Month: December 2009

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism History Politics

You don’t have to be happy about supporting this bill. But you should support it.

I apologize if this is a bit long – but I felt it was important.

[digg-reddit-me]When I read and hear and watch the progressive reaction to Obama – calling him a sellout, calling health care reform a scam, calling it a bailout of the insurance industry, claiming Obama has been allying himself with Rush Limbaugh, claiming Obama has betrayed them, asking when it is time to march Obama to the guillotine – I’m reminded of how abolitionists reacted to Abraham Lincoln.

Despite his almost universally praised legacy today, in his time, Lincoln was a polarizing figure – scorned by Confederates and abolitionists, Copperheads and radical Republicans. Yet in time, he came to be seen as our greatest president. One has to wonder why all these involved and motivated individuals who eviscerated his actions as he did them came to see him as a visionary leader when these actions were seen in perspective.

The reason is that Lincoln was ruthlessly pragmatic. He had principles, but was willing to forgo if he didn’t think he could achieve what he wanted. Thus, Confederates seeing what he felt believed he was an abolitionist bent on the destruction of the South and seceded from the Union. The abolitionists derided him as weak-willed and unwilling to stand on principle. The progressives of today might learn something from looking at their precursors, the abolitionists of Lincoln’s time.

Wendell Phillips, a prominent abolitionist, labeled Lincoln “the Slave Hound of Illinois” for his reluctant support of the reviled Fugitive Slave Act, even claiming as Lincoln ran for president that, that he was worse than James Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Act. Lincoln won election promising not to end slavery, but that “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” He even refused to expand on his limited remarks to explain his thinking further – afraid that any further revelations might cost him votes that his carefully worded statement preserved.

After his election, Frederick Douglass declared: “Abraham Lincoln is no more fit for the place he holds than was [pro-slavery and worst president ever] James Buchanan…” The aforementioned Wendell Phillips continued to attack Lincoln after his election: “I believe Mr. Lincoln is conducting this war, at present, with the purpose of saving slavery…[I]f Mr. Lincoln had been a traitor, he could not have worked better to strengthen one side, and hazard the success of the other…The President…has no mind whatever.“

When one of Lincoln’s generals issued an order ending all slavery in the state he was ruling under martial law, Lincoln rescinded the order and fired the general, saying: “I think there is a great danger, confiscation of property, and the liberating of slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us.”

Other abolitionists complained that Lincoln’s “face was turned toward Zion, but he seemed to move with leaden feet.” They declared him, “stumbling, faithless, uncertain.”

Even when Lincoln finally decided to make a dramatic move condemning slavery – his famous Emancipation Proclamation – it did not end slavery in America. Only in those states still in rebellion, because, as Lincoln reasoned: “I hope to have God on my side. But I must have Kentucky.” Even after this Emancipation, the radical abolitionists in his own party sought to impeach him for being too soft on slavery and the rebellious states. All through this, Lincoln was assailed by the abolitionists as weak, as timid, as cowardly, as unmanly. He refused to let his idealism determine his policy – but rather let it guide it when possible.

Lincoln’s legacy is rightly lionized – he proved to be a brilliant leader, pushing and prodding America in the direction he believed in over time, persevering as his supporters gave up hope, and always looking for the opportunity to push the country in the direction he believed it should be going, rather than forcing it into the place where he thought it should be. This is the difference between a leader and a pundit. After Lincoln died, one of his most prominent critics, Frederick Douglass, scolded himself and those other abolitionists:

His accusers, in whose opinion he was always too fast or too slow, too weak or too strong, too conciliatory or too aggressive, would soon become his admirers; it was soon to be seen that he had conducted the affairs of the nation with singular wisdom, and with absolute fidelity to the great trust confided in him. [my emphasis]

It is normal for those watching the day-to-day activities of a leader to be disillusioned, angry, and bitter, as idealistic hopes are broken on pragmatic realities. While our politicians campaign in poetry, as Mario Cuomo said, they must govern in prose. What frustrates me though is the type of short-term thinking and reacting that leads to good policies being destroyed for improvements being derailed because of their imperfections.

The health care bill before Congress is far from ideal – and it has been weakened every step. But it is progress! It is, in the words of progressive Senator Sherrod Brown, “Not a great bill, but a good bill.” It will help millions of Americans. (As well as, unfortunately, the profits of health insurance companies.) Most importantly, it provides a foundation for future reform. Remember that “Social Security was designed to exclude African Americans. Medicare didn’t cover prescription drugs. Medicaid was mainly for pregnant women and their young children. Canada’s system was limited to a single province. There was no University of California at Los Angeles.” Once the funding and system is there, it can be improved upon. This bill takes a huge step to making health care insurance universal and expands access to health insurance more dramatically than any program since Medicare in the 1960s.

As a liberal, I’d rather start reforming health care now and help the insurance companies as part of the bargain, then than fuck over the uninsured to spite the insurance companies. To quote Ezra Klein:

To put this a bit more sharply, if I could construct a system in which insurers…never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal.

And if getting this done means caving in to a weasel like Joe Lieberman, who is willing to block this bill and let 150,000 die as a result of their lack of access to health insurance, then so be it. I’d rather protect the thousands than, in a display of pique, destroy any chance of reform. (This posturing reminds me of nothing so much as a domestic application of neoconservative foreign policy: It’s better to be strong and get nothing done than appear weak and negotiate.)

So, to my brethren on the left posting at reddit, and on progressive blogs around the nation, remember this: Be angry the bill has been undermined. Be angry that various interest groups have gotten their way at the expense of the majority. But keep perspective, and see which direction the bill moves us. And ask: Does it create a framework of exchanges and subsidies that can improve our health care system? Does it bring us closer to universal health insurance? Will it be easier to add a public option to this structure in the years ahead if, as seems likely, the health insurance industries continue their abusive behaviors, than to start anew?

The answers are clearly, Yes, Yes, and Yes.

As a progressive, as a liberal, you don’t have to be happy about supporting this bill. But you should support it.

Postscript: And to preemptively answer 3 other issues:

I have yet to see an argument which truly makes the case for why this bill should be scrapped from a progressive view that doesn’t focus on insurance company profits – which suck – but there are worse things, or an exaggerated view of what the White House could have done, or an exaggerated view of how important the public option was to the reforms.

[Image not subject to copyright.]

Categories
Domestic issues Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

Harry Reid’s Heroism

I’ve said it before, but I’m saying it again:

If you’re trying to follow the ins and outs of the health care debate, there’s no better source than Ezra Klein. But for the moment, I wanted to cite one particular post of Klein’s citing Matt Yglesias:

[L]iberals have rarely found themselves hailing Reid’s leadership. But the fact of the matter is that there’s almost no precedent for the legislative mission he’s been asked to accomplish of turning 59 Democrats, one loosely Democrat-aligned Independent, and two slightly moderate Republicans into 60 votes for a package that’s simultaneously a dramatic expansion of the welfare state and a measure that reduces both short- and long-term deficits.

On top of the intrinsically difficult nature of the task, he’s facing a really ugly political situation back home. Because Beltway mores dictate that you can never hold a member of congress morally culpable for actions undertaken in the name of raw politically self-interest, it must have been very tempting for Reid to get distracted. But he’s stayed on point and focused, dealt with the timid members of his caucus, dealt with the ignorant members of his caucus, dealt with the egomaniacal members of his caucus, and dealt with the all-too-typical Senatorial combination of policy ignorance, egomania, and political cowardice among some members. For his troubles it looks like we’re going to get a bill that liberals feel churlish about at best. But it’s really an extraordinary achievement.

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Financial Crisis Politics The Opinionsphere

The Left’s Odd Abandoment of Obama: Glenn Greenwald

Whatever Charles Krauthammer or Rush Limbaugh may tell you, there is no evidence that Obama is secretly an extreme leftist. On the contrary, he both ran and has governed as a liberal. The various forces on from the left to the center-left rallied around him in 2008 though – seeing hope in his ascendancy. But like all presidents, Obama while campaigning in poetry now faces the challenge of governing in prose.

Yet what is remarkable is how fashionable it has become for respectable voices on the left to hyperventilate and rant against Obama, most often by equating him with George W. Bush. European leftists, unused to America’s slow-moving political system can be forgiven for not appreciating the scope of what Obama is attempting to do, and for the difficulties in doing it. But among mainstream American intellectuals to the left of center, this is harder to understand.*

Reacting to this anti-Obama sentiment on the left, which most often seems to embrace an hysterical tone more appropriate to spurned lovers than political supporters, Andrew Sullivan (who himself recently announced that he could no longer countenance being on the right-wing because what he sees as their odd rejection of Obama’s core conservatism) began to publish emails from readers purporting to “leave the left” because of this demonization of Obama. (In fairness, let me admit that this meme bothered me too: Andrew Sullivan decided to leave the right after every dissenting voice has already been purged. To leave the left over the rants of some of its prominent members is to overreact.)

Glenn Greenwald responded by doing what he does best: He distorted the opposition beyond recognition in order to make his case that they are wrong. He accused these critics of a veneration of Obama similar to the veneration of Bush and Palin among some on the right:

According to these defenders, it’s just wrong — morally, ethically and psychologically — to criticize the President. Thus, in lieu of any substantive engagement of these critiques are a slew of moronic Broderian cliches…Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom are similar in kind to those whose reaction to Obama is dominated by their view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. [my emphasis]

As always, Greenwald has an interesting point – and there is some subset of people who do take the view he is refuting. But it’s far from clear the commentors on Sullivan’s blog do. (Go ahead and read them.) More importantly, Greenwald’s reaction follows exact same emotional logic he is criticizing: Just as these readers of Andrew Sullivan’s blog have created a politically stereotyped parody of the Left based primarily on what bothers them, and react viscerally, emotionally to it, so Greenwald creates his own politically stereotyped parody of Obama defenders, which he then viscerally, emotionally reacts to.

Another good example of this came earlier this week, as Greenwald responded to his bête noire, Joe Klein:

Klein explained:

[S]ome of the best arguments about why this war is necessary must go unspoken by the President.

So there are deeply compelling reasons to escalate in Afghanistan.  But they’re secret.

Greenwald then goes on a rant about wars justified only by “secret reasons.” Being a fairly intelligent guy, Greenwald clearly knows the difference between things a President cannot say and “secrets” – but he elides this, even contradicts this common-sensical reading, because what his opponent is actually saying does not fit into the political stereotype that Greenwald wants to kick in the groin.

Let me step back again in fairness to Greenwald – who, let me emphasize, I often admire. The way I see it, there are two Glenn Greenwalds. One who will take a step back and observe that Obama is far better than the alternatives and who is able to fairly ascertain that Obama is not guilty of hypocrisy in escalating in Afghanistan and that he should not be blamed for failing to keep those promises he clearly has tried to keep like closing Guantanamo, and who fairly criticizes Obama for a range of issues ranging from Bagram to state secrets.

And then there is the Glenn Greenwald who likes to rant and throw tantrums. The second Greenwald paints the world in vivid colors that bear some resemblance to the more muted colors that my eyes see. The second Greenwald goes on, blithely ignorant of his own more reflective judgments, self-confident and self-satisfied, secure in the knowledge that he himself, merely a critic and holding no formal powers, is above reproach. This second Greenwald is still a useful addition to the political conversation, but in a marginal way.

At his best, Greenwald could be a polemicist, arguing against the conventional wisdom; but he lacks the audaciousness positioning that is the mark of a true polemicist. Too often, Greenwald becomes one of the many voices in our political chorus – a ranter, a talking head.

I would argue the one core principle that allows Greenwald to so often lapse into ranting is his view that: “Political leaders deserve support only to the extent that their actions, on a case-by-case basis, merit that support…” Thus it’s not quite fair to tar Greenwald as someone who abandoned Obama – as he never claimed to embrace Obama. Instead he rationally analyzed and decided to support certain discrete positions Obama took. This is the rationale. But it ignores the second Greenwald certainly who expresses a visceral, emotional distaste for Obama that seems at odds with this rational “case-by-case” analysis of Obama’s actions.

* To be clear, and to preempt attempts to write me off as a victim of Obamania, deluded by hope, I have seriously criticized Obama about Bagram (here and here), on the mere technocratic approach to serious issues (here and here), on his approach to state secrets, and I would endorse several other criticisms of the administration – specifically on their seeming reluctance to embrace what I see as clear principles in regulating the financial industry, on transparency issues, and regarding national security. But I do – at the same time appreciate that Obama is moving in the right direction on these issues – though not on the first two.

[Image not subject to copyright.]

Categories
Barack Obama Economics Financial Crisis Health care Politics The Bush Legacy

Real Fiscal Responsibility & Deficit Politics: Democrats

[digg-reddit-me]This is part 3 of a 4-part series of posts. Part 1 provided an introduction and description of the groups that benefit from the government spending status quo: the elderly, the military, the poor, and big corporations in that order. The overall societal status quo clearly favors all these groups except the poor. Part 2 described the main political dynamics behind what the Republicans are doing, along with their solutions; it explained why Republicans oppose government intervention in principle, and yet protect the status quo because it benefits those interest groups that support their party – the elderly, the military, and the big corporations. The solution to this political dilemma is to “starve the beast,” to protect the status quo until it becomes so catastrophically unstable that it has to be dismantled; which explains why, when in power, Republicans have both cut taxes and increased spending – protected today’s elderly at the expense of tomorrow’s elderly while trying to force Democrats to take responsibility for the undoubtedly unpopular solutions to the deficit problems created by Republican administrations.

Given this, the next question is: what is the Democratic approach? Do they seek to dismantle the programs that benefit the Republican interest groups? Have they figured out the political answer to the politics of “starving the beast” that so benefit the Republican Party? In short, the answer to both is no. Social Security and Medicare do benefit the elderly – who were the only demographic group to go Republican, even in the aftermath of Bush – but they are historic Democratic programs. They represent in some sense liberalism at its best* – an attempt to soften the roughest edges of capitalism, to ensure that our grandparents and parents are taken care of in their old age. It’s not clear that the Democrats have the political will to go about rescinding subsidies of various sorts to big corporations or to dramatically cut military spending. This doesn’t simply motivate Democratic voters, but the backlash caused by doing so could hurt the party. And the Obama administration’s approach of blaming the short- and mid-term deficit on Bush’s irresponsibility is of decreasing political utility, even if it has the benefit of truth.

What the Democrats offer is at best a partial solution in the hope that before the time is too late, the Republicans will abandon their destructive “starve the beast” strategy. In short, the Democrats are finessing the issue – to avoid the hard clashes that the Republicans claim are inevitable, and that Republicans while in power have made almost inevitable.

What the Obama administration offers now is a 3-part plan – one that is, to some degree, a Hail Mary pass, a desperate attempt to ease long-term deficit before it is upon us.

Step 1: Keep the Economy Going. Part of the urgency for the stimulus early in Obama’s term was the knowledge that if the economy was not growing, then the staggering short term deficits incurred by the Bush administration could prove crippling to the economy. The only way to pay off the debt without causing significant social problems at home or defaulting on the debt is to have a growing economy. This is how stable nations have gotten out of deficit holes such as the one we are in, and how we almost painless paid off massive debt following World War II, following the stagflation of the 1970s, and again in the 1990s. (A constantly growing economy also happens to be an implicit part of the social bargain at the heart of the American dream.)  The stimulus was needed because keeping the economy growing was essential to easing the fiscal pressure on America’s mid-term debt.

Step 2: Health Care Reform. Policy wonks – led by Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag – have seen this fiscal timebomb coming for some time. They can see the two root causes of the rapid growth in projected federal expenses:

(1) the aging of our population and

(2) the rapidly rising cost of health care, which has been growing faster in America than in any other nation in the world for the past several decades.

As they cannot change the former, they decided to address the latter. The Obama administration has made clear that their primary goal is reducing the growth of health care costs, even at the expense of extending coverage, and the plans consist mainly of a hodge-podge of measures that would tinker with how health care is paid for and how people obtain health insurance, using some previous Republican proposals which focused on cutting costs as models.

As a necessary precondition for rationalizing our current system, the plan would also significantly extend health insurance – following Milton Friedman’s observation that as health insurance approaches universality, political incentives change to allow for more cost control (even in wholly private systems.) In part this explains how the current health care bills has become not only the most significant effort to expand coverage, but the most significant attempt at cost control in a generation. Mark McClellan, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush, for example, called the bill “the right direction to go” while suggesting medical malpractice reform would also be good. (However, as Ron Brownstein observes, “since virtually, if not literally, none of [the Republicans] plan to support the final health care bill under any circumstances, the package isn’t likely to reflect much of their thinking.”) The bill includes pilot projects for almost every other cost control program that those interested in health care believe has promise.

The hope is that if we act now before the imminent wave of Baby Boomer retirements, we will soften the impact of the fiscal timebomb that is entitlement spending. Then, programs can be adjusted without being slashed – as proponents of the “starve the beast” approach would prefer. Our debtors, including the Chinese government, have thus taken a keen interest in the steps we are taking to curtail the growth in health care costs. As one prominent Chinese economist has said, “At some point, if you refuse to contain health care costs, you’ll go bankrupt.”

Step 3: The Grand Bargain. These first two parts were the easy ones. This part is where it gets tricky. If the first two parts of the plan work, the pressure for massive change will be relieved. The mid-term deficit incurred during Bush’s term and during the early Obama years will be less painful in the face of a growing economy. The long-term deficit will still be a problem, but not an insurmountable one if health care costs stop growing so rapidly. Each of these will take tremendous pressure off of our fiscal situation – but neither are enough to make the status quo sustainable. At this point, Obama has said he hopes to strike a “grand bargain,” putting everything on the table, and engaging in a frank discussion of tax reform and entitlement reform, of how America collects money and what it spends the money on. At the moment, with the idiocrats dominating the public debate, this doesn’t seem a very promising route.

Tackling these issues would be many times more explosive than health care as so many groups have a stake in maintaining the status quo. And the biggest flaw in the plan is that by relieving the pressure, the Obama administration may simply put off the day it will be dealt with – no matter how determined they are to deal with these issues. But breaking the grip of the idiocrats was at the core of the promise of Obama’s campaign. And these are core issues Obama was elected to address.

*Contemporary Democrats do not – contrary to the caricature Republicans push – think government and centralized control is the solution to everything; but they do believe that government can be a force for good, that through democracy we can make modest steps and institute policies that improve our society. And despite an organized campaign to suggest otherwise, history has demonstrated this to be true, from the the founding of our nation, the building up of our infrastructure, to that giant social engineering project called abolition, to Social Security and bank regulation, to the Civil Right Movement.

Categories
Morality Reflections

No one asked Chris Brown why he beat Rihanna. Why then do we blame Tiger Woods?

[digg-reddit-me]Everyone seems to have forgotten why it was we all first became involved in his personal life: that car crash in the early morning hours after Thanksgiving. Public opinion has coalesced around the conclusion that Tiger Woods was the victim of domestic abuse – that his wife became enraged upon discovering he was unfaithful and attacked him; and that when he tried to flee, she attacked his car with a golf club leading to his crash – during which he also may have been disoriented by a blow to the head. He was saved apparently by a call to 911 by one of his neighbors. We do not know what transpired here with any certainty. All we have are some alarming facts which everyone from late night comics to pundits seem to agree suggest an enraged spouse.

And yet, the lesson we are being asked to take is not that domestic abuse is unacceptable under any circumstances, but as Maureen Dowd opines:

Tiger ignored the obvious rule: Never get involved with women who have 8-by-10 glossies.

Or, as the Christian Science Monitor’s editorial board wrote:

The moral of the Tiger Woods story is that adultery leaves a trail of destruction. It can be avoided.

Or perhaps this from Bill Shuler at Fox News:

The issue of private sin is not exclusive to Tiger Woods. It is an epidemic in America.

Or any of a hundred variations on these lessons by pundits and late night comics.

Yet who asked Chris Brown why he beat Rihanna? It doesn’t matter if she was cheating on him or what ever else she might have done to lead to him beating her. As a society, there was broad agreement that what he did to her was wrong and that it should be condemned. Chris Brown’s career has likely been trashed, and good riddance, while Rihanna’s has gone on.

Why is it different for Tiger?

Why did the story move from the details of the events of that early morning quickly to what he did to provoke his wife?

The implicit message seems clear: if a man hits a woman, no matter the provocation, it is wrong; if a woman hits a man, he probably deserved it. This is simply sexism, and part of the legacy of gender discrimination in which women were regarded as weak and inferior. While overall, men do more damage in violent attacks on their partners, domestic violence by women is a serious issue as well, despite the sexist attempts to write it off.

All this reminded me of a story ABC News did several years ago – in which, after they had done several segments simulating male-on-female domestic violence in a public setting, and found that many people intervened, it occurred to the producers to try the opposite.  ABC News staged female-on-male violence – and over several hours 163 people walked by, one of whom eventually intervened. Several made gestures supportive of the woman. Almost all the women assumed that the man had did something wrong, that he deserved what he got – which was not what they would assume if a man had been attacking a woman. As one woman recalled her reaction:

“Good for you. You Go, Girl!” is how Lynda recalls her reaction.

“I was thinking he probably did something really bad,” she said. “Maybe she caught him cheating or something like that…and [it] made her lose it and slap him in the face. I reacted like, ‘Yes. Woman power.'”

The story is on YouTube as well. Watch for the gleeful reaction of Lynda as she sees the woman hitting the man.

The academic experts on gender violence I have contacted pointed out that academic studies have demonstrated this same point, as this chart sent to me by a professor of sociology shows:

Tiger was taken the hospital with what were described by those at the scene as “serious injurious” including lacerations to his face. He was in and out of consciousness, woozy, seemingly from head trauma. But, the news coverage has focused almost exclusively on why he was beaten – on his adultery, on his wife demanding and getting more money from him.

I don’t blame feminists for this. I blame latent sexism, the vestiges of a patriarchy that protected women because it considered them weaker. But the question that arises is clear: Are women to be the only beneficiaries of a feminist revolution that seeks women’s empowerment by any means necessary, even by hypocritically accepting the benefit of patriarchal assumptions if they benefit women? Are men to be mere victims of this feminism? Or is feminism about transforming society for the better for men as well as women?

If feminism is about more than mere rooting for women, if feminism is about more than genitalia, then feminists should be condemning Tiger Woods’ wife as loudly as they condemned Chris Brown. Perhaps some are. I don’t mean to call everyone out. (desifeminists on the Feministing Community page sees what I mean.) But the loudest voices have been gossips and busybodies who gather around every scandal. Where are you Jessica Valenti? Where are you Feministing, which so loudly (and rightly) pointed out that it didn’t matter what Rihanna was supposed to have done?

Violence against women is abhorrent and should be condemned. It’s time to take on the patriarchal attitude that a man hit by a woman probably deserves it. It’s time to stand up for victims of domestic violence, even if they are men, even if they are Tiger Woods.

[Image by Keith Allison licensed under Creative Commons. Graph taken from “When a Man Hits a Woman: Moral Evaluations and Reporting Violence to the Police” by Richard B. Felson and Scott L. Feld in the journal Aggressive Behavior, Volume 35, page 484.]

Categories
Uncategorized

No posts today.

As my site was down for most of the day.

I’ve got a few posts done and ready to go though – with just a few edits I didn’t have a chance to make.

Categories
The Web and Technology

Brief Thoughts for the Week of 2009-12-11

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Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Economics Financial Crisis Foreign Policy Politics The Opinionsphere

Kashkari, 2009’s Ideas, Richard Milhouse Obama, Frum!, Chinese-American Trade Imbalance, Obama’s Nobel, and Charborg

1. The Personal Toll TARP Exacted. Laura Blumenfeld profiled Neel Kashkari for the Washington Post – the Treasury employee and Hank Paulson confidante who presided over TARP and assisted with much of the government’s response to the bailout who is now “detoxing” from Washington by working with his hands in an isolated retreat. The piece focuses not on what happened and the enormous impact, but on the personal toll this crisis exacted on Kashkari and those around him: the heart attack by one of his top aides; the emotional breakdowns; the trouble in his marriage as he didn’t come home for days, sleeping on his office couch and showering in the Treasury’s locker room:

Thoughts tended toward the apocalyptic. During midnight negotiations with congressional leaders, Paulson doubled over with dry heaves. A government economist broke into Kashkari’s office sobbing, “Oh my God! The system’s collapsing!” Kashkari counseled her to focus on things they could control. (Minal: “So you offered her a bag of Doritos.”)

“We were terrified the banking system would fail, but the thing that scared us even more was, what would we do the day after? How would we take over 8,000 banks?”

The piece seems to ask us to feel pity for these men and women who toiled under difficult circumstances, but it seems inappropriate to feel pity for those who assume power because they also feel its heavy weight. But the piece acknowledges that Kashkari himself seeks to get back to Washington again, “Because there’s nowhere else you can have such a large impact — for better and for worse.” Lionize them for their heroic sacrifices if you will, but there is no place for pity. Those who choose to take on the burdens of power should not be pitied because it proves too weighty.

2. New Ideas. The New York Times briefly discusses the Year in Ideas. Some of the more interesting entries:

  • Guilty Robots which have been given “ethical architecture” for the American military that “choose weapons with less risk of collateral damage or may refuse to fight altogether” if the damage they have inflicted causes “noncombatant casualties or harm to civilian property.”
  • The Glow-in-the-Dark Dog (named Ruppy) that emits an eerie red glow under ultraviolet light because of deliberate genetic experiment.
  • Applying the Google Algorithm that generates the PageRank which first set Google apart from its competitors to nature, and specifically to predicting what species’ extinctions would cause the greatest chain reactions.
  • Zombie-Attack Science in which the principles of epidemiology are applied to zombies.

3. Obama’s Afghanistan Decision. Fareed Zakaria and Peter Beinart both tried to place Obama’s Afghanistan decision into perspective last week in important pieces. Both of them saw in Obama’s clear-eyed understanding of America’s power shades of the foreign policy brilliance that was Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Zakaria:

More than any president since Richard Nixon, he has focused on defining American interests carefully, providing the resources to achieve them, and keeping his eyes on the prize.

Beinart:

Nixon stopped treating all communists the same way. Just as Obama sees Iran as a potential partner because it shares a loathing of al-Qaeda, Nixon saw Communist China as a potential partner because it loathed the U.S.S.R. Nixon didn’t stop there. Even as he reached out to China, he also pursued détente with the Soviet Union. This double outreach — to both Moscow and Beijing — gave Nixon more leverage over each, since each communist superpower feared that the U.S. would favor the other, leaving it geopolitically isolated. On a smaller scale, that’s what Obama is trying to do with Iran and Syria today. By reaching out to both regimes simultaneously, he’s making each anxious that the U.S. will cut a deal with the other, leaving it out in the cold. It’s too soon to know whether Obama’s game of divide and conquer will work, but by narrowing the post-9/11 struggle, he’s gained the diplomatic flexibility to play the U.S.’s adversaries against each other rather than unifying them against us.

Perhaps this accounts for Henry Kissinger’s appreciation for Obama’s foreign policy even as neoconservative intellectuals such as Charles Krathammer deride Obama as “so naïve that I am not even sure he’s able to develop a [foreign policy] doctrine“:

“He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games,” Kissinger said. “But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one.”

4. The Unheeded Wisdom of Frum. It seems that almost every week a blog post by David Frum makes this list. This week, he rages at how the Republican’s “No, no, no” policy is forcing the Democrats to adopt more liberal policies (which Frum believes are worse for the country, but in the case of health care, more popular among voters):

I hear a lot of talk about the importance of “principle.” But what’s the principle that obliges us to be stupid?

5. Fiscal Imbalances. Martin Wolf in the Financial Times identifies the imbalance between America’s deficit spending and China’s surplus policy as the root of our financial imbalances in a piece this week:

What would happen if the deficit countries did slash spending relative to incomes while their trading partners were determined to sustain their own excess of output over incomes and export the difference? Answer: a depression. What would happen if deficit countries sustained domestic demand with massive and open-ended fiscal deficits? Answer: a wave of fiscal crises.

While he says both sides have an interest in an orderly unwinding of this arrangement, both also have the ability to resist:

Unfortunately, as we have also long known, two classes of countries are immune to external pressure to change policies that affect global “imbalances”: one is the issuer of the world’s key currency; and the other consists of the surplus countries. Thus, the present stalemate might continue for some time.

Niall Ferguson and Morris Schularack offered a few suggestions in a New York Times op-ed several weeks ago as to how best unwind this. I had written about it some months ago as well, albeit with a pithier take.

6. War & Peace. Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech was an audacious defense of American power and ideals. If you read nothing else on this list, read this.

7. Song of the week: Pinback’s “Charborg.”

Categories
Criticism Environmental Issues Humor Palin Politics The Opinionsphere

Global Warming: A conspiracy perpetuated by the sushi-eating, coastal elites known as polar bears.

[digg-reddit-me]

Of course, such anti-polar bear sentiment doesn’t exist beyond The Colbert Report and satire of global warming denialists.

Oh, wait. I forgot about Sarah Palin, populist tribune of all that is good, who has taken a vehemently anti-polar bear stance, writing in yesterday’s Washington Post:

As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the [Bush administration] over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species…

Categories
Criticism Humor Politics The Opinionsphere

TownHall.com Still Thinks Its Readers Are Idiots…

[digg-reddit-me]I love subscribing to TownHall.com’s emails. They are often good for a chuckle.

But what truly surprises me is the absolute contempt they show for their readers. Obviously, the website promotes political lies and makes no attempt to disguise this. But, as conservatism today has devolved into a reality-show equivalent of  thrillers like The Da Vinci Code or any Vince Flynn novel – complete with ominous music that would play in the background if these novels are movie-fied – the fictional world created by these lies seems to provide enjoyable entertainment.

But TownHall.com apparently believes its readers will not only gullibly accept lies that confirm their political convictions, but are gullible enough to invest money in all sorts of shady enterprises and get-rich-quick schemes. Back in August, I posted one such email – in which TownHall.com allowed an advertiser to use its brand and email list to send out a promotion for a newsletter suggesting that you too could get “A potential 6-figure fortune within 12 to 24 months” by investing in Constitution Mining Corp. Nearly 5 months after this email – but to be fair, less than the 2 years they are talking about – Constitution Mining Corp. has increased in value from $1.25 per share on the day of the post to $1.53 today. A significant increase, but nowhere near the 430% return discussed in the email.

Now, TownHall.com has sent out another amusing email (full text here for the patient and curious) – this time promoting a special investigative exposé:

Special Investigative Exposé

“The $50 Billion
Shadow Syndicate”

How a Ruthless Government
Conspiracy Could Make You
$97,500 Richer by March 2010

*(The following true story will make you mad as hell. It could also make you very rich…)

The email, when printed out, was 21 pages long. But in its 21 pages, it did not manage to mention the name of the company it was promoting. To get that, you need to buy the $49 subscription fee for BreakAway Investor. Of course, Michael Robinson, editor of BreakAway Investor, didn’t make that clear until about 15 pages in. But in the meantime, Robinson spun a fantastical story  of a dark, nefarious conspiracy – which you too could become rich by participating in!

I can’t emphasize enough how extraordinarily unique this situation is. In fact, the last time an opportunity this explosive… and this lucrative… came along was in 1933…

… right in the middle of the Great Depression…

… when a similar U.S. government “conspiracy” sent tiny military contractor EBC soaring 55,000%… turning a handful of people into multimillionaires.

Folks who got in early had the chance to turn a $5,000 investment into $2.5 million.

The opportunity I’ve uncovered today offers similar riches. And while a 55,000% return might take a while…

… folks who get in now — on the GROUND FLOOR — could be $97,500 richer by March 2010. Maybe a whole lot more…

There is one catch, however…

Continue reading “TownHall.com Still Thinks Its Readers Are Idiots…”