Our sucky political-media establishment

Chris Bodenner, guesting at Andrew Sullivan's pad, sums it up:

The civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan have endured eight years of collateral damage yet our political establishment says we can't handle the collateral fear of a few dozen men in shackles.

Pope in Holy Land: orthodoxy bad

Abroad in the Holy Land, from which Christians, a minority there for centuries, continue to flee, the Pope has a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion on the virtues of diversity and the vices of "extremism" and "orthodoxy":

He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”

On Sunday in Jordan the pope argued that Christians had a role here in reconciliation, that their very presence eased the strife, and that the decline of that presence could help to increase extremism. When the mix of beliefs and lifestyles goes down, orthodoxy rises, he implied, as does uniformity of the cultural landscape in a region where tolerance is not an outstanding virtue.

So, "tolerance" is now a virtue, while "orthodoxy", "extremism", and "uniformity of the cultural landscape" are now bad? Pretty shocking stuff from the former Head of the Office of the Inquisition, responsible for forcing Roman Catholic orthodoxy. I imagine this new-found appreciation for tolerance and diversity will last as long as it takes for the pope to board his private jet back to Rome, but at least it provides a basis for Christians of alternative views and cultural environments to throw the pope's words back at him when his holiness reverts to the demands of religious conformity.

If it's Thursday, if must be Anti-Chavez Day at the Washington Post

Consider, if you will, this statement of breathtaking ignorance:

The administration's strategy -- to open up a constructive dialogue with Venezuela and avoid being cast as Mr. Chávez's Yanqui foil -- is reasonable; it is also the same strategy as was tried, unsuccessfully, by the previous two administrations.

That's true, I guess, if you think that trying to overthrow their democratically elected government (in 2002) and replace it with a military dictatorship amounts to "constructive dialogue".

Then there's this, the logic of which I can't even begin to fathom:

["constructive dialogue"] makes it more rather than less likely that Venezuela, with the help of Iran and Russia, will become a threat to the United States.

What is this, Red Dawn? That's the kind of paranoid, fear-mongering lunacy only the commenters at Red State (and I guess Fred Hiatt at the Wash Post) would believe.

Conservative evangelicals discover moral relativism and the dreaded situational ethics

Newt and W speech writer, Gerson.

When elections are lost

I don't see any connection here between the Pakistani Taliban and American conservatives, do you?

Meanwhile, with Taliban fighters occupying more and more areas in the northwest and vowing to bring Islamic justice to the region, political and professional leaders have fled. Few officials from the ANP (the democratic, secular party--Bulworth) and Zardari's Pakistan People's Party dare visit the constituencies that voted for them in the February 2008 elections. Mohammed Khan, a lawyer from Swat who fled the region last month with his family, recounted how pressure from the insurgents prevented secular candidates from holding rallies or campaigning before the elections. But their two parties swept the polls, while religious ones fared poorly.

"One [Islamist] party used the symbol of a book, telling people it was the Koran, but Swatis voted for the lantern of the ANP," Khan said, referring to the symbols used on ballots to indicate a candidate's party. "Now the ANP has had to swallow the bitter pill of sharia rule, but how can anyone say the people wanted that? They have been pushed into a corner, and now no one is there to defend them."

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I really don't see any connection here between Pakistani Taliban, which lost out in that country's elections but are now trying to obtain through the gun what they couldn't earn at the ballot box--and the various reichwing American militia movements threatening to conduct an armed "demonstration" march on Washington. No connection at all. Nor do I see any similarity between these Pakistani Taliban and various reichwing leaders who want their states to secede in the aftermath of their party's losing two straight elections at the ballot box; I also don't see anything similar between the Pakistani Taliban's violent behavior and rhetoric after losing an election and Faux news hosts who after their party has lost two straight elections, simultaneously broadcast from a "bunker" while trying to incite their listening audience to claim that they have the nation's capitol "surrounded". I don't really see any comparisons here at all. Nor should anyone draw any conclusions as to the like-mindedness of those Pakistani Taliban who want to enshrine Islamic-biblical law and conservative American reichwingers who want to enshrine Judeo-Christian-biblical law in place of the U.S. Constitution. The fact that religious parties lost in both countries and that both are reacting largely along the same, militaristic lines, should not imply that the American reichwing is just like the Pakistani Taliban.

Are the religious reichers moral relativists on usury?

We already know of course that the religious reichers are moral relativists on torture.

Dispatches from an alternative universe

Oh No!!!!!!!!!! Here comes the ACORN!!!!!!!!!

Insanitea

Rachel Maddow is a goddess.

And I'd also like to officially announce that my crush on Ana Marie Cox is back on.

Deep Thought

Isn't it about time the media made another call for a revote in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race?

The end of the free market as we knew it

Well, a lot's been happening. There was the AIG bonus hullabalu. Who was to blame for these payments going out, and who knew what and when did they know it? And should we really fuss over these bonuses which are a minute fraction of the dough we shilled out to AIG in the first place, some of which has gone to those street people, Goldman Sachs, and foreign companies and on and on. Blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, last year's election losers, and of the election cycle before that, have morphed into tea party people, gathering in small groups around the country to vent about big government, deficits, taxes, and any number of things of which they know little.

Nobody's happy. Everybody's angry. I'm a bit angry, too. Angry, or maybe disallusioned would be a better aproximation, because it seems as if the central facts of the current crisis, the malaise if you will, are still not being made clear. And what are those central facts of which I speak?

Well, while I can't speak with certainty about everything going on today, or to the wisdom or foolishness of the government's latest bailout plan, there are some key facts which seem rather beyond dispute. And those facts are that the free market economy worshipped by our country's elites and conservative yakkers is kaput. It commited suicide last fall, after a long period of deranged and unregulated behavior. And without the government's stepping in to bail out AIG and its cronies, we would be in a lot worse shape than we are today.

Congressional and media Republicans, and the tea people's subsequent complaints about "government" are so 1979. They have no idea of what has happened to their precious market and seemingly no self awareness about anything. If government was the problem in 1980 when Reagan came to power, the free market itself is the culprit today, and the government had to save it (and the rest of us lest the market kill us along with itself). It's as simple as that.

Recommended reading:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0903.galbraith.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

Orwell watch: special cram-down edition

I was glad to see the House pass Obama's mortgage plan, and also got a chuckle from this remark by a spokesperson of the Mortgage Association:

The House yesterday passed legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of troubled home mortgages, overcoming fierce opposition from the financial industry.

The bill, a package of housing-related initiatives, passed 234 to 191, largely along party lines. It now heads to the Senate, where it will face a tougher fight but has the backing of some powerful members.

Under the legislation, bankruptcy judges could cut the principal on a homeowner's mortgage as well as reduce the interest rate and extend the terms -- provisions known as cramdowns.

(snip)

This year, the measure also faced opposition from moderate Democrats who forced concessions that require, among other things, a homeowner to share with the lender any profit from the eventual sale of the home if a judge lowers the principal balance. The compromise version also gives preference to reducing a homeowner's interest rate over cutting the principal balance.

"We are pleased that the House moved to limit the harm this bill will do to consumers, and we want to work with the Senate to further contain the damage," David G. Kittle, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry group, said in a statement.

--------------

Ah yes. We, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America are expressly concerned about the impact this bill will have for consumers. Including that provision we demanded about making sure lenders get some of any profit from the homeowners, er, "consumers".

John Boehner is on some serious crack

Calls for government spending freeze.

This reminds me of a much quoted story from the Civil War when Lincoln, exasperated with the inaction (sound familiar?) of General McClellan, initiated a war plan on his own, setting a date to begin the battle, and remarking that "if the general isn't using the army, he (Lincoln) would like to borrow it for a while."*

If Boehner, David Brooks, Evan Bayh, Judd Gregg, Lou Dobbs, and CNBC don't want to use the government for anything, we would like to borrow it for awhile.

*quotation approximate

On moderation, budgets, and the work of government

I don't know who's been spiking Joe Klein's oatmeal these days, but he is almost starting to make me like him again:

---------------

David Brooks writes today as a moderate-conservative anguished by Barack Obama's budget. I've known David for almost twenty years now. We've had many wonderful conversations, publicly and privately, over those years, and I value the quality of his mind, his decency, his essential sanity. We both consider ourselves moderates, though of different sorts.

But I disagree with him profoundly about the Obama budget--and so, I would venture, do most moderate-liberals. The budget has to be seen in context. We are at the end of a 30-year period of radical conservatism, a period so right-wing that many of those now considered "liberals"--like, say, Barack Obama--would be seen as moderate pantywaists in the great sweep of modern political history. The past 30 years have been such a violent departure from the norm, such a profound destruction of the basic functions of government, that a major rectification is called for now--in rebalancing the system of taxation toward progressivity, in rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, not just physically, but also socially and intellectually.

---------------

Here's hoping the regressives in Congress and the media will not thwart the attempt to undo the havoc of the last few decades and allow us to make our system work again.

I'm sure more tax cuts and less regulation are the answer

Or we could keep killing off what labor unions are still left.

But whatever we decide to do, more better policy ideas are definitely NOT the answer.

"CPAC is just unpleasant"

Via Firedoglake, one conservative's take on the recently concluded conservative political action committee conference:

Tucker Carlson mildly suggests that conservatives need more than their feelings. That, whatever you think of the bias of the New York Times, they at least care that they spell your name correctly, and they actually do something: gather news.

He was booed and challenged by the audience of course.

Joe the Plumber was the star of the day. I haven't confirmed this, but I was told he recently briefed a group of Republicans on his trip to Gaza. I don't care what your foreign policy is: Joe the Plumber shouldn't be informing it.

All day, the message I got was this: The movement enjoys being hated by its enemies, more than it cares about its own goals. It is populist, and irresponsible. A little popularizing is good, a little political theatre is good.

CPAC is just unpleasant. And it is not just the elites flattening the ambitions of the people, it is the people dumbing down their own elites. Well-adjusted people, even if they feel alienated from certain parts of American society don't wish to be hated by society. People who want to advance some goals, want more responsibility, not less. I hate that CPAC seems to give credibility to Adorno: that conservatives have defective personalities.

------------

Maybe we can pony up the money so the CPAC can bring its freak show to town every six months. The more the better.

Post wants do-overs for Republicans

Balloon Juice's DougJ wonders where the f%$# this is coming from:

Baltimore, Md.: Speaking of junior senators, do you see Al Franken being seated anytime before 2010?

Shailagh Murray: Perhaps, but it seems more and more likely that the Minnesota race will wind up as a re-vote. At this point it seems like the quickest way to resolve the situation.

and later:

Al Franken Revote Really?: Star Tribune just published an article on the front page which discusses Coleman’s dwindling chances. The Politico last week published an article discussing Coleman’s need for a miracle. Election experts from Minnesota are discussing the math which makes a Coleman comeback extremely difficult and the higher courts taking this case an unlikely prospect. How did you arrive at this recount theory? I think the only folks advocating this are a FEW Republicans who see this as Coleman’s only realistic hope for overturning the results of November.

Shailagh Murray: I don’t have a revote “theory.” I’m just wondering how long this is going to sit in the court system. If Coleman looks desperate, why not just hold another election and beat him handily?But there’s a process in place here, and we can only assume both parties will abide by it.

From the comments we see that a non-reporter has recognized that a revote isn't an option. Funny how the Post's political reporter can't seem to figure that out.

And yeah, sure, why not just hold another election? That's what the Post called for in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential elections? Remember? Oh yeah, they didn't. Between Murray who wants a revote for this one special election that the Republicans keep litigating and op-ed writer George Will who thinks state legislatures should take back the selection of U.S. Senators, WTF?

And what if the revote came down to a few votes difference just like this one, Shailagh Dearest? Do we keep demanding a revote until Coleman comes up ahead?

Again from the BJ comments, KC in DC says:

[Murray]If Coleman looks desperate, why not just hold another election and beat him handily?

Maybe because that’s not what the law says? How does that question even make sense? "If Coleman looks desperate"? Hey, McCain seems pretty desperate now, why not have a revote of the presidential election?

What's wrong with Thomas Frank?

He'd rather have good policy than bipartisanship. (h/t Balloon Juice)

For the Beltway commentariat, however, transcending partisanship is the most meaningful of issues, more important, one senses, than the economic problems that trouble those people at town-hall meetings. "Nothing was more central to [Obama's] victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington," wrote the Washington Post's David Broder a few weeks ago, in an altogether typical expression of media perceptions.

The way I remember it, the No. 1 issue in the election was the collapsing economy, followed at some distance by the Iraq war. On both of these questions, Mr. Obama prevailed because he was the candidate who promised most convincingly to reverse Republican policies -- not because he planned to meet the GOP halfway across the charred ruins of American prosperity.

(snip)

It is supposed to be high-minded stuff, this longing for a bipartisan golden age. But in some ways it is the most cynical stance possible. It takes no idea seriously, since everything is up for compromise. The role of the political parties is merely to cancel each other out, so that only the glorious centrists remain, triangulating majestically between obnoxious extremes.

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Does anyone in the media commentariate realize that the "golden age" of bipartisanship (the 1950's and 1960's?) was a function of the schizophrenic New Deal coalition, which pitted conservative Democrats from the confederate states of America against more moderate Democrats and Republicans from the North, and since then the golden era of bipartisanship there has been a regional and ideological realignment of the parties?

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy, apparently in need of continuing rehab or other medical attention related to his recently discovered cancer, will not be present for the Senate vote on the final passage of the stimulus bill. The pro side will probably, hopefully, still gain 60 votes, however.

Nonetheless, and I hate to be inpolitic, but at what point should the appropriate decision makers and thought leaders in the party encourage all involved that (a) Kennedy should retire and (b) the Democratic governor of Massachusetts should appoint a Democratic successor to Kennedy's seat, someone who can be on hand for the important decisions and votes ahead?

Conservatives and "fiscal discipline"

After eight years of "deficits don't matter" the new Republican minority is now in danger of ridding the world of fainting couches. The blatant absurdity and hypocrisy of it all is staggering. But fortunately not all observers are buying it:

A Republican party that added more than $30 trillion to the future debt in a time of boom has no credible answer but raw partisanship for opposing $800 billion in the swiftest downturn in employment since the Great Depression. That's the bottom line. The party that campaigned for eight years on the principle that "deficits don't matter" has no good faith standing to oppose a measure that provides the minimum to ensure some kind of bottom in the looming depression. To take their fiscal conservatism seriously at this point and in this crisis is to engage in some kind of instant amnesia............

The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.

The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency. The rest is transparent cant.

The Republican Opposition

Via Andrew Sullivan, Booman makes what I think is a pretty valid analysis of future presidential-congressional relations:

The Republicans wanted to demonstrate some strength at the outset of this administration. They wanted to prove that they can maintain cohesion in opposition to things they truly oppose. It was important for them to send this message even though it was a discordant rejection of Obama's olive branch. They probably would have sought to send such a message on any major vote, so the stimulus wasn't necessarily the primary cause of their reaction. But there is something important about how the stimulus was put together that also helps explain Republican behavior. The stimulus package wasn't written using 'regular order' and did not come up through the committee and subcommittee process. There was a good reason for this...expediency. But that doesn't change the fact that the Republicans had no opportunity to influence the bill in committee.

Going forward, individual Republicans will have the option to work in a constructive way with the Democrats on the committees on which they serve. This is basically the only way House Republicans can have any influence over legislation over the next four years. Republicans that learn how to play this game will get to co-sponsor bills and bring home projects and appropriations to their home districts. Those that don't learn how to play this game will have nothing tangible to show for being a member of Congress. It might be comforting to be a member of the opposition and a champion among Republican activists, but it doesn't make for much of a day job.

What I'm basically saying is that the Republicans, as a group, want to oppose Obama at every turn. But it will not be easy to keep a unified opposition in place over time. I predict it will fall apart quite quickly. And then the Republican leaders will have to choose their battles very carefully because it will be hard to keep the caucus unified for more than a few key votes. Even on the stimulus, the Republicans lost. They won some important concessions, but they lost.

It will also be impossible to attack Obama as successfully as the Republicans attacked Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was a deeply flawed person who won a plurality of the vote. Barack Obama cannot demonized so easily.

So, no, the Republicans are not going to embrace bipartisanship or suddenly begin wishing the Obama administration well. But they're also not going to maintain a rock solid opposition. They can't.