbial “ticking time bomb” (which we know means that we simply must bring out the torture device and start squeezing.)

As I have written ad nauseum over the years, the torture debate inevitably leads to doing it here in the homeland for more prosaic reasons. If this is a ticking time bomb (obviously requiring “enhanced interogation) there are clearly many crimes out there which could fall under the same category. gang crimes, organized crimes, any crimes foiled in the planning stages where lives could be at stake.

Oh, and as per usual:

“[Najibullah Zazi] rented a suite at a hotel in his hometown of Aurora, Colo., authorities charge. The room had a kitchen, and subsequent FBI testing for explosives and residue in the suite found the presence of residue in the vent above the stove.

“In July and August, Zazi bought unusually large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a solvent commonly found in nail polish remover — from beauty supply stores in the Denver metropolitan area …”

If true, and if the evidence of explosive ingredients or concentration of hydrogen peroxide is substantial, Zazi will be sent over — probably for life. The various documents, focusing on the last .pdf which indicates a frantic search for hydrogen peroxide and acetone, on display at Cryptome, are particularly damning with regards to the accused man.

In the UK, there have been three bomb plots which employed peroxide. Most recently, I blogged about the Airplane Plot Liquid Bombers. For them, concentrated hydrogen peroxide was the oxidizer for a primary of Tang citric acid/sugar powder concentrate.

[…]

In the chapati flour and peroxide bomber case, the prosecution took pains to convince that the bombs, which fizzled, were deadly. In this, a variety of experts were trotted out to make statements to point in this general direction. They were never particularly convincing, except as arguments from authority, asserting that cobbled-together soggy things consisting of flour and an indeterminate concentration of store bought hydrogen peroxide would be dangerous without explaining how or why.
The more accurate picture was that the bomb-makers were yet another dismal collection of stupid al Qaeda men, in contravention of the usual received wisdom in the media that jihadists are Islamo-MacGyvers, always well-trained, efficient, smart and capable of whipping up a batch of death from anything.
However, because such people are quite often ineffective, or arrested before they can move forward, does not in any way ameliorate the uncharitable and anti-social nature of the activity.
An entire archive of pieces on jihadists and peroxide bombing, accumulated over the past few years, is at my blog here.

There could very well be a ticking bleach job and pedicure out there right now. Best waterboard these guys immediately (and then lather rinse and repeat) before all hell breaks loose.

Update: Jeffrey Toobin rightly took Crowley to task and he responds here:

A rough interrogation of Zazi, Toobin concludes, “would be both immoral and counterproductive.” It’s a well-argued case, and I think I agree. But, let’s play Devil’s Advocate: 1) While the Obama administration’s new emphasis on the illegality of torture is very important here, of course, even some mainstream Democrats have argued for an implicit wink-wink exception in “ticking bomb” cases. (This was Hillary Clinton’s position for a time during the 2008 primaries; and although she refined her language under pressure, in my reading she still allowed for such exceptions.*) 2) Toobin argues that this isn’t really a ticking bomb case anyway. Rough interrogation isn’t warranted, he argues, given that the feds have already amassed so much information about Zazi’s associates. That is reassuring. But it still doesn’t mean we know where those guys are right now. Zazi might. 3) Toobin adds that mistreating Zazi might hurt the government’s legal case against him. But is that really more important than preventing a bombing? (A question which complicates the question of morality, I would argue.) 4) One argument I’m surprised Toobin doesn’t make: that torture doesn’t yield useful information. That could be the best rationale of all here, although I’ve never quite been convinced that’s an indisputable fact–and I suspect others in the government, probably including White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, feel the same. If it were up to me, I don’t know what I would do; I would need to know more facts. I am not a proponent of torture, which I think has done enormous harm to America’s image abroad and moral fiber at home. But I ride the subways these guys may have been planning to attack and I would like to be quite sure we’ve found all of them. At a minimum, this is a good opportunity to stress-test the debate about interrogation techniques, because it may be that life can imitate 24 after all.

Oh yessss. It would be irresponsible not to.

Why do I increasingly feel like the last seven or eight years never happened and I’ve awakened sometime in early 2002? More 24 bullshit? Really? What, did Crowley miss out on the post 9/11 pants peeing extravaganza or is this is some kind of retro panic chic? (Can’t you just feel the breathless, macho arousal in his words?) Jesus.

Somebody needs to tell Crowley that we’ve had the debate and we don’t need any “stress testing.” It was “tested” on quite a few subjects and it didn’t work no matter how fast Dick Cheney dances on the head of a pin. Plus there’s this.

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Following Orders

by digby

Pam Spaulding put up a list of the 39 people (that we know of) who have been killed so far this year by tasers. (The list was compiled by Electronic Village, which is keeping track of the statistics.) Unsurprisingly, nearly 40% of the victims were black, despite being only 6% of the population.

But lest anyone who isn’t black think they are immune, consider this:

An 81-year-old man tased during his arrest by a Stockton CHP officer says he may take legal action.

Victor Schiaffini says he is considering filing an excessive use of force complaint.

Schiaffini walks with a cane, has no use of his left arm after suffering six strokes, and takes several prescription medications daily.

The CHP says he attacked an officer with a deadly weapon, his cane.

Schiaffini was pushed to the ground and tased three times during his arrest.

“That was the worst whoopin’ I’ve ever taken in my life,” Schiafiini told CBS13.

Schiaffini spent three days in San Joaquin County Jail following his arrest in July.

The District Attorney reduced Schiaffini’s charges to an infraction and he pleaded guilty.

Again, every American needs to realize that if they look at a police officer sideways or misunderstand their orders they will be shot with electricity regardless of whether the officer has other choices. When you see a half paralyzed, 81 year old man tasered, you know for sure that it cannot be possible that they needed to taser him three times to subdue him. It was to teach him and anyone who was watching a lesson: if you fail to quickly comply with a police officer’s instructions, no questions asked, you will be electrocuted and hauled off to jail. That’s just the way it is.

And the more this is officially sanctioned the more common it will be become. The famous Milgram Experiment showed that people are more than willing to inflict pain on their fellow humans if they are instructed to do so by someone in authority.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: “Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?” In other words, “Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?” Milgram’s testing revealed that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.[3] Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]

Over time Americans will learn that in order to maintain their liberty, they must instantly comply with everything those in authority tell them to do. The police will follow the edicts of their civilian leaders, who sanction torture on many different levels “to keep the people safe.” The population will learn eventually that they will automatically be shocked with electricity if they fail to comply and over time they will be conditioned to fall in line regardless of their constitutional right to speak or resist unwarranted intrusion. And then we will truly be free.

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Stooge (D-ND)

by dday

Sherrod Brown sez that, contra Rahm Emanuel, no Democrat will vote with Republicans on a filibuster to kill the health care bill, even if it includes a public option.

Brown should go have a talk with Kent Conrad (D-ND). Ezra Klein just did, and I don’t know how he got through it without banging the telephone against his ear until it hurt. That Conrad displayed an unconscionable ignorance, as well as an arrogant belief in his own falsehoods, would be normal if he were a teabagger attending a town hall. That he’s a Democratic United States Senator fills me with nothing so much as fear.

Conrad raised eyebrows this week when he told the Senate Finance Committee that the health care systems of countries like France, Japan and Germany should be models for the United States because they aren’t “government-run systems,” even though the government intrusion into those systems is far greater than anything this country is contemplating, even with a public option. Conrad got this from a book he read over the weekend, T.R. Reid’s “The Healing of America”. That’s right, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, a leading voice on the Finance Committee and a member of the Gang of Six, who has been working on health care for months if not years, JUST DECIDED to look into how other countries around the world manage their health care systems.

Klein started by asking Conrad what he was talking about with respect to France and Germany:

But that runs over some fairly large variations. In France, for instance, the insurance really is government-run. The vast majority of people are on public insurance, and there’s private supplementary insurance atop that. So too with Japan. They’re not confined to simply subsidizing the poor.

But it’s not government-run. The doctors and hospitals are private. You’re right that in France there’s more of a government involvement beyond providing money for those who can’t afford coverage. There’s a regulatory involvement in terms of what’s required by the plans. But the plans themselves, the mutuals, are not government.*

You’re talking about France here? Not Germany?

Both of them. The intermediaries are not-for-profits. The model is universal. Employers contribute. Reid says we are in part a Bismarck model, where employers contribute. Part which is that Beveridge model, like the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Service. We have a national health insurance model with Medicare. And then out-of-pocket for people with no coverage. We have a real mixed system. We really don’t have a system. That’s kind of what you get down to.

Klein puts an asterisk there, kindly not telling Conrad on the phone that he’s totally full of it. Basic insurance in France is provided through a government program called Social Security. The mutuals only deal with supplementary private insurance.

Conrad segues into the “innocent bystander” approach to policymaking, renouncing his status as a US Senator and just marveling at how the universal “we” balk at changing the health care system:

But we decided not to change that much. The real lesson from Reid’s book is that we do this badly. If the French came up with a great new medical procedure, we wouldn’t say that’s just some French procedure. We’d adopt it. But when they come up with a better way to do health care, we dismiss it as French, and inapplicable.

Yeah. We don’t want anything to do with it. He talks about that in the book. It’s an odd thing.

Sure is! If there were only a US Senator who praised T.R. Reid’s book, who could draw a lesson from it about acting boldly and not getting caught up in nonsensical American exceptionalism! Wherever could we find someone?

After some talk about Medicare and the Clinton 1994 plan and the Gang of Six (“We had 61 meetings!”), Klein moves to the public option, and here Conrad reveals his true grievance:

Do you support the public option?

No.

Why?

I go back to the T.R. Reid book. I don’t think a government-run plan best fits this culture. A plan that’s not government-run has the best chance of succeeding in being passed into law.

Second, and this is very important to my thinking, the public option as defined by the committee of jurisdiction in the House, the Ways and Means Committee, is tied to Medicare levels of reimbursement. My state has the second-lowest level of Medicare reimbursement in the country. If my state is tied to that reimbursement, every hospital goes broke.

People say, “Just fix it.” I’ve been on the Finance Committee more than 15 years. I’ve been trying to fix the unfair aspects of Medicare reimbursement all the time. We run into the House. Membership is determined by population, and the big population states write levels of reimbursement that unfairly treat hospitals in states like mine. My hospitals get one-half as much as urban hospitals to treat the same illnesses.

What about a public plan that can’t use Medicare rates?

There are discussions going on about that. Obviously, it would be very important that it would be clear that it’s not tied to Medicare levels of reimbursement. Those of us in low-reimbursement states would have our health infrastructure put at risk.

For all of Conrad’s talk about “uniquely American systems” and “not fitting the culture,” what Conrad wants is a full-on handout for providers in his state. He wants the Medicare reimbursements to go higher for North Dakota. There’s probably a point where they get high enough that he can tolerate the government intrusion. He’s essentially calling for a bribe.

And mind you, this is the deficit hawk chair of the Budget Committee, whose entire goal in health care reform is to “bend the cost curve.” Now, raising reimbursement rates for rural areas would, of course, INCREASE HEALTH CARE COSTS across the system. But Conrad thinks it’s terribly unfair to his doctors to get less than urban hospitals to treat the same illnesses. Has anyone asked Conrad about the cost of living in North Dakota as opposed to New York City?

Then, Conrad whines about that damn House of Representatives where “membership is determined by population,” as if the majority should be allowed to rule or something!

Conrad, of course, is also protecting his boomer baby idea of co-ops, which he pulled out of thin air after meeting with the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. Blue Cross of North Dakota, which covers 90% of the market in Conrad’s home state, would qualify as a non-profit to be a co-op and receive millions in seed money. Again, payouts are the goal here. Klein asks Conrad why the co-ops in the Finance Committee bill are so weak, leading to this incredible exchange:

I was also struck when I read the chairman’s mark that the co-op option seemed shackled. It couldn’t sell to large employers. It couldn’t set payment rates. The co-ops are not public. But they were being prevented from competing with insurers on a level playing field. It seemed like private insurers were being protected from competition.

I think there are things I would like to see that would make certain co-ops be given the full ability to compete that others are.

So you would like to see those restrictions lifted.

I would.

Why are they there?

Because that came out of the Group of Six discussions.

I have no words.

OK, I have a couple. The Group of Six discussions FELL APART, and yet the useless co-op plan, which Conrad admits he does not like, still comes out of the language from those meetings. Why? I’d have to guess that Conrad doesn’t care that the co-ops won’t work, as long as Blue Cross of North Dakota gets their seed money.

This guy is CENTRAL TO HEALTH CARE REFORM.

Weep for America.

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Monopoly Money

by digby

Just shoot me. American politics are so inane right now that I can hardly stand it:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), a Republican member of the Finance Committee who was part of negotiations that produced the pending healthcare bill, said that insurance companies are supportive of the legislation as it stands.

He said the insurance industry would accept legislation prohibiting it from discriminating against customers because of pre-existing medical conditions in exchange for a government mandate that requires tens of millions of Americans to sign up for coverage.

Really? They will agree to stop discriminating against sick people who don’t have insurance (who, by the way, will be forced to buy expensive insurance from them) in return for 40 million or so new customers? Wow, that’s really big of them.

That idiotic statement was in this story from The Hill which says that Harry Reid is holding back a new provision that’s floating around, which would repeal the health care industry’s anti-trust exemption. (Can you believe they have an anti-trust exemption?) The Republicans are claiming he’s using it as some kind of intimidation threat against the insurance companies in the negotiations although I’m unclear what it is he’s trying to extract from them in return.

In any case, it’s quite clear that the insurance companies all operate like cartels, quite obviously fixing prices and running out competition. (Even Trent Lott was for lifting their exemption in the past.) It’s one of the reasons why the public option is needed. If Reid is holding that over their heads to get the PO in the legislation, then I’ll go and volunteer for his reelection. Let’s just say I’m skeptical.

Vanity Fair has a great article today about the outrageous compensation schemes in the medical industry. We’ve written about the insurance company CEO’s a lot on this blog, but this article takes a broader look at the health industry as a whole:

With median annual compensation of more than $12.4 million, C.E.O.’s at the big health-care companies make two-thirds more than their counterparts in finance and are the highest paid of any industry. The health-care industry’s total annual profit has grown to an estimated $200 billion, and it doled out nearly $170 million in campaign contributions in 2007 and 2008. It now spends more than any other industry lobbying the federal government—$3.5 billion over the past decade and a record $263 million in the first six months of this year. That’s six lobbyists and nearly half a million dollars for each member of Congress. It’s been a good year on K Street, too.

It should come as no surprise, then, that we spend 17 percent of our G.D.P. and more than $7,500 per American per year on health care. That’s 50% more than any other industrialized nation. Meanwhile, the quality of care we get in return has fallen to embarrassing lows. According to the World Health Organization, our health-care system ranks 37th in overall quality and fairness, placing us between Costa Rica and Slovenia. We rank 41st in infant-mortality rates, alongside Slovakia and Serbia, and dead last among 19 leading industrialized countries in preventable deaths. Nearly two-thirds of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are caused by illness, yet more than three-quarters of those people actually had health insurance when they fell ill. In other words, we’re all getting ripped off.

Evidently, the answer to this problem is to mandate that more Americans pay into this corrupt system. It’s hard to keep those big pay packages coming without making sure that every possible customer is coerced by law into paying for them.

These mandates are going to be a hard sell as it is, even with a public option. As Gene Lyons points out in his column, there are good reasons why most people don’t buy it already — they can’t afford it. They are, by necessity, playing a game of russian roulette with their health care. I don’t know why nobody gets the idea that just because someone in Washington says a family that makes 50k a year can afford to spend 12% of their income to pay for the Cigna CEOs private jet, that they actually can. And to do this without offering them something that’s guaranteed, well subsidized and subject to public scrutiny and citizen lobbying seems like political suicide to me.

Nonetheless, many of these Democrats are intent upon passing a regressive tax on middle income people that will go directly into wealthy insurance company coffers, which as Chuck Grassley admits right out loud is exactly the kind of “reform” the insurance companies are fully behind. And that’s supposed to be a win-win for everyone. Except the people, of course, but who cares what they think?

Here’s hoping, once again, that Obama and company realize that pleasing the insurance companies this way is not in their political interest. For while the House of Lords may not care about political consequences because they pretty much have lifetime tenure and a direct conduit to massive amounts of lobbyist cash, the president has an election in 2012 and an historical legacy to consider. If badly done, this “reform” will be a disaster and he will be blamed. He says he knows this. Let’s hope he does and pulls out all the stops to keep these Fauntleroys from giving away the kingdom.

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Getting The Job Done

by digby

I’m not sure if Donna Brazile fell into a time warp and woke up thinking she was a member of the Bush administration circa 2003 or if these are the sanctioned talking points of the Obama administration. Either way, this is just awful:

Blitzer: [Michael Moore] would also like the president to take bold leadership right now and simply get out of Afghanistan and do it as quickly as possible. Listen to this:

Moore: he’s got to stop sending troops there, he’s got to start to bring the troops home. Otherwise we will stop thinking of this war as bush’s war and start thinking of it as Obama’s war. This is a losing proposition, he must know this, history has proven, nobody can win there.

Blitzer: remember, this comes from Michael Moore who greatly admires president Obama, just wants him to pull out of Afghanistan.

Donna Brazile: Well Wolf, this is a very volatile situation. I think the president has already made a commitment by sending troops earlier this year to finish the job. And the troops have an important mission, that is to destabilize and destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I think the time for us to pull out is when we have made significant progress in destabilizing the government.

Yes, she really said that, but I have to believe she just misspoke. But her real point is just as mind boggling. Haven’t we been “destabilizing” the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for eight years? Is there really some hope of “finishing the job” and destroying them if we just send in more troops?

But it got even worse, with the GOP mouthpiece starting to babble about Islamo-fascism and Brazile getting a little bit stroppy with Blitzer.

Blitzer: Michael Moore reflects a lot of Democrats on the left. they would like president Obama to pull out as quickly as possible as well.

Brazile: I think the most important thing the country can do right now is finish the job and bring our troops home when we’ve been successful at making sure that the people who attacked us on September 11th do not rearm themselves and and attack us again. That’s important.

Huh? Rearm themselves with bigger box cutters? What the hell?

Blitzer: This isn’t just on the left though. George Will, the conservative columnist recently wrote, “you know what? It’s time to get out of there as well.”

GOP strategist John Feehery: A lot of libertarians feel the same way. The fact is that the president campaigned that Afghnanistan was the “Good War” the war we had to win. We had to shift our responsibilities from Iraq to Afghanistan. If he now says that we have to pull out immediately, it puts a lie to everything he campaigned on. The fact of the matter is that Donna is absolutely right. we cannot leave without leaving in a way that will fix the problem, that takes on Al Qaeda, and that makes us a more secure country. i think if we pull too quickly, we’re in big trouble.

Sadly, Feehery is right that Obama (and the rest of the Democrats) boxed themselves in with their short term strategy of portraying The Good War as something that they would “win” if they got elected. But that doesn’t mean they have to stick with it. After all, George W. Bush ran on having a “humble foreign policy” and then turned into Atilla the Hun the minute he got the chance. Somehow I doubt that when he said he was going to be humble that he really meant it. He was running against the Clinton-Gore policy of intervention in the Balkans and Somalia, back when the Republicans were pretending to be worried about quagmires and exit strategies, which they now view as the mark of feckless nancy boy politics. They love wars, and Bush himself proclaimed before he was installed that if he had the “chance” to run a war he would make the most of it.

Let’s just say that neither party can boast of much integrity when it comes to foreign policy on the campaign trail. So let’s just forget about campaign promises and deal with what they do, ok? It’s a waste of time to do otherwise.

Then Blitzer brought up the dreaded “V” word:

Blitzer: We used to hear that argument about Vietnam all the time and you know what, the US pulled out and now there’s full diplomatic relations between the United states and Vietnam.

Feehery: I don’t think Afghanistan and Vietnam are the same things. I think Afghanistan is really a small Islamic Fascism that is so much different than the naitonhalized war that was being fought in Vietnam.

Blitzer: But Michale Moore’s point is, and you’ll see the full interview in our six pm hour, Michael Moore’s poiint is you know what, any foreign occupying force that’s gone into Afghanistan over hte centuries, they get kicked out eventually and the US should learn from that history.

Brazile: President Obama clearly knows the history. But so does General McChrystal, who said this is about the Afghan people: “if we leave those people the civilians there now to the Taliban and Al Qaeda then we will have left the situation worse off.” And to the Afghan women who proudly went to cast their ballots, we should not leave them alone.

Did they accidentally send Brazile some Karen Hughes talking points or what? This is just ridiculous.

Not that I’m surprised. There’s a reason that old coots like Bob Dole used to refer to “Democrat Wars.” They’ve never exactly been opposed to them — at least until massive amounts of blood and treasure have been wasted.

The Dems walked into this problem and now they are facing a huge amount of pressure to escalate, which was entirely predictable. Blitzer is absolutely right to bring up the Vietnam analogy, because it’s should serve as a valuable lesson, especially to a Democratic president.

1964:

Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don’t know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we’re getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don’t see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we’re committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don’t think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don’t think it’s worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out. And it’s just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.

Bundy: It is an awful mess.

Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I’m looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and he’s got 6 little old kids over there, and he’s getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We’ve got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they’re not doing a thing about it.

Bundy: Yeah, yeah.

Johnson: Of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.

Bundy: Yeah, that’s the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That’s the dilemma, that’s exactly the dilemma.

Johnson: But everybody that I talk to that’s got any sense now they just says Oh, my God, please give us thought. Of course I was reading Mansfield’s stuff this morning, and it is just Milquetoast as it can be. He’s got no spine at all.

Bundy: Yeah.

Johnson: But this is a terrible thing that we’re getting ready to do.

Obama famously dismissed all that back in the campaign when he said:

We’re still having the same argument… It’s all around culture wars and it’s all … even when you discuss war the frame of reference is all Vietnam. Well that’s not my frame of reference. My frame of reference is “what works.” Even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was I don’t oppose all wars, specifically to make clear that this is not an anti-military, you know, 70’s love-in kind of approach.”

We’d better hope that if he’s ignoring the lessons of that era, that he at least understands that “what works” isn’t escalating out of fear that some rightwing jackass is going to point fingers or that you’ll “send the wrong message.” Actually, you shouldn’t have to know the lessons of Vietnam to know that. It should be common sense.

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Really Dumb Choice

by tristero

The comments to my previous post were genuinely fascinating. They reflect, in a microcosm, the much larger problems with our national discourse, which I’ve bemoaned since my earliest days as a blogger. As always, I’m not trashing our commenters, at least I hope not, I like you people! Rather, I think we all accept the prevailing terms of the current discourse as normal rather than what it is: a bizarre caricature of what real discussions look like. (Me, too, of course, that’s why I blog about it so much, and why I love reading the comments, even the ones I disagree with.)

The subject of my post was, I thought, obvious: the latest eruptions of unbelievably deceptive marketing. I gave two examples. In the first, a consortium of enormously wealthy corporations bought off a bunch of corrupt nutritionists and got them to relabel junk food as a “Smart Choice.” In the second, a company that manufactures a very-low-nicotine “electronic cigarette” touted the availability of their product as the very embodiment of an all-American value, “Freedom of Choice.” (I’ll get to the use of the word “choice,” which is no accident, later. )

Ok, let’s not argue whether the Smart Choice nutritionists are really corrupt or simply clueless pawns of Big Food. What’s simply beyond dispute, except to those paid to say otherwise, is that Froot Loops is junk food, as is Diet Pepsi. As for electronic cigarettes, their availability for sale is merely a financial issue to the company, not a moral one; trust me: If no one buys them, the company will no longer manufacture them, freedom of choice be damned.

Again, I thought it was patently obvious: these are some of the most cynical marketing practices around. Who could possibly disagree? But to many of the commenters, it wasn’t obvious at all.

Some folks defended Diet Pepsi, as if Diet Pepsi were the subject and I was trying to ban it. It wasn’t and of course I’m not. Apparently this too isn’t obvious, so I’ll spell it out:

Just because Diet Pepsi is junk food doesn’t mean you shouldn’t drink the stuff, if you like it. Who says eating should be healthy? Not me. In fact, a lot of my posts on food have stressed eating for pleasure, not health. (True, I can’t stand Diet Pepsi, I think it’s swill, but I’m sure there are plenty of junk foods, like soft pretzels with yellow mustard from street carts, that you loathe and I love.)

My only objection is that junk food, with the collusion of nutritionists who should know better, is being marketed as a Smart Choice, ie, as health food. That is very, very wrong.

Amazingly, many people who should know better fell for this marketing scam, including many commenters. So let’s again be clear: there is sheer rhetorical malpractice afoot in branding Diet Pepsi a Smart Choice. There is no reality there. We’re talking junk food here. But, you might ask, isn’t Diet Pepsi less awful than Pepsi Pepsi (ie, HFCS soda)? No, it’s not. Junk food that appears less awful than other junk food is still… you got it. It’s still just junk food, just like the legendary Ponzi wasn’t a “better” human being than Madoff because he didn’t bilk as many people. They’re both rotten crooks. (Cue commenters with an encyclopedic knowledge of Ponzi to explain why this, really, really is unfair to the poor guy.)

It’s not elitism or egomania to assert that if you eat enough junk food, your health will suffer. That is simply a fact. It may suffer differently whether you have a regular diet of Pepsi Pepsi or Diet Pepsi, but suffer it will if you persist in drinking the stuff the way we used to drink water (not everyone, duh, will get horribly sick, mentioned for the benefit of those who think they have “good genes”). Less awful junk food doesn’t mean it’s “better” junk food; it’s still junk food and you will hurt yourself if you eat too much of it.

Less awful junk is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “Smart Choice.” It’s still food with next to no decently balanced nutritional content and often plenty of stuff that’s downright bad for you. It seems to me that a far better choice is to eat the junk food you want to eat. At least, you’re not kidding yourself, which, when it comes to food, can lead to binging on the junk you really wanted in the first place. Regardless, whether you eat the junk you want, or the junk you don’t want that you think is “less junk,” it’s a plain fact, not a scolding, that you just shouldn’t eat it too often. It’s not good for you to eat a lot of it.

Now regarding the e-cigarettes, one commenter wrote:

I’m so disappointed in this blog today.

tristero, you completely ignored my comment. You completely ignored the many many people who commented on that very page you linked to for criticism – people who credit their e-cigs for getting them off smoking *entirely*.

tristero, I am very disappointed in you. You have let me down as a supposedly-but-not-really responsible, progressive blogger. You are not progressive – you seem to be in favor of restricting options, options that work for many people. You are also not responsible – taking one paragraph out of an article when anyone who would read the whole of that article might come away with an entirely different position. Fucktards on the RIGHT do that, not us.

First of all, I’m sorry he felt ignored. As for quoting that poor spokesperson out of context, I don’t think I did, but if she thinks so, she’s more than welcome to get in touch. Now, to the issues he brings up.

Regarding the folks who posted comments saying they quit smoking by using this product, that is classic anecdotal evidence and obviously represents a small fragment of the entire population of users – to call them self-selected is just the start of the problems with taking their comments as something significant. Among my questions are: How many didn’t post who are still addicted? Furthermore, how many were fooled into perpetuating a deadly nicotine addiction by the misleading nonsense of that company’s morality-based marketing?

The issue is not smoking a healthier cigarette, or one which quoteunquote can’t say it because they don’t have good evidence but it will help you quit – wink, wink. Why? Ingesting nicotine is not healthy. It’s just a simple fact: Nicotine is very bad for you. Here’s a google link to nicotine’s known health risks; it shouldn’t surprise anyone if they found more.

But even if 99.99% of e-cig users quit all nicotine use within a year – fat chance – I don’t find the cure rate relevant to the point I was making. Again, the only issue that concerned me in that post was marketing something falsely, in this case, casting the availability of a nicotine delivery system, sold for profit, as a moral right. As Clint Eastwood sez, “right’s” got nothing to do with it.

This brings us to the commenter’s other point, regarding whether I am “in favor of restricting options.” I don’t know how to respond to something like that because, in this context, the entire issue of “freedom of choice” has been reduced to a nonsensical marketing gimmick designed to distract from the fact that we are talking about people trying to make money from nicotine addiction and who will say anything, do anything, to make that money. The real issues regarding freedom of choice are far too serious to be exploited for mere financial gain by a cigarette maker, “e” or otherwise. They are simply distracting all of us from the real issue: whether any company has the right to prey on consumers by manufacturing for profit and marketing deceptively a product we all know contains substances that are both highly addictive and very bad for you.

And that leads us to the word “choice.” Many folks, including my friend above, took the attitude that it was illiberal of me to trash Diet Pepsi and Fruit Loops and/or e-cigarettes. In short, they think I am against choice, or at least leaning that way.

Hmm… “Smart Choice,” “freedom of choice,” where have I heard that “choice” rhetoric before? Oh yeah! “Pro-choice!”

I can’t help but think of all the times the right has turned liberal memes and slogans on their head. Why shouldn’t their allies in Big Food and tobacco do the same? I am not suggesting that the commenter above is a rightwinger, I’m sure he’s not, rather it’s that rightwing framing and rhetoric is ubiquitous; at different times we all fall for it, including me of course. But one clue that something was amiss here, to me at least, is that good people, who really know better, were actually defending bad, deceptive, and evasive marketing. Furthermore, they were doing so not only by arguing that the products were not only healthy products instead of junk, or addicting, but that they were morally good as well, or at least that somehow there were Higher Principles involved in objecting to this deception, like Freedom of Choice In A Democracy.*

I don’t buy any of it. You wanna make junk food, you don’t have the right to deceive people into thinking it’s healthy. You wanna make cigarettes, you most certainly don’t have the right to distract from all the health problems any nicotine delivery system has by pretending, even for a moment, that some sort of freedom of choice issue is involved in your avid pursuit of profit.

Suddenly, when I blog about food these days, there sure are a lot of concern trolls, cautioning me not to be any more smugly self-righteous than I already am. Funny, these concern trolls weren’t there when I started, before all the publicity about good food and Michelle’s organic garden… But let’s address the issues raised head on.

First of all, let me cop directly to the core of real criticism behind what smells like a tiny insignificant crumb of the rightwing-inspired pushback that includes the CEO of Coca-Cola comparing efforts to tax soda with, I kid you not, the Soviet Union.** For many reasons, writing about food is exceedingly difficult, far more so than I imagined when I started. I have a lot to learn. One of the few writers around who can address food matters unpretentiously and brilliantly is the oft-mentioned-by-me Mark Bittman – in fact, Food Matters is the title of one of his books. I certainly hope the more I do think about the issues involved, that I’ll do a better job. Part of that job is finding a language and style that reflects my own thoughts and feelings about food, which are certainly opinionated but the exact opposite of doctrinaire and restrictive. I’m all about eating purely for enjoyment. (The crucial question is how can we identify really delicious food when our culture is trying desperately, and in so many ways, to make us confuse profitable food with good-tasting food.)

So, yes, I can be more skillful and hopefully will be, going forward, when I write about food. That fully acknowledged, it won’t change my opinions on these issues:

The marketing of junk food as health food is outrageous. The marketing of cigarettes as a moral issue is utterly disgraceful.

To close, let me point out that, as Michael Pollan astutely observed, ultimately, these greedy bastards are manufacturing an additional, and enormously lucrative, product: patients for our dysfunctional, and highly profitable, health system. And that should be a national scandal.

*Just to head off a lot of angry commenting that might distract from the real issues, I don’t believe that most commenters that objected to my post because they liked Diet Pepsi or felt the e-cigs were useful, or that I’m an insufferable elitist, were right wingers. However, I do believe strongly that when we start to couch issues of business, profit, and marketing as Gigantic Moral Imperatives, we have often become suckered into accepting a totally bogus rightwing frame. This certainly seems like one of those times to me. You may disagree. It’s a free country. That’s your, ahem, choice. But I’m certainly sorry if you feel insulted as that was not intended, but perhaps, in some cases, unavoidable.

**I don’t have an opinion right now on the soda tax. Like everything else food, it’s a complicated subject. But I do know for a certainty, that if soda is taxed it will be nothing like the Soviet Union. I saw the Soviet Union and the comparison of a soda tax – a soda tax! – to that totalitarian nightmare is obscene trivialization of the efforts of all those who resisted and protested and suffered under Soviet totalitarianism.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Soldiers

by dday

According to Tom Andrews, the McChrystal strategy in Afghanistan would need just under that many to carry out the mission:

Embedded in General Stanley McChrystal’s classified assessment of the war in Afghanistan is his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy will require 500,000 troops over five years.

This bombshell was dropped by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday:

The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops – boots on the ground – and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way. [Morning Joe, September 23, 2009]

Spencer Ackerman cautions against reading too much into the numbers, saying that they would include Afghan Army and police boots on the ground, which in McChrystal’s ultimate vision reaches 400,000. So we’re talking about 100,000 coalition troops for five years, which roughly correlates to current levels. However, the Afghan security forces that make up 4/5 of this commitment, which is aspirational and not concrete at the moment, are 90% illiterate, frequently desert their posts and simply cannot be relied upon as a fighting force.

What is there to show for all this remarkably expensive training? Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn’t the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to “operate independently,” but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?

My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of “Basic Warrior Training” 90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.

In a country where 40 percent of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training, but it’s a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid. Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujahidin — the Islamist fundamentalists the U.S. once paid to fight the Soviets — and many are undoubtedly Taliban.

In addition, maintaining a 400,000-strong security force would probably take three times the gross national product of the country at a minimum. It’s naive to the extreme to assume that the Afghans will live up to the 400,000 end of the bargain, and similarly to assume that McChrystal would not seek reinforcements from American troops should the Afghan security forces falter. Putting the number 400,000 Afghan security forces on a piece of paper and expecting them to deliver in any meaningful way is as silly as expecting that they have a legitimate government to defend.

Which means that US military might and treasure will get dragged in once again to another futile war, with an escalation bringing mostly destruction to Afghanistan instead of development. It is for this reason – and maybe others – that the President may be rethinking such a commitment. Dan Froomkin has a superb post about how the President could actually lead on this issue by changing his mind.

Should Obama actually change his mind about Afghanistan, our elite journalists — obsessed as they are with how the game is played — will almost inevitably characterize this as vacillation and declare it a sign of political weakness. But that really misses the point.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that over the last several months, what’s emerged when it comes to Afghan policy is a sort of consensus of the realists — from across the political spectrum. The consensus: That our national interests in Afghanistan are pretty limited and that the harder we try to change things over there, the more resistance we face; that Afghanistan, after eight years of U.S. occupation, has become a Vietnam-like quagmire where escalation only leads to more escalation, not victory; and that what little we could possibly accomplish there is not worth more American blood […]

Another important thing that could happen here is that, by fully explaining his decision, Obama could go a long way toward restoring a balanced and rational sense of what it means to “support the troops.” Former president George W. Bush and his political henchmen used that phrase as a bludgeon to beat Democrats into submission on any issue even vaguely related to national security — even when it actually resulted in putting the troops in greater danger. Most notably, Bush insisted that once troops had been committed to Iraq, he bore the responsibility to make sure they had not died in vain — and that anything short of victory would be a betrayal of those soldiers who had already made the ultimate sacrifice. Democrats were way too terrified to demand a pullout from Iraq, even when they controlled Congress, for fear of being accused of undercutting our brave fighting men and women.

It would be a sign of strength and not weakness to base strategy on the available evidence, and change it when the evidence points in that direction. It may not get you far in the Washington commentariat and foreign policy establishment, where only bombing countries to smithereens and sending in every able-bodied man and woman in America halfway around the world are seen as serious and acceptable options. But it would reflect strength, nonetheless.

The McChrystal troop request should reach the Pentagon within days. So we’ll see if the President bends to the will of the neocon-establishment complex, or makes his own assessment. The shitstorm that would ensue if he nixes the counter-insurgency strategy would make the health care town halls look like (actual) tea parties. So Froomkin’s take provides a response that will need to be echoed.

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Don’t Know Which Way To Turn

by digby

According to a Dutch newspaper, Obama refused to met with British Prime Minister five times. And Hot Air is jumping mad:

The reason is that Scotland’s leader – not Brown – recently released Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi recently. Brown supported this decision because it would improve Britain’s relationship with Libya (the power of the almighty dollarpound).

Megrahi should obviously never have been released. But insulting a loyal ally because of one (admittedly big) mistake isn’t exactly what I’d call smart diplomacy.

Especially not considering the fact that Obama has no problem whatsoever meeting with Iran’s, Venezuela’s and other anti-American dictators who have sponsored and continue to sponsor terrorism against America.

Many have speculated in recent months that Obama may treat Britain badly because of his personal history. Unlike most Americans he has no personal bond with this country.

Perhaps there’s something to that explanation, but you wonder how it is that he does treat, say, Venezuela well since he and his family have no personal history with that country either.

Here is my guess of why he rebuffed Brown not once, not twice but five times: Brown supports the war on terror, Obama does not. Obama holds Brown (partially) responsible for the Iraq War. He believes this war to be unjust. And as has become clear due to his constant bashing of his predecessor George W. Bush, he has nothing but contempt for those who decided to remove one of the worst dictators in modern times from power.

That or he simply sides with those he considers ‘the weak’ automatically; even if they’re enemies of the West.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that this story is true, but nonetheless, it’s certainly evoked a confused response.

First, one would assume the 101st keyboarders would all be so aghast at the freeing of a terrorist who blew up an American Airplane full of people that they’d be thrilled by a president who delivered a little slight to those who did it. Who’s the appeaser now, eh?

On the other hand, how could they be supportive of someone who “has no personal bond” with Mother England the way that Real Americans do. Not being white and all. (Or American, for that matter.) Of course, his mother’s family goes back more than six generations to Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, but then they probably don’t have much of a “personal bond” with mother England either. Besides, the “American identity” comes through the father — everyone knows that.

As for siding with the weak, I thought Iran and Venezuela were mortal threats. If they are actually weak, it doesn’t really matter if Obama sides with them or not. (Of course he isn’t “siding” with them at all, but again, if they are weak, who cares if he is or isn’t?)

And let’s face it: you can count on one hand the number of people who don’t have contempt for George W. Bush. That’s doesn’t settle anything. And seeing as Obama chose a Vice President and Secretary of State who voted for the Iraq war, I’m not sure it makes sense that he would diss a British Prime Minister for doing exactly the same thing.

The right is very discombobulated by this new Democratic president on foreign policy. They can’t wrap their minds around the fact that so far, he’s behaving like a run of the mill establishment hawk (as Greenwald thoroughly documents here) — which is how they all act to one degree or another. So they flail about incoherently attacking and defending in different directions simultaneously without really knowing who the enemy is. It’s fascinating.

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Gangs Of Washington

by dday

Charles Grassley, having been kicked out of the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, has posted a flyer on the Senate’s grey utility pole seeking out members for a new Hole-in-the-Wall Gang:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Wednesday he’s begun reaching out to other colleagues in both parties about reshaping the health bill through amendments on the Senate floor.

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a conference call with Iowa reporters that he has had conversations with senators not on either committee handling health reform legislation about assembling a new bipartisan agreement.

“I’ve had discussions with senators that aren’t on the committee that could possibly work with us to try to get back into a bipartisan mold,” Grassley said. “I think, though, that it’d be very helpful for people who aren’t on the Finance committee or even the HELP committee…would kind of take the bull by the horns themselves and try to coalesce around something that could eventually become more bipartisan.”

Grassley, who said that the health care bill may “pull the plug on Grandma,” tried to raise money in his own state to “defeat Obamacare” and claimed that it would have left Ted Kennedy without treatment, seems like the perfect candidate to lead a group seeking to improve the health care bill.

I’m thinking he may find some takers, though. The Senate Wanker Caucus can seat up to 60, depending on the policy. Witness, for example, Bill Nelson, trying transparently to preserve corporate welfare for insurance companies.

Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, has a big problem. The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.

“It would be intolerable to ask senior citizens to give up substantial health benefits they are enjoying under Medicare,” said Mr. Nelson, who has been deluged with calls and complaints from constituents. “I am offering an amendment to shield seniors from those benefit cuts.” […]

Mr. Nelson said he had received 56,000 telephone calls, letters and e-mail messages on the legislation since June.

Some of those callers have been mobilized by insurance companies.

Humana, one of the nation’s largest insurers, has urged subscribers to contact their members of Congress and register their opposition to the cuts. “Millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,” Humana said in a recent letter to beneficiaries.

Medicare Advantage is quite simply corporate welfare and nothing else. The government pays private companies on the average 14% more than it would to produce the exact same coverage on their own, for no increase in quality, despite Nelson’s claims. It’s a pure subsidy, leveraging an insurer-led scare campaign to seniors.

Pair Grassley with the Nelson twins, a Lieberman, maybe a Mark Warner, and who knows? They could put the old gang back together.

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They Can Do It

by digby

So, in this mornings committee, Kent Conrad and John Kyl had a dust-up wherein Kyl bravely defended the elderly from the Democrats who are angling to take away their medicare while Conrad sounded like he’d be up for death panels if it would save the treasury a couple of bucks.

Here’s the result:

Mitch McConnell: They have a president, a large majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. If they all want to join together in unison and raise taxes and cut medicare, they can do that.

It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

Here’s how Mike Viqueira summed it all up for us:

Mike Viqueria: When’s it all going to be done Dr Nancy? We simply don’t know. We do know that in the House of Representatives, the big issue is the Public Option. Nancy Pelosi wants to get a bill as far leaning left as she possibly can get out of the House knowing that out of the Senate, there will be no public option in the bill and if and when this thing does come to the conference, she’ll be in a stronger bargaining position.

Also, she would be able to demonstrate to the left leaning base of the Democratic party that she’s doing everything she can to get that public option — which they hold so dear.

That would be a great plan if only the far leftward position wasn’t the public option.

And what happened to the Kennedy bill? Last I heard, it had a public option in it too. I know that the country elected Kent Conrad and Olympia Snowe to run the country so what they say goes, but still, we usually have a formal vote on these things before the press declares that something is over. I guess that’s old fashioned…

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