Month: September 2011

Rushing back into the cave
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Reading traditional media pundits (with a few Krugman-like exceptions) is usually an exercise in frustrated disgust. Most of the time, columns not filled with rightwing misinformation are alternatively filled with vacuous conventional wisdom masquerading as insight.

But perhaps most frustrating are the columns make it most of the way toward the obvious conclusion, but back down at the last moment as they rush to turn aside from the blindingly obvious and grab for dear life onto the raft of comfortable village talking points.

Exhibit A for today comes in the form of Robert Samuelson at the Washington Post. Samuelson starts off astutely and concisely:

Recall that the private sector is the main employment engine. Businesses create jobs when two conditions are met. First, extra demand for their products justifies more workers. Second, the extra demand can be satisfied profitably. There are qualifications to these generalizations (start-ups, for instance), but these are the basics.

By contrast, government is less a job creator than a job changer. It supports jobs (soldiers, teachers, scientists) by taxing, borrowing and regulating. If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.

To this observation, there’s one glaring exception. In a slump, government can create jobs by borrowing when the private economy isn’t spending. But the effect is temporary and isn’t automatic.

Fair enough. A balanced take on the economic facts, and succinct explanation of Keynesianism.

After agreeing that the so-called “stimulus” bill did indeed create and/or save millions of jobs, Samuelson then asks the key question: why didn’t the stimulus jump-start the private sector economic engine as it was supposed to do? And here again, Samuelson agrees with the Keynesian analysis of pundits like Krugman:

This weakness has many possible explanations. One is the severity of the housing collapse. Potential buyers are waiting until prices reach bottom. Another is Americans’ eroded financial position. Since 2007, households have lost $7 trillion in wealth, mostly from lower home and stock prices. To restore that wealth, many Americans are saving more, spending less and repaying debt.

Exactly, say advocates of more stimulus. Condition One for private-sector job creation isn’t met: Demand is insufficient. Slowdowns in the United States and Europe confirm this. Governments need to “borrow and spend” to bolster demand, writes Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ economic commentator. Deficit reduction should be long-term.

Perfect. So the core issues are well defined. The American consumer lacks the spending the power to drive the private sector economic engine. More stimulus is needed. From here, an intelligent analyst might have moved to the long-term causes of that slump in demand. Samuelson could easily have pointed out the massive rise in income inequality, and the lack of wage growth in the middle class. He could have pointed out that this inherent economic weakness was being papered over by illusory asset growth in real estate and other investment vehicles. He could have made it clear that the key to prosperity in the near and long-term future is the stabilization and wage growth of the American middle class.

But Samuelson did none of those things. Instead, he went on to claim that the American consumer and corporate sector is too risk averse after the financial crisis, and that government policies should try to reinflate those asset bubbles–the same ones that were the proximate cause of the financial crash in the first place:

The answer, I think, is psychology. Small changes in precautionary behavior by anxious consumers and companies offset stimulus. Suppose, for example, consumers raised their savings rate by three percentage points; that would neutralize three-quarters of Obama’s program.

The surprise and brutality of the financial crisis left a powerful legacy of risk aversion. Companies — like consumers — have become defensive. They accumulate a cash hoard against unknown threats. Our political leaders have also compounded the caution and fear; indeed, government policies sometimes cause unwanted behavior.

And by government policy, Samuelson means things like the Affordable Care Act’s mandating employer health insurance coverage, which raises the cost of employment. Any word from Samuelson on how single-payer healthcare might alter that dynamic? No. Any word from Samuelson that, single-payer aside, if the ACA works as intended it should reduce healthcare costs across the board, ultimately reducing the cost of employment? No.

And the biggest problem, according to Samuelson? Partisan bickering:

Switch to Capitol Hill. It’s more of the same. Republicans and Democrats exult in vitriolic attacks on each other. Their pleasure from mutual vilification comes at the public cost of lower confidence. By contributing to this, the disarray over long-term deficits also undermines employment.

Our jobs debate should acknowledge these realities. No policy will succeed unless it results in self-sustained hiring by private firms. This means giving job creation precedence over other goals. It means conducting the debate so that the nation’s spirits — and hence, private spending — are not further depressed by partisan rancor. It suggests taking proposals from both parties, because neither can be sure its approach will work.

It ought to be about building confidence, not scoring political points.

I would enjoy hearing from Mr. Samuelson how “taking proposals from both parties” failed to take place on, say, deficit reduction, seeing as how most of the proposals enacted were conservative. Or how implementing more directly anti-Keynesian ideas would assist the situation. Does Samuelson believe the ACA should be repealed? If so, what should take its place? Shall we throw Americans with pre-existing conditions to the free market wolves so that the hungry Confidence Fairy might feast on their bones? How would that help the economy, exactly?

And, of course, there’s the “both sides do it” canard, even though it demonstrably clear that the GOP has gone over the partisan deep end even as Democrats try desperately to compromise with them.

It’s as if Samuelson walked to the edge of Plato’s cave and, blinded upon his first glimpse of the light, rushed back to the quiet comfort of his shadow-obsessed friends.

In many ways, cowards like Samuelson are more infuriating than any Ross Douthat or David Brooks.

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The Black Robed Regiment on the march

by digby

Yes, it turns out that the post mortems on the culture war were premature. Again. Does anyone want to guess how long it will before we start hearing lectures from the Democratic hucksters of the Religion Industrial Complex that candidates and office holders need to start throwing women to the wolves as soon as possible?

The pastor movement is being guided and ministered to by a growing web of well-financed organizations that offer seminars, online tools and a battery of lawyers.

Tim Wildmon, who runs the American Family Assn., one of the most generous underwriters of Christian conservative activism, predicted that evangelicals in 2012 will match the fervency of theRonald Reagan era — in large part because so many pastors are prodding their flocks to the polls.

“They’re going to be telling their parishioners to get registered and to make sure to go vote,” he said. “I think it’s huge.”

Boosting the movement are veteran figures such as Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition. His new organization, Faith & Freedom Coalition, is developing a list of Christian voters in key states, a tool it used to reach thousands of voters in Wisconsin’s recent recall elections.

New players are even more ambitious. United in Purpose, financed by an anonymous group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, aims to register 5 million conservative Christians to vote. The organization boasts a sophisticated database that identifies millions of unregistered evangelical and born-again Christian voters around the country.

I’m sure there will be others. The big money boyz need to get the rubes riled up about something other than shrinking bank accounts and housing equity.

The article goes on to explain that these pastors are inspired by their hatred for gay marriage and Glenn Beck faves the revolutionary “black robed regiment”, perceiving themselves as patriotic Christian warriors. (Aaaand the Tea Partiers come full circle.)

“There is a fire in my bones to do this,” Demastus said, citing the passion of a Revolutionary War pastor who dropped his ministerial robes before his congregation to reveal the uniform of the Continental Army.

The story of the Rev. Peter Muhlenberg telling his flock “there is a time to pray and a time to fight” was repeated across Iowa this summer, as pastors signed up worshipers to become “prayer warriors” and, they said, help take the country back to its Christian roots.

And naturally, the next generation of wingnut institutions are already in place:

The most prominent — the Alliance Defense Fund, a group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that spent $32 million in fiscal year 2010 — is challenging a 1954 tax code amendment that prohibits pastors, as leaders of tax-exempt organizations, from supporting or opposing candidates from the pulpit. The group sponsors Pulpit Freedom Sunday, in which it offers free legal representation to churches whose pastors preach about political candidates and are then audited by the Internal Revenue Service. (So far, no IRS investigations have been triggered.)

Last fall, 100 churches participated — up from 33 in 2008. This year’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday, scheduled for Oct. 2, is expected to draw more than 500 churches.

This truly is the great strength of the right. They are like sharks, whatever happens they just keep moving, relentless and single minded. They don’t waste their time with self reflection or analysis — they just keep building their movement institutions, preparing for the day when they will be able to use them. All that money helps, of course.

Perfect

“I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.”

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Stubborn Idiocy
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Reading newspapers: it’s like reading blogs, but several months too late. The New York Times is finally discovering what on-the-ground Democratic activists have known for months:

Democrats are expressing growing alarm about President Obama’s re-election prospects and, in interviews, are openly acknowledging anxiety about the White House’s ability to strengthen the president’s standing over the next 14 months….

“In my district, the enthusiasm for him has mostly evaporated,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon. “There is tremendous discontent with his direction.”

The president’s economic address last week offered a measure of solace to discouraged Democrats by employing an assertive and scrappy style that many supporters complain has been absent for the last year as he has struggled to rise above Washington gridlock. Several Democrats suggested that he watch a tape of the jobs speech over and over and use it as a guide until the election.

But a survey of two dozen Democratic officials found a palpable sense of concern that transcended a single week of ups and downs. The conversations signaled a change in mood from only a few months ago, when Democrats widely believed that Mr. Obama’s path to re-election, while challenging, was secure.

“The frustrations are real,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who was the state chairman of Mr. Obama’s campaign four years ago. “I think we know that there is a Barack Obama that’s deep in there, but he’s got to synchronize it with passion and principles.”

There is little cause for immediate optimism, with polls showing Mr. Obama at one of the lowest points of his presidency.

His own economic advisers concede that the unemployment rate, currently 9.1 percent, is unlikely to drop substantially over the next year, creating a daunting obstacle to re-election.

Liberals have grown frustrated by some of his actions, like the decision this month to drop tougher air-quality standards.

And polling suggests that the president’s yearlong effort to reclaim the political center has so far yielded little in the way of additional support from the moderates and independents who tend to decide presidential elections.

“The alarms have already gone off in the Democratic grass roots,” said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, who hopes the president’s jobs plan can be a turning point. “If the Obama administration hasn’t heard them, they should check the wiring of their alarm system…”

“He should have given [the jobs speech] earlier,” said Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said, “He’s got to engage, make the contrast and occasionally be combative.”

It’s nice of the traditional media to finally take notice of what’s really going on out there. This revolt from the base, combined with lack of enthusiasm from reliable Democratic voters, has been many months in the making. It began with the cave on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, continued to gain steam throughout each subsequent battle that saw the President attempt to compromise with the right wing, and has culminated with a mixture of fury and despair with the debt ceiling austerity debacle.

It will also be interesting to discover how the Obama Administration’s fiercest defenders will spin this article. Some will dismiss is as the New York Times doing a hack job on Democrats for the benefit of Republicans, which is about the equivalent of putting one’s head in the sand politically speaking. It will be interesting to hear Administration defenders tar Peter DeFazio, Elijah Cummings, John Dingell and Sherrod Brown as whining “emo progressives” desperately seeking attention. Maxine Waters is apparently already on their hit list for daring to criticize the Administration’s approach. Soon it appears that just about everyone this side of Joe Lieberman will be an insufficiently supportive self-aggrandizing Democrat.

But what has to be the most galling is the incredibly stupid stubbornness from Administration officials:

At the White House and at Mr. Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, officials bristled at the critiques, which they dismissed as familiar intraparty carping and second-guessing that would give way to unity and enthusiasm once the nation is facing a clear choice between the president and the Republican nominee.

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for the president’s re-election, said the criticism was largely a “Washington conversation” that did not match up with the on-the-ground enthusiasm for Mr. Obama among his network of supporters.

That’s really precious. If Democratic activist bloggers complain about Administration policies and tactics, then they’re irrelevant, impatient cheetos-munching hippies of the “professional left.” If Democratic National Committee members complain, it’s just “intraparty carping and second-guessing.” And if it’s Democratic Congresspersons complaining, it’s labeled an irrelevant “Washington conversation.” In other words, there may be Democrats complaining, but no true Democrat.

There are three possibilities here: one is that Administration officials are as willfully blind about the severity of their problem with the Democratic base as they have been with the severity of the economic disaster and the severity of Republican opposition to compromise of any sort. If true, then Democrats are staring into the face of a big defeat in 2012, and the reality of a President Romney or Perry.

The second is that the Administration is aware of their problem with the base, and putting the bravest face on it they can by pretending it doesn’t exist. If so, they’re only going to make the problem worse.

The third is that the Administration is right that the vast majority of Democratic activists and voters will be so afraid of the Republican nominee that they’ll jump on board regardless. This is the least likely possibility: many of the activists like myself will probably hunker down and glumly do their duty because they know more than anyone how devastating a Perry/Romney presidency would be, but many will not. And a great many of the less-informed voters themselves will stay home regardless. But it’s also the most troublesome, because it means that progressive Democrats have a Hobson’s choice: support a standard-bearer who openly mocks them, their passionate beliefs and their very existence, or allow a Romney/Perry presidency to destroy everything they’ve spent their lives working for. That dynamic will make mincemeat of Democratic Party activism for years to come, and Administration officials seem to be utterly unfazed by that prospect, if they’re even aware of it.

No matter which of these three possibilities is the real one, the answer for good Democrats remains the same: build progressive infrastructure, use the primary system to evict Blue Dogs and elect progressive Democrats at all levels from hyper-local to Congressional, and make damn sure that we have a reliable Democratic candidate who respects the Democratic base to take office in 2016, no matter who wins in 2012.

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The catalyzing event

by digby

I’m not going to write a remembrance of 9/11. David did a lovely one this morning and I have nothing of substance to add to it. Like everyone else, I remember what I felt and thought on that day with crystal clarity and I’ll never forget it. I had nightmares for years about being caught in the towers after reading first person accounts of those who got out. I still avoid listening to those voice mail messages of those who didn’t make it. It’s just too awful.

But beyond the horror of that day was the other story that began to unfold within minutes of the event: the government response. In the early days, the people’s reaction was admirable and it reaffirmed our faith in human nature. But within a very short time, the human decency and common purpose was supplanted by a cynical political strategy to manipulate man’s desire for revenge in order to advance a long held agenda. I believe it started right here:

One year later, with the help of a pathetically puerile media (as tristero devastatingly outlines here) this was where that battle cry had led us:

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: September 11, one year later; the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein; the state of America’s economy; and corporate responsibility and accountability. Our guest, an exclusive interview with the vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney.

Mr. Vice President, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: Good morning, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: September 11—when you hear those words, “9/11” what are your thoughts?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, it’s become sort of a unique event in our history, one of those events that everybody shared in in some fashion. And I think all of us remember where we were when that happened. I think I bought it a lot in terms of how it’s changed, how I spend my time, what I think about, what we worry about in the administration, it’s a watershed event. The world before 9/11 looks different than the world after 9/11, especially in terms of how we think about national security and what’s needed to defend America. Those are the thoughts that crop up…

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the issue of Iraq. You have said that it poses a mortal threat to the United States. How? Define mortal threat.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: You know, this will take some time, but it’s important for us, as I mentioned earlier, to remember that the world has changed. That prior to 9/11, we really focused our defense capabilities on the possibility, for example, during the Cold War the Soviet Union attacking, and we worked with strategies of deterrents and containment. If we could hold at risk the targets the Soviet Union cared about, then they wouldn’t attack us. That strategy, obviously, worked. What we found on September 11 is that the danger now is an attack that’s launched from within the United States itself, not from some foreign territory, as happened with respect to the hijackers on 9/11. Also that, in this particular case, it was backed up by a cell, terrorist cell, operating in Hamburg, Germany. You have to completely recalibrate your thinking in terms of how you deal with that. Now, if you start with that as background, then you deal with Saddam Hussein and his 11 years, now, since 1991, since the end of the war, his refusal to comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions. If you look at the extent to which he has aggressively sought to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, over the years, the fact that he has previously used them-he used chemical weapons both against the Kurds and against the Iranians during the 1980s-the fact that he has twice invaded his neighbors. He’s launched ballistic missiles against four of his neighbors over the years. There’s a pattern and a track record there that one has to be concerned about.

Now, the more recent developments have to do with our now being able to conclude, based on intelligence that’s becoming available, some of it has been made public, more of it hopefully will be, that he has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability. There are other elements that need to be considered here. For some 10 or 11 years now, the international community has attempted to deal with this, but it’s been generally ineffective.

The sanctions are breaking down. The willingness of nations to trade with Saddam Hussein is increased. He’s also sitting on top of about 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and generating enough illicit oil revenue now on the sides that he’s got a lot of money to invest in developing these kinds of programs. So we find ourselves, on the one hand, with the demonstrated greater vulnerability of September 11; and, on the other hand, with the very clear evidence that this is a man who is resuming all of those programs that the U.N. Security Council tried to get him to forgo some 10 or 11 years ago. And increasingly we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities.

[…]
MR. RUSSERT: ….Would this administration be willing to go before the United Nations, the world, and show convincingly just exactly what Saddam has, as best we know?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I think we’ve started that process already, Tim. The president’s going to address the General Assembly of the United Nations this week. He will lay out his concerns at that point. We have begun to share, as much as we can, with committees of Congress. A lot of this, I hope, eventually will be in the public arena so that we’ll be able to discuss it not only with our allies overseas, but also with the American people here at home. They have a right to know and understand what it is that’s happened here.

It’s also important not to focus just on the nuclear threat. I mean, that sort of grabs everybody’s attention, and that’s what we’re used to dealing with. But come back to 9/11 again, and one of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well, is his biological weapons capability; the fact that he may, at some point, try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States. So this is not just a one-dimensional threat. This just isn’t a guy who’s now back trying once again to build nuclear weapons. It’s the fact that we’ve also seen him in these other areas, in chemicals, but also especially in biological weapons, increase his capacity to produce and deliver these weapons upon his enemies.

MR. RUSSERT: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.

MR. RUSSERT: Could it have been Saddam?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible. Who’s the source? We were able to come fairly quickly to the conclusion after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, the individual behind the 9/11 attacks. But, like I say, I point out the anthrax example just to remind everybody that it is very hard sometimes, especially when we’re dealing with something like a biological weapon that could conceivably be misconstrued, at least for some period, as a naturally occurring event, that we may not know who launches the next attack. And that’s what makes it doubly difficult. And that’s why it’s so important for us when we do identify the kind of threat that we see emerging now in Iraq, when we do see the capabilities of that regime and the way Saddam Hussein has operated over the years that we have to give serious consideration to how we’re going to address it before he can launch an attack, not wait until after he’s launched an attack.
[…]
Mr. RUSSERT: One year ago when you were on MEET THE PRESS just five days after September 11, I asked you a specific question about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Let’s watch:

(Videotape, September 16, 2001):

Mr. RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.

(End videotape)

Mr. RUSSERT: Has anything changed, in your mind?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.

Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that and the president?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got…

Mr. RUSSERT: Anything else?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is-again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years. And in terms of exchanges and in terms of people, we’ve had recently since the operations in Afghanistan-we’ve seen al-Qaeda members operating physically in Iraq and off the territory of Iraq. We know that Saddam Hussein has, over the years, been one of the top state sponsors of terrorism for nearly 20 years. We’ve had this recent weird incident where the head of the Abu Nidal organization, one of the world’s most noted terrorists, was killed in Baghdad. The announcement was made by the head of Iraqi intelligence. The initial announcement said he’d shot himself. When they dug into that, though, he’d shot himself four times in the head. And speculation has been, that, in fact, somehow, the Iraqi government or Saddam Hussein had him eliminated to avoid potential embarrassment by virtue of the fact that he was in Baghdad and operated in Baghdad. So it’s a very complex picture to try to sort out.
And…

Mr. RUSSERT: But no direct link?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can’t-I’ll leave it right where it’s at. I don’t want to go beyond that. I’ve tried to be cautious and restrained in my comments, and I hope that everybody will recognize that.
[…]
MR. RUSSERT: The foreign minister of Turkey said, “Any change in Iraq’s government system should be carried out by that country’s people.” Dick Armey, Republican, said that, we as a nation should not be doing pre-emptive strikes. International law-where is our right to remove or topple another country’s government?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We believe that, especially since September 11th, we have to consider action that may, in fact-I suppose you can call it pre-emptive-we’ve talked about it in the past-to head off an attack against the United States. If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think the United States is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.

Let me take you back to 9/11, Tim. If we had known what was about to happen to us on September 11th and we could have prevented it by military operation, in effect, pre-empt, would we have done it? The answer is: You bet we would have.

And virtually all Americans would have supported it. We are in a place now that, I think, some Americans, as well as some of our European friends, for example, have difficult adjusting to, because, in the case of the Europeans, they haven’t the experience we have of 3,000 dead Americans last September 11th. They are not as vulnerable as we are, because they’re not targeted. They also really don’t have the capacity to do anything about the threat. You know, if you take-they can participate in an international coalition, but left to their own devices, they can’t deal with Saddam Hussein. Only the United States has the military force capable of doing that. So we find ourselves in a situation where the president has an obligation to defend the nation, and it’s conceivable that that could at some point require him to take military action. We’d like to do it with the approval and support of the Congress. We’d like to do it with the sanction of the international community, but the point in Iraq is this problem has to be dealt with one way or the another.

MR. RUSSERT: We have just a minute in this segment. Will militarily this be a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would it cost?
[…]
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Could be very costly. The danger of an attack against the United States by someone with the weapons that Saddam Hussein now possesses, or is acquiring, is far more costly than what it would cost for us to go deal with this problem.

MR. RUSSERT: And the rest of the Arab world would stay stable?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think so. But the risk here that has to be weighed, Tim, isn’t just-you know, what’s it going to cost you to do this today? It’s what will the cost be if you don’t do it? And what happens if you delay six months or a year or two years? And at that point, when you start to weigh those prospects, then the cost of military action, if that’s what it comes to, strikes me, would be significantly less than having to deal with it after we’ve been struck once again by a deadly system.

MR. RUSSERT: Bottom line, it looks like we’re going to war.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Can’t say that. It will depend a lot on what happens over the course of these next few weeks. The president, as I say, has got a major speech before the United Nations on Thursday. It’s a very important event. But there shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind that this president’s absolutely bound and determined to deal with this threat and to do whatever is necessary to make certain that we do so.

I excerpted so much of that because I think it’s important to remember just how detailed and crafty the lies were, how deviously he wove the thread of 9/11 into the Iraq justification. It was quite masterful. But once the jingoism started, and it started early on when George W. Bush screamed into that bullhorn about “the people who took down these buildings”, it was only a matter of time before we got to that place. A cadre of neocon hawks in the Bush administration who believed that America’s global military empire needed to be massively expanded had been hoping for a chance to wage this war. They had written this just two years before:

“the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor.

As Bush inappropriately quipped, they hit the trifecta. The march to Iraq started before the smoke had cleared from the World Trade Center.

9/11 was many things. It was a horrific human tragedy first and foremost. But beyond that it was an event that enabled a group of fanatics, serendipitously walking the halls of power at the right moment (due to the vagaries of the anachronism known as the electoral college and a partisan Supreme Court ruling) to fulfill their long held desire to flex America’s military might, control “security” in the middle east, and extend what they (oxy)moronically called the “Pax Americana.” As one observer said at the time: “These are the thought processes of fanaticist Americans who want to control the world.” That’s not an exaggeration.

America was filled with pain, fear and anger in the aftermath of 9/11. And our leaders cynically used that emotional confusion to advance an immoral foreign policy agenda that was dreamed up in an obscure right wing think tank and carried out with lies and obfuscation. It led to the embrace of a domestic surveillance state, “preventive” war and torture. Unfortunately it looks as though that legacy will be with us even longer than our memories of the beautiful and tragic humanity that manifested during those early hours and days in New York City. And that’s a terrible shame.

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Keller’s Mea Culpa

by tristero

There is much to dislike in Bill Keller’s long, tedious article explaining why he initially supported the Bush invasion of Iraq. I will focus on three. They are all very small little details, basically asides, but they are all of a piece. They speak to things that are in short supply among the purveyors of the mainstream discourse: character and intelligence.

Before doing so, I want to make the point that many of us – including Digby, including myself, including millions of other ordinary Americans who marched in 2002 and 2003 – never changed our minds about the Bush/Iraq war because we got it right from the start. Long before the first American soldier stomped onto Iraqi soil, we knew it could only be, in Keller’s own words, “a monumental blunder.”

And those of us who were right have as little power now – even less, by some measures – to influence the public discourse than we had back then.

I believe the following tiny excerpts from Keller’s piece are deeply telling. They seem trivial, but it is their very triviality, the fact that they go unnoticed and therefore become tacitly accepted into the discourse, that makes the wrong-headedness of our public discussions so intractable:

I christened an imaginary association of pundits the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club, made up of liberals for whom 9/11 had stirred a fresh willingness to employ American might…

[Fred] Kaplan dropped out of the hawk club within a month when he concluded that, whether or not an invasion was morally justified, he doubted the Bush administration was up to the task. The rest of us were still a little drugged by testosterone…

All in all, Fred Kaplan, who predicted they would screw it up, looked like Nostradamus…

”The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club”… how terribly clever a quip it is, how humorous, how smug. How easy it is, when you talk this way, to forget that we are talking about the advocacy of war, the process of turning living human beings into hamburger. No doubt, men – and women – have spoken flippantly about war since before Achilles, but rarely has an entire discourse about going to war been permeated with such callous, snotty arrogance as was the attitude of the Bush administration and mainstream media in 2002/03 towards Iraq. Perhaps there are justifiable, unavoidable wars – although I have never heard of a war in my lifetime that was either – but serious discussion about the necessity of war ends – not begins – when you resort to such frippery as ”The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club.” It all sounds like a lark, a disagreement among campers over which team to join, the Eagles or the Hawks rather than a discussion about whether or not it achieves some kind of super-ordinate goal to kill lots of people. And when you put it that way, it sounds morally corrupt to label the advocates of such murderous behavior as mere members of a club.

Keller wants to blame a hormonal imbalance – too much testosterone – on his and his pals’ failure to perceive the “monumental blunder” as quickly as Fred Kaplan, who presumably suffered from some kind of chemically masculine deficit. He’s speaking metaphorically – duh – but it’s a bad metaphor, and it’s wildly wrong. Because it was not testosterone – a substance – that blinded Keller to the insanity of Bush/Iraq but fear, a psychological state. Put another way, Keller’s body didn’t fail him; his character did.

Nostradamus is the quintessential wild-eyed, insane prophet making preposterous, impossible-to-believe in predictions. Needless to say, it didn’t take anything remotely like Nostradamus-level Dark Powers to predict that Bush/Iraq would end in disaster – in fact, it required the precise opposite. It took examining the cold, hard facts with a mind unclouded by fear to figure out that this was a colossal mistake. And, it turns out, millions of people around the world figured this out at the time. But not Bill Keller and his Club.

What these three remarks reveal is that the man who, until recently, edited the New York Times treated the awesome, solemn subject of war as an intellectual lark; a near-frivolous disagreement amongst friends; he permitted his fear to blind him to the reality of the situation and cloud his judgment; and even now, he ascribes superhuman powers of prediction to anyone who could have dared to voice in advance the obvious outcome of the Bush administration’s madness. These remarks also reveal that rather than acknowledge his own responsibility to think clearly through his fear, Keller is prepared to blame his stupid – no other word suffices – decision to support the invasion of Iraq on his hormones, ie, something other than his own inability to conquer his terror and think rationally.

I don’t know if Bill Keller is a stupid man. I suspect he is not. But I do know that in 2002/03, fear made him very stupid indeed – as it did so many in the mainstream media and government. I also know that even now, as he issues a long-overdue mea culpa , Bill Keller still cannot face the full consequences of what his fear enabled: the murder and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of people.

I suppose it is churlish not to say something like “better late than never,” that it is good to know that Keller learned something from this and will be reluctant to throw his still-considerable influence behind the next cockamamy violent nonsense a psychotic cadre of government officials demand he supports. Perhaps: better late than never. But I can’t help thinking of the awfulness of what this country did to the citizens of Iraq – we all know that Abu Ghraib was just the tip of the iceberg – and did it with a moral arrogance that was, at the time, breathtaking and sickening to behold.

It is those deaths and tortures that matter to me, not Keller’s belated redemption. It is those people – and their families – that concern me, and while I can certainly find it in me to accept that Keller truly regrets his support for what, at the time, was clearly going to become the worst blunder ever in American foreign policy (and that’s saying a lot), I can’t spend much time praising or thanking him for his change of mind. Because whenever I think of the liberal hawks, my mind and my heart go immediately to their hapless victims and it is entirely with them that my sympathy and my thoughts lie.

I remember
by David Atkins

It wasn’t a typical morning. I was walking from my parents’ home to the office of the family business three city blocks away in a 10-story Los Angeles highrise. I was 20 years old and in college at UCLA, but the academic year hadn’t started yet. The family business kept me preoccupied. I was supposed to open for the day and prep the office for the arrival of several clients from the East Coast, including New York and Boston. I made my way in, did some preparations, and then headed across the street to get some iced tea to wake me up. I hadn’t had much sleep the night before.

The radio was on at the little cafe. They were saying something about a plane hitting a building in New York and that it was on fire. They mentioned the World Trade Center. No one in the cafe was listening. That’s when the cell phones starting going off. I loudly hushed everyone so I could listen to the radio. That’s when I heard that one of the towers had reportedly collapsed. I got my tea and rushed back across the street to the office.

I tried to log onto the Internet. Unsuccessfully. It took me about five minutes to finally get a news page to load. When it did, the headline read that the World Trade Center towers had both been destroyed in a likely terrorist attack. I was in shock. I had been to New York several times before, and been up to the top of the towers twice. It seemed impossible that they were just…gone. I immediately tried to call home on my cell phone. The call wouldn’t go through. I tried the landline, and that didn’t work either. I tried the landline again, and finally got on the line, and was told to come back to the house where the TV was on.

I walked on back to the house. My family was silently watching as heartwrenching images flooded the room. People screaming, crying for help, a city and a nation in shocked bewilderment. The TV reporters said the government had no idea how many other planes might be involved or what the targets were. A rumor was flying that a skyscraper in Los Angeles was being possibly targeted by an airplane.

After a short discussion, it was agreed I would walk back to the office and close down, leaving a number to call just in case the clients arrived. I cried the entire walk back to the office. Once inside, I tore off a sheet of paper, writing the words “Closed for Obvious Reasons: Call xxx-xxx-xxxx if you need assistance,” taped it onto the front door and walked back, watching the skies nervously as I went. The clients never showed up that day. It wasn’t until the next day that I even learned that they were still alive.

The horror of what had really happened didn’t sink in until that night. I still remember it as one of the most emotionally wrenching, surreal nights of my life–which is really saying something, considering my…how shall I put this…eventful childhood and teenage years.

But I didn’t have any family or relatives who perished that day in the towers, the Pentagon or Flight 93. Friends of friends did, but no one I knew personally. I was worried for a few days, as a female friend from college on whom I had a small crush was supposed to be in New York with her family at the time, and she had said they would be visiting the twin towers. Turns out she and her family were at the top of the towers at 11:00 AM on the morning of September 10th. What a difference a day makes. One day’s schedule change, and she and her family would have been gone.

I can only imagine the devastation that must have come from losing a loved one on that day. The attack still reverberates in my life, even though I was barely touched personally by it. Mere words cannot describe the emotional scars left by those who survived such a loss. To say nothing of the pain and terror of those who did lose their lives on that fateful day.

After this tragedy–perhaps more than after any other–this nation needed a spirit of bipartisanship. After this horrible event, a nation torn apart over stained blue dresses and pregnant chads was ready for national unity. After this nightmare, the nation deserved a reorientation. A commitment to a new national purpose. A promise to hold the terrorists accountable, and an opportunity to find new footing in the world that would minimize that possibility of such an event ever happening again. It deserved a pathway forward that would once again make America not only the world’s economic leader, but its moral leader as well.

This nation was denied that chance. It was denied that opportunity. Even those misguided souls who argue that America paid a karmic price for its foreign policy on that day, would certainly admit that the American people at least deserved an opportunity for redemption for the past, and the chance to prove that we are a great nation, capable of great things. We all merited an opportunity to take the sorrow that we felt on that day and in the days thereafter, and channel that energy into collectively making a real difference in the world.

This nation was denied that opportunity. Instead, it was led by a group of charlatans intent on enriching themselves and their friends, while abusing the moment to cow the American public into horrific and utterly unnecessary misadventures. A grieving and yet hopeful nation was conned and manipulated in the hour of its greatest vulnerability.

I remember that day as clearly as yesterday in my mind’s eye. I remember the fear, the grief, the anger, the hope of that day. Over the course of ten years, those emotions were dulled to a simmering sense of permanent outrage at the “leaders” who horribly abused this country in its hour of need and for years afterward. That righteous indignation still motivates me to this day.

But still that hopeful yearning for a bold new beginning remains, just as brightly and yet just as hidden as it did on that day ten years ago in another very different September. A yearning for a grand call to action, for a new movement on which to set our course for a different world. A world free of dependence on fossil fuels, a world free of economic imperialism on behalf of multinational corporations through the barrel of a gun, a world free of poisonous bickering over irrelevant follies by a lazy media, a world free of bullies using religion as bait with which to divide hardworking families the world over, a world free of fundamentalist backlash against modernity, science and equality, a world free of the oppression of financiers stealing the world’s wealth by pretending that “finding a good rate of return” is a justification for even drawing breath on the planet, much less siphoning off trillions in unjustified wealth. A world free of the sorts of fundamentalists that comprise Al Qaeda, and a world free of the influence of the millionaire corporatists who enable the mass suffering that allows and gladly enables fundamentalism to thrive.

That hope still burns as brightly as it did 10 years ago. I do my best every day to turn that hope into reality, in whatever small ways I can. And hopefully, someday, we will have a national leader who will help realize that promise for all Americans, and fulfill the destiny of a nation long denied its due.

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The punk vs. the Godfather
By Dennis Hartley

No day at the beach: Brighton Rock (2010)


“It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?”-Graham Greene (from his novel, “The Heart of the Matter”)
Did you ever get on a kick with a writer? It can be quite a passionate love affair. When I was in my early 20s, a friend loaned me a dog-eared paperback copy of The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene. The diamond-cut prose, compelling narrative, and thematic depth left me gob smacked. “Ah,” I thought, “so this must be that ‘literature’ of which they speak.” It was time to put Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean behind me and kick it up a notch (when I was a child, I thought as a child, etc.). I had to have more of this, immediately. And so it was that I got on a Graham Greene kick, voraciously devouring virtually every word that he ever fought from his pen. As I plowed through the oeuvre, I began to notice prevalent themes emerging; most notably that whole Catholic thing (for someone like me, with a Jewish mother and a Protestant father, it was theologically fascinating). There was much ado about guilt, mortal sin, clutching at redemption, moral failure, lapsed faith…and more guilt. But you could still “dance to it” (in a literary sense).
The rich complexity and narrative appeal of Greene’s “theological thrillers” certainly has not been lost on filmmakers over the years; nearly all of his novels have been adapted for the screen (with mixed results). Probably the most well-known are two Carol Reed classics, The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949). Other notable adaptations include the 1942 noir, This Gun for Hire (based on A Gun for Sale), the 1944 Fritz Lang thriller The Ministry of Fear, John Ford’s 1947 film The Fugitive (based on The Power and the Glory), The Heart of the Matter (1953), The End of the Affair (1955; remade in 1999), The Quiet American (1958; remade in 2002) and two uncharacteristically light-hearted entries-Our Man in Havana (1959) and Travels with my Aunt (1972). All the aforementioned are worthwhile, but if pressed to pick a favorite Greene-to-screen (well, after The Third Man, natch)… it would be John Boulting’s 1947 thriller, Brighton Rock.

That film was memorable on several counts. It was stylishly directed (Boulting later helmed one of the early nuclear paranoia thrillers, Seven Days to Noon and the classic comedy I’m All Right, Jack), well-scripted (by Greene himself, along with Terence Rattigan) and topped off by then 24 year-old Richard Attenborough’s indelible portrayal of the central character, a ruthless and ambitious hood named Pinkie Brown. In fact, Attenborough so thoroughly inhabits the creepy, sociopathic Pinkie that you find it difficult to connect the actor who plays this hateful little punk with the future Oscar-winning director of Gandhi (by then addressed as ‘Sir’ Richard). Any way you slice it, a tough act to follow, for anyone attempting to do a remake. And guess what-someone has.
For the new, BBC Films production of Brighton Rock (currently available on pay-per-view) writer-director Rowan Joffe has, for the most part, kept the original characters, chief plot points and thematic subtexts in place, but moved the time period up to the 1960s (Greene’s novel was first published in 1938). The story is set in 1964 Brighton; more specifically, on the eve of the infamous Mods vs. Rockers youth riots which took place at the popular English seaside resort that year (shades of Quadrophenia). Sam Riley (who channeled doomed singer Ian Curtis in Control, which I reviewed here) tackles the Pinkie Brown role. Pinkie is a low-rung mobster who has been scheming for dominance of his gang. When his mentor (Geoff Bell) is killed by a rival outfit that is attempting to monopolize the local gambling racket, Pinkie sees an opportunity to upgrade his own status by proactively seeking vengeance on his friend’s killer (Sean Harris). In their haste to grab the intended victim (on a crowded boardwalk and in broad daylight, no less) Pinkie and his cohorts get sloppy and involve an innocent ‘civilian’, a naïve young waitress named Rose (Andrea Riseborough). A ‘pavement photographer’, intending to take a picture of Rose, inadvertently gets an incriminating shot of the soon-to-be murder victim and his abductors. When Pinkie learns that Rose has a claim ticket for the photo, he ingratiates himself into her life, pretending to be romantically interested (while in reality only biding time until he can figure out what he’s going to do about her).
Joffe’s film left me feeling a little ambivalent. While on the one hand it is kind of refreshing to see a British mobster flick that isn’t attempting to out-Guy Ritchie Guy Ritchie, this version of Brighton Rock may be a little too somber and self-consciously weighty for its own good. Moving the time setting to 1964 doesn’t detract from the original, but it doesn’t necessarily improve on it, either (and did it really need ‘improving’?). In fact, large chunks of the film are essentially a shot-by-shot remake of the 1947 version. Joffe’s version does exude more of a Hitchcockian vibe; it is particularly reminiscent of Suspicion (especially once Pinkie and Rose are married). Riley is a good actor, and does bring a brooding intensity to the role, but his portrayal lacks some of the subtlety that Attenborough was able to inject. In Greene’s original novel, Pinkie is described by Rose as someone who, despite his youth, seems to “know” he is “damned”, and all of his actions are predicated on this feeling of quasi-religious predestination. Attenborough, I think, embodies that perfectly, while Riley simply comes off as preternaturally evil, like a boogeyman. Dame Helen Mirren feels a bit wasted as Rose’s employer Ida, who is suspicious of Pinkie and becomes a thorn in his side; oddly, her character (an important one in the book and the 1947 film) seems to have been downgraded here. The usually wonderful John Hurt barely registers; not really his fault as his character feels underwritten. The ubiquitous Andy Serkis chews the scenery in a couple of scenes, as the rival mob’s boss, and there is a standout supporting performance from Philip Davis (whose presence also brings a sort of symmetry to the Quadrophenia connection; he played ‘Chalky’, one of the principal Mod characters). There are worse sins than watching Joffe’s film, but if you prefer to clutch at redemption, rent the original.

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This is how it works
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Your liberal media at work:

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?
Room for Debate experts discuss Gov. Rick Perry’s claim that it’s a scam on young workers.

It doesn’t really matter what sort of he said-she said tripe fills the “debate.” What matters is the mere fact that we’re having a “debate” on whether social security, the most successful government program in history, a program that is nowhere close to going belly up in the near future, a program that even if payroll taxes fell short of covering it could easily be funded directly just as our overseas military adventures are, is somehow a “ponzi scheme.”

According to the centrism fetishists in the Democratic Party, Rick Perry’s embrace of anti-Social Security talking points should doom his candidacy and marginalize his supporters, leaving the field clear for Democrats to seize the day. In reality…well, in reality in may do just that, or it may not. But who cares? Either way Rick Perry wins.

Because if Perry wins the Oval Office, he’ll try and likely fail to eliminate Social Security, settling instead for weakening it by raising the eligibility age or some such tripe that will directly harm America’s seniors and our economy. If Perry or the GOP nominee loses, Obama holds the Presidency and raises the eligibility age of Social Security in order to pursue a “moderate” media-friendly agenda, even as the media continues to “debate” whether Social Security is a ponzi scheme.

Perry and friends play this game because it works–whether they win elections or not. Because for them, winning the election isn’t the key to success; winning the policy battle is. And they don’t need to necessarily win the election to do that.

There are only two ways out of this mess; the first is to change the media so that they no longer fall for this Overton Window game. That is highly unlikely.

The second is to push the envelope just as hard in a progressive direction as the GOP pulls it in a conservative direction, and acknowledge the reality that the nation is in a political civil war. But in order to do that, progressives would need to rout out and disempower the centrism fetishists who continue to infect its ranks and negatively influence its decision making and endorsement processes.

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Bucking and arching in a world he could never see

by digby

There is nothing creepier than right wing novels. The pinnacle of such achievement remains the bodice ripping yarns by Ayn Rand. Far too many of these men (and it’s usually the men) have a strange need to reveal their stunted inner lives to the world. And there’s something so wrong about their fantasy of themselves that it makes me literally queasy.

Glenn Beck’s magnum opus, The Overton Window was creepy, but also hilarious, what with the “don’t tease the panther” sexy time dialog. But Michael Savage’s new book, aptly named Abuse of Power takes it to a whole new level.

Media Matters has done us all the great service of reading it so that we can be spared all but the most telling passages. Evidently, Savage has cast himself as a terrorist fighting talk show host who is hunted down by George Soros and MI-5. Or something.

Soren [Soros]reveals the entire evil plot to Jack in a gloating, long-winded speech, and asks Jack to join his cause because he’s just so damn talented: “You’re a wonderful communicator, Jack. You have a friendly, trustworthy manner about you, but you can be a bulldog when you need to and people respond to it.”

Jack declines, and Soren orders him tortured for information and then killed. Thanks to Jack’s incredible Krav Maga martial arts maneuvers (and use of a laser pointer to blind assailants), he manages to escape a compound filled with heavily armed men (for at least the third time in the book).

Working with several retired military men, Jack is able to stop the evil plot, which culminates in a fistfight (to stop the lead terrorist from detonating the nuke) at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Jack pummels the Muslim terrorist savagely (or Savagely?), and then delivers the requisite action-hero catchphrase, “Enjoy the virgins, asshole”

But never let it be said that the Islamofascist hating hero is a bigot, by golly. Why he even has an affair with an exotic Muslim woman to prove it. I hope you didn’t recently eat anything. Picture Michael Savage as our hero here:

She closed the door behind her now, then moved to a small television in the corner and turned it on, tuning it to an Arab station, which was only playing Arabic music at the moment. Jack wasn’t sure what she was up to but he didn’t protest when she came over to the bed and lit the scented candle that was sitting on the nightstand. Her long brown hair was highlighted against the window and he saw a light snow falling outside.He didn’t know if he should trust this, or her motives. It didn’t matter. He instantly felt himself stirring.”I don’t want to be alone right now,” she said, then reached a hand under the back of her T-shirt and unfastened her bra, dropping it to the floor. Her breasts shifted, reacting instantly to the brush of the fabric.He didn’t look away this time. “Neither do I.””I want to forget for a while, Jack. Can you help me do that?””You have no idea how much I’d like to try.”He hadn’t bothered to take off his clothes before lying on top of the bed,and she came to him, reaching for his belt and unbuckling it. She unfastened his pants and pulled them away, freeing him, then took him in her hand, gently kneading him as she leaned forward and kissed his lips.The she pulled away, whispering softly against his cheek, “Make me forget, Jack. Please make me forget.”As he drew nearer and removed her T-shirt and panties, she began to moan deeply and loudly. Loudly and deeply. In the midst of their heat, such a state of abandon was reached that the normally voyeuristic Jack, who liked to watch himself make love, actually fell from the bed onto the hot radiator. But, like the Indian fakirs who can be on a bed of nails without later showing puncture marks, Jack did not scorch or burn, nothing visible remaining except a small soreness days later.Once he was inside her, she began to cry and shudder in a series of small convulsions. He had never been with a woman who reacted like this and was both surprised and excited by her abandon.Her cries became veritable screams as she moaned, and her eyes became glassy with passion. As Jack continued to bring Sara to an increasingly greater state of tension and release, tension — a violent begging for release and then the convulsive wave — her screaming became threatening.He tried to quiet her by putting his hands over her mouth while continuing to stroke with his loins and lips.”Quiet,quiet,” he tried to command hoarsely. “Faisal will hear you.” He reached for her T-shirt and couldn’t believe himself as he pressed it over her mouth, holding it down hard against her lips by pressing it against the sheets, one hand on each side of her face.Their hips were in perfect synchony and she continued her cries and screams, now muffled beneath the shirt, as Jack made love to her as he had never made love before. Sara bucked and arched and was in a world he could never see. [pp. 252-253]

Ok. You have to admire the little detail about rolling over onto a steaming radiator and being so turned on that it leaves no mark and you just keep going and don’t even notice until days later. Now that’s hot! Burning hot!

There’s a part of me that sort of feels sorry for these poor fellows. They are just so lame. But I feel even sorrier for the women in their lives. I’m mean, clearly he desires sex with a woman who is having an epileptic fit — or is possessed by demons. (“Her screaming became threatening”?) And then there’s the whole bizarrely detailed shirt over the mouth thing. Other than a hooker, who can possibly deliver that freakish version of passion.