Shadow of the Hegemon

Payroll Tax Cut Extension

2011-12-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

Credit where credit's due. Obama and the Dems faced the Republicans down, got a big win, made them look like chumps, and demonstrated a bit of stones for a change.

Heck, look at this:

Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer reached out to the White House early in the standoff to convey their view: They can win without giving an inch. The White House agreed, giving way to a no-compromise strategy championed internally by senior adviser David Plouffe, who, like the president, was in a fighting mood, according to multiple sources.

Their thinking, according to White House and congressional aides: Obama and Senate Democrats already negotiated through McConnell. They made concessions. Eighty-nine senators, in a rare moment of overwhelming bipartisanship, approved the deal. And the public, according to polls, was on their side. Case closed.

“We were resolved to hold the line on this from the moment the speaker’s office indicated they were going to cave to the pressures from the fringe element of their caucus,” said a Senate Democratic aide. “We felt we had such a resounding vote in the Senate that they were going to be trapped. It was going to be impossible for the Senate Republicans to walk away from it. They were doomed to be divided because of that.”

I don't even think that the Senate unanimity had much to do with it. The Republicans have been more than successful without it in the past. The simple truth here is that fighting for legislation that is publicly popular works. Yes, you need to be smart and canny about how you do it, and I was impressed by the full-court press the White House executed to get this thing passed. The lesson's still clear. With any luck at all, they'll remember that going forward into 2012.

This is a bit bittersweet, though. You can't help but wonder about how different the world would be if the White House had been willing to do this from the beginning.

So Time Magazine's Person of the Year is "The Protester"

2011-12-14T19:31:00.000-05:00

Yep. See it for yourself. Well, at least it's not Zuckerberg again. Or Paul Ryan, which was apparently a serious possibility.

Sure, it's logical enough. The Arab Spring changed the middle east, the Occupiers changed the American discourse on wealth, and a lot of expectations about the utility of protest were upended. The biggest thing that seemed to jump out of these protests is that having a dedicated structure and organization almost seems like a liability; if there are no faces, there's no way to muck about and find ways to discredit them.

That's the whole "Anonymous" lesson that people keep on forgetting. The whole reason they were able to take on the Church of Scientology was because their structure made it damned hard for the CoS to try to respond. The Occupiers picked this up from Anonymous—witness all the Anonymous masks at the protests—and that's helped them remain relevant. There's been attempts to try to discredit them by attacking their "leaders", but it just doesn't stick. The only thing that's come even close to working is just straight-up violence.

The violence is the part that Time doesn't talk about, by the by. One of the odder bits in the piece was the claim that Occupiers didn't stand to get "beat up or shot" like their middle-eastern counterparts. The "shot" part, I'll grant, though I'd wager that that has more to do with the general peaceability of occupiers than anything else, but stating that they haven't been beaten is just ludicrous. They have. Often. Quite savagely at times, and that's not even getting into just how bad pepper-spraying really is. Were the Time editors unaware of this? Or did they just not really care, since it was their countrymen doing the spraying and beating?

Still, I think that they've missed the real story here. The real story is about the tension between the public and the elites. That's what the 99% vs. 1% thing is really about: it's not about wealth, per se, but about a relatively small elite that call the shots without even pausing to consider the wishes or interests of the rest of the population. As Lawrence Lessig pointed out on The Daily Show last night, that 1% thing is a bit misleading: it's actually only about 0.05% of the public that have access to lawmakers—that really have any say at all.

And the elites are fighting back. Nevermind the cops being sent to beat up protesters. Look at Europe. Look at what's happened in Italy and Greece. Look at the appointed economic "experts" that have been brought in to supposedly "fix" things by gutting the public service and social services. They're taking money from the 99% to pay off debts owed to the 1%. They won't even consider anything that might increase aggregate demand by putting money in the hands of the vast majority of people who would really use it. They believe in price stability over all else, and are willing to drive unemployment into the ground in order to do it, even though all the pressures right now are DEFLATIONARY pressures. And they weren't even elected. They were imposed.

Look what's going on with this supposed deal to save the Euro. As Paul Krugman, Felix Salmon, and loads of others keep on pointing out, this whole thing is profoundly misguided. They're pretending that a balance-of-trade problem is somehow a sovereign debt problem. Countries like Ireland and Spain weren't awash in sovereign debt before the crisis. Quite the opposite. Yet instead of solving the real problem, the Eurozone is going to put straightjackets on member governments attempting enact counter-cyclical policies and get their economies back on track. Unemployment in every Euro country whose name doesn't end in "many" will keep going up, social spending will keep going down, and the lives of the 99% will become more and more nightmarish.

What are people supposed to do in that case? They have no access, because access costs money. They have no votes; Italy, Greece, and the new move towards fiscal unity prove that policy is now imposed from above, instead of elected from below. They have no say. The elites are calling the shots, despite the elites' bungling incompetence being proven over, and over, and over, and OVER again throughout the last half-decade.

They find themselves with only two choices: take to the streets, or take to the hills. They're choosing the former. Good on 'em. But I don't think we should ever, ever forget that in this cold war between the public and the elites, they can always decide to choose the latter.

You're Killing Your Grandchildren, You Idiots

2011-12-13T13:20:00.001-05:00

So Arctic methane's being released faster than anybody had expected, thanks to the melting of polar ice. Methane's an even worse greenhouse gas than CO2, by an order of magnitude, and it was responsible for at least one big extinction event in history: the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

You hear that word? "Extinction"? It means "everybody's dead". Not just you, but your kids, and your grandkids, and every other generation that would have come of that. It means that your life was pointless, because everything you did, and everything you made, is wiped out, along with everybody else who might have remembered you.

But go ahead and keep on babbling about "hoaxes" so that you can keep driving that sweet SUV. I'm sure your progeny will understand. Or, well, would have understood.

This is How Bad It's Gotten

2011-11-19T15:03:00.001-05:00

Watch this video. Right now.

This is what America has sunk to.

No, let me amend that. America has always treated its minorities this way when they get "out of line". The police have been defending their own privilege using overly violent means for years.

This is something different. This was a cold, calculating, pointless assault on these protesters. There was no move to arrest or detain, and certainly none of the violent resistance that pepper spray is supposed to be used to deter. This doesn't fit any sane rules of engagement for police, and yet the officer didn't even do this furtively, afraid of being caught. He calmly walked up and used a burning, blinding chemical weapon on these kids' faces.

What's worse is that they aren't even defending their own privilege. Cops aren't wealthy. They aren't powerful...not really. They sure as hell aren't part of the 1% of wealthy Americans that are at the center of this, nor will any of them ever be part of that group. Their own pensions are being raided to pay for the bailouts; their own children are facing a lifetime of un- and underemployment. Their own family members are out of work, and may never find work again. They're defending the privilege of a tiny mob that they will never, ever belong to: a mob that created the intolerable future that America now faces.

Yet here we are, with a police officer betraying everything his badge and his country stands for, in order to protect people who neither acknowledge nor appreciate it. People who are, frankly, being utter douchebags about the whole thing.

Edit: One of the protester chants sums it up pretty well. They shout, repeatedly: "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?"

Good question. In fact, it's the only question that matters.

Congratulations, Mayor Bloomberg!

2011-11-15T03:33:00.001-05:00

No, really. We should give the guy a hand. He's given the order for the cops to clear Zucotti in the middle of the night, and he's accomplished a lot of things in doing so!

-He's confirming every negative thing that Occupy has ever said about the attitudes and behavior of the ultra wealthy elite that he belongs to;

-He's going to radicalize absolutely everybody who has come anywhere near that park by sending in riot cops with batons and pepper spray, meaning that a lot of potentially-reasonable people are now going to be both furiously angry and rigidly defiant; and

-He's going to make sure that the clearout is a big story, by preventing the media from sending helicopters overhead to show what's going on, and by (allegedly) having his officers take the press credentials away from people. Not that that'll stop people from seeing what's going on: there's a nice live feed going on right here on UStream, and everybody in that park is going to be furiously recording every minute action of the police. What it will do, though, is give the media the opportunity to talk about its absolute favorite subject: itself.

As I type this, they're saying that the people in the kitchen are being tear gassed. TEAR GASSED. How the hell can you justify that? What kind of idiot would write rules of engagement that even considered that?

I'm not sure. I do know what kind of idiot gives the order though. So take a bow, Bloomberg. You just made yourself a parkful of martyrs.

Edit: And now there's video out of them roughing up protestors. And here's video of them using tear gas.

OWS: "Screw the Pundits". Good on 'em.

2011-10-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

One of the best parts about the "Occupy" movement? The fact that it baffles and enrages television and print pundits. Not all are as incoherent as, say, Canada's Andrew Coyne, who thinks that poor people should shut up because they have microwaves and color televisions(!), but it's pretty universal.

As Dalia Lithwick points out in Slate, that may be part of the point:

I feel it’s time to explain something: Occupy Wall Street may not have laid out all of its demands in a perfectly cogent one-sentence bumper sticker for you, Mr. Pundit, but it knows precisely what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want you.
What the movement clearly doesn’t want is to have to explain itself through corporate television. To which I answer, Hallelujah. You can’t talk down to a movement that won’t talk back to you...

...Occupy Wall Street is not a movement without a message. It’s a movement that has wisely shunned the one-note, pre-chewed, simple-minded messaging required for cable television as it now exists. It’s a movement that feels no need to explain anything to the powers that be, although it is deftly changing the way we explain ourselves to one another.

Think, for just a moment, about the irony. We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs. And why is that? Because they very wisely don’t trust television cameras and microphones to get it right anymore. Because a media constructed around the illusion of false equivalencies, screaming pundits, and manufactured crises fails to capture who we are and what we value.

They don't necessarily trust the Internet, either, though they surely trust it more than they trust the cable networks.Is it really any wonder, though? Television news is basically rich people talking to rich people about rich people's problems. Someone like Andrew Coyne doesn't have the foggiest idea how the 99% live, or what their issues are. It's an academic, abstract issue to him, which is almost certainly why he fell back to "what are they complaining about? Color televisions, people! COLOR!" These people want simple solutions to the problem of poverty because isn't their problem. They just want it to go away and stop bothering them with the minimum amount of hassle.

People might have been willing to go along with that when the Great and the Good were benefiting their lives. Those days are over. The 99% are now of the opinion that they've been scammed by the pundits and their cronies, and they're PISSED. That's the message. What they're planning on doing about it isn't quite certain yet. But that's the message.

Krugman's Take on OWS: "Panicked Plutocrats"

2011-10-11T13:17:00.004-04:00

The Brooks twaddle I just mentioned makes a bit more sense when you read Paul Krugman's piece about "Panicked Plutocrats".

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

Okay, fine, that last link was my addition. Times columnists aren't technically allowed to take shots at each other, though everybody knows that Krugman spends a fair bit of time tearing apart Brooks' arguments, even if he can't actually name the man. Only fair to fill in the gap on his behalf.

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is...

...What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

And now we've reached the point where people like David Brooks are so terrified on behalf of their tiny sliver of plutocrats that they're already throwing the words "anti-Semitic" around. The man must be absolutely shitting himself at the thought of what OWS represents.

David Brooks Went From Zero to "OWS are Anti-Semites" in Four Paragraphs

2011-10-11T12:53:00.001-04:00

This has to be a new record.

Sure, the piece itself is ridiculous nonsense. He bandies about that raising the income taxes on people making "between 1 and 10 million" would only cut 1% of the national debt, completely ignoring that it's the national deficit that matters, that salaried income aren't their only (or even principal) source of wealth, or that extreme concentration might mean that people making more than ten million might be part of the problem. It certainly doesn't help that he's sourcing some right-wing think tank instead of a reputable source, either, nor that he won't acknowledge just how concentrated wealth is.

There's also a great wealth of bullshit about how dividing up the country is "self-limiting", when the whole point of the OWS movement is that the country is already divided. But, hey, never mind that,the whole point of his sort is to make the rest of us identify more with this wealthy "sliver" (in his words) than with each other.

But, accusing them of anti-semitism? That's a new low.

Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy.

Wow. Brooks is actually arguing that the only thing that Adbusters is known for is this seven-year-old article about supposedly "nefarious Jews", and therefore is not only anti-semitic but has rendered OWS anti-semitic as well. This despite the fact that Adbusters has been around for decades, and is hardly the only or principal reason why OWS started.

Never mind that this is insulting and quite possibly libelous. Is it really a good idea to try to discredit a movement decrying wealth concentration by calling it anti-semitic? Doesn't that sorta internalize the absurd notion that Jewish people are all wealthy bankers and movie moguls and whatnot, instead of just being, well, Americans? The vast, vast majority of Jewish-Americans are part of the 99%, just like anybody else; so why the hell is Brooks trying to build up this notion of a connection between extreme wealth and Judaism? It is poisonous and destructive. Why on earth would he DO that?

Well, okay, we all know why. He wanted to get a cheap shot in, and didn't think of the connotations or the consequences. He didn't realize that this is about to absolutely enrage pretty much every Jewish-American who is tired of these stereotypes, along with any who would resent being so cynically exploited.

(It's also going to do nothing to affect OWS. If anything it'll embolden them: this is such an obvious and pathetic cheap shot that it could hardly do otherwise.)

I'm sure he'll get away with it. Those who truck in stereotypes and myth to defend the interests of that "sliver" get enough cover to get by. But it's a useful lesson for any of you who think that Brooks is some sort of "moderate". He isn't. He may not give a shit about social issues...but when it comes to defending the interests of his precious sliver against the interests of the rest of the world, he will say ANYTHING. No matter how odious.

Edit: The Jewish magazine Tablet has much the same take. And I missed the lovely bit where Brooks said that OWS has nothing to say about "wage stagnation or polarization". That's pretty comical, considering that's the entire damned point of the exercise.

As Dean Baker reminds us, he's little more than "the bard of the 1%". He's just there to make them feel better about themselves, which is probably why his hateful little scrawling attempts to call OWS "ineffective" and "milquetoast". It's wishful thinking by the bucketload.

"Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-05T19:08:00.000-04:00

I had thought it would fizzle out. It hasn't. It's getting bigger, it's getting more coherent, and it's finding a winning narrative with this "we are the 99%" line.

Mainstream media ignore it at their peril. This could be bigger than the tea party.

Edit: People keep asking "what do they want?"

Isn't it obvious? They want want Lincoln talked about: they want "government of the people, by the people, for the people". They know that isn't the case. Not all of them can articulate it, but they all know somewhere that the American government—and, in fact, pretty much all modern governments—act at the behest of corporations. These corporations are given the same rights as actual citizens, and carry outsized weight due to their enormous economic power...and as they are generally owned by a tiny minority of people, they provide an outsized voice to that tiny minority.

That's why there's all this talk about the "99%" and the "1%". The 99% have no real voice. The only voices that are listened to are those of the corps, and the corps are overwhelmingly owned by that tiny minority. Even if members that tiny minority wanted to help the rest, they can't, because the corporations that act on their behalf are (somehow) legally obligated to fight anything and anybody that threatens the income of that minority.

(That's what corporations are for, after all. They make money. That's it.)

People get that this situation cannot continue. They get that this isn't working properly. They aren't yet quite sure why, or how to get out of it, but they KNOW that things are broken. They're looking for someone to fix it. If someone doesn't, they'll do it themselves.

Re-Edit: The truly bizarre part is that even people on Wall Street know that the current system is broken. They don't like being blamed, true, but they know the problem. The issue is that the people with actual power and influence won't believe it for ideological reasons.

The ISI and the Kabul Attacks

2011-09-23T12:05:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like the ISI had a hand in the Kabul attacks.

Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency communicated with Afghan insurgents who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in central Kabul last week and appear to have provided them with equipment, according to U.S. military officers and former officials.

Communications gear used by the insurgents "implicated" the directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan's spy service, a senior U.S. military official said Thursday. The equipment was found in a14-story building under construction that the attackers used to lay siege to the embassy compound for 19 hours on Sept. 13, according to the official, who would not describe the equipment recovered.

Bruce Riedel, a former White House advisor on Pakistan and a retired senior CIA official, said administration officials told him that "very firm intelligence" linked the Pakistani spy agency to the embassy attack, which killed at least nine Afghans.

"There are [communications] intercepts and the attackers were in cellphone contact back to Pakistan," he said.

In a dramatic appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that the insurgents had received "ISI support" not only for the attack on America's most prominent diplomatic and military symbols in the Afghan capital, but also for a massive truck bomb assault this month on a U.S. combat outpost in Wardak province west of Kabul that wounded 77 U.S. soldiers.

Pakistan's government angrily denied any involvement. But Mullen's comments are the most direct, and most explosive, accusations by a senior U.S. official of direct complicity by Pakistan's chief intelligence agency in attacks on American facilities and military personnel.

Not any sort of surprise that they would deny it. Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been strained for a while, and this is likely to seal their fate.

It's almost certainly true, though, and it's difficult to say what it'll mean. Pakistan's a nuclear power, so any sort of direct action is impossible even if it weren't a bad idea, but the United States will have to do something to make it clear that the ISI cannot be allowed to continue supporting this sort of action.

What's likely, then, is that the American government will take this as a go-ahead for continued drone attacks in Pakistan on the Haqqani network that was behind this attack. It keeps Americans out of harm's way, and they're insulated from Pakistani objections by the fact that the ISI is partially responsible for this in the first place. It won't solve the problem, but it's the only plausible action that presents itself.

Orwell on Unemployment

2011-09-22T01:15:00.000-04:00

From Wigan Pier:

But there is no doubt about the deadening, debilitating effect of unemployment upon everybody, married or single, and upon men more than upon women. The best intellects will not stand up against it. Once or twice it has happened to me to meet unemployed men of genuine literary ability; there are others whom I haven’t met but whose work I occasionally see in the magazines. Now and again, at long intervals, these men will produce an article or a short story which is quite obviously better than most of the stuff that gets whooped up by the blurb-reviewers. Why, then, do they make so little use of their talents? They have all the leisure in the world; why don’t they sit down and write books? Because to write books you need not only comfort and solitude—and solitude is never easy to obtain in a working class home—you also need peace of mind. You can’t settle to anything, you can’t command the spirit of hope in which everything has got to be created, with that dull evil cloud of unemployment hanging over you.

Welcome to America's future, ladies and gentlemen. The longer this nonsense lasts, the worse it gets. And with the choice of a Democratic president that—according to Suskind's latest—doesn't understand the central importance of aggregate demand on the economy vs. a Republican opposition that devoutly wishes that the long-term unemployed would just crawl into a hole and die quietly, it's likely to be getting worse for a good long time.

Krauthammer's Tiger Rock

2011-09-12T02:18:00.001-04:00

All these years, and Charles Krauthammer is still insisting that the lack of a second AQ attack proved that the War on Terror worked.

Of course, you could just as plausibly argue for the release of Alice Cooper's Dragontown as the reason why there was no second attack.

What's really funny is that he's pretending that two "hot wars" in the War on Terror didn't cost a truckload of money because it was only a little more than a trillion dollars. Apparently a fair percentage of THE YEARLY DOMESTIC PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES isn't a big deal to him.

"Entitlements" are a big deal to him. Of course. They usually are to wealthy apologists for the ultra-rich, especially ones like Krauthammer that haven't the faintest clue how any of this works, and are just mouthing the words they're told to say by their handlers and sponsors. Social Security and Medicare, unlike the botched conflicts that he advocates and apologizes for, actually help people. Krauthammer wouldn't know what "helping people" was like if you gave him diagrams.

It isn't as bad as the spectacle of a Bush-admin neoconservative trying to take credit for the Arab Spring, like Michael Gerson. That goes beyond wrong to simply nauseating. But it still shows us exactly why America is in the fix it is: because people like this are given newspaper columns, fame, and power... instead of people with ideas, insights, track records and a positive outlook.

One of the lessons of the last decade is really simple: never trust neoconservatives. They cannot govern countries, they cannot fight wars, they cannot budget responsibly, and they cannot be trusted to provide advice about anything. Mock them, deride them, and dismiss them if you want...just never, ever trust them. Their ideas are poison and their doctrines corrupt.

They were wrong. They were ALWAYS wrong. They always will be.

So. It's the 9/11/2001 Anniversary. It's really bad now. There's still hope.

2011-09-11T16:22:00.002-04:00

Ten years. It's been ten years since Osama Bin Laden's people attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Ten years since the United States discovered that it was vulnerable. I don't think America has gotten over that, not really. As was constantly pointed out at the time, America hadn't had a real attack on mainland soil since the Civil War. Nobody knew what to expect. Nobody knew how they'd react. They found out. It was shock, horror, dread, and confusion. There was also a bit of disbelief. Everybody—including myself—felt like it was something out of a movie. It wasn't real. Things like that don't happen for real.

Ten years since America went slightly mad. No, really. How else can you explain the "War on Terror"? It was always a bad idea. It was always somewhat incoherent. It's pretty much over now, and the consensus is that it was never properly thought out or worked that well. Attacking Afghanistan robbed Al Qaeda of their home base, but botching the occupation gave Al Qaeda's Taliban allies renewed strength, and the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban was a big issue for years; quite rightly, as it turns out, since Osama was hiding out in Pakistan. It wasn't until the War on Terror ended that 9/11's chief architect was found and killed. If anything repudiates it, that would. Well, anything except IRAQ.

It's been ten years since a group of mad delusional idiots that call themselves "neoconservatives"—a group that's always been obsessed with Iraq—seized control of the levers of American foreign and defense policy, and proceded to drive it into the ground. Almost all the goodwill that America received after the attack was burned away by these fools and their obsession with Iraqi conquest. Almost all the advantages gained in bloody Afghanistan combat were bled away by the Iraq misadventure, and pretty much every ally of note that helped America in Afghanistan walked away in shock and disgust. Almost all of America's credibility as an international voice, as an exemplar, and as a friend to democracy ended thanks to the neoconservatives' Iraq adventure.

The worst thing about it isn't even the invasion, not really. The worst part was the botched occupation. America treated its Iraqi subjects terribly, inflicting the worst sort of horrible right-wing bullshit on them at the hands of the worst sort of Republican apparatchiks. One need only read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City to see just how badly the "Green Zone" was run, and how ruinous the Republicans have been.

And, yes, it's been ten years since the foundations were set for the current economic crisis. Sure, the regulatory changes that opened the door for the excesses of Wall Street were made back in the 1990s. But absent all this adventurism, America's fiscal situation would be very, very different, and the Republicans wouldn't have been able to wave the flag in order to silence critics of their broken, oligarchic economic policy. Hell, Bush would have probably have been kicked out of the White House in short order. What a better world it would be.

He should have been kicked out. All this happened on HIS watch. There's more than enough evidence that the ideological fervor of his administration helped blind them to the threat posed by Al Qaeda. Republicans are very good, though, at making people think that they're good at both economics and security when they're utterly terrible at anything but punishing the poor and striking macho poses. They didn't deserve it, but they got it anyway.

So, ten years later, how is America? America is broke. America is dispirited. America's workers are unemployed, underemployed, or massively overworked. America had to win its "war" only by giving up the idea that it's a "war" at all. America's poor leadership and deluded right-wing economists helped drag down the entire world, to the point of threatening the very existence of the European project. America's corporations and a tiny ultra-rich minority are doing quite nicely, but nobody else is; America's sinking into the sort of inequality and oligarchy that's normally associated with third-world dictatorships.

Worst of all, ten years later, America's governing plutocrats still won't even pay all of the medical bills of the brave men and women that risked their lives helping people to survive this horrible attack.

Yet there is hope. This has been a terrible decade, but there is still hope. I still remember how people drew together after the attack. I remember people lining up to give blood to any survivors. I remember the strong national resolve to keep going, and to show that people would not be intimidated by extremist thugs, no matter how they dress. I still remember the times when Americans came together—most recently back in 2008—to say that they wanted a better country. I remember how people bust their asses to try to improve their life and station, and still believe in the American dream of prosperity despite every single piece of evidence in the world telling them otherwise.

Americans should remember that the solution to the current malaise isn't difficult. Despite the anti-worker rhetoric, it isn't about Americans being lazy or stupid or unskilled. The current recession and stagnation is just the side-effect of a lack of aggregate demand. That's it. It's eminently fixable, too. If Americans come together to rebuild and and improve the infrastructure that lies at the foundation of their economy; if they help their friends, relatives, and neighbours that are currently unemployed; and if they realize that AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE THE JOB-CREATORS, not the plutocrats that have been mismanaging their money, they can bring their country back.

It'll mean that some Americans will need to set aside certain assumptions. "Conservative" doesn't mean "prudent". A government's finances are not that of a household. "Belt-tightening" is not the way to fix an economy. "Stimulus" doesn't mean bank bailouts. You should identify with your fellow citizens, instead of the wealthy plutocrats that are sucking the country dry and sending the wealth offshore. Privacy and civil rights aren't negotiable, no matter how many times someone says the word "War". And, for the love of God, everybody needs to remember that Republican ideologues are terrible at governing and always will be.

If that can happen, though, then America can move forward. Americans can look back on this horrible past decade as a cautionary tale, and teach their children the lessons they need to learn so that it never, ever happens again. EVER.

Chait's Comedy Gold

2011-09-06T01:40:00.000-04:00

So, yeah, Jonathan Chait wrote a howler in the New York Times, where he brought the rank rightish apologias of the ~~National Review~~New Republic to the Times. It's a typical Chaitesque piece where he talks about how horrible the "Left" is and how they're all delusional and about how everybody that "mattered" thought that Obama's stimulus was huuuuge.

(Yep. That's right. To Chait, Paul Krugman doesn't matter.)The funniest bit, though, comes later. It isn't the bit where he studiously ignores everything that Bush succeeded in pushing through Congress to focus on Social Security, the one bit where he didn't. It wasn't even the bit where he treated Colin Freakin' Powell as some sort of nonpartisan barometer of opinion, when he was one of Bush's Cabinet members. No, the funniest bit has to be the part where he says "In the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former."

You may ask "When the hell did he do that? He didn't succeed in winning any Republicans over for health care, and every other significant bit of his agenda either didn't pass or was so watered down as to be unrecognizable." And that's just it: he doesn't say. He did mention cap-and-trade and financial reform, but both are examples that liberals are right about this: his "capital banking" was absolutely useless and unnecessary, because it didn't buy him a damned thing when it came to the point when he started trying to actually pass his agenda. Never mind the Republicans; even his own party members treated him like a supplicant, instead of the leader of their party and the damned President of the United States.

Bush was never, ever treated that way by Republicans, even when they disagreed with him. They weren't that dumb. Tthey knew very well that Bush's people would PUNISH them if they fell out of line. DINOs never had to worry about that. Why would they? The only people that Obama ever punished were the very progressives that Chait so thoroughly and utterly despises. So the DINOs stomped all over this "agenda", again and again and again, with progressives getting more and more convinced that Obama was either powerless or a closet Republican. Progressives feel that they've been had. Progressives know that they've been had.

It's funny, yes, but it's also somewhat sad. This isn't the only misrepresentation of progressives' criticism. The whole article is absolutely littered with them. It's a stack of strawmen built so high that satellites may crash into the top layer. Yet I can't help but think that these cartoonish versions of progressives are how Chait actually views us. Everything he writes just reconfirms it, including his submission to the biggest newspaper in America.

I wonder whether it's even his fault. When Washington is so thoroughly, utterly hostile to progressives, when it's a town so thoroughly dominated by the Republicans and their conservative-movement owners, how could he possibly resist it? He probably never even meets progressives. I suspect that, at this point, he just knows us from the stereotypes that he inherits from the Republicans and DINOs around him.

So we get articles like this, where he knocks down strawmen and hopes that nobody notices. It'd be funny...if it weren't so sad.

Happy Labor Day

2011-09-05T20:45:00.004-04:00

With any luck, more people will be able to call themselves laborers by this time next year.

Kristof Asks "Did We Drop the Ball on Unemployment"?

2011-08-28T12:48:00.001-04:00

YES, YOU THUNDERING DOLT, YOU HAVE.

Maybe if you'd been addressing it as often as your fellow columnist Paul Krugman has, instead of talking about almost every other issue under the sun, people would get the severity of the situation. No such luck.

This has been another "simple answer to stupid questions."

(Edit: And, no, admitting you're "an offender" for asking the wrong question at a Twitter thing doesn't cut it. You've been offensive on this issue for a long, long time.)

Stay Safe, East Coasters

2011-08-28T11:07:00.000-04:00

It looks like Irene got downgraded to a tropical storm, but it's still no joke.

Rebels in Gadhafi's Compound

2011-08-23T12:19:00.000-04:00

As always, go check AJ's live feed.

Rebels in Tripoli's Central Square

2011-08-21T23:19:00.000-04:00

From Al Jazeera:

Euphoric Libyan rebels have moved into the centre of the capital, Tripoli, as Muammar Gaddafi's defenders melted away and thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with fighters shooting in the air.

The rebels' surprising and speedy leap forward, after six months of largely deadlocked civil war, was packed into just a few dramatic hours. By nightfall on Sunday, they had advanced more than 32km to Tripoli.

Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said from the Green Square: "There's a party in the Libyan capital tonight. The people are in charge of the city. They've decided the square is now called Martyr's Square, the original name. They're shouting 'we're free' and shooting at a poster of Gaddafi."

Green Square had been the site of night rallies by Gaddafi supporters throughout the uprising.

Earlier, the rebel leadership said on Sunday that Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, was arrested in a tourist village in western Tripoli. There was no word on the whereabouts of Gaddafi himself.

US President Barak Obama said Gaddafi must "acknowledge the reality that he no longer controls Libya. He needs to relinquish power once and for all".

In a statement issued from Martha's Vineyard, where he's vacationing, Obama said: "The future of Libya is now in the hands of the Libyan people." He promised to work in close coordination with the rebels and said the US will "continue to insist that the basic rights of the Libyan people are respected."

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, confirmed Seif al-Islam had been detained and said the ICC would speak to the rebel National Transitional Council about his transfer to the Hague.

Seif al-Islam, his father and Libya's intelligence chief were indicted earlier this year for allegedly ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks on civilians in the early days of the violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi's eldest son, Mohammed, surrendered to rebel forces and spoke to Al Jazeera shortly afterwards.

In the interview, he took an apologetic tone and said it was a lack of wisdom that caused the revolution and crisis in Libya.

"I've never been a government or security official, however I can tell you the absence of wisdom and foresight is what brought us to here today. Our differences could have been solved easily," he said.

As he spoke though, his house was attacked and shot at and the interview ended with the sound of gunfire.

"I'm being attacked right now," he said. "This is gunfire inside my house, they're inside my house. There is no God but Allah - no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

However, the head of the National Transitional Council later told Al Jazeera that Mohammed was not hurt.

"Neither Mohamed Muammar Gaddafi nor any one of his family was harmed," Mustafa Abdel Jalil said. "He will remain in his house, and I guarantee his safety."

There were no confirmed reports about the fate or whereabouts of other members of the Gaddafi family...

...The rebels said they had entered the Green Square near the compound of Gaddafi where his supporters gathered nightly throughout the uprising to rally for their leader of more than 40 years.

Our correspondent said the rebels met little resistance as they moved from the western outskirts into the capital in a dramatic turning of the tides in the six-month-old Libyan civil war.

"Hundreds are on the street, and most of them are armed. Most of these are fighters who came down from the mountains in western areas of Libya. They entered the capital a few hours ago and with the opposition inside the capital, have managed to liberate the city from the government's control," our correspondent said.

"Everyone we have been talking to in Libya say that they want to Gaddafi and his son to pay for their action and for what they accuse them as crimes against humanity.

"People are worried about sleeper cells but cleaning up operations are underway to make sure there are no snipers in the buildings nearby.

"For the people here, Tripoli has fallen and they are in control ... and this is what they have been telling us: 'For years we could not speak, prevented from any sort of freedom whatsoever’.

"People are confident that the government has fallen and they are in control."

Stunning, stunning news.

Google Plus's "Nymwars"

2011-08-19T21:19:00.002-04:00

I'm not on Google Plus, for reasons that should be quickly obvious: I use a pseudonym here, I'm very open about using a pseudonym here, and I have no interest in having my blog suspended or worse because of how Google wants to manage their new social networking thing.

But what I'm reading about these "nymwars" is very alarming, because I'm suspecting more and more that it's going to affect Blogger. If it does, then I'll just change the pseudonym to "Demosthenes Jones" or "Demosthenes Smith" or something of the like. I shouldn't have to, though. Pseudonymity is vital.

Ehrenreich: "On Turning Poverty into an American Crime"

2011-08-18T02:00:00.000-04:00

Barbara Ehrenreich updates Nickled and Dimed for 2011. It's horrifying.

You want to know what America really is? It's stuffing poor people into small apartments like sardines because they can't afford their own space. It's suicide help lines swamped with calls, and suicide rates spiking with those who couldn't be helped. It's people selling raccoon carcasses on the side of the road because it's the only source of food for people in the area. (The guy selling them recommends "marinating them in vinegar and spices") It's people killing squirrels for meat in places where they can't even afford the raccoons.

America is injured workers that can't go on disability because disability insists on an MRI they can't afford. It's people on food stamps only because welfare is now impossible to get, post-Clinton. It's TANF recipients being fingerprinted and interrogated as to the parentage of their children by hostile social workers.

As Ehrenreich said, though, America is mostly about criminalizing the destitute and impoverished, hating and blaming them for their own misery. That hatred motivates the constant suspicions of drug use in low-wage employment. That hatred motivates a legal system that drags ordained ministers out of shelters for the crime of being homeless. That hatred gets homeless activists arrested for feeding "indigents", and pushes places like Phoenix, Arizona to try to use zoning laws to stop churches from serving breakfasts to the desperate.

America is, yes, also about debtor's prisons. It's not called that, of course. But if you can't pay a fine, or if your creditor leans on a judge to get you declared "in contempt of court"? Off you go to jail. If you're a minority, you might not even have to wait until you're in debt, either; your communities have their public funding cut at the same time as law enforcement is redoubled:

In what has become a familiar pattern, the government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt. The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.

One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today, exactly the same number of Americans -- 2.3 million -- reside in prison as in public housing. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents. The safety net, or what remains of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

Worst of all, as Ehrenreich points out, is that many states are making prisoners pay for their own incarceration, shifting the burden of a broken justice system onto its desperate victims.

Meanwhile, America's richest 1% are wealthier and more powerful than they've ever been in the history of the Republic, and thanks to Citizen's United, they're going to make damned sure that the only voice that voters hear is theirs.

That's your America. Unless you damned well DO something about it.

Most American's Can't Afford a $1000 Emergency (Plus Bonus Buffet)

2011-08-15T17:54:00.000-04:00

From CNNMoney:

When the unexpected strikes, most Americans aren't prepared to pay for it.

A majority, or 64%, of Americans don't have enough cash on hand to handle a $1,000 emergency expense, according to a survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, released on Wednesday.

Only 36% said they would tap their rainy day funds for an emergency. The rest of the 2,700 people polled said that they would have to go to other extremes to cover an unexpected expense, such as borrowing money or taking out a cash advance on a credit card.

"It's alarming," said Gail Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the Washington, DC-based non-profit. "For consumers who live paycheck to paycheck -- having spent tomorrow's money -- an unplanned expense can truly put them in financial distress," she noted.

That's the case for Allyson Curtis, 35. "I think about it every day," she said.

Curtis was unemployed for only three months last year, but in that time she accumulated $5,000 in credit card debt that she's now struggling to pay down. In the case of an emergency, Curtis said she would likely postpone other payments and pile on additional debt.

She is already putting off $450 in dental work and a car inspection due to a crack in her windshield, which will cost $300 to replace, she said.
Budgeting for an emergency fund

Many respondents, 17%, said they would borrow money from friends or family. Another 17% said they would neglect other financial obligations -- like a credit card bill or mortgage payment -- in order to free up some funds.

Alternatively, 12% of the respondents said they would have to sell or pawn some assets to come up with $1,000 and 9% said they would need to take out a loan. Another 9% said they would get a cash advance from a credit card, according to the NFCC.

Cunningham finds that particularly troubling. Neglecting other debt obligations -- or worse piling on more debt -- "really exacerbates the problem," she said.

An earlier study by the same organization found that 30% of Americans have zero dollars in non-retirement savings. A separate study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 50% of Americans would struggle to come up with $2,000 in a pinch.

So people are a minor emergency away from financial doom. Good to know.

But, hey, at least the richest people are happy, right? Well, no. Warren Buffett wrote a big ol' piece in the Times talking about how he thinks the current situation is nonsense as well.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent...

...I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Many, yes. The problem is that the ones who aren't decent—like, say, the arch-conservative Koch brothers, the Coors family, and Scaife—are expending a ton of time, effort, and money into supporting a whole system of bullshit "free market" think tanks, institutes, media outlets, and other organizations that exist solely to screw the middle class and apologize for their billionaire backers.

Warren, if you want things to change, stop writing Op-Eds and start underwriting groups that counter the destructive influence of your far-right counterparts. Start making sure that progressives have the same sort of influence and reach that conservatives do. Start ensuring that Grover freakin' Norquist isn't the only voice that matters in Washington.

Talk is cheap. You have loads of money, and this is all ABOUT money. You can afford more. So do something about it.

Super-Committee

2011-08-14T01:50:00.000-04:00

So the Republicans have made their picks, and not surprisingly, they're all nutbar right-wingers:

For the House, it's Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp, and Fred Upton. For the Senate, it's Jon Kyl, Rob Portman, and Pat Toomey.

So how nutty are they? Well, Toomey wants to privatize social security, Henserling called Social Security "a cruel ponzi scheme", Camp wants higher taxes on the poor, and Portman wants to get rid of the Department of Education.

Yep. Jon Kyl is the "not intended to be a factual statement" guy, too.

Meanwhile, Reid's sent in John Kerry, Patty Murray, and Max "DINO" Baucus. All of whom are more than willing to carve up "entitlements" that they have no personal need for or familiarity with.

So, yeah, America's fucked. I just wish it had a President. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Niall Ferguson Blames Global Uprising On....Wait For It...

2011-08-13T17:21:00.000-04:00

...GREEDY POORS! That's right, it's all the fault of those damned poors and their "entitlements".

What all the Indignant have in common is the refusal to address squarely the problem that nearly all Western countries face. That problem is that the welfare systems that evolved in the mid-20th century are unaffordable under the demographic and economic circumstances of the 21st century. The financial crisis has merely exacerbated what was already a severe structural crisis of public finance, boosting deficits while slowing growth.

No, asshat, that's not the problem.

The problem is that a miniscule minority of nouveau-robber-barons control such a gigantic portion of the world's wealth that it's destabilizing the entire system. It's what's screwing up the economy—since you can't have a functional economy without people who actually spend money instead of hoarding it—and it's those screwed-up economies that are responsible for the deficits that you're whinging about.

But, then again, whose interests do you think he's advocating? Money is speech, after all.

Perry for President

2011-08-13T16:12:00.000-04:00

So, that's what's happening. A low-rent Dubya imitator that can't even get abstinence-only education right is going to make a grab for the big-boy chair.

Well, here he is, in all his glory, explaining his "mommy problem":

Watch live video from texastribune on Justin.tv

London's on Fire

2011-08-08T21:18:00.001-04:00

Guardian has the liveblog about the riots here.

Edit: Here's a good quote from MSNBC about why this is happening.

LONDON -- As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool."

Hello? America?

THIS IS WHAT AUSTERITY LOOKS LIKE.

No Such Thing As "Independents"

2011-08-03T14:40:00.001-04:00

I'm no great fan of TNR. I always try to give credit where it's due, though and TNR hosted a very good piece by Ruy Teixeira, worth quoting in full.

The debt ceiling deal has been struck and the score looks to be in the neighborhood of Republicans: a zillion, Democrats: zero. It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a process in which Obama treated GOP default-threatening tactics as legitimate and accepted the GOP framework that cutting debt, not creating jobs, was the country’s central problem. As a result, we have a deal that severely undercuts Democratic policy priorities and cuts government spending just as the economic recovery is showing signs of tanking. Just how, exactly, did it come to this? The most plausible explanation is that Obama and his political advisors are convinced that striking a bipartisan compromise on debt reduction is the way to the hearts of America’s political independents, who famously abandoned the Democrats in 2010.

Following this logic, Obama’s actions—treating the Republicans’ extraordinary threat not as an illegitimate bargaining tactic but as an opportunity—begin to make a measure of sense. Since independents are supposedly fixated on a bipartisan compromise to reduce spending and cut the debt, Obama would use the leverage provided by the Republicans’ threat, in a judo-like fashion, to enlist both parties in a grand bargain to restore long-run fiscal health. As a result, independents would reward Obama for being, in that tired phrase, “the adult in the room” who stood up for their fiscal priorities.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. As Obama has talked endlessly about a “balanced” approach to getting the country’s fiscal house in order, the economy has continued to stagger and that support from independents is nowhere in sight. Pew data show his approval rating among independents down 16 points in the last few months to an abysmal 36 percent. As for Obama’s re-elect numbers, they have also tumbled, with just 31 percent of independents now saying they would vote to re-elect him, compared to 39 percent for a generic Republican.

To understand how very unlikely it is that Obama’s long sought-after deal is going to magically turn around his numbers, we must visit one of the most robust but amazingly underappreciated findings in American political science: independents are not independent. That is, the overwhelming majority of Americans who say there are “independent” lean toward one party or the other. Call them IINOs (Independents In Name Only). IINOs who say they lean toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Republicans. IINOs who say they lean toward the Democrats think and vote just like regular Democrats.

Right now, according to Pew data, IINOs are 68 percent of independents, split 36/32 between Republican-leaners and Democratic–leaners, respectively. That leaves less than a third of independents who might really qualify as independent. This figure, in turn, translates into just 13 to 14 percent of adults, and inevitably a lower percentage of actual voters, since pure independents have notoriously low turnout. In 2008, according to the University of Michigan National Election Study, pure independents were only 7 percent of voters.

Only SEVEN PERCENT. That's what the Dems are obsessing over. Kee-rist.

So how’s the debt deal going to go over with these different flavors of independents? Well, Democratic IINOs and pure independents both are concerned about the job situation over the deficit by a margin of two to one, according to Pew data. In fact, the only part of the “independent” pool that actually thinks the deficit is more important than the job situation are Republican IINOs, who right now give Obama a 15 percent approval rating, the same as regular Republicans. Good luck winning that group over.

But maybe pure independents only say they’re concerned with the economy when their real passion is bipartisan compromises on the debt, and so they’ll ignore the bad jobs situation and turn out in droves for Obama. That’s not likely to happen either. As John Sides has pointed out, voting preferences among pure independents are more influenced, not less, by the state of the economy.

These are the facts, but politicians, and Obama especially, seem to have a hard time grasping them. Perhaps that’s because independents are the Rorschach test of U.S. politics—you see in them what your beliefs and preferences incline you to see. Obama and his team want to see teeming hordes of voters who are above the partisan allure of party, untroubled by the bad economy (or, at least, not planning to vote on that basis), and pining for a Washington where the parties, darn it, just work together. So that’s what they see.

The administration’s chimerical search for the independents of their dreams has not served the country, nor the president, well. Obama has stumbled ever further into a political heart of darkness, hemmed in on all sides by radical GOP views on government and governance. And he can’t expect independents to bail him out.

No, he can't. It's amazing that someone as sharp as Plouffe would think that, but I suspect it might be because Obama did a damned good job of scooping up progressives during the primaries, and didn't yet have to match his rhetoric with action. Now America's got two and a half years of his Administration behind it, and progressives are pissed, as they have every right to be. Plouffe's assuming that he has them on-side, and I don't think he necessarily does, even if you have a crazy like Bachmann on the Republican side.

I'm still a bit baffled by all this. There's no goddamned way that you're going to see a lot of people who are both highly informed and completely without opinion or ideology. That doesn't happen. You might get IINOs, but highly-informed swing voters are only marginally less rare (and mythical) than unicorns. Teixeira's right: low-info voters are going to vote based on the economy, considering how crappy the economy is, and aren't going to give a shit about who's being more "reasonable".

I still believe Obama will win, if only because the Republican candidate is likely to be an absolute disaster that even turns off IINOs. It's still going to be closer than it has any right to be—and they'll still take the wrong lesson from it.

Neither New Taxes Nor Pentagon Cuts

2011-08-02T15:16:00.000-04:00

So says Kos, and I buy it.

So Reid says the super committee must have new revenues.
Reid says the tea party's influence on the process has been "unfair to the American people." "The American people are not impressed by the no new revenue...because the richest of the rich have contributed nothing...the burden [in the deal] is on the middle-class." Says the Bush tax cuts did not help the economy. But says we do need to cut spending, and says the Super Congress will force action, and that the Super Congress must include revenue. "We need a fair approach to this committee." "The only way we can arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people is to have equal sharing." He says revenue must match spending cuts (which I think is an absolute minimum standard). "It has to be equal. There has to be spending cuts...and revenue that matches that."
Boehner and McConnell say it won't. Limbaugh and Norquist won't let them.

So then what? Automatic cuts to discretionary spending and the defense budget.

But the GOP won't fret over those defense cuts. Because all they have to do is pass separate legislation refunding the Pentagon and Senate Dems (either too scared or too compromised) will cave on that and what will Obama do? Veto spending "for the troops"?

Not much to add to that. This arrangement would work if Dems had the stones to follow through on their threats. They don't. They NEVER do. So Republicans need not fear.

It's Over

2011-08-01T12:21:00.001-04:00

Yep, it's over. And by "over", I mean the likelihood of any sort of real American recovery.

Remember, kids: extortion works wonders against Democrats. They fold like a cheap shirt. They might babble about how it makes them stronger in future fights...but it's horseshit and always has been. They said the same thing about John Roberts, for God's sake, and look at what happened: America ended up with a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court where Antonin Scalia calls the shots.

In any case, I'd suggest looking up butler schools. The only people that are going to see prosperity are the wealthiest families. Might as well try to make a living off of them, since it's going to be damned near impossible to make a living doing anything else.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Might Scuttle Deal

2011-08-01T02:41:00.000-04:00

If you don't like the idea of government spending getting cut to the bone, just so that rich people can continue to have the lowest taxes in generations, these are the people you need to contact. They're the House's Congressional Progressive Caucus, and they're saying that they aren't going to accept this gigantic hillock of bullshit lying down.

These are the people you talk to if you want to prevent the Republicans from getting away with threatening to murder an economy to protect the richest people in the world.

"A nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists."

2011-08-01T02:19:00.003-04:00

So says The Times about the new deal. Krugman's more straightforward, saying "the President Surrenders". Which he did...like a scared coward, huddling in a pool of slow-cooling urine.

Well, looks like Al Qaeda had the right of it after all. The United States does negotiation with those threatening its destruction. Not only does it negotiate, it fucking surrenders without a shot.

The Republicans are emboldened, progressives are betrayed, the economy is fucked, and the people are too. What a pathetic, ridiculous spectacle.

Edit: Just for some laffs:

Q Mr. President, thank you. How do these negotiations affect negotiations or talks with Republicans about raising the debt limit? Because it would seem that they have a significant amount of leverage over the White House now, going in. Was there ever any attempt by the White House to include raising the debt limit as a part of this package?

THE PRESIDENT: When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?

Q Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to raise the — we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across the board that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do. I mean, what leverage would you have –

THE PRESIDENT: Look, here’s my expectation — and I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.

Mr. President, sir?

You're a credulous idiot.

Silver Lining on the Small Screen

2011-07-31T15:18:00.000-04:00

He isn't going to get listened to...but it's nice to see Paul Krugman basically take command this morning on This Week and lay out exactly what's going on. When I saw the panel included Will, Norquist, and Stephanopolous, I expected a right-wing pile-on, but Krugman ran that table like a boss. He used to be a bit shy and intimidated by these things, but he kicked ass.

No wonder he got hate mail.

Krugman, Chait, and "Centrist" Idiots

2011-07-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

Well, this is a surprise. First, Chait:

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types...

...The political assumptions here turned out to be badly wrong. The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit. It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits. The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities. Primarily "deficit reduction" is a framing device for their opposition to social spending, as opposed to a genuine belief that revenue and outlays ought to bear some relationship to each other.

Yeah, no shit. The rest of us, especially the "left" that your mag loves taking cheap shots at, have been yelling this from the rooftops for the past decade and a half, and definitely since the Crisis.

Willing to admit that the "shrill" set have a point yet?

Meanwhile, here's Krugman:

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out...

...it also showed awesome political naivete. As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.

What’s really awesome here is the blindness. Anyone reading the newspapers with an open mind had a pretty good idea of what would happen in the debt fight; only Washington insiders managed to fool themselves.

But they’re Very Serious.

Yep. Krugman's been calling this one for ages, and he's being borne out. (As is usually the case on these things.)

The best (worst) part is that I suspect that the "centrists" will remember this right up until the moment when the opportunity once again arises to punch a hippy and get some "centrist" cred.

(Well, no. The best part is that Chait wrote a piece last year that showed that there are absolutely no negative electoral consequences to progressive voting.)

Chronic Child Hunger in America

2011-07-30T21:36:00.000-04:00

Yep! America has now hit the point where there are children in Boston who can't get enough to eat! First world country? Look at this:

Doctors at a major Boston hospital report they are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.

Many families are unable to afford enough healthy food to feed their children, say the Boston Medical Center doctors. The resulting chronic hunger threatens to leave scores of infants and toddlers with lasting learning and developmental problems.

Before the economy soured in 2007, 12 percent of youngsters age 3 and under whose families were randomly surveyed in the hospital’s emergency department were significantly underweight. In 2010, that percentage jumped to 18 percent, and the tide does not appear to be abating, said Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at BMC.

“Food is costing more, and dollars don’t stretch as far,’’ Sandel said. “It’s hard to maintain a diet that is healthy.’’

The emergency room survey found a similarly striking increase in the percentage of families with children who reported they did not have enough food each month, from 18 percent in 2007 to 28 percent in 2010.

Pediatricians at hospitals in four other cities - Baltimore; Little Rock, Ark.; Minneapolis; and Philadelphia - also reported increases in the ranks of malnourished, hungry youngsters in their emergency rooms since 2008. But Boston’s increases were more dramatic, said Sandel, a lead investigator with Children’s HealthWatch, a network of researchers who track children’s health. Researchers said higher housing and heating costs in Massachusetts probably exacerbated the state’s surge.

BMC has also seen a 58 percent increase, from 24 in 2005 to 38 in 2010, in the number of severely underweight babies under the age of 1 who were referred by family physicians to its Grow Clinic, where doctors provide intensive nutritional, medical, and other services to boost babies’ growth. Such malnourishment is similar to what is more typically seen in developing countries, Sandel said.

Among the children treated at the clinic last year was Jordan Turner-Goode, who at age 1 weighed just 19 pounds, while the average child that age is more than 24 pounds.

That's right! A 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies! BABIES!

Meanwhile, at this very moment, someone on Wall St. is buying a new iPad for his kids. Not that the kids really need it. They just don't want the kids to look bad when they go back to their private school in the fall.

Hey, gotta spend that last big bonus check on something. They've already bought Washington—so why not splurge on some Appleware?

Dean Baker Endorses Ron Paul's "Surprising Lucid Solution" for Debt Crisis

2011-07-28T02:50:00.001-04:00

I'll have to admit that the whole thing is bizarrely elegant. Here's Baker.

Representative Ron Paul has hit upon a remarkably creative way to deal with the impasse over the debt ceiling: have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it now holds. While at first blush this idea may seem crazy, on more careful thought it is actually a very reasonable way to deal with the crisis. Furthermore, it provides a way to have lasting savings to the budget.

The basic story is that the Fed has bought roughly $1.6 trillion in government bonds through its various quantitative easing programs over the last two and a half years. This money is part of the $14.3 trillion debt that is subject to the debt ceiling. However, the Fed is an agency of the government. Its assets are in fact assets of the government. Each year, the Fed refunds the interest earned on its assets in excess of the money needed to cover its operating expenses. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. In this sense, the bonds held by the Fed are literally money that the government owes to itself.

Unlike the debt held by Social Security, the debt held by the Fed is not tied to any specific obligations. The bonds held by the Fed are assets of the Fed. It has no obligations that it must use these assets to meet. There is no one who loses their retirement income if the Fed doesn’t have its bonds. In fact, there is no direct loss of income to anyone associated with the Fed’s destruction of its bonds. This means that if Congress told the Fed to burn the bonds, it would in effect just be destroying a liability that the government had to itself, but it would still reduce the debt subject to the debt ceiling by $1.6 trillion. This would buy the country considerable breathing room before the debt ceiling had to be raised again. President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership could have close to two years to talk about potential spending cuts or tax increases. Maybe they could even talk a little about jobs.

In addition, there’s a second reason why Representative Paul’s plan is such a good idea. As it stands now, the Fed plans to sell off its bond holdings over the next few years. This means that the interest paid on these bonds would go to banks, corporations, pension funds, and individual investors who purchase them from the Fed. In this case, the interest payments would be a burden to the Treasury since the Fed would no longer be collecting (and refunding) the interest...

...In short, Representative Paul has produced a very creative plan that has two enormously helpful outcomes. The first one is that the destruction of the Fed’s $1.6 trillion in bond holdings immediately gives us plenty of borrowing capacity under the current debt ceiling. The second benefit is that it will substantially reduce the government’s interest burden over the coming decades. This is a proposal that deserves serious consideration, even from people who may not like its source.

He's not wrong. Neither of them are wrong. It makes perfect sense and I can't fault the reasoning. Sure, the Fed would take a bit of a bath on this. So what? They're still the best equipped organization in America to do so. It wipes out a lot of debt in one go, and it means that there won't be the Mega Catfood Commission wiping out old people's Medicare and Social Security, at least not anytime soon.

In fact, it's such a logical solution that I'm really, really wondering why the hell nobody else has advocated it.

Edit: Noah Smith thinks that it could lead to "hyperinflation", as it would signify the end of Fed independence. Maybe. But I'm a bit skeptical about that. Inflation, yes, but "hyperinflation"?

Norway Attacker's "Manifesto Against Muslims"

2011-07-24T11:28:00.001-04:00

From Huffpo. (The Canadian one this time; the piece was in the Canadian Press. You can find it by going through the Oslo page on Huffpo.)

The man blamed for attacks on Norway's government headquarters and a youth retreat that left at least 93 dead said he was motivated by a desire to bring about a revolution in Norwegian society, his lawyer said Sunday.

A manifesto published online — which police are poring over and said was posted the day of the attack — ranted against Muslim immigration to Europe and vowed revenge on "indigenous Europeans," whom he accused of betraying their heritage. It added that they would be punished for their "treasonous acts."

Police have not confirmed that their 32-year-old Norwegian suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, wrote the document, but his lawyer referred to it and said Breivik had been working on it for years.

The treatise detailed plans to acquire firearms and explosives, and even appeared to describe a test explosion: "BOOM! The detonation was successful!!!" It ends with a note dated 12:51 p.m. on July 22: "I believe this will be my last entry."

Everybody and his dog was presuming that this was an Islamist thing. Then, when that was ruled out, everybody was presuming that this was just a random crazy. It wasn't that, either. The man is responsible for his own actions, but we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: he's motivated by the same sort of reactionary xenophobic fervor that so much of the American right is.

Here's some elaboration from the Statesman:

A 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, included a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and the author claimed to be part of a small group that intends to "seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda."

He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than 1 million "Marxists/multiculturalists" and added: "The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come."

The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former U.S. government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Breivik's work.

The manifesto, titled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence," claims to explain "what your government, the academia and the media are hiding from you" and warns against "appeasement and anti-European thinking."

Breivik also was thought to have posted a video Friday calling for Christian conservatives in Europe to rise up violently as a modern-day version of the Crusades-era Knights Templar to save Europe from Islamic totalitarianism. In its closing moments, the video depicts Breivik in a military uniform, holding assault weapons.

What bothers me—other than the fact that ninety innocent people are dead, mind—is that I doubt the wingnuts will stop to reconsider. They'll probably just point to the guy having played that "Modern Warfare" shooting game and say that this is all video games' fault.

I do hope that everybody else remembers, though. I hope that people remember that the xenophobic hate infesting places like the Murdoch Press and the right-wing blogs can foment violence just as easily as theocratic Islam. I hope that people are at least skeptical when engaging those sources in the future.

Freedom of expression is the most important freedom of them all—but the consequences of expression are not limited to expression in Arabic.

Edit: Oh, and he had ties to the good ol' English Defence League.

Fox News: Big Phone Hackers?

2011-07-19T21:54:00.000-04:00

Big "allegedly" there, of course, but just look at what "The Anomaly" wrote on DailyKos. It's a story about Dan Cooper, a former Fox executive who let out a bunch of confidential information about Fox News' head honcho, Roger Ailes. He did it off the record, but Ailes found out anyway.

Why?

Cooper says that Ailes discovered he was the source by gaining access to his phone records through Fox's “brain room”.
Cooper claims that his talent agent, Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a client--or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner and gather dust. Cooper continued: “I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn’t tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock’s telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation’s New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.”
In a Rolling Stone piece, Tim Dickenson corroborates Cooper's account of a “black-ops” room deep within Fox HQ:
Befitting his siege mentality, Ailes also housed his newsroom in a bunker. Reporters and producers at Fox News work in a vast, windowless expanse below street level, a gloomy space lined with video-editing suites along one wall and an endless cube farm along the other. In a separate facility on the same subterranean floor, Ailes created an in-house research unit – known at Fox News as the “brain room” – that requires special security clearance to gain access. “The brain room is where Willie Horton comes from,” says Cooper, who helped design its specs. “It’s where the evil resides.”

If that sounds paranoid, consider the man Ailes brought in to run the brain room: Scott Ehrlich, a top lieutenant from his political-consulting firm. Ehrlich – referred to by some as “Baby Rush” – had taken over the lead on Big Tobacco’s campaign to crush health care reform when Ailes signed on with CNBC. According to documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Ehrlich gravitated to the dark side: In a strategy labeled “Underground Attack,” he advised the tobacco giants to “hit hard” at key lawmakers “through their soft underbelly” by quietly influencing local media – a tactic that would help the firms “stay under the radar of the national news media.”

I don't know if this will get any traction. This isn't the Guardian, it's Kos. But this "bunker" is definitely worth investigating. It may well be that News Corps' tactics were only a UK thing...

...but I sure as hell wouldn't bet money on it.

So Warren Won't Be Leading the Consumer Protection Agency

2011-07-17T02:02:00.001-04:00

So sez the Post, quoting a source in the White House.

Well, of course she won't be. She might be effective. And Lord knows we can't have that. The little people are cattle. You don't protect them. What are you, some sort of commie?

Dow Jones CEO Bails Thanks to Murdoch Hacking Scandal

2011-07-16T13:05:00.000-04:00

Well, I wasn't expecting this. Sure, it seems like everybody in the UK is resigning in disgrace in light of the hacking scandal, but I'd expected that it would stay on that side of the Atlantic.

Apparently not.

Dow Jones & Co. Chief Executive Les Hinton resigned late Friday, as the top executive at News Corp.'s financial publishing unit sought to contain the damage from the company's British tabloid scandal, which began while he oversaw the company's U.K. newspaper operations.

Mr. Hinton said that he was "ignorant of what apparently happened" at the company's tabloid newspapers earlier in the decade. He characterized his lack of knowledge as "irrelevant" and said it was "proper" for him to step down.

Mr. Hinton's announcement came hours after Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive of News International, News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper unit, resigned. She acknowledged the reputation of the company was "at risk."

The resignations were part of an aggressive new damage-control campaign by the media company, which also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

It's not enough. It's not remotely close to enough. Murdoch and his underlings knew damned well what was going on. They're under investigation for hacking 9-11 victims, for God's sake. This isn't the sort of thing that gets blown off with a full-page apology in a newspaper and a few strategic resignations. This is serious. The truth must out.

South Sudan Gains Their Freedom and Independence

2011-07-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

I know I've been a bit negative here over the last while. There's good reason for that.But South Sudan finally getting their independence? After all this time, all the bloodshed, all the tears, and all the trials? There's nothing bad to say about that.

The country is going to need investment, aid, and support, and it is going to face immense trials. That doesn't matter. It was necessary, it was a long time coming, and it'll help things in the long run.

It's a glorious day.

Kevin Drum Tears a Strip

2011-07-09T03:18:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum is pissed. After the latest dismal job report—followed by the latest Krugman skewering—he has clearly had enough.

We are ruled by charlatans and cowards. Our economy is in the tank, we know what to do about it, and we're just not going to do it. The charlatans prefer instead to stand by and let people suffer because that's politically useful, while the cowards let them get away with it because it's politically risky to fight back. Ugh indeed.

The truly sad thing is that it's more politically risky not to fight back. David Plouffe aside, unemployment is going to have a massive effect on people's voting habits. They aren't going to give a tinker's damn about deficits or debts if the employment situation doesn't improve.

Hell, the only reason they care about either debts or deficits at all now is because a large part of the public has been convinced that cutting the deficit will help the job situation. It won't. Even the terrible economists grant that it won't. It still doesn't matter. If people are still lacking jobs, they'll "toss the bums out" no matter how solvent the government is. The politically wise move is not to give in.

Good luck convincing Washington Dems of that, though. They'll keep on following that deficit drumbeat right off the cliff, with Obama at their head. Some nutter like Bachmann will get the reins. Then the fun will TRULY begin.

Mark Fiore Blows One

2011-06-30T14:58:00.001-04:00

So, uh, Mark? I know you're probably proud of that little cartoon you made—though I hope no kiddies see it, since that's apparently an issue—but you ARE aware that Kagan and Sotomayor and two other justices signed on with Scalia's opinion, right?

If you're going to go after Scalia for shitty decisions, you have loads of better choices than the one that crossed party and ideological lines.

Edit: Oh, and a columbine reference? REALLY? Mark Halperin just called, and he said "dick move, bro."

Mark Halperin Called the President of the United States "A Dick"

2011-06-30T14:30:00.002-04:00

Don't believe me? Here's the little toad himself.

This is the state of America in 2011, folks. This is the state of the world.
He even joked about it. He said "do we have a seven second delay?" He thought about this. This wasn't a stupid outburst, this was PLANNED.

Mark Halperin, you just outed yourself as a fucking prick. Good job, asshat. I hope this suspension you got is permanent.

Edit: And while Greg Sargent is right that the problem is less the use of the word "dick" and more why he used the word "dick", it's part-and-parcel with a press corps that carries Republicans' water and treats Democrats with nothing but contempt. It's occasionally amiable contempt, sure, like they had for the Pelosi House and for the Clinton White House. But there's rarely any respect there, and never the sort of pants-wetting fear that they have of the Republicans and their various creatures.

I don't care that he used swears. He can call people dicks all day long. He's an asshat, they do that. What earned the suspension is the CONTEMPT.

Re-Edit: And here's David Axelrod earning the contempt, by saying all these nice things about a man who called his boss a dick.

David, he called your boss a dick. You're allowed to be mean to him. You're allowed to withhold your forgiveness, at least for a time. You're allowed to not act like his friend, because he is most assuredly NOT yours.

For once in your administration's life, treat the gutter hacks the way they deserve to be treated.

Jonathan Chait Carrying Republicans' Water??

2011-06-29T20:42:00.000-04:00

Who'd have thunk it?

Keep in mind that the Chait-Lieberman-Coburn proposal would not only raise the age of Medicare, and not only force vulnerable seniors into a co-payment at the very point when Social Security is under assult, but would inevitably serve as starting point for the Republicans to negotiate away from. They would just pocket the advantage and scream for more, as they ALWAYS do.

Then again, should we expect anything else from someone who responded to an Evan Bayh tantrum by agreeing that "I hate a lot of left bloggers too?" One who responded to Jonah Goldberg's ludicrous whinging by pointing out all the times that he attacked (supposed) fellow progressives, so many that he (in his own words) "stopped copying links because my wrist got tired?"

(And then there's this destructive babble.)

You'd think he'd know better about trying to appease or support Republicans, or Republicans-lite like Lieberman. It doesn't matter how much he says that he hates "lefties", he's still going to get lumped in with them and attacked by the wingnuts he's trying so desperately to ingratiate himself with. It will NEVER be enough. But, hell, he'll keep on trying.

How could he not? He's with TNR. That's what they do.

Kos Sez It'll Be Bachmann

2011-06-27T15:45:00.000-04:00

Kos did a whole thing about "Why Michele Bachmann will be the GOP nominee"

Michele Bachmann will be the GOP nominee.

Yeah, yeah—this could be wishful thinking. Bachmann would gift Obama a second term and would lead to another Democratic wave election in the House. And yeah, this assumes that Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin don't get into the race. But this is the age of Christine O'Donnell and Ken Buck. Republican primary voters don't give a damn about electability, but about casting a vote for the purest candidate.

Currently, there are three real candidates in the race—Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich is history, Rick Santorum is yesterday's news, Ron Paul is a niche product, John Hunstman has six supporters, and Herman Cain exists only to allow Republicans to say, "Some of my best friends are black!"

Of the three credible candidates, Bachmann easily wins the purity test. Romney has been on the other side of pretty much every issue of current importance to Republicans, while Pawlenty supported the individual mandate. They're toast.

But it's not just policy substance. The early GOP nomination calendar clearly favors Bachmann...

Kos then goes on to talk about the various early states and how they favor Bachmann. No idea if this will actually pan out, but it's plausible enough.

I'm very, very skeptical about Kos' declaration that this will be a gimme for Obama, though. Yes, Obama's clearly a more serious, sane candidate and certainly preferable to someone like Bachmann. But as I mentioned with the LulzSec thing, America's going through some very strange times right now. The whole reason why the GOP is acting this way is because there are a lot of rank-and-file Americans that are very angry with what's going on in their country—but whose ideology is preventing them from accepting the truth about exactly why their lives are so fucked up. It's not going away. It's only getting worse.

That anger, and that mistake, could spread all over the place. It was already responsible for the ridiculous GOP House takeover in 2010. It hasn't peaked. So why would Obama and his party be the beneficiaries? What if Bachmann strikes a chord?

Lulzsec and the Internet of Old

2011-06-17T14:55:00.002-04:00

The hacker group Lulzsec, the ones that took down Sony, Nintendo, EVE Online, CIA.gov and the Senate's website, have just revealed what they're all about.

Dear Internets,

This is Lulz Security, better known as those evil bastards from twitter. We just hit 1000 tweets, and as such we thought it best to have a little chit-chat with our friends (and foes).

For the past month and a bit, we've been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S. government, Sony some more, online gaming servers (by request of callers, not by our own choice), Sony again, and of course our good friend Sony.

While we've gained many, many supporters, we do have a mass of enemies, albeit mainly gamers. The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that we're going to bring down more Internet laws by continuing our public shenanigans, and that our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you. But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing...

Do you think every hacker announces everything they've hacked? We certainly haven't, and we're damn sure others are playing the silent game. Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn't silently sitting inside all of these right now, sniping out individual people, or perhaps selling them off? You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value.

This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn't released something publicly. We're sitting on 200,000 Brink users right now that we never gave out. It might make you feel safe knowing we told you, so that Brink users may change their passwords. What if we hadn't told you? No one would be aware of this theft, and we'd have a fresh 200,000 peons to abuse, completely unaware of a breach.

Yes, yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011. This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining. Watching someone's Facebook picture turn into a penis and seeing their sister's shocked response is priceless. Receiving angry emails from the man you just sent 10 dildos to because he can't secure his Amazon password is priceless. You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it.

Most of you reading this love the idea of wrecking someone else's online experience anonymously. It's appealing and unique, there are no two account hijackings that are the same, no two suddenly enraged girlfriends with the same expression when you admit to killing prostitutes from her boyfriend's recently stolen MSN account, and there's certainly no limit to the lulz lizardry that we all partake in on some level.

And that's all there is to it, that's what appeals to our Internet generation. We're attracted to fast-changing scenarios, we can't stand repetitiveness, and we want our shot of entertainment or we just go and browse something else, like an unimpressed zombie. Nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan, anyway...

Nobody is truly causing the Internet to slip one way or the other, it's an inevitable outcome for us humans. We find, we nom nom nom, we move onto something else that's yummier. We've been entertaining you 1000 times with 140 characters or less, and we'll continue creating things that are exciting and new until we're brought to justice, which we might well be. But you know, we just don't give a living fuck at this point - you'll forget about us in 3 months' time when there's a new scandal to gawk at, or a new shiny thing to click on via your 2D light-filled rectangle. People who can make things work better within this rectangle have power over others; the whitehats who charge $10,000 for something we could teach you how to do over the course of a weekend, providing you aren't mentally disabled.

This is the Internet, where we screw each other over for a jolt of satisfaction. There are peons and lulz lizards; trolls and victims. There's losers that post shit they think matters, and other losers telling them their shit does not matter. In this situation, we are both of these parties, because we're fully aware that every single person that reached this final sentence just wasted a few moments of their time.

Thank you, bitches.

Lulz Security

So they're basically Ledger's Joker, attempting to "introduce a little anarchy" as an "agent of chaos".They're highlighting just how insecure people really are online; how their information is being bought, sold, traded and used without their knowledge. They're also getting a bunch of cheap laffs in the process.

But, honestly, what they really seem to be doing is bringing the OLD INTERNET back. The one you warned your kids about and protected them from. The one where you'd be nuts to give personal information online. The one where you needed to keep your identity under wraps. Where you only did online shopping if you were absolutely confident in it. Where you had to be aware that there were Bad People out there who would mess with you for the sheer joy of it.

That Internet never really went away. It was just carefully obscured. You still aren't really safe. You still have to be careful with your credit card info. You still have to supervise your kids' activities online. You should still keep personal things off the Internet unless its necessary. You should still trust Zuckerberg's whole operation about as far as you can throw it. You should still consider using pseudonyms unless using your real name is necessary.

I don't condone this. It isn't even close to ethical. Like the Joker, though, I'm not convinced that they care. If this shows people that they need to be a lot more careful online, it might end up doing some good.

The American Worker's Depression

2011-06-15T12:33:00.001-04:00

Here's a chart from Talking Points Memo. It shows the American worker's share of national income.

The rebound in workers' income share after the early 2000s recession simply never materialized. As a result, this figure is now at by far its lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of it in 1947.

There isn't much to add, is there? This is probably why Obama Admin people think that there's a recovery while regular joes think that America's going into a depression. For them, it has.

Krugman and the Rentiers

2011-06-11T02:44:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, it's just better to quote.

The latest economic data have dashed any hope of a quick end to America’s job drought, which has already gone on so long that the average unemployed American has been out of work for almost 40 weeks. Yet there is no political will to do anything about the situation. Far from being ready to spend more on job creation, both parties agree that it’s time to slash spending — destroying jobs in the process — with the only difference being one of degree.

Nor is the Federal Reserve riding to the rescue. On Tuesday, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, acknowledged the grimness of the economic picture but indicated that he will do nothing about it.

And debt relief for homeowners — which could have done a lot to promote overall economic recovery — has simply dropped off the agenda. The existing program for mortgage relief has been a bust, spending only a tiny fraction of the funds allocated, but there seems to be no interest in revamping and restarting the effort.

The situation is similar in Europe, but arguably even worse. In particular, the European Central Bank’s hard-money, anti-debt-relief rhetoric makes Mr. Bernanke sound like William Jennings Bryan.

What lies behind this trans-Atlantic policy paralysis? I’m increasingly convinced that it’s a response to interest-group pressure. Consciously or not, policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers — those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else’s expense.

Of course, that’s not the way what I call the Pain Caucus makes its case. Instead, the argument against helping the unemployed is framed in terms of economic risks: Do anything to create jobs and interest rates will soar, runaway inflation will break out, and so on. But these risks keep not materializing. Interest rates remain near historic lows, while inflation outside the price of oil — which is determined by world markets and events, not U.S. policy — remains low.

And against these hypothetical risks one must set the reality of an economy that remains deeply depressed, at great cost both to today’s workers and to our nation’s future. After all, how can we expect to prosper two decades from now when millions of young graduates are, in effect, being denied the chance to get started on their careers?

Ask for a coherent theory behind the abandonment of the unemployed and you won’t get an answer. Instead, members of the Pain Caucus seem to be making it up as they go along, inventing ever-changing rationales for their never-changing policy prescriptions.

While the ostensible reasons for inflicting pain keep changing, however, the policy prescriptions of the Pain Caucus all have one thing in common: They protect the interests of creditors, no matter the cost. Deficit spending could put the unemployed to work — but it might hurt the interests of existing bondholders. More aggressive action by the Fed could help boost us out of this slump — in fact, even Republican economists have argued that a bit of inflation might be exactly what the doctor ordered — but deflation, not inflation, serves the interests of creditors. And, of course, there’s fierce opposition to anything smacking of debt relief.

Who are these creditors I’m talking about? Not hard-working, thrifty small business owners and workers, although it serves the interests of the big players to pretend that it’s all about protecting little guys who play by the rules. The reality is that both small businesses and workers are hurt far more by the weak economy than they would be by, say, modest inflation that helps promote recovery.

No, the only real beneficiaries of Pain Caucus policies (aside from the Chinese government) are the rentiers: bankers and wealthy individuals with lots of bonds in their portfolios.

And that explains why creditor interests bulk so large in policy; not only is this the class that makes big campaign contributions, it’s the class that has personal access to policy makers — many of whom go to work for these people when they exit government through the revolving door. The process of influence doesn’t have to involve raw corruption (although that happens, too). All it requires is the tendency to assume that what’s good for the people you hang out with, the people who seem so impressive in meetings — hey, they’re rich, they’re smart, and they have great tailors — must be good for the economy as a whole.

But the reality is just the opposite: creditor-friendly policies are crippling the economy. This is a negative-sum game, in which the attempt to protect the rentiers from any losses is inflicting much larger losses on everyone else. And the only way to get a real recovery is to stop playing that game.

All I can add to this at the moment is to remind people that when Republicans and their lot talk about "job creators" and "spurring investment" and the like, they're really talking about policies that benefit these Rentiers. The problem, as Krugman exhaustively showed, is that these people DON'T necessarily create jobs. They can plow money into investments that create jobs, yes, but they can also plow it into arcane financial instruments, real estate bubbles, and (now) food and commodities. That doesn't benefit anybody except them; and to the extent that it hurts the economy, it doesn't even benefit them, not really.

The other stunning thing about this article is that it shows just how radicalized basically-moderate economists like Prof. Krugman have become. He's not the only example of a scientist driven to radicalism in the face of the state's capture by its most short-sighted and least competent members—climatologists are becoming more radical by the day as well—but it's rather shocking when you compare it to his old "dismal science" articles. He's all but admitting that the old lines about economic self interest are falling apart in the face of classism and cronyism.

That doesn't invalidate him. Far from it. A bit of radicalism is the only sane response in these mad times. It shows, instead, just how far his compatriots have fallen. If they're going along with these apocalyptically stupid and destructive policies, what does it say about them

Edit: He also points to the solution: if you want to get sorted out, follow Iceland's lead and default, instead of following Ireland's lead of austerity.

By the 1%

2011-06-07T14:52:00.000-04:00

Good piece by Joe Stiglitz about income inequality in last month's Vanity Fair . Hadn't highlighted it then, but would like to do so now.

Its last paragraph makes a point worth repeating:

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Well put. One of the problems with America's (and the world's) growing inequality is that the elite forget that their fate is bound up in the fate of everybody else. To be altruistic isn't solely self-interest, as some economists seem to pretend, but you'd have to be pretending really hard not to realize that a certain level of community-consciousness is a smart move for even the wealthiest American.

Then again, considering their money appears to mostly go towards a mixture of lobbying and bubble-inflation, perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.

The Republicans Want to Cause a Bond Panic....

2011-06-01T12:57:00.002-04:00

...just so that they can gut what remains of America's social safety net, and by extension its middle class.

And, as digby points out, along with Stan Collander, the Dems appear to be perfectly willing to go along with it.

He says that just because the Republicans get their wish for a failure of a clean vote, it does not necessarily follow that they would vote for a "dirty" one either. He feels this vote is entirely a kabuki dance that's necessary (because of the polls saying people don't want to raise the debt ceiling) for the Republicans to record a "no" vote no matter what's in it.

So basically, the Democrats are sacrificing their position so that Republicans can be comfortable voting to raise the ceiling with spending cuts in a couple of months. If Collander is right, the Democrats are even stupider than usual. It's a twisted good cop/bad cop scene where the Republican base applauds its leaders for being tough guys and the Democratic base hand theirs a hankie and commiserates with their powerlessness. (And then the leadership goes out and has a cup of coffee and a donut, or in more common parlance -- Tipnronnie have a drink together.)

Digby has a point. That seems fits both bases quite nicely. The Republican base gets to celebrate a Republican victory, whereas the Democratic base gets to mourn one.

Collander does allude to an end game that seems to be making its way into the beltway ether:
Many Members publicly insist that a big “no” vote on a clean bill will have little to no effect on financial markets. But here’s another dirty little secret: There is a growing suspicion that, like what happened the day after the House rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program in September 2008 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by almost 7 percent, such a vote could quickly change market perceptions of the situation and have a substantial negative effect on interest rates and equity prices.

It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.

So that's where it stands. After all the bullshit about building confidence by cutting spending, we now have a Republican party that's preparing to DEMOLISH confidence by cutting spending. Notice the common theme, there? It isn't about building a strong economy. It's about driving taxes to zero for their ultra-monied friends and clientele, while simultaneously driving wages to rock-bottom by making people so desperate that they'll accept absolutely anything.

Digby again:

I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.

But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)

The Democrats can turn this clean vote against the Republicans if they want to. The polls may say that the people don't want the debt ceiling raised, but they also don't want the government shut down, Medicare to get privatized and the economy to get worse. If the Democrats have even a modicum of guts they'll relentlessly hammer this vote home for the next two months as a sign of the Republicans' willingness to do anything to destroy Medicare, even destroy the economy. There are several months of negotiations ahead and they could tie this albatross around their necks right along with the dead Ryan plan if they want to. The real question is whether they want to.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I disagree with digby that this is implausible. It's extraordinarily plausible, and will pay off big for the Republicans and their buddies. Going along with this program of tax cuts WILL mean that the Democrats will get punished. The Republicans will get away with selling the cuts by lying about their economic impact and because they'll retain the support of their deluded base. The Dems will watch as their base simply doesn't bother to vote. The "swing" voters won't help the Dems, either; they'll go to whichever party can promise that they won't be homeless in two years, and the Republicans will be more than happy to swoop in with supply-side horseshit about how this engineered panic will ultimately help "job creators".

It's a lie, of course. the whole POINT of this thing is to demolish the middle class and loot the wreckage left behind for every nickel. The middle-class will be poor, the poor will be destitute, and America's income distribution will look like something out of the third world. But, hey, that's what Republicans are ABOUT, now, isn't it?

Digby's right in saying that the Dems could turn this around. The Republicans are taking it on the chin for this anti-Medicare bullshit of theirs. The Dems could absolutely savage the Republicans for using this sort of game to threaten America's economy. They probably won't do it, though. If they had THAT sort of sense, they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked last year after a recession which should have discredited the Republicans once and for all.

Edit: And, yes, the Republicans are probably gunning for a bond panic. They've been hoping for one for years, because rising interest rates would give them the cover they need to insist that America's turning into Zimbabwe. When the current situation just isn't supporting your story, why not create the situation yourself?

Britain Discovers David Brooks and Vice Versa

2011-05-26T12:18:00.001-04:00

At least one Briton doesn't appear to be a fan. Daniel Knowles has what appears to be a very entertaining time ripping up Brooks' babbling paen.

It honestly couldn't be difficult no matter where you are. "Britain is working"? Really, David? The country is living proof that the sort of austerity you've advocated is absolute rubbish (as the Brits would say), and it's been convulsed by protests and, yes, out and out riots.

But Daniel, well, he knows better:

Let’s take a few choice bits, starting with the opening section. Apparently, from 1900 to 1920:

Britain faced an enormous task: To move from an aristocratic political economy to a democratic, industrial one. This transition was made gradually, without convulsion, with both parties playing a role.

Gradually? Without convulsion? I don’t know if you’re aware of this David, but most British historians believe that the First World War was pretty convulsive. And definitely not very gradual. He seems to think that Britain cast off her aristocratic rulers by a process of “constructive competition.” In fact, what happened was that we went to war, conscripted millions of young men and sent them to France to be machine-gunned. Simultaneously, our government was taken over by a clique, led by Lloyd George, which ruled autocratically from a garden shed in No 10 Downing Street. Meanwhile, a whole part of the country – Ireland – descended into civil war. Somehow, I don’t see that as a “gradual” transformation.

I'd noticed that too. What on earth would possess Brooks to opine that British history is "peaceful"?

And then there's this:

But perhaps he has a better grasp of our politics? Well, no. Take this:

Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.

Prep school? I’m afraid I think Mr Brooks is referring to public school (Eton, I expect) though Boris Johnson does, of course, share a primary school with Ed Miliband. That aside, the statement is still ludicrous – is being ruled by a clique of Oxford PPEist ex-public-school boys really what you would call a functioning political culture? And if so, how does that chime with the claim that we’re “democratic”?

It is obvious why this man is popular in Westminster – he is telling us how perfect we all are. But this self-indulgent ego-boosting nonsense is just what we need to get away from. While our politicos go around slapping themselves on the backs about how utterly indescribably and uniquely brilliant they all are, the British public hates them more than ever. In fact, it’s all a little bit like that place Mr Brooks knows so much better – the United States!

This really is outrageous. So the reason why the British system is supposed to work is because the country is ruled by an incestuous mob of upper-class twits? I can see how that would appeal to Brooks, considering his day job as an apologist for America's own incestuous mob of upper-class twits. But the fact that America's twits aren't all singing from the same hymnbook isn't something to moan about, especially considering how sad and useless those hymns have been.

(How sad and useless? Just ask Paul Ryan.)

Daniel ably points out that it just means that the public hates the lot of them. That's one of the reasons for that temporary Cleggsplosion in the last election, though that's long since dead now that Clegg decided to prop up Cameron for reasons which still escape me. It's the reason why the Scottish Nationalists kicked ass in the last election. Hell, it's not even just an British thing: anti-European parties are getting votes and seats all over Europe thanks to the ECB's obsession with austerity at the expense of all else. They're at the point where the Euro itself may be endangered, and Brooks thinks that this WORKS?

Well, no. He probably doesn't. He did mention those past local elections. He focused on Cameron's numbers and steadfastly ignored the Scottish embarrassment and the way that the Lib Dems were punished for propping up Cameron. He ignores what that suggests: that a majority of Britons think that he's a disaster, barring his True Believers, and that those with another option (like, say, the Scots) are picking it. And he's ignoring the riots that have convulsed Britain, that show that those who don't like Cameron REALLY don't like Cameron, just as people REALLY didn't like Thatcher.

No, it's just Brooks. He is, once again, ignoring anything and anybody that might contradict his banal little stories. He's playing his little game of pretending that if only everybody got along and agreed with David Brooks, things would be so much better. They wouldn't—but don't try telling HIM that.

Edit: And here's Greenwald!

It has long been the supreme fantasy of establishment guardians in general, and David Brooks in particular, that American politics would be dominated by an incestuous, culturally homogeneous, superior elite "who live in [Washington] and who have often known each other since prep school." And while these establishment guardians love to endlessly masquerade as spokespeople for the Ordinary American, what they most loathe is the interference by the dirty rabble in what should be their exclusive, harmonious club of political stewardship, where conflicts are amicably resolved by ladies and gentlemen of the highest breeding without any messy public conflict.

Very elegant way of expressing it. It's funny how many Americans seem to have this really deep envy of Britain's class system. Sure, they lionize the founders and all, and they don't want a King, exactly...but wouldn't it be nice if the oiks just learned their place?

The WSJ's Convenient Whistleblower Protection

2011-05-06T10:26:00.000-04:00

Boingboing has a good piece today about the Wall Street Journal's somewhat useless "whistleblower" site, Safehouse. By all accounts, it's not very good. It's actually insecure as hell. Even worse, though, it doesn't really protect you from much. Here's the EULA:

"Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement… we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others."

Law enforcement is bad enough; much of this whistleblower stuff is about authority. But the real kick to the teeth is the other part. Releasing information "to a requesting third party...to safeguard the interests of others?" The interests of who, exactly?

Think about it a little, though, and it becomes clear. This is a selective whistleblower protection scheme. If you're whistleblowing against someone that the WSJ and its owners like, then you'll get all the protection you could ever ask for. Say something about how Obama's a jerk, or upload some misleading bilge about how the Demmycrats are sizing you up for the Death Panels, or babble some horseshit about birth certificates, and not only will you get protection and anonymity, you'll get the credibility that comes with being a whistleblower for the Journal.

Say anything mean about the Republicans, the Tea Partiers, or any big corp that the WSJ has any relationship with whatsoever, and they'll hang our ass out to dry so fast it'll make your head spin. They'll probably just sit on it long enough to figure out what kind of nonsense they need to grunt out in order to discredit you. Hell, they'll probably "whistleblow" on you for that time you were addicted to Fresh kitten-kebabs back on '97.

(What's that? You've never enjoyed a nice kitty-bab in your life? Don't worry. By the time their anonymous, newly-credible "whistleblowers" are done with you, your own children will think that you can barely stand to eat anything but.)

So, no, it isn't useful, and you shouldn't trust it. It's another goddamned tool for the goddamned conservative movement. It's just another way for them to use their wealthy backers' big wads of cash to grant them legitimacy they don't deserve, and control they should never, ever have.

Casey Mulligan's Strawman and the Numbers/Words Divide

2011-05-04T13:14:00.001-04:00

It's nice to know that being a big-time University of Chicago economist writing in the New York Times doesn't preclude you from acting like a marginal blogger and beating the holy hell out of a strawman.

So we see, today, in Casey Mulligan's piece in the Times' Economix column, where he takes cheap shots at what he calls "New Keynesianism". Trying to take down a school of thought in a few paragraphs was a dubious mission at best to begin with, but I immediately noticed that his only actual source on what New Keynesianism is was the electric goop between his ears.

Professor Paul Krugman, Keynesian extraordinaire, agrees:

I’ve been asked for reactions to Casey Mulligan’s piece about the failure of New Keynesian economics.The short answer is, he should try reading a bit of Keynesian economics — old or new, it doesn’t matter — before “explaining” what’s wrong with it. For the doctrine he’s attacking bears no resemblance to anything Keynesians are saying.

This is fairly typical of freshwater economists. They know that what the other side is saying is obviously stupid, so there’s no need to read it; they picked up enough about it talking to some guy in a bar, or whatever, to criticize it...

...he presents as “the New Keynesian position” something that is just what he imagines, on casual reflection (or, again, maybe after talking to some guy in a bar) to be the New Keynesian position.

OK, so from now on I’ll assert that the Chicago position on unemployment is that we can cure it by sacrificing goats. Hey, I heard that somewhere — no need to actually read anything they say, right?

So, yeah, strawman. Krugman goes into greater detail about why the Mulligan piece is wrong, but you could pretty much assume it was wrong going in, so no worries there.

What surprises me, though, is just how much this differs from other social sciences. Citing is sacrosanct there. You simply don't refer to an idea or a position or a theory without pointing to someone, somewhere, that defines exactly what that theory is. (Something beyond Mulligan's half-assed links to "Investopedia".) It just goes to show what Noah Smith was talking about when he decried his graduate instruction in economics as little more than getting force-fed DSGE modelling with little instruction in real-world economics and even less instruction in competing economic theories. If you think that the only thing that matters is plugging numbers into a model, why on earth would you care about silly things like citing sources? Numbers are objective! Their only source is Divine Providence!

It points to a deep, deep problem that we are starting to have as a civilization. We know numbers. We know how to manipulate numbers. We have fantastic devices of unimaginable power in manipulating numbers. Humans, though, aren't fantastic at manipulating numbers. We're good at it. Some of us are really good at it.

No, what humans are really good at is manipulating words. Even the least of us has a greater faculty with words than all but the best of us do with numbers. We know words. We're familiar with words. We're not just good at it, we're fantastic at it. Best on the planet, maybe even best in the universe. Go, us.

Since we're familiar with words, we know not to trust words. That's why we focus on things like citation. People lie and misrepresent and omit and use rhetoric and all the rest to manipulate words to their advantage. You've seen it. You may have even used it. That makes us skeptical about words. We demand sources, and citations, and literature reviews, and all that other lovely academic folderol. We know better.

So when we delve into the world of numbers, many of us—maybe even most of us—set aside that healthy skepticism. We presume that "numbers can't lie". We presume, in turn, that quantitative, formal modelling can't be a lie. It can be wrong, but even then, we presume that it's the numbers that will prove the model wrong. If the numbers fit, then it must be true, right?

It isn't true. A model is just an opinion. It's the quantitative equivalent of saying "Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with the Pipe" in a game of Clue. It might be true. It might not. Certain choices of numbers might show it to be true. Others might show it to be false. Others might mean nothing at all. It's a theory. Words, numbers, whatever, that's how theories work.

That means you can indeed lie or misinform or misdirect with numbers. Choosing one set of numbers and ignoring another set might "prove" the model you want. The process of turning qualitative factors into quantitative variables ("operationalization") might also "prove" the model you want. And, hell, if the numbers prove multiple sets of models—which happens—picking one model and ignoring the rest can also "prove" the model you want. All of these are lying with numbers. They can happen. They do happen. Constantly.

I don't think that Casey's lying with numbers. I do think that Casey doesn't really realize what he's doing. He (and many others) forget that the same sort of care that we take with theories in words also needs to be taken with theories in numbers. You have to teach and learn and cite these theories, so that you aren't vulnerable to those who attempt to lie with numbers, and you aren't susceptible to making mistakes with your number-theories that amount to unwitting lies.

Most importantly, you have to be very careful to present the theories as they are, instead of how you think they are. If you don't, you end up like Casey Mulligan: beating the holy hell out of a strawman made of numbers.

Osama's Dead, and Obama Got Him

2011-05-02T00:28:00.002-04:00

Yep. It's true. That bastard's toast, and it was the demmycrat that was responsible.

Not even in a figurative sense, either. Go read Chris Bowers' Twitter feed. Obama was given the information back in February, chaired the meetings that set out the operation while they confirmed the location, and gave the go-ahead on Friday.

Bowers quotes officials as saying "Administration officials believe bin Laden's death will put Al-Qaeda on path of decline that will be difficult to reverse." Can't disagree there. They were already on the downslope; this is going to be a body blow that will likely be the end of the organization. We can only hope.

It's instructive, though. Eight years of Republican rule, and nothing happens. After a little over two years, it's the Democrats that get it done. It's just another reminder of how incompetent the Republicans really are. I can only hope that, when 2012 rolls around, the American people will remember that too.

(Edit: fixed tags.)

Hamas/Fatah Pact?

2011-04-27T14:49:00.000-04:00

No idea if this is true, but according to one source, it may be that Hamas and Fatah are putting their differences behind them.

Earlier on Wednesday delegations headed by Musa Abu Marzoka, member of Hamas Politburo member, and Azzam al-Ahmad, member of Fatah central committee started talks to reach the long awaited unity deal mediated by the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Nabeel al-Arabi.

Sources close to Azzam al-Ahmad of Fatah told PNN that the deal have in fact been signed adding that al-Ahmad and Abu Marzoka will announced the deal in a press conference at 8:00 PM ( 9:00 PM local Palestinian time).

In a phone call from Cairo al-Ahmad told PNN “we have reached reconciliation deal and both Fatah and Hamas have signed it.”

According to sources in Cairo that Fatah and Hamas signed the initial deal, while other Palestinian groups will arrive in Cairo within a week to sign the deal as well.

Given that it's in the Times as well, it's probably credible.

Wow. And I'd thought the stories about Canada possibly ending up under a social democratic government were surprising. THIS could change the face of the entire region.

"Contractionary Policies, It Turns Out, Are Contractionary"

2011-04-26T20:15:00.000-04:00

Ireland? Under Austerity, it ain't doing so well. Greece? Under Austerity, also not doing so well.

So, as is usually the case, Krugman called it. He knew that austerity wouldn't work. He predicted austerity wouldn't work. He was razzed for predicting that austerity wouldn't work. But lo and behold...austerity doesn't work.

Which means, as he pointed out, that Keynesian analysis DOES. It may not describe a world as elegant as you see in RBC models. For the world we actually live in, though, it's still the best choice.

Eliminationist Difference

2011-04-24T12:29:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of Alicublog, we see Ann Althouse whining about how Paul Krugman is as "eliminationist" as the people he criticizes. What's the justification? Because he talks about shooting a "zombie lie" in the head.

Okay, Ann? Here's the thing. HIS comment was about a concept. It was about an idea. That's it. He's extending his zombie metaphor and referencing the way that people stop zombies.

Your commentators, on the other hand, are (just from a quick scan) suggesting that Prof. Krugman himself be raped and murdered. Not necessarily in that order. For suggesting that taxes should be more progressive.

THAT, friend, is the difference.

(Oddly enough, that isn't the part that annoys me. What truly annoys me is "democrat party". It really shows what a stupid, petty, childish bunch of passive-aggressive children these people can be.)

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T12:02:00.004-04:00

Hope it's a good one.

Really, Matt?

2011-04-16T23:52:00.000-04:00

Is this seriously what you have descended to? Have you forgotten EVERYTHING anybody ever told you about health care economics?

Yes, okay, Klein was arguing with Megan McArdle. That's an inherently difficult task: it's rough to debate economics and policy with someone who hasn't the faintest clue about anything—least of all economics and policy. But that's no excuse for saying "I think seniors should just be given cash instead of Medicare". There IS no excuse for that.

Harper and Iggy in 2011

2011-04-13T16:39:00.000-04:00

Saw a traffic spike to an old piece of mine on Ignatieff from 2006. So I re-read it. And one paragraph seemed more relevant than any other...though perhaps not the one the linkers intended.

That's not to say he'd be a worse Prime Minister than Stephen Harper, of course. Stephen Harper is a zealous market fundamentalist; a neoconservative exploiting a base of social conservatives to gain the kind of autocratic power that only a Canadian Prime Minister at the head of a majority government can enjoy. We've already seen that he wants to control the government from his own desk, and the only check on his ambitions is the reality that he only controls a minority government. That's why every single thing he's done since the end of January has been turned towards winning that majority; from budgetmaking, to speechmaking, to muzzling his ministers, all of it is aimed at gaining power. Nobody knows what Harper would do with that power, but I imagine it would be to do his damnedest to remake Canada in the image of Howard's Australia and Thatcher's England. Needless to say, anybody would prefer Ignatieff to THAT.

I actually think Ignatieff has changed. I still prefer Dion or Rae to Ignatieff, but "Iggy" has moderated his tone, and has handed off the lead on foreign policy to Bob Rae.

Meanwhile, if anything, Stephen Harper has become worse. He seems to be working hard to become the most autocratic leader of any democracy in the english-speaking world. He cows his party and the public service at the same time, and lies with impunity only when he can't simply ignore you. A Harper majority would be disastrous, and the only reason anybody could possibly think otherwise is that much of Canada's media is so bizarrely right-wing—compared to the public—that they seem to welcome the prospect of a Thatcherite Canada.

Just to be clear, and I'm saying this as a once-strident Ignatieff critic: Given the choice between Ignatieff and Harper, I'd choose Ignatieff in a flash.

Paul Ryan's Top-Down War for Plutonomy

2011-04-09T13:27:00.001-04:00

Yeah, let's not mince words here. That's what's going on. Taibbi:

[David Brooks slobbers] over all of Ryan’s ostensibly daring proposals, from the Medicare block grants to the more obnoxious Medicare voucher program (replacing Medicare benefits with vouchers to buy overpriced private insurance, which Brooks calls the government “giving you a sum of money” to choose from “a regulated menu of insurance options”).

What he doesn’t mention is that Ryan’s proposal also includes dropping the top tax rate for rich people from 35 percent to 25 percent. All by itself, that one change means that the government would be collecting over $4 trillion less over the next ten years.

Since Brooks himself is talking about Ryan’s plan cutting $4 trillion over the next ten years (some say that number is higher), what we’re really talking about here is an ambitious program to cut taxes for people like… well, people like me and David Brooks, and paying for it by “consolidating job-training programs” and forcing old people to accept reduced Medicare benefits...

...The last ten years or so have seen the government send massive amounts of money to people in the top tax brackets, mainly through two methods: huge tax cuts, and financial bailouts. The government has spent trillions of our national treasure bailing out Wall Street, which has resulted directly in enormous, record profit numbers – nearly $100 billion in the last three years (and that doesn’t even count the tens of billions more in inflated compensation and bonuses that came more or less directly from government aid). Add to that the $700 billion or so the Obama tax cuts added to the national debt over the next two years, and we’re looking at a trillion dollars of lost revenue in just a few years.

You push a policy like that in the middle of a shaky economy, of course we’re going to have debt problems. But the issue is being presented as if the debt comes entirely from growth in entitlement spending. It’s bad enough that middle-class taxpayers have been forced in the last few years to subsidize the vacations and beach houses of the idiots who caused the financial crisis, and it’s doubly insulting that they’re now being blamed for the budget mess.

But the icing on the cake comes when a guy like David Brooks – like me a coddled, overcompensated media yuppie whose idea of sacrifice is raking one’s own leaves – comes out and calls Paul Ryan courageous for having the guts to ask seniors to cut back on their health care in order to pay for our tax breaks.

A FOUR TRILLION DOLLAR WEALTH TRANSFER. That's what we're talking about here. A forcible transfer (for what choice do Americans have?) of four TRILLION dollars from the poor, middle-class, destitute and aged to monied chucklefucks like David Brooks and Paul Ryan.

If this were happening anywhere else in the world, there would be people on the streets. Things would be burning. But in America, where everybody thinks he's gonna be a billionaire someday, there ain't a damned word said about it or thing done about it. Never mind that income mobility is pathetic and getting worse. Never mind that "equality of opportunity" is naught but a sick joke. Never mind that (as I said in my last post), the guys running the show don't even care if your water poisons you.

No, people aren't even realizing that they're in the middle of a one-sided war for plutonomy. Maybe they'll begin to realize it before they've been hung up and bled dry. Considering what just happened in Wisconsin, though...I wouldn't lay money on it.

Edit: Oh, and pardon my language here, but the very fact that that disingenuous dipshit David Brooks couldn't be bothered to even discuss the possibility of tax increases just shows how fucked up the American media truly is. There's no way that someone like that should be taken seriously, let alone given space in the Times. But there it is.

Apparently the Republicans Want Floridians to Drink Soiled Water

2011-04-09T13:09:00.001-04:00

Sounds strange, but take a look at the budget's policy riders if you don't believe it. Specifically, look at section 4035, which "prohibits funds for the EPA to impose and enforce federally mandated numeric Florida water quality standards". Yep. Right there, in black and white. That's what they want.

You may be confused. You may ask yourself "why would the Republicans be deliberately harming Floridians, considering how important that state is?" You may ask "who the hell is against water quality standards"? Sure, contraception, Republicans hate contraception and its role in women's emancipation. But water quality standards? That is, without a doubt, 100% within the purview of government. It's like policing, or the military, or food quality...

...oh, right. If you look at Section 1268, they're also trying to screw the FDA, too.

So, once again, there you have it. That's the party that American voters chose in large numbers. The party that doesn't care if there's poison in your water, or mercury in your cement (Sec. 4008), or radioactive coal ash in your air (Sec. 4045). If you get sick, or your loved ones get sick, or your CHILDREN get sick? Not their problem. F.O.A.D.

All that, and they still haven't done a damned thing to bring jobs back to America. But, then, they were never going to, were they?

Edit: Oh, and before the Dems get too smug: this was in the compromise bill. Which means the Dems signed off on all of this.

No, You Idiots, Ryan Isn't "Courageous"

2011-04-08T16:41:00.000-04:00

Just saw a great piece in Time (Yeah, I know, but it happens) by Michael Grunwald. It's about the Beltway nonsense about how Ryan is "courageous" for his determination to screw the non-rich:

You may not like Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan, but you must admit that it's courageous. You simply must. By order of the Washington establishment, you may question whether Ryan's plan is sensible or humane or even remotely honest, but you have to confess that it is undeniably an extraordinary act of bravery, or else pundits will beat the confession out of you with swoony prose.

To New York Times columnist David Brooks, Ryan's 73-page budget outline — it's not an actual budget — is "the most comprehensive and courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes." Here at Time.com, Joe Klein wrote that it's "without question, an act of political courage," while Fareed Zakaria declared that "Ryan's plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous." The Economist agreed: "Credit where credit is due; whatever you think of Paul Ryan's budget, it is politically gutsy." (See "The Ryan Budget: A Test of Character for Obama.")

This is just weird. Ryan is a conservative Republican committee chairman in a conservative Republican caucus. He was reelected last year with 68% of the vote. Sorry, Joe, but I do question whether it was really courageous for him to propose huge tax cuts for the rich, squeeze health care for the poor, and promise that nobody over 55 — the heart of the conservative Republican base — will have to make any sacrifices. Honestly, does anyone think this week has been bad for Ryan's career?

Yeah, screwing the poor has never taken courage in Washington. It just takes the ability to see where everybody around you stands as well.

As Grunwald points out, what would have been "courageous" is if Ryan had advocated tax increases. Same if he had called for curtailed military spending, or if he had touched that "third rail" of Social Security. But he's not courageous at all. He's just convenient, because he's advocating policies that Americans would never accept in order to fix a deficit that his billion-dollar buddies were responsible for.

One other bit I liked was the one about "adult conversations":

Supposedly, Ryan is brave because he's willing to start an "adult conversation" about the deficit and entitlements in Washington. But politicians talk about the deficit and entitlements all the time. Some close observers of American politics may recall that President Obama proposed a health care bill last year; it included half a billion dollars in Medicare cuts, which Republicans attacked as vicious rationing that would pull the plug on Grandma. I don't recall a lot of David Brooks commentary about the courage of that plan, even though, unlike Ryan's, it had a chance of becoming law.

That's the whole point. "Adult", here, means "realistic". And "realism", in Washington, means admitting that the New Deal is dead, that plutonomy is the new normal, and that the only policies that have a hope in hell of getting implemented are the ones that could issue from the pens held in the Koch brother's desiccated hands.

Thinking that the non-wealthy are allowed to anticipate anything but the workhouse or the gutter? Yeah, that might as well be fairy dust and unicorns for all that it's likely to happen. The only hope people are allowed to have is that the other guy just might get screwed harder and sooner than they are. It's all relative: as long as there's someone worse off than you, you don't have to feel so bad.

That's not "adult", except in the sense of the word where somebody's always getting screwed.

He closes with this:

So by all means, let's have an adult conversation about deficits. A good place to start would be the origins of our current predicament. President Clinton left behind a huge budget surplus. As Joe pointed out, it was wiped out by President Bush's tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit.

All of those budget-busters went on the national credit card. And all of them were supported, no doubt courageously, by Congressman Ryan.

But that's just it. It's people like Joe that are the problem. Sure, they'll savage the policy. But, shit, that's utterly irrelevant and always has been. Obamacare-as-policy was savaged by all the liberal pundits back when it was the finance committee's recommendation, but it's the one that Americans ended up with. What matters is whether or not these guys are willing to put away the personal lionizing of people who think that they're scum and call them out for what they are. Klein will never, ever do that. Unlike his conservative counterparts, Joe Klein would never have the stones to say that someone like Ryan's a convenient coward. That would create issues. Klein can't afford issues. He needs beltway access and beltway friends, and knows that ineffective policy critiques are the perfect way to do it.

(Unfounded, bizarre personal attacks on people to his left are also a great way to do it, which is why Klein became synonymous with it.)

If he didn't need access, and didn't need beltway friends, then he might be comfortable saying that Paul Ryan is an absolute coward, a fool, a liar, and a danger to his country and the people that reside within it. But we'll never, ever know. All we'll ever get is "courageous". More's the pity.

Shutdown Coming

2011-04-08T16:16:00.001-04:00

So, the government's going to shut down because anti-choice nuts are freaking out over the funding of Planned Parenthood. I'm guessing that this isn't what people had in mind when they threw the Dems out. But, rest assured, that's what you were gonna get.

On the plus side, though, the Republicans appear to be living up to every negative stereotype that you could possibly think of them. Not only are they basically working as the footsoldiers for plutonomy and working hard to screw over everybody who makes less than 500k a year, but they're having a gigantic tantrum because people dare to have a different opinion on an issue that motivates their base. They're doing no better at improving the lot of the country than the Dems did; in fact, they're objectively and unmistakeably worse, just as everybody would have expected.

That's probably going to help Obama and the Dems in 2012—assuming they don't compromise themselves into oblivion between now and then. Poor comfort for all the people who are going to get screwed over by this prospective shutdown. But at least everybody knows the score.

Frabjous Day

2011-04-06T15:59:00.002-04:00

Beck's leaving Fox.

Julian Sanchez, Copyright, and the Undeserved Inheritance

2011-04-04T23:16:00.002-04:00

Go here to read an excellent, unsentimental piece on copyright by Julian Sanchez (h/t DeLong).

Excerpt follows:

Wise assessment of copyright policy should have nothing to do with how you feel about the person or entity who holds the right at any particular time, because copyright policy is not about identifying wonderful and meritorious people and ensuring—certainly not as an end in itself, anyway—that their income is proportioned to their intrinsic moral desert—or lack thereof. We are all the massive beneficiaries of millennia of accumulated human scientific knowledge and cultural output, and not one of us did anything do deserve a jot of it. We’re all just extremely lucky not to have been born cavemen. The greatest creative genius alive would be hard pressed to create a smiley faced smeared in dung on a tree trunk without that huge and completely undeserved inheritance.

I really liked that first paragraph; it laid down the situation as it stands EXACTLY as it stands. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes. We don't pay them a thing except the intrinsic honor of building edifices upon the foundations of thought and technology that they bequeathed us, with the understanding that the same thing will happen to us, one day.

So banish the word “deserve” from your mind when you think about copyright. Nobody “deserves” a goddamn thing. (I say this, for what it’s worth, as someone who makes his living entirely through the production of “intellectual property.”) The only—the only—relevant question is whether a marginal restriction on the general ability to use information incentivizes enough additional information production over the long run to justify denying that marginal use to every other human being on the planet, whether for simple consumption or further creation. That’s an empirical question, and while I strongly suspect the answer will generally be “not by a longshot” beyond a whole lot more limited level of protection than we currently provide, I’m happy to be persuaded otherwise along any particular dimension. But if you want to make an argument that turns in any significant respect on how unlikeable big corporations are or how marvelous creative people are… well, spare me. And the rest of us. Because in both cases it’s probably true, but as a policy matter, nobody should really give a damn.

I liked this more, though. Sanchez is wonderfully unsentimental here, and discards the hollow "MINE! MINE!" variety of pseudo-morals that tends to underpin this. The only reason the copying monopoly exists is to produce more information and creativity than would exist otherwise, and in an age where more is produced free of charge on the Internet than could ever possibly be consumed, it's sort of a hard argument to make. At best you could argue from quality, and that might work for, say, film and some forms of video games. But things like music and prose writing? Good lord, there's more amateur material out there NOW than you could possibly consume in a lifetime; and while much of it is dreck, there's certainly enough quality there to raise the question of why the lucky few who benefit from the copyright system should be so expansively (and expensively) coddled.

(Of course, I might have a different view if I had ever written for cash; but as you can see by the distinct lack of advertisements on this site, that isn't the case.)

(I use a pseudonym. How would I even cash the cheque?)

Most of the moral arguments revolve around the idea that artists should be paid a fair wage for their work. I'd buy that if artists seemed to give a rat's ass about the fact that nobody else is getting paid for their work. No, I'm not terribly pleased with how the Huffington Post exploits its writers, but it's no different than a thousand other industries where that happens. The plight of the people who are furiously "tweeting" on their iPads about how horrible the Internet is for their profession pales in comparison to the plight of the impoverished, suicidal workers who MADE the damned things to begin with. Are they aware of that? Do they even care?

(Of course, I doubt Sanchez does, being a CATO writer and all; but even libertarians occasionally have their uses.)

Once everybody else gets a fair wage for their labor, then I'll start crying over the plight of Zack Snyder and Miley Cyrus. But I expect that I'm going to have a very, very long wait.

Edit: DeLong's commentators are very much annoyed with a different part of the Sanchez piece, which was about how one shouldn't blame corporations that exploit artists because "bad contracts happen, deal with it". Obviously that's absolutely ridiculous, and why I didn't deign to quote it. It's also not really about copyright in the first place; it's about the political economy of corporate power. It applies to every sector, not just copyright.

Again, libertarians have their uses—but you'd never want to endorse one's arguments wholesale.

Re-Edit: Or, as John Emerson put it: "Deep pockets can break anyone".

E.J. Dionne Asks "The End of Progressive Government"?

2011-04-04T11:35:00.001-04:00

This has been in the works ever since the Republicans started lying their way into a House majority. Hell, it may have been in the works since Citizens United opened the floodgates of corporate cash. But now, finally, here we are.

Americans are about to learn how much is at stake in our larger budget fight, how radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the have-nots and have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal?

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will announce the House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to include cuts in many programs for the neediest Americans.

The Ryan budget’s central purpose will not be deficit reduction but the gradual dismantling of key parts of government. Remember that Ryan wants both to preserve the Bush tax cuts and, over the long run, to enact more breaks for the wealthy, including the elimination of the capital gains tax.

Ryan’s plan reportedly will include steep Medicaid cuts, disguised as a proposal to turn the program into a “block grant” to the states. The net effect would be to leave even more Americans to the mercies of the private insurance market.

In deference to the GOP’s success in turning last year’s health-care law into “Obamacare,” let’s call this proposal Ryancare — and let’s make sure we look carefully at its impact on the elderly and the disabled, the main beneficiaries of Medicaid.

Put the two parts of the Ryan design together — tax cuts for the rich, program cuts for the poor — and its radically redistributionist purposes become clear. Timid Democrats would never dare embark on class warfare on this scale the other way around.

No shit. What's so enraging about this is that the Republicans are likely to accomplish more with their majority in one House than the Dems did with both Houses and the Presidency. The Republicans have stood their ground over and over again, and the Dems have caved over and over again.

And this is part of the reason:

But while I am assailing his ideas, let me put in a good word about Ryan himself:he is, from my limited experience, a charming man who truly believes what he believes. I salute him for laying out the actual conservative agenda. Here’s hoping he is transparent in the coming weeks about whom he is taking benefits from and toward whom he wants to be more generous. If he thinks we need an even more unequal society to prosper in the future, may he have the courage to say so.

WHY? Why praise a man who is trying to tear apart every program that has ever helped the non-wealthy in America? And why, especially, praise him for being "charming" and for consistency? He is a VILLIAN. Not only that, but he is a villian who, by all credible standards, knows absolutely nothing about economics and will most assuredly do more harm than good.

HIS HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL WILL KILL PEOPLE, DIONNE. DO NOT "SALUTE HIM" FOR HOW "CHARMING AND HONEST" HE IS ABOUT THAT.

(What the hell is it about the American media that they must embrace amoral, potentially-deadly bastards as long as they're honest about it?)

You want to know why the Republicans are winning? There it is. It may not be what Dionne thought it was. Dionne almost certainly was just trying to play a silly little trick where he damned with faint praise, and he spends a fair amount of time tearing the policies apart.

But what it really is is the same goddamned thing that happens every time: reasonable progressives giving quarter to bastard conservatives, ones that would never, ever return the favor. The same thing he's saying that Obama must not do, he's doing. The same Republican policies of minority rule, gutted revenue, and destroying social security and medicare that he's decrying, he's actually aiding. He can castigate the policies all he wants; it's completely irrelevant.

In the interest of being "nice" and "fair", he's handing his enemy a rope and an instruction manual on noose-tying. Ryan doesn't deserve it. "Charming and honest" or no, he deserves nothing but scorn.

No quarter. Not ever.

Bob Herbert's Leaving the Times?

2011-03-31T01:47:00.001-04:00

Well, that's just a damned shame.

I shudder to think at what sort of wingnut trogg is being lined up to replace him. After all, their last big hire was Douthat, wasn't it? And THAT guy has proven himself as someone who would would be over his head in a local alt-weekly, let alone the Times.

But, hey, it's a brave new world where the entire media revolves around keeping the New Robber Barons happy. And it IS the New York Times, after all. Now that we know that Wall Street will be permitted to continue it's inexorable climb to 100% of (quasi-legitimate) GDP, I imagine they'll soon have little choice.

Edit: Yes, that is completely unfair. And, yes, they may hire a progressive. If they do, great! It's just that I'm not expecting it.

Then again, I think they should hire digby, now that she's no longer pseudonymous and all. So I might be especially biased that way.

Something to Keep in Mind:

2011-03-31T01:40:00.001-04:00

The Tea Partiers "won" on the budget, as Ezra put it, because they screamed and yelled and wouldn't compromise and threatened to primary everybody to the left of Genghis Khan. The Republicans cut even more than they had before, and then "compromised" with the Dems back to their original desired position.

The lesson should be obvious for the "reasonable" Democrats that folded like a cheap suit from 2008 to 2010. It should be even more obvious for "reasonable" so-called "progressives" that just went along with the ride for the sake of a party that, like or not, couldn't give a rat's ass about them.

Yet, for all that, I suspect not a soul will figure it out. They haven't yet. Why would they now?

Supreme Court Blows Off Man Unjustly Imprisoned on Death Row for 14 Years

2011-03-30T17:43:00.000-04:00

This is sick. And yet more proof that "keeping your powder dry" was a terrible idea. If Roberts and Alito hadn't been appointed with the Dems' tacit consent, this man would have received justice. Instead, he gets nothing more than a pathetic slap in the face by the Roberts court.

And, now, because of this, prosecutors know that they can act with complete impunity. There will be more miscarriages of justice coming out of this. I guarantee it.

If you're on the wrong side of a public prosecutor, take NOTHING for granted. And if you see that someone's been convicted? I wouldn't necessarily take THAT for granted either. After all, how do you know the evidence is worth a tinker's damn?

America's Industrial, War-Winning Might

2011-03-29T12:07:00.000-04:00

Interesting piece by Krugman today in relation to the Times' new Civil War blog, about how the North won the Civil War (and, later, how America helped win WWII):

[T]he way modern America won was characteristic. Southerners were better warriors — man for man, they almost always outperformed Union armies, although the gap narrowed over time. But the North excelled at the arts of peace — that is, in industry and ability to get things done. The North couldn’t stop Bedford Forrest from raiding supply lines; but it could repair track incredibly fast. And it was that Northern superiority in logistics, in production, that eventually proved decisive.

America’s other great moral war, World War II, was similar. The war movies I watched when I was a kid always had plucky, individualistic American heroes beating superbly equipped Nazis, but the reality was mostly the other way around. We had many heroes, but the truth is that Americans were never as good at the art of war as the Germans. What we were good at was the art of production, of supply. Honor the heroes who stormed Omaha Beach — but it was the floating harbors, the trans-Channel fuel pipeline, and the air superiority achieved through production miracles that really did it.

Not much to add to that. Except that I still find it amusing that fantasy strategy games like Starcraft and the like are much the same way: the wars between the little robots and aliens and whatnot are usually won through canny production and resource management, not through a player's dextrous handling of their onscreen avatars.

Wars really are won on the homefront.

Election in Canada

2011-03-29T11:53:00.001-04:00

It seems somewhat trivial compared to what's going on in the Middle East and Japan, but for those interested, Canada's moving into another election.

It's a bit of an odd one, thanks to Canada's equally odd party system. It has four major parties (the Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and Greens), a single member first-past the post electoral system, and a rather notoriously powerful executive branch leading to a sort of "winner take all" situation regarding the Prime Ministership. Unlike, say, the United Kingdom, where MPs generally have more say. Thanks to regionalism, you also have a lot of ridings (electoral districts) where the Conservatives and NDP fight it out, the NDP and Liberals fight it out, the Conservatives and Liberals fight it out, or all three at the same time. Add in a staunch nationalist (and quasi-separatist) party in Quebec called the Bloc Quebecois, and you have a recipe for continuous hung parliaments—which Canada has—and coalition governments.

Except there IS no coalition. That's the strange part. The Conservatives have ruled the country without a coalition for over five years now, simply by threatening the Liberals with another election every time a confidence vote—which would bring down the government—came up for a Parliamentary vote. The Conservatives have enough money to fight an election whenever they please, while the Liberals are a bit skint these days, so the Liberals tended to knuckle under. (Though, when pressed, the New Democrats have propped up the Conservatives as well.)

But what if a defeated government just led to a new government with the same Parliament? Certainly that CAN happen. It happens pretty much everywhere else with three-party-plus electoral systems. The UK, New Zealand, Australia, and of course Israel, Germany, Japan and the rest. Both the UK and Israel are run by parties that didn't win the plurality of seats. So why not Canada?

Remember that big pot of money the Conservatives have? That's why. After an attempt was made at changing governing parties back in 2008, they successfully used their huge war chest to demonize the very concept of a coalition in the minds of the Canadian public. Part of that was due to the presence of the aforementioned nationalist party, which is unpopular in the rest of Canada due to separatist leanings, but a lot of it is due to attacks on the very concepts itself.

So, now, the prevailing opinion in Canada (at least among the commentariat) is that the party with the plurality is the only one that should be allowed to try to form a government. Other arrangements aren't acceptable, and the leader of the Liberals, Michael Ignatieff, has ruled it out. Yet there's almost no hope that he'll get a majority of the seats, so he'll have to do something to coordinate with the other parties should he get a plurality. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, for his part, is claiming that the choice is between giving him a majority and a Liberal minority government; but even he can't necessarily hope for that. His numbers are strong now, but these are early days, and Ignatieff has successfully jettisoned a lot of the foreign policy adventurism and American apologism that made him such a problematic candidate in the past.

(I was no fan of "Iggy", and still have doubts, but he's certainly a better choice than the paranoid, autocratic, near-dictatorial Harper.)

This multi-party, first-past-the-post system also means that the lion's share of votes will be utterly wasted. Although some candidates win with a majority of votes, many win with a plurality; in either case opposition votes (in classic FPTP style) do absolutely nothing except sit there. So any plurality of seats may not even really be a plurality at all; Harper may be Prime Minister again with a "mandate" of a minority of seats held by people that each received a minority of votes.

It makes strategy difficult, too. Since each party is contending with all other parties in a variety of winner-take-all plurality battles in a country riven by regionalism, no single strategy will do. A strategy which would work in the Prairies for the Conservatives against the New Democrats may fall flat in Ontario against the Liberals. A Liberal strategy or policy that would be killer in inner Toronto against the NDP would be suicidal in battles against the Tories in ridings only about twenty miles away. The "also-rans" are always there bleeding off support and creating the possibility of candidates coming up the middle.

And in Quebec? Five parties contend there, the issues are totally different, the ideology is muddled at best, the separatist question looms over everything, and since the dominant language is different, communications are a whole different bag, too.

So, yeah, strange election. And likely to get stranger.

Libya Attacks

2011-03-24T01:42:00.000-04:00

I'm very, very skeptical that the airstrikes on Libya will do more harm than good. I'm also very skeptical that this won't end up turning into a broader conflict.

But I do think that, unlike in Iraq, this is not a simple case of thinly-justified American aggression against a target of convenience. Libya has already descended into civil war, and the Libyan government has demonstrated that it neither has the confidence of its people nor even the most basic decency and respect for human rights. I would have preferred that it went away peacefully, but that was apparently not to be.

So the question of the hour is what happens next. Can the rebels really accomplish much? Will the cause of Democracy in Libya fizzle? And, most importantly, will the Arab Uprising get bogged down in yet another argument about the intentions of the west that obscures the dangers of their own leadership?

And, worst of all, what happens if it turns out that Seumas Milne's charge that US Special Forces are helping to repress, arrest, and kill dissidents in places like Bahrain and Yemen turns out to be true?

TEPCO and Transparency

2011-03-16T02:53:00.000-04:00

The lesson of Fukushima isn't what you think it is.

It's not about nuclear power, or at least not really. Fukushima is almost certainly not going to be like Chernobyl, because it's not designed like Chernobyl. It doesn't use graphite as a moderator, and it was the explosive graphite that turned Chernobyl into a de facto dirty bomb. There is some danger from melting of the cores, but two of the cores are cooling normally and the other appears to be settling down after some issues with the hydrogen buildup.

Even a "meltdown" would only mean that the core would melt into the thick concrete beneath it. That would still protect the environment from the core until it could be cleaned up. Modern reactors aren't even be prey to that much danger. A pebble reactor in this situation would, I believe, simply cool down and stop normally. The frothing panic over this is completely unwarranted.

It's not about the media, either. Not that they haven't acted execrably during this crisis. They seem to have completely ignored the massive toll of lives and property that was inflicted in Japan to focus on the sexy possibility of another Chernobyl. In doing so, they have failed two peoples: the Japanese people, whose real needs and real tragedies are being ignored; and the American people, who are being whipped up into such a panic that they are now in fear of mortal peril if they can't buy potassium iodide. The job of the media should be to tell them that they need not worry, that the Pacific is a big place and that they will be fine. But they aren't. They're acting like savages and beneath contempt. But I still don't think it's really about them.

No,I think the real story here is about Tokyo Electric Power Company. Their press conferences are just about the only source of real information we have, and they have been TERRIBLE. They've been evasive and vague, and it's been like pulling teeth finding out what's really going on.

That's fueling the destructive speculation, because this vagueness is serving as fertile ground for people to assume the worst. Whenever somebody who actually knows about this sort of thing tries to mollify the public, we find out something ELSE that TEPCO hasn't told us. The water level issues in reactor #2, the spent fuel storage issue in reactor #4, all of those things have been fueling destructive speculation about what they may not be telling people. If people feel like TEPCO can't be trusted, they'll turn to other "experts", who will only fuel the rampant speculation with guesswork of their own. TEPCO needs to step up and be clear about what's going on, what they're doing, what is happening, and what ISN'T happening. Leave no room for speculation, and be transparent enough so that people will believe you.

This sort of vagueness and evasiveness fits the classical Japanese stereotype, of course. But I do wonder if it will remain so. Already, a lot of younger Japanese seem to have little time for it, especially with the old certainties having faded away over the last few years. After the way that this disaster has been compounded by the Old Way Of Thinking, is there any doubt that there will be an appetite for something new? We may see a serious cultural shift in the wake of this incident.

And while it's part-and-parcel with Japan's business culture, I can't imagine that "acting like TEPCO" is going to endear Japanese businesses to anybody either within or outside of Japan any time soon. This may, finally, be impetus for the real reform of business-government relationships that Japan so desperately needed.

Of course, all of this pales in importance compared to the quake and tsunami themselves. I honestly and urgently hope that the Fukushima issues can be speedily and safely resolved, so that the Japanese people can return to the business of taking stock of the damage, helping their countrymen, and rebuilding their shattered country. I also still urge you to donate to the Red Cross.

I definitely urge you to take everything you read about this with a huge grain of salt, and stop panicking about a singular, one-in-a-million disaster that pales in comparison to the devastation wreaked by hydrocarbons to the environment and human health each and every day.

Stay calm, stay skeptical, stop freaking out about potassium iodide, and be ready to support the Japanese as they rebuild their country and, perhaps, rethink their assumptions. And maybe, just maybe, you should do the same.

Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Explosion

2011-03-12T10:24:00.000-05:00

You know what happened yesterday. I won't belabor it. Two points.

First: If you want to donate, do it to the Red Cross.

Second: It looks like the Fukushima power plant—the one whose cooling was affected by the earthquake—suffered an explosion. According to CBS, it was not a meltdown, and unlikely to become a meltdown. There IS radiation and people are being evacuated. Thankfully, though, it's no Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

But it's still bad. VERY bad. Not only because the Japanese are just about the last people on earth who should endure a nuclear disaster, but because this could send the entire energy industry spinning off into crisis. Nuclear power had been barely rehabilitated in the public's eye, and this is going to make people distrustful of it all over again. Americans, certainly, ain't going to want no new nukes near them anytime soon.

Perhaps they're justified. This should NOT have happened, considering the Japanese's knowledge of nuclear power, attention to safety, and earthquake-consciousness. I know that I'm going to be a bit less receptive to the nuclear industry's claims.

But the one thing that nuclear power isn't is carbon-intensive. A wholesale switch from nuclear to oil, natural gas, or coal could exchange the possible environmental effects of a nuclear accident for the certain environmental devastation of climate change.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who pooh-poohs conservation and renewable energy in the name of putting nukes everywhere. Those people are short-sighted idiots. But I do think that nuclear power has its place, and in a world where the bought-and-paid-for "denialists" are getting more and more coverage and sympathy from the bought-and-paid-for "newsmedia", anything that could be used to justify tossing more carbon into our atmosphere is a bad thing on principle.

(Even if it we weren't talking about an explosion at a nuclear generator.)

I hope the optimists are right. I hope that the current situation is the end of it. And I hope that nuclear plant engineers and designers learn from the mistakes that have been revealed over the last few days. Our planet needs it, in more ways than one.

David Broder Passed Away on Wednesday

2011-03-10T01:54:00.000-05:00

Sure, I disagreed with much of what he wrote. I will still freely grant his basic civility, his skill as a writer, and the generosity of someone who appeared to think that all of his countrymen could someday come together and reach a consensus on the issues of the day.

He'll be missed.

Digby in The Hill

2011-03-10T01:50:00.000-05:00

Huh, I'm a bit behind the times. Didn't realize that Digby was doing real-name pieces now. But she is, at The Hill, and it's a great piece about how the talking heads in the media just ain't gonna sympathize with the American people, because they aren't really part of the American people to begin with. They make too much money for that, and (as digby puts it) "[i]t’s very easy to prescribe “shared sacrifice” when you will not personally sacrifice anything at all."

(Yes, it's under her real name. You want it, it's there. She was, is, and will always remain "digby" to me, so that's the name I'll use.)

DC is Booming. America is Not.

2011-03-06T18:37:00.001-05:00

That's the core problem facing America, according to The Nation's Christopher Hayes. We all know that DC doesn't give a rat's ass about America's dubious jobs situation, where so many people are out of work and so many MORE people are under-employed. But Hayes has come up with one good reason why:

I think there are two numbers that go a long way toward explaining it.

The first is 4.2. That’s the percentage of Americans with a four-year college degree who are unemployed. It’s less than half the official unemployment rate of 9 percent for the labor force as a whole and one-fourth the underemployment rate (which counts those who have given up looking for work or are working part time but want full-time work) of 16.1 percent. So while the overall economy continues to suffer through the worst labor market since the Great Depression, the elite centers of power have recovered. For those of us fortunate enough to have graduated from college—and to have escaped foreclosure or an underwater mortgage—normalcy has returned.

The other number is 5.7 percent. That’s the unemployment rate for the Washington/Arlington/Alexandria metro area and just so happens to be lowest among large metropolitan areas in the entire country. In 2010 the DC metro area added 57,000 jobs, more than any in the nation, and now boasts the hottest market for commercial office space. In other words: DC is booming. You can see it in the restaurants opening all over North West, the high prices that condos fetch in the real estate market and the general placid sense of bourgeois comfort that suffuses the affluent upper- and upper-middle-class pockets of the region.

Hayes goes on to point out that for those living in the midst of that sort of boom, it's very difficult to see that the rest of America is hurting. Sure, you understand it on an intellectual level. But it just doesn't feel real when you aren't personally exposed to it.

We know what they can do when there's a personal connection. It's been (quite literally) scientifically proven that DC Politicians only really pay attention to the concerns of the wealthiest 10% of Americans, as Hayes reminds us. With that in mind, is it any wonder that they responded to the market crash quickly and decisively, and yet are dragging their feet while less-connected Americans continue their slow slide to unemployability?

That brings Hayes, and us, right back to Wisconsin.

There is only so much social distance a society can take. The social science literature shows that as social distance increases, trust declines and aberrant and predatory behavior increases. The basic mechanisms of representation erode, and the social fabric tears. “An imbalance between rich and poor,” Plutarch warned, “is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

It’s against this backdrop of creeping dissolution that the word “union” takes on a renewed power. That’s why the struggles of the protesters in Wisconsin have resonated so profoundly. In banding together to oppose Republican Governor Scott Walker’s power grab, the students, teachers, cops, firefighters and neighbors have willed themselves to shrink the social distance those in power are cynically using to pit constituencies against one another. Walker exempted cops and firefighters from his bill’s radical limits on collective bargaining, but they joined the protests anyway. “An assault on one is an assault on all,” proclaimed Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association president Mahlon Mitchell.

It’s in Wisconsin and across the Midwest that union members like Mitchell and his allies are showing us the antidote to the social distance that threatens the core of American democracy.

The Republicans know this quite well. That's the reason Walker's trying to bring down the Wisconsin public unions, and why the Republicans' various mouthpieces are bashing unions everywhere and every time they can. They know that this disconnect could easily convince the "other America" that they need to band with each other, instead of looking to their "betters" to solve things for them.

The American people are also starting to understand the situation. That's why the polls are showing that—despite all the anti-Union agitation of the Republicans' mouthpieces, the Kochs' various hirelings, and every corporation in the country—the American people support Wisconsin's public workers instead of Walker and his lot.

So the only group that doesn't understand this, as usual, are the DC Democrats. They're the ones who are so busy gobbling up corporate cash that they've forgotten that, as the old song goes, "the Union makes them strong". They're the ones who are disconnected with the "other 90%" when they shouldn't be. And they're the ones who need to reconnect, if they're ever going to be able to do more than pass Republican policies under a Democratic name.

(Edit: Added missing link.)

Odd Traffic Spike About Bahrain

2011-03-01T16:01:00.000-05:00

I had an odd traffic spike a little while ago—specifically a spike in direct hits to this piece on Bahrain. I'm wondering if it has to do with the anonymous comment I got in response. Content is reproduced here:

for all word PLS see what happen in bahrain
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/180956_10150151088095470_626170469_8431044_5088246_n.jpg

see this video, they kill the bahraini

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDX0T5Vt7xU

other video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeBVAjs4eeY&feature=player_e

The two videos are very disturbing, so I'll just leave them as links instead of embeds.

Herbert and Krugman on Taxes and Wisconsin

2011-03-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have, together, done a pair of excellent pieces on the forces that have led up to the crisis in Winsconsin.

Of course, Krugman already discussed Wisconsin more directly a little while ago, by turning to (surprisingly) Naomi Klein and her "shock doctrine" theory. But this latest piece, primarily about how low-tax, low-spending environments really hurt marginal children, also contains a key money quote:

By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.

Very MUCH worth noting. There's been a lot of blather about how bad public sector unions are, including from good ol' NYT Token Con David Brooks. But Texas is living proof that unions don't necessarily have anything to do with it: you can ruin your state just fine with nary a union in sight, simply by presuming that government programs spring forth from faerie dust and that ogres eat your tax dollars.

(All things considered, it's surprising that conservatives aren't more into high fantasy.)

Herbert really brings it home, though, by focusing on how important organization really is:

When you talk to the workers who are hurting most in this epic downturn, they are overwhelmingly out there on their own. No one has their back. The corporate community and the politicians who do their bidding know better than anyone else that workers who are not organized are most often helpless. They have no leverage. They cannot demand raises or health and retirement benefits or paid vacations or sick leave. They cannot negotiate shorter hours or better working conditions. It’s the boss’s way or the highway.

It’s not just pocketbook issues but the dignity of American workers that is at stake in the confrontations in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere. These confrontations are about so much more than the right of public employees to bargain collectively, as important as that is. This most recent assault on labor is part of an anti-worker movement that has been on the march for decades. Jobs have been shipped overseas. Workers have been denied their rightful share of productivity gains. Wages have been depressed and benefits in many, many instances have disappeared.

It’s true that states are facing serious fiscal problems, crises in some cases, but a much bigger threat to America as we’ve known it is the increasing inability of hard-working men and women to earn enough to maintain a middle class standard of living, even as the corporate sector is thriving. The economic lives of the poor and an ever-widening portion of the middle class have become maddeningly insecure as the wealth of the society has been funneled, increasingly and unconscionably, to those at the top.

This is the most important economic issue of our time. No other even comes close. We are watching the middle class bleed out at the same time as the wealthiest 0.1% become near-omnipotent Robber Barons, and the closest thing we thought we had to an FDR turned out to be more of an admirer of Reagan than Roosevelt. It isn't a white collar thing or a blue collar thing; both good office jobs and good blue-collar jobs are disappearing at the same clip. I wonder whether there will be a middle class worthy of the name in a decade or so.

And while it could be said that it's enriching workers in other countries, the basic facts of international trade dictate that somebody on the North American side must be benefiting as well. America wouldn't trade if nobody benefited from it. Middle class blue- and white-collar workers aren't benefiting: any benefit to consumption they might get is overwhelmed by their devastated income. That much is absolutely, abundantly, and trivially clear at this point.

No, it's the ultra-wealthy that are benefiting, and they are reshaping America—and the western world—to suit their needs. Deluging voters during campaign season with nonsensical attack ads, overwhelming the popular discourse with plutocracy-friendly "scholarship", ripping apart public sector unions (the only unions really left in the country)...they're busily tearing down both government and any vestige of the fair markets that liberals advocate and are replacing them both with a convenient plutonomy.

All that despite the damning fact that it was that lot that plunged us into a near-depression two years ago.

It's enough to drive you to drink, except that the American people aren't buying it. From CNN:

Forty-two percent of the public sides with the public employee unions and 31 percent backs Gov. Scott Walker, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday. Nearly one in ten say they don't support either side, with 18 percent unsure.

The poll's release comes as protesters rally for the third-straight week outside the Wisconsin state capitol, upset with Walker's plan to limit collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees. The Republican governor, who was elected last November, says his plan is necessary to reduce his state's budget deficit, but pro-union groups say the governor is trying to curb long-held labor rights under a guise of fiscal responsibility.

A new CBS News/New York Times survey indicates that six in ten oppose the elimination of collective bargaining rights for the public sector union workers, with 56 percent opposed to the cutting of pay or benefits to reduce state budget deficits. The poll indicates a partisan divide, with Democrats and independents opposed to both moves while Republicans in favor of Walker's proposals.

A USA Today/Gallup survey released last Wednesday also indicated that 61 percent of the public would oppose a move in their state to pass a bill that would take away some of the collective bargaining rights of union government workers, with one in three saying they'd support such a move.

According to the Pew poll, two-thirds of Democrats side with the government employee unions, with Republicans favoring the governor by a 53-17 percent margin. Independents questioned in the survey are more divided, with 39 percent siding more with the unions and 34 supporting the governor.

The survey also indicates an income gap, with lower income people siding with the unions and more affluent people divided.

This is heartening news, at least. Sure, affluent Republicans are going to be anti-union. But it's nice to see that everybody else appears to be at least open to the idea that unions can look out for their interests against the Powers That Be.

I just hope that the inevitable crush of anti-union bullshit that's inevitably coming won't distract them from remembering that.

Stephen Walt

2011-02-22T14:29:00.002-05:00

Okay, somebody who knows Walt offline really needs to make fun of him at this point. Man actually wrote "Why the Tunisian Revolution Won't Spread" in January. Yep.

Goes to show that you have to be very, very careful about the predictions of International Relations experts, and ESPECIALLY of the Realists. They talk a good game, but the end of the Cold War showed that they can get it majorly, majorly wrong. Considering this is a similar case study, well...

Edit: Also, it shows that you need to be incredibly careful about pundits' track records. They don't exactly admit their mistakes much.

Re-Edit: Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of what Walt has written. I think that, when he gets away from wearing the "Realist" hat, he has a lot of good points to make.

But it's becoming harder and harder to conclude that Realism is anything but a creaky, decrepit doctrine—and that the only reason that it perseveres is because of the paucity of decent alternatives.

Gaddafi May Go On...

2011-02-22T14:13:00.001-05:00

...but I cannot possibly see how. Strong leaders don't strafe their own people with gunfire from fighter jets. That's not a sign of strength—that's a sign of weakness.

Anyway, latest AJE liveblog is here. One react to Gaddafi's latest rant:

Anoushka Kurkjian, a Middle East consultant told Al Jazeera the address was "a typical Gaddafi speech". She said "Gaddafi's resiliance is not in doubt" and it can't be ruled out that he will stay in power for as long as he can.

She added: "The structures of the state are disintegrating. There is that shift from Gaddafi towards an alternitive, but that hasn't yet taken shape."

Regarding the Arab League expelling Libya, she said "The Arab League has been muted by saying that it's suspending Libya. If the death toll does mount, reactions will become more thoughtful."

I suspect that part of the problem is that the Arab League has no idea who's next. It's difficult to expel someone for pulling the same sort of repression that you might be contemplating in a few weeks or so.

As for U.S. reactions...Obama's being cautious, as always, but I suspect that Kerry is speaking for him by saying that the attacks were "despicable" and that the regime cannot go on. He did seem to sort of pass the buck to the UN, though, by saying that "United Nations leadership is on the line. Libya's mission to the UN bravely condemned their own government. Now UN action is critical." But that may just be Obama signalling to the rest of the Security Council that this shit will not fly with the Prez.

(Not sure what good it'll do, though. China is going to be loathe to go along with a serious condemnation. Not when they're scared stiff about what might happen to THEM.)

Unarmed Libyans Being Attacked by "Foreign Mercenaries"

2011-02-20T20:19:00.000-05:00

Gaddafi's making Mubarak look like a reasonable man. According to the AJE Live Blog Gaddafi's son is warning of "civil war"...but as Najla Abdurahman put it on the Live Blog, how on earth could that be worse than what Libyans have had to deal with for the last 40 years?

Meanwhile Robert Fisk is in Bahrain, where he reveals that the people are making it clear that they are in control, repression or no repression. It isn't Libya or Egypt, not yet. This will not necessarily end in revolution. But if change doesn't happen soon, the Khalifas will be lucky if they get away with a simple transition to constitutional monarchy.

Libya

2011-02-19T17:36:00.002-05:00

Can't comment much at the moment. But the AJE livefeed is here.

Bahrain is Getting Bad

2011-02-17T14:18:00.000-05:00

Or, perhaps, "getting worse", after the government suppressed peaceful protests with deadly force. In either case, NPR:

Reporting from Bahrain — where, before dawn, riot police armed with clubs and shotguns charged into the protesters' camp in the capital's main square — NPR's Peter Kenyon tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep that Bahrainis' grief is "turning to anger very rapidly."

Four people were reported killed, and dozens more were seriously wounded in the raid in Manama's Pearl Square.

Peter, where are you now and what are you seeing?

Steve, I'm at the Salmaniya hospital, where many of the wounded and dead were brought initially. I have to say, uh, I have just seen one of the more gruesome sites in 10 years of covering the Middle East. I was in the mortuary. I saw a man lying on a gurney. The top of his head was literally blown off.

The injuries have been widespread — clubbing and some shot and rubber-bullet injuries. Paramedics who were trying to get to the scene told me they were pulled from their ambulances and dragged to the ground and beaten.

It's ... it's been a scene, kind of. It's a bit quiet at the moment, I have to say, but just moments ago, this compound in the hospital was filled with screaming people. The grief is turning to anger very rapidly here.

And the situation is changing very rapidly. I recall, Peter, just yesterday you were telling us how the protesters had occupied the square and the police were nowhere to be seen, at least not in the areas where the protesters were. That seems to have changed very, very quickly.

It was a dramatic change and a bit hard to understand at the moment, I have to say. I mean, only Tuesday the king, Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, had said he was sorry for the deaths that had happened earlier, the two people who were killed [during protests Monday], and he had vowed that there would be peaceful responses to peaceful protests.

The crowds had swelled over 36 hours in Pearl Circle there, which is what they had hoped would be their Tahrir Square. Many people had camped out for the night, mostly, I should say, young men but also some families, women and children there in family tents. I would say a percentage of the people go home after midnight to their own homes to sleep. But there is a corps that stays there every night, and they bore the brunt of this attack.

They said it started about 3 a.m. with tear gas being fired from above, where there's a bridge that overlooks the square. And then the police moved in, clubbing people out of their tents, according to witnesses, and then the wounded and the damage ensued.

As best you can determine, who ended up in possession of the square?

The police and the military are in charge of the square. There was a military convoy that moved in. It sealed off the square, and access to that area is now sealed off by police, armed police.

In fact, the man whose body I saw, I spoke with his son and he said they were trying to walk back into the square to help the wounded when the man was killed.

So we do not have the same situation as in Cairo, Egypt, where the protesters took over a central square, a symbolically important square, and managed through everything to stay there for days. The protesters have cleared out. Do you have any sense of what the protesters are going to do next or are attempting to do now?

You're right. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, it was not a call for regime change immediately, except for a few isolated pockets. It was a call for political reform and economic reform.

The regimes in the region are getting more and more scared as the calls for reform and change grow. Egypt may have been relatively peaceful, barring the thuggery of the goons that Mubarak sent out, but I wonder how long that will remain the case. As the repression gets more and more violent, how long until the the protesters respond in kind? And, honestly, could you even blame them for doing so?

Nicholas Kristof brings up an important point, too: Bahrain is a critical American client state. It isn't just an ally that protects Israel's southern flank—it is the home of the Fifth Fleet. But as Kristof says, "If we favor “people power” in Iran, we should favor it in Bahrain as well."

It was so much easier back in '89, wasn't it? When it was the other guy's client states falling like dominoes, instead of your own? Good times, good times. Still, it makes me wonder if this is the final, TRUE end of the Cold War. Both sides ended up losing their clients and tributaries—it just took the one an extra 20 years to have it happen. And, like Eastern Europe, I can't help but wonder if the Middle East will ultimately be better off for it.

A Discussion of PBS Funding From A Man You ALL Should Listen To

2011-02-15T17:07:00.005-05:00

Yes, PBS funding is important. But you don't have to listen to me. Listen to this guy:

Mister Rogers' PBS show was one of the most important formative experiences for a generation of children. If not generations of children. He wasn't alone in it, either; PBS is also the home of Sesame Street, for G--s sake. It is an absolutely vital part of American culture.

(Yes, G-d. Mr. Rogers wouldn't like it if someone swore on his behalf.)

House Republicans are planning to cut the funding of PBS and NPR. Entirely. Republican mouthpieces everywhere are defending it by whining about how NPR/PBS "suck on the public teat". No. What they do is exactly what government is SUPPOSED to do: use the public resources they are granted to provide a service to the public. That's exactly what they do, and they do a VERY good job of it—probably better than any of their conglomerated private-sector counterparts.

In fact, that's probably the reason why the Republicans and conservatives are so desperate to shut them down. They're living proof that the idea of well-provisioned public services at the heart of liberalism is TRUE, that it always HAS been true, and it always will be true where there is the will and honesty to serve your country and your fellow man.

That's what Mr. Rogers did, more than anything else. He served his country. He did a fantastic job of it. He was a parent to millions. He was universally recognized as one of the greatest of Americans. So let me be very clear: if you care at all about his work and his legacy, you will make d--ned sure you do everything you can to ensure that these deceptive, destructive ideologues do not have their way. Tell your Congressman and Senator not to betray his legacy. NOW.

He always believed in you. Start justifying it.

Obama Focuses on Deficit, and Guess Whose Fault it is?

2011-02-14T11:30:00.001-05:00

What was that Atrios line? "And the millions of unemployed cheered themselves hoarse"? Yeah, that. I especially like the part where he eliminates Pell Grants and screws post-secondary students over on interest charges. Now THAT'S "winning the future", Barry!

Wrong time, wrong target. And as Paul Krugman ably demonstrates, one that's only going to piss people off when the thing you cut is something they like. Obama was voted partially to be a president that sets aside Washington's ridiculous GroupThink on issues like deficits, and focus on what's really bothering Americans. Guess that just doesn't happen.

But, hey, it isn't just his fault. It's also yours. Remember: you voted for this. You voted in a whole lotta Republicans who were wailing about budget deficits. You didn't just toss out those "blue-dog" idiots, either, which would be understandable and excusable; you also threw out Democrats like Howard Feingold and Alan Grayson who were solid on the issues and knew what they were talking about.

You chose a Republican House that will do its best to drag the country into the abyss and told the president that he should follow their lead. You chose to have your government focus on deficits by fucking the poor and jobless. That's what the Republicans were selling, and you bought it.

There were an awful lot of "experts" telling you that it was necessary, of course. The media's owned by the very corps whose execs and owners benefit so handsomely from the total wealth transfer to the richest 1% that's going on in America. It would make sense that they'd bring in the very finest expert opinion money can buy. But you DO still have options, especially in this day and age.

Ah well, you've got two years to suffer, and then maybe you can throw THESE bums out too. Assuming you aren't too distracted by Snooki and The Situation to pay attention. I can only hope.

Algeria: "Running Street Battles"

2011-02-13T02:50:00.000-05:00

Algeria's Internet has been shut down, Egyptian-style. But that clearly hasn't stopped them from following the Tunisian and Egyptian lead:

Plastic bullets and tear gas were used to try and disperse large crowds in major cities and towns, with 30,000 riot police taking to the streets in Algiers alone.

There were also reports of journalists being targeted by state-sponsored thugs to stop reports of the disturbances being broadcast to the outside world.
But it was the government attack on the internet which was of particular significance to those calling for an end to President Abdelaziz Boutifleka's repressive regime.

Protesters mobilising through the internet were largely credited with bringing about revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

"Security forces are armed to the teeth out on the street, and they're also doing everything to crush our uprising on the internet. Journalists, and especially those with cameras, are being taken away by the police." President Hosni Mubarak had tried to shut down internet service providers during 18 days of protest before stepping down as Egyptian leader on Friday.

Mostafa Boshashi, head of the Algerian League for Human Rights, said: "Algerians want their voices to be heard too. They want democratic change.

"At the moment people are being prevented from travelling to demonstrations. The entrances to cities like Algeria have been blocked."

At least five people were killed in similar protests in Algeria in January, when the Interior Ministry said 1000 people were arrested.

On Saturday at least 500 had been arrested by early evening in Algiers alone, with hundreds more in Annaba, Constantine and Oran taking part in the so-called February 12 Revolution.

"The police station cells are overflowing," said Sofiane Hamidouche, a demonstrator in Annaba.

"There are running battles taking place all over the city. It's chaos. As night falls the situation will get worse."

These are astonishing times. I don't know if the "running battles" in Algeria will hand the state the excuse for repression that it couldn't find in Egypt. Different countries require different tactics and strategies. But after Tunisia and Egypt, Algeria's Powers-That-Be must be sweating. If there's a way of stopping this tsunami of demands for freedom, nobody has yet found it.

Egyptian Army Refused Orders to Fire

2011-02-11T19:59:00.000-05:00

Heard it around, confirmed by Robert Fisk:

Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

I said it before. I'll say it again. These men were and are heroes. It was their decision to act like human beings, instead of deadly automatons, that prevented another Tiananmen Square from happening. That this is almost certainly common knowledge in Egypt might help explain why the people are rallying around the Army, instead of rallying against it.

Fisk's right about the West's issue, too:

The events of the past 12 hours have not, alas, been a victory for the West. American and European leaders who rejoiced at the fall of communist dictatorships have sat glumly regarding the extraordinary and wildly hopeful events in Cairo – a victory of morality over corruption and cruelty – with the same enthusiasm as many East European dictators watched the fall of their Warsaw Pact nations. Calls for stability and an "orderly" transition of power were, in fact, appeals for Mubarak to stay in power – as he is still trying to do – rather than a ringing endorsement of the demands of the overwhelming pro-democracy movement that should have struck him down.

The people of Egypt will, I suspect, remember quite well who their friends were in this struggle. They'll also never forget who hemmed and hawed due to their preference for tractable, predictable tyrants in the developing world. Nor should they.

Realists, Neo-Conservatives and Egypt

2011-02-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

One under-appreciated but useful aspect of Egypt's revolution is that it is a direct repudiation of both the realists AND the neoconservatives. The realists never thought that anything like this could ever happen. Sure, they're preaching "military coup" now, and the military has a big role to play in the short-term, but there's really nothing in realist doctrine and theory that acceptably explains all this, and not a realist in the world that had predicted it.

It's even worse for the neocons, though. Their argument was that only violent, foreign-backed uprisings and takeovers could bring any freedom to the middle east. That was the whole point of the Iraq adventure, of their coddling of Iranian terrorists, of their advocacy of sanctions against states that they didn't like, and of their attitude towards the Middle East in general. They were completely wrong. It was non-violent, it was Arab-led, and it had NOTHING to do with outside pressure. (Far from being a target of sanctions, Egypt was a favored client of the West. )

In fact, if anything, it was more about outside support than about outside pressure; while this wasn't a "twitter revolution" or anything like that, there's no doubt that the people of Egypt drew strength and hope from the outpouring of support that they received around the world. If we as outsiders want people to "throw off their chains", we shouldn't try to force them into it, we should encourage them. Make it positive, not negative.

(The lessons for handling the Israel-Palestinian conflict are left as an exercise for the reader.)

If there's any theory in IR or political science that holds sway here, it's good ol' fashioned liberalism, the kind that realists since Morganthau have always sneered at as "idealism". The Tunisian and Egyptian people wanted to be free of their dictators, and used their passion and determination to do it. That is the finest example of liberal doctrine and liberal tradition as we've ever seen, in countries that were thought to be so thoroughly illiberal as to be unrecognizable.

This isn't just a new day for Egypt. It's a new day for how we understand the world and our place within it.

And So Much for Mubarak

2011-02-11T11:39:00.001-05:00

AJE says that he's done. He just resigned.

Next step: Suleiman.

Edit: It happened without violence, too. That was almost certainly key: the military clearly couldn't be coaxed into attacking non-violent protesters. (I'd heard rumors that the order had actually come down, but the soldiers on the ground flatly refused. If true, it's amazing, and those men are heroes.) Mubarak was left powerless; the security forces just didn't have the power to enforce his rule, the army was unwilling, and the chaos strategy that I'd been so concerned about just didn't do the job either. I'd said that the only way the Chaos Strategy could work is if it managed to stop the Egyptian protesters from gathering momentum. It didn't. The thugs were repelled, and really wouldn't have worked again. Once the Wael Ghonim interview came out, it was all over.

That said, I'm very, very concerned about the army taking over, and about the comments being made questioning whether Egyptian democracy will be recognized as legitimate if the Muslim Brotherhood plays a role in the government. (As it almost certainly will.)

This is NOT over. Not by a long shot.

Well, THAT Didn't Go Over Well

2011-02-10T16:08:00.000-05:00

Mubarak says "I might transfer power, but I'm going nowhere". Crowd is...displeased...by the news.

The shouts on Al Jazeera are deafening, and the crowd is beyond angry, shouting "he shall leave" in unison. I would be too. He sounded patronizing, out-of-touch, and more than a little delusional about his situation and about his people's attitude towards him. He tried to blame "outside forces", but his own countrymen are screaming for him to leave. He demonstrated exactly why no longer deserves the power he wields...if he ever really did in the first place.

Tomorrow will not be a peaceful Friday.

So Long, Hosni?

2011-02-10T11:09:00.000-05:00

Looks like there's going to be an imminent transfer of power away from Mubarak to the Vice President and/or the army. Considering everybody and his dog has been predicting it, no big surprise; what will be surprising is if it's enough.

(Though, on AJE, they're saying that he might transfer it to the leader of Parliament in anticipation of elections in 60 days. He has that power under the Egyptian constitution. Nobody seems to know whether that's likely, though.)

Tea Partiers Buck Republicans to Kill Patriot Act

2011-02-10T04:33:00.001-05:00

Er...I don't think anybody was expecting THIS.

A measure to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act counterterrorism surveillance law through December failed the House Tuesday night, with more than two-dozen Republicans bucking their party to oppose the measure.

The House measure, which was sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and required a two-thirds majority for passage, failed on a 277-to-148 vote. Twenty-six Republicans voted with 122 Democrats to oppose the measure, while 67 Democrats voted with 210 Republicans to back it. Ten members did not vote.

The measure would have extended three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire on Monday, Feb. 28, unless Congress moves to reauthorize them. One of the provisions authorizes the FBI to continue using roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; the second allows the government to access "any tangible items," such as library records, in the course of surveillance; and the third is a "lone wolf" provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act that allows for the surveillance of targets who are not connected to an identified terrorist group.

The vote came as several tea party-aligned members of the new freshman class had been expressing doubts about the measure.

Not that I have any more respect or admiration for the teabaggers. They're still a blight on the country. But it is interesting to see that they can and do buck some of the Republicans' default positions. Should make the next two years more fun.

Edit: Okay, true, most of the teabaggers voted for it. And it'll be coming up again as a regular vote, so it'll likely pass.

Still, for the Republican party, even a minor rebellion like this is somewhat of a big deal.

Andrew Coyne is What Happens When You Unleash a Republican-Style Troll on Canadians

2011-02-07T12:51:00.000-05:00

He spouts unbelievable torrents of absolute liquid BS, but everybody's too nice to call him out on it.

Case in point: The last page of the article where he's advocating toll roads. (He has also advocated privatizing public transit, but never mind that.) He makes a whole load of absolutely unsupported and likely unsupportable conclusions. Let's go down the list:

1)Nobody cares about privacy because people use phones;
2)Poor people don't have cars in the first place;
3)Tax Credits would be a fine solution for people who can't afford to get to work TODAY;
4)Toll roads would make public transit pay for itself;
5)Transit Vehicles "speed up when tolls are imposed" (Subway riders would be amused by this, but Coyne also despises rail and believes all should ride buses);
6)This howler:

If getting more people to use transit is your aim, moreover, subsidies are the last thing you should want. The biggest factor in people’s decision whether to use transit is not the fares, but rather the speed, comfort and convenience relative to other options: that is, the passenger experience. And the surest means of forcing transit operators to pay more attention to the passenger experience is if their livelihoods depend on it. The greater the share of revenues paid for by passengers themselves, the more operators are likely to be lying awake at night thinking up ways to put bums in the seats; subsidies simply insulate them from that concern.

Now, this may be true. It may not be. But we certainly have no REASON to think any of it is true. Even if the transit operator were privatized, most sane people know that relatively few natural monopolists (which is what transit is) "lay awake at night thinking up ways to put bums in seats"; for those that do, why should they stop simply because they receive subsidies? Coyne's industry receives massive subsidies—does that mean that he doesn't give a tinker's damn about the circulation of his little rag?

(Do YOU not give a damn about the cost of mass transit when and if you use it?)

That is, I think, one of the enduring differences between the Canadian and American online media scene. While there is a lot wrong with the American blogosphere, I can be reasonably confident that someone like Coyne would be constantly assailed by people who are carving him up and serving his chunks as object lessons in what you cannot get away with in 2011. But, instead, this guy has a sinecure on Canadian public television, for God's sake, where he does little more than act the token conservative who gets all angry that the government isn't right-wing enough.

Even Kady O'Malley, someone whom I respect quite a bit, gets all chummy with him on Twitter, exhorting people to follow the old hack as if he needs any MORE of an audience. Collegiality should have its limits.

As much as I'm not terribly fond of how the Huffington Post's owners have become fabulously wealthy off of the backs of unpaid labor, at least you could rest assured that somebody at Huffpo would tear this guy up. In the UK, they'd probably tear his heart out and show it to him. But in the True North? Not so much. Unfortunate.

Holy Hell, Al Jazeera Offices in Cairo DESTROYED

2011-02-04T14:47:00.000-05:00

ABC News

Al Jazeera's office in Cairo was stormed and burned today, the most dramatic evidence yet that Egyptian authorities are desperate to shut down the network widely praised for revealing the size and reach of the demonstrations.

Over the last week nine of the network's reporters have been detained and satellite providers across the region have shut its signal off.

The assault on Al Jazeera is part of an offensive against the foreign press by those in Cairo upset by the portrayal of the rock and fire bomb battles. More than 100 reporters, including those from ABC News, have menaced, threatened with death and beaten in the streets.

Much of the anger by the supporters of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has been aimed at Al Jazeera.

That authorities have targeted reporters for Al Jazeera English – as well as those for Al Jazeera Arabic -- shows how the younger, more analytical of the two channels has come echo the Arabic channel's ability to get under the skin of autocratic, unpopular regimes.

For almost five years, Al Jazeera English has followed a single motto: "Giving voice to the voiceless." Despite the attempts to silence it, the network's coverage of the revolts seem to be ensuring that its own voice is only getting louder.

Al Jazeera English has its detractors, but its coverage of Egypt has been lauded by most independent critics as aggressive, informative and more extensive than its competitors. Its increasing influence has earned the ire less of the United States -- often called its most obvious target, but which this week defended its right to report freely -- than of the governments of the region. Today at least four governments in the Arab world have banned the channel from operating, none more obviously than the Egyptians in the last two weeks.

Remember how I was talking about "desperation moves"? Yeah. That.

Ban-Ki Ain't Happy

2011-02-04T12:13:00.000-05:00

And why would he be? Using hired thugs to attack pro-democracy protesters is terrible and cause for condemnation alone...but using said thugs to intimidate and attack journalists and calling them "Israeli spies" is beyond the pale. Makes sense that he'd condemn it.

Something's Up in Tahrir

2011-02-04T10:15:00.002-05:00

Well, besides surprisingly peaceful (even joyous protests) that is.

There's a lot of chatter about how "something" is happening in the Square. People are cheering for some reason.

Edit: Apparently they thought Mubarak had acquiesced and stepped down. Not so much. Still, the protests appear to no longer be battles between pro- and anti-mubarak supporters. Supposedly the army is working to reduce the violence.

Odd, that. The chaos strategy was working. You'd think the military would continue standing by. Might reflect the divisions within the military. (And I've heard there are MANY.)

Egyptian Gov't Calling Western Journalists "Israeli Spies"

2011-02-03T13:26:00.000-05:00

So, uh, Bibi? How's that "hey, at least the Egyptian dictators are pro-Israel" thing working out for you?

In any case, this is disgusting.

The conventional wisdom goes, when it’s too dangerous to film on the streets, you can always do an interview with someone inside a building.

Not in Alexandria you can’t. Not today.

We had arranged to interview a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his apartment, but the neighbours – sitting by the door on the street, snarled like guard dogs when we arrived. They didn’t want foreigners inside their building, they said, and saw us off.

We retreated down the street to our car. A group of young men approached, armed with baseball bats, sticks and machetes. They were the neighbourhood Popular Committee.

For the past few days, these groups have been smiling and friendly to us but this lot started shouting and banging on the roof of our car. They demanded to see our passports.

I think I know why. Last night and today, Egyptian state TV had been broadcasting of Israeli spies disguised as western journalists roaming the country.

It’s a wicked rumour to spread because it puts any westerner – or any Egyptian working with westerners – at risk of a beating or worse. It’s cynical to say the least.

This government did a deal with Israel, but it still stirs up anti-Zionist feelings when it suits and that’s one reason so many journalists have been attacked in Cairo today.

I guess rank anti-Semitism is okay after all, just as long as being stirred up by people who suit your state's interests. Good to know.

Nationalist Element of Chaos Strategy

2011-02-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

I should have pointed out that part of all this is, as always, to blame "outside influences" for what's going on. That's what Suleiman is up to. Though he can't seem to decide between blaming Americans or terrists or both. That won't help him much.