Egypt Opens Its Border

Also in the Guardian:

Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip today amid mounting criticism of Israel's violent raid on a flotilla of aid ships attempting to break the three-year blockade of the enclave.

Thousands of Palestinians crossed the border at Rafah as Turkey called for Israel to be punished for the attack, which left at least nine people dead. Volatility in the area was further underlined by reports that five members of Islamic Jihad were killed in Gaza in two separate attacks.

The Israeli army confirmed its aircraft had shot at militants in Gaza, killing three, after they had fired rockets into southern Israel, and that two gunmen were killed after breaching Israel's border fence.

Earlier, putting aside his hostility to Hamas, which has links to his political opponent, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, ordered that the crossing be opened until further notice. The move is being seen as a response to increasing Arab anger at what is perceived as Egyptian complicity in the blockade.

The border normally only opens once a month for a few days.

An Egyptian security source told Reuters: "Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian and medical aid to enter. The border will remain open for an unlimited time."

So now this blockade has been a complete failure. Egypt has opened up their borders, so the Palestinians can get whatever they like. The Israelis can't stop it, unless they either go after Egypt—which would be ludicrous—or close down the Gazan/Egyptian border.
Since this is going to be an open border, it means that all the munitions and war materiel that wasn't on the aid ships can now be easily shipped from Egypt to Gaza, too! Israel's security has actually been harmed by this nonsense!

Activists: "Israeli Forces Fired First"

Guardian:

Arriving at Istanbul's Ataturk airport with her one-year-old baby, Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin said Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the Turkish-flagged ferry Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of the worst clashes and all the fatalities. Israeli officials have said that the use of armed force began when its boarding party was attacked.

"It was extremely bad and very tough clashes took place. The Mavi Marmara is filled with blood," said Cetin, whose husband is the Mavi Marmara's chief engineer...

..."The attack on the Mavi Marmara came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis."

Six Greek activists who returned to Athens accused Israeli commandos of using electric shocks during the raid.

Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni, told reporters: "Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used."

Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: "We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks.

Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza "and nothing more", said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. "They didn't let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers."

Remember, these latter ships were not the Turkish Mavi Marmara.  But they still got the holy hell beat out of them, had their records of the attack seized, and were apparently kept in privation after capture. As I said earlier, the whole "they jumped us" talking point was used because it was appropriate to the footage they were able to isolate that would make them look the best. That's why they seized anything and everything that would contradict them. 

Now, though, it's clear that the whole "they jumped us" thing wasn't intended to be credible. It's just cover. It allows those who would suffer serious political fallout or cognitive dissonance to have something to fixate on that will justify the position they so desperately want to maintain.  They'll carefully ignore the electrocution of harmless activists and fixate on the few who decided to defend themselves, because it makes their brains hurt a little less.

They're lost. Hell with 'em. The question is what the rest of us decide.

Anti-Israel Activist Loses Her Eye For the Trouble

No, I'm not making this up:

An American solidarity activist was shot in the face with a tear gas canister during a demonstration in Qalandiya, today. Emily Henochowicz is currently in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, following the demonstration that was held in protest to Israel’s murder of at least 10 civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters this morning.
21-year old Emily Henochowicz was hit in the face with a tear gas projectile fired directly at her by an Israeli soldier during the demonstration at Qalandiya checkpoint today. Israeli occupation forces fired volleys of tear gas at unarmed Palestinian and international protesters, causing mass panic amongst the demonstrators and those queuing at the largest checkpoint separating the West Bank and Israel.

The source is unreliable (not scoop, but the source that Scoop is working from), but it's pretty hard to fake a lost eye.

She is an artist, by the way. Icing on the cake, isn't it just?

IDF Shot First? (Plus: Legal Ramifications)

RawStory has linked to a repost of the flotilla footage that I had linked to earlier.

Israeli forces assert they came under attack by the pro-Palestine civilian group, and video released by the IDF appears to show one soldier being tossed overboard amid a scuffle with unidentified individuals wielding melee weapons, like clubs and chairs.

However, in raw video captured by an Al Jazeera producer and published to YouTube late Monday, two journalists provide a play-by-play of the harrowing event as pops and cracks echo in the background. Even before the Israeli forces were aboard, one says, they were pelting the boat with tear gas and stun grenades, injuring numerous people.

Then he confirms the first death, saying the individual was killed by "munitions," but not specifying whether it was a bullet or something else. Then he confirms that Israeli forces were boarding the ship.

Another of the reporters featured in the video works for the Iranian network Press TV. "We are being hit by tear gas, stun grenades, we have navy ships on either side, helicopters overhead," he said. "We are being attacked from every single side. This is in international waters, not Israeli waters, not in the 68-mile exclusion zone. We are being attacked in international waters completely illegally."
"The organizers are telling me now, they are raising a white flag -- they are raising a white flag to the Israeli army," the Al Jazeera reporter said. "This is after one person has been killed; a civilian has been killed by munition. That number could be more ... Despite the white flag being raised, despite the white flag being raised, the Israeli army is still shooting, still firing live munitions."

Here is the video in question.


Disturbingly, the reporter is reporting that Israeli forces are trying to block phones and destroy satellite feeds to the outside world. The attempts to squelch independent reportage really raise questions about the IDF's credibility; it suggests that they knew going in that there would be casualties, and were trying to shut people up before the outside world figured it out.

That would be par for the course for, say, China; but isn't it Israel's status as the "sole regional democracy" that justifies supporting it in the first place?

In any case, you hear gunshots right off the bat, and it appears that gunfire is coming from the boats around the ship. Clearly, then, the gunfire did not originate with the activists. One of the reporters at the beginning said that they were under fire with tear gas and stun grenades from all sides, so those sounds may have been from those weapons, but it didn't sound like tear gas or grenade launchers; it sounded like straight-up gunfire.

In any case, Craig Murray brings up a good point: even if this isn't piracy, it is an act of aggression against ships flying under a Turkish flag:

The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place
on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody's territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory. There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.
Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.
Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.
In brief, if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

This is why you don't attack ships like this in international waters: because if you aren't already at war with them, you damned well will be at war with them. Israel may have committed an act of war against Turkey in order to stop a shipment of humanitarian aid to a people who aren't even allowed fresh meat or a tub of margarine. Madness.

Confiscated "Weapons" From the Flotilla

I got a chance to see the confiscated "weapons" from the flotilla.

A few matched sets of galley knives, a kirpan, and a few utility knives do not an arsenal make.

Yep, the US Rolled Over

Here's the official response:

The United States is deeply disturbed by the recent violence and regrets the tragic loss of life and injuries suffered among those involved in the incident last night aboard the Gaza-bound ships.  We are working to ascertain the facts.  We expect a credible and transparent investigation and strongly urge the Israeli government to investigate the incident fully.As I stated in the Chamber in December 2008, when we were confronted by a similar situation, mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so.  These non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms should be the ones used for the benefit of all those in Gaza. Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances.
The United States remains deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza, and the deterioration of the situation there, including the humanitarian and human rights situation.  We continue to believe the situation is unsustainable...

The rest is inconsequential babble about the peace process that Bibi could give a shit about.
Definitely a roll-over. Did not mention the piratical nature of the attack, did not condemn the Israelis for either violating their RoE or for having ridiculous RoE to begin with, and did not acknowledge any of the vital materiel that the Israelis are not letting through.

This might just be State boilerplate awaiting a real White House response, but I don't believe so. The lesson is clear. Netanyahu can now act however he chooses, confident that Barry will have his back. No matter what he does.

Sullivan on the Flotilla

Andrew Sullivan isn't exactly an Israel-hater, but here he is on the footage of activists trying to fight off the commandos:

They are engaging in self-defense. More to the point: they are civilians confronting one of the best militaries in the world. They killed no soldiers; their weapons were improvised; the death toll in the fight is now deemed to be up to 19 - all civilians. It staggers me to read defenses of what the Israelis have done. They attacked a civilian flotilla in international waters breaking no law. When they met fierce if asymmetric resistance, they opened fire. And we are now being asked to regard the Israelis as the victims.
Seriously.

This is like a mini-Gaza all over again. The Israelis don't seem to grasp that Western militaries don't get to murder large numbers of civilians because they don't like them, or because they could, on a far tinier scale, hurt Israelis. And you sure don't have a right to kill them because they resist having their ship commandeered, in international waters. The Israelis seem to be making decisions as if they can get away with anything. It's time the US reminded them in ways they cannot mistake that they cannot.

I'm still very, very skeptical that the U.S. will do a damned thing. I'd like to be wrong, but I don't expect to be.
And, yes, Sullivan is right. Since the blockade has not been accepted under international law—nor could it be, considering that Gaza is in fact under Israeli control and not an enemy state—Israel had no right to attack those ships. Israel has always maintained that acts of violence are only illegal under international law if they are aggressive in nature. They maintain that defensive violence and territorial acquisition is legitimate, in order to justify the settlements in occupied lands.

Well, that's what's happened here: defense. Even if the activists had fired on the descending commandos, they still would have had the right of it, because it was the commandos who are the aggressors. They didn't, of course, and apparently there is footage out there of the Israelis firing long before their first commando hit the deck of the Mavi Marmara. But it's still important to be clear about the irrelevance of the "debate".

Bibi's Doubling Down

Well, according to Fox (no link. Ever.) it looks like Bibi's doubling down. He's saying that the attack was entirely "self-defense", that the activists were all Al Qaeda stooges, and that the military has his "full backing". He probably has to, since the "they had sticks! STICKS!" line just isn't going to cut it, not when people bring up the problem of this being pretty naked high-seas piracy.

(If not an act of war against Turkey.)

But he must be really confident that Obama's toeing the Israeli line.  He's pretty much left Obama twisting in the breeze. Either Barry backs Bibi to the hilt and loses the entire Muslim world and any hope of positive influence in the middle east, as well as any lingering remnants of his mystique as a peacemaker and fair broker—or he criticizes Israel and the apologist wing in the United States goes insane. He can't stay on the fence, either, since both sides will claim that it confirms their worst instincts about the man.

All this as oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, too. Obama isn't even really responsible for that, that's entirely the result of Republican ideology, policies and practices, but he's being forced to wear this. He did not need this, and would be entirely justified in telling Netanyahu to shove it. But I suspect that he won't.

Legality of Israel's Flotilla Attacks

Forget the whole "they came at us with knives, so we gunned them down" defense that Israel is putting forward for their attacks on the Gaza relief flotilla.

They attacked the flotilla in international waters. You do NOT do that. It is just about as illegal as anything can be in international waters. It is pretty much an act of war. It's also blatantly stupid besides, since it means that your civilian ships are now fair game.

That all this was pulled to stop humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza is just insane.

Edit: There appears to be a video of the beginning of the attack, and it appears to show the commandos firing first.  And what the hell is going on with twitter? They seem to be blocking hashtags about the incident. They were all over Iran.

"A Stark and Potentially Durable Change in Politics"

So here's Politico on last night's establishment bloodbath:

The anti-establishment, anti-incumbent fevers on display Tuesday are not new. The ideologically charged, grass-roots activists flexing their muscle in this week’s primary showdowns are the same breed as primary voters who four years ago stripped the Democratic nomination away from Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who later won as an independent.

What’s now clear, in a way that wasn’t before, is that these results reflect a genuine national phenomenon, not simply isolated spasms in response to single issues or local circumstances.

This is a stark and potentially durable change in politics. The old structures that protected incumbent power are weakening. New structures, from partisan news outlets to online social networks, are giving anti-establishment politicians access to two essential elements of effective campaigns: publicity and financial support.

In effect, the anti-institutional forces that coalesced in recent years now look like an institutional force of their own.

All I have to say is: Good. Been pointing out for years now that the activist wings are more powerful than they know, or that D.C. will admit. Well, now they know. And so does D.C.

Anti-Incumbent, Anti-Elite

Well, looks like it's abundantly clear what's going on right now. Sestak beat Specter in Pennsylvania, Rand won in Kentucky, and Arkansas' Democratic primary is going to a runoff.

 Why? Simple. People wanted a change and didn't get it. I think there is a serious danger that people will misinterpret this as some sort of vindication of the teabaggers. It's not.

It is, instead, an indication that people are pissed off about how betrayed they feel by their own elites.  They sense that the people at the top are not looking out for them, but just looking out for themselves. The teabaggers are getting manipulated into being ticked off at the wrong people—the ones who aren't just anti-Dem reactionaries—but it's being motivated by the same basic problem.

And, yes, that problem is the economy.  Unemployment is still far too high. Opportunity is still lacking. People are still desperately insecure about their own financial future. And, most importantly, the only people who are benefiting from economic and productivity growth are the wealthiest 1%. That ain't right, and people sense that that ain't right, but they've been so thoroughly indoctrinated to fear and despise "class warfare" that they're casting about for other justifications. So they rage about Obamacare, and about TARP, and about cap-and-trade, and everything else that is so "elitist".

Thing is, they are right. They are being screwed over and betrayed by an elite. They're just being mislead as to who that elite is. They're angry at an elite, but it's not the right elite. So it doesn't accomplish anything.

In the meantime, though, they're still ticked, and so incumbents (an elite) are still going to take it on the chin. Bad news for the Dems; but then again, they've richly, richly earned this.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a Goddamned Idiot

How stupid do you have to be to write this:

All of this analysis would be true if America were using its drones to launch unprovoked attacks against targets in Pakistan. But it is not. These attacks are provoked. And who is doing the provoking? Jihadists, who, for all the obvious reasons, want us to believe that it is our actions that cause the violence they inflict on us. Ask yourself this question: Did American drone attacks in Pakistan cause 9/11? Or the attack on the U.S.S. Cole? Or the embassy bombings in Africa?

No. Really. HOW? How is it possible?

It is the most trivially obvious thing in the world to realize that people are going to pay one hell of a lot more attention to attacks on their friends and family than they are to attacks that happened almost a decade ago and almost a world away, and they are sure as hell not going to pay much attention to this sort of reasoning when the attacks are being made on people who were not directly connected with either the Cole or 9/11 bombings? Yes, they might be jihadists—though predators aren't exactly the most accurate platform in America's arsenal so there's a good chance that many might not be—but they are not going to agree with Goldberg's reasoning, any more than Goldberg would believe that blowing up a building in DC is acceptable because of what America got up to in, say, El Salvador.


Look, idiot, this is absurdly simple. The whole "predator attacks cause more retaliatory attacks" idea is based on the notion that they don't care whether or not you think your actions are justified. It's not a normative argument, it's a factual argument: bombs drop, they get mad, they "respond". The fact that the bombing is a response to something that they did does not mean that they aren't responding in turn to what you did. That's what escalation IS: response building on response building on response. Nobody gives a shit about "he started it!"

That's why one has to be thoughtful about any sort of military response to terrorism: even if it is justified, it's going to carry consequences, and you have to recognize and understand those consequences before making those decisions. Saying "he started it!" is what a CHILD does.

(Not that it's surprising to see someone from the Atlantic acting like a child. They provide a platform for Jane Galt, after all.)

The truly hilarious part of the story is here:

"No terrorism group has the word 'terrorism' in its name. They see themselves as reluctant fighters, always retaliating, never initiating."

Well, nobody should say that terrorists never learn. Looks like they learned that little trick reeeeal well.

Copyright and Information Asymmetry

I'd been reading Michael Geist's pieces on the new Canadian copyright bill—which looks to be following the DMCA model—and I had a thought about the debate.
The debate over copyright is as much about information asymmetry as anything else.

Information asymmetry, in economics, is the idea that a purchaser and seller have inequal amounts of information about the value of a good. A used-car seller knows more than the buyer about the soundness of the vehicle, for example. The buyer might not know whether or not the car is a "lemon", so the price he pays isn't necessarily going to correspond to the actual value of the car. Ditto with everything from home loans to first dates; people don't know everything they need to know. In a lot of cases, the seller is deliberately keeping them from knowing it.

Creative works, especially narrative creative works, are much the same. If you're buying a game, movie, album or book, you aren't generally going to know how good it is until you've already bought it. By then, of course, it's too late; you can't get your money back at the theatre for a movie you hated, and you can't get a refund on a terrible game. If it's good, then great! But if it's bad, you're stuck.

In turn, the presumption that animates enforcement copyright law is that if you could view a work for free, you wouldn't pay for it. Remember, it's not theft per se; nobody is deprived of the use of a good, just the ability to control who can gain access to the work. You don't pay, you don't watch. (Or listen. Or play. Or whatever.)

Since these creative products are information, then, that means consumers are inevitably and inescapably operating at an information deficit. They don't know that the movie is worth anything to them until after they've seen it—but by then they have already seen it! And if they've seen it, why on earth would they pay for it? The whole industry depends on information asymmetry to work. People can never pay what something is worth to them. They're always at risk of being suckered. Always.

Then again, perhaps it is the presumption that is wrong. Perhaps consumers would, if prompted, pay what they think that something is worth. Homo Economicus wouldn't, since he wouldn't part with a dime he didn't have to if he didn't have a gun to his head. But real people don't think that way.

It makes me wonder. If you took away the barriers, would people pay what something is worth? Is the presumption wrong? Or will consumers always be on the edge of getting suckered?

Krugman: "Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work"

The Krug-man sums it up:

Thinking about BP and the Gulf: in this old interview, Milton Friedman says that there’s no need for product safety regulation, because corporations know that if they do harm they’ll be sued.

Interviewer: So tort law takes care of a lot of this ..

Friedman: Absolutely, absolutely.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

In the wake of last month’s catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is “not where we need to be right now” she said.

And don’t say that we just need better politicians. If libertarianism requires incorruptible politicians to work, it’s not serious.

The problem with libertarianism (well, one of them) is that economic power almost always translates into political power. That political power gets exploited to build greater economic power, which translates into more political power, ad nauseum.

The only way you can prevent that is to use political power to prevent it. That gets harder and harder over time, as economic power gets concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. And it requires loci of political power that are separate from those of economic power. That's what democracy is supposed to do.

(It isn't, of course. Economic power has been translated into political power, so much so that most people believe that their votes can't really change a damned thing. BP will probably skate on this. But that's the general idea.)

Kagan's the Nominee

So Obama's moving the court to the right, replacing Kennedy with the "ideological cipher" that supports giving the executive branch carte blanche.

Ah, well, not much to be done about it now. As Greenwald said:

Our politics is nothing if not tribal, and the duty of Every Good Democrat is now to favor Kagan's confirmation.  Conservatives refused to succumb to those rules and ended up with Sam Alito instead of Harriet Miers, but they had a much different relationship to George Bush than progressives have to Obama (i.e., conservatives -- as they proved several times late in Bush's second term [Miers, immigration, Dubai Ports] -- were willing to oppose their leader whey they disagreed).  The White House knows that progressives will never try to oppose any important Obama initiative, and even if they were inclined, they lack the power to do so (largely because unconditional support guarantees impotence).

Not much to add to that. Conservatives oppose, and get their wish. Progressives acquiesce, and get trampled.  You'd think the latter would have figured it out by now. But if they had, they'd probably still be calling themselves "liberals".

Britain's Hung Parliament

It's too soon to predict exactly how the British House of Commons is going to turn out. It's quite likely that it will be a "hung parliament" however, where nobody has a majority but one party (the conservatives, likely) have a plurality.

Considering this is the case in Canada as well, and has been for a while, it does raise the question about whether or not this will become the rule of thumb for Westminster systems in general. It also suggests that the main argument for FPTP systems—that they generate stable two-party systems with clear winners—simply does not apply anymore.

At best, you can hope for stable coalitions, and you're as likely to get that from a proportional system. Considering there is literally nothing else that justifies FPTP, the lesson is clear.

Crist Goes Indie

Not exactly the greatest of surprises. He was going to get (as Mike Allen put it) "shellacked" by the hard right.

I agree with Allen that this probably isn't going to help him. Incumbents are going to be under fire in November; an incumbent without the benefit of party identification is only going to be that much worse off. It was inevitable—Republican primaries actually mean something—but he's still not in good shape. He might lose the seat, and the Dems might win it.

In the long run, though, this only benefits the conservatives in the Republican party. They've demonstrated their power. They've pushed the party to the right, and they've made the politicos that much more worried about them. When the Republicans regain control, that's going to ensure that conservatives get much more of a say than they would otherwise.

For progressives this should prove...instructive. If they're willing to learn the lesson.

M.I.A's Disturbing "Born Free" Video

Yes, it is disturbing. Very much so. SO much so that it was pulled from YouTube. (You can see it on Vimeo.) But, like the Wikileaks video, it's the kind of disturbing that is worthwhile. The kind that is necessary. If you are an adult and willing to deal with shocking content, I'd recommend you see it. You aren't going to like it, but you'll have appreciated seeing it.

Pretty much anybody with a clue (and, who, especially, knows anything about the UK's cultural idiosyncrasies of prejudice) will know instantly what sort of allegory is going on here. It's about showing how minor prejudices can become major ones, and about how the sort of prejudices that you cavalierly ignore or explain away—because you don't identify with the victims—can be brought to vivid life when they're people that you can identify with.

(If nothing else, I'm never going to see certain episodes of South Park the same way again.)

Goldman's "Big Short"

Emails have been released that show that Goldman, contra their assertions, made a whole bunch of money by shorting in the face of the banking collapse.

From Huffpo:

In a July 25 email that year, Gary Cohn, the firm's chief operating officer, wrote Viniar to update him on the firm's mortgage market activities. The firm lost about $322 million on residential mortgages -- but it made $373 million on its bets against the market, bets that increased in value as the market tanked.

About 25 minutes later, Viniar wrote back, "Tells you what might be happening to people who don't have the big short." The firm made $51 million that day.

"There it is, in their own words: Goldman Sachs taking 'the big short' against the mortgage market," subcommittee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the internal emails.

"Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," Levin said. "They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients."

Levin's panel points out that in the firm's 2009 annual report, Goldman Sachs stated that the firm "did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products."

"These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market," Levin said.

Whoopsie. Pretty sure that out-and-out falsehood in your annual reports ain't gonna do much for your reputation.

Still interested in seeing where this goes. The real story isn't so much the revelations coming out now. We knew all this stuff, it is simply being (finally) proven beyond doubt. The real story is how the hell Washington handles it, since they're absolutely choked with both GS alumni and people who are beholden to GS alumni. The public knows that this thing is going on, and this situation is pretty easy to understand: "GS helped create a bad investment and then bet against it" is not going to be too tricky for even the most low-info voter to grasp.

They're already angry at the "big banks", and this will crystallize their anger. The only question is who to be angry at: and if the Dems (or the Republicans!) don't work damned hard to distance themselves and be seen to punish the bastards, they'll be punished themselves.

Are the British LibDems...Winning?

Maybe yes, maybe no. The Sun (care of the BBC) has them polling ahead of the other two parties following Nick Clegg's victory in the PM debate. People are tired of both Labour and the Tories, and are taking a fresh look at Clegg's crew. But Britain's first-past-the-post system means that it doesn't necessarily matter: the LibDems would have to crush the other parties to win a majority. They aren't crushing. Yet.

It's starting to feel like it might happen, though. The other parties are so tired, and the whole business is so tawdry, that a lot of Brits can be forgiven for wanting a change or three. Certainly a Labour/LibDem coalition is possible, and that could make a lot of big differences. But it's still early days, of course. Who knows what will happen next week.

(Makes one wonder about America, too. England has a third party, and they're doing pretty well. America's system isn't that much different...)

Nice Response to Ebert

Found a good response to Ebert's latest at Gamasutra.

Thing is, I don't think that it matters all that much. Ebert's writings on this are notorious mostly because they're novel. Most people, if they think about it at all, wouldn't have too much trouble with the idea that games are art. The objections appear to come mostly from those who are defending other forms from being "sullied" by games. Since most people under the age of 30 don't see games as "sullying" anything, I doubt that that perspective will endure.

It's a question of time. Nothing more.

Ebert: Still Disappointing

What's disappointing about Ebert's latest whinge about people daring to define computer and video games as "art" isn't so much that he tortures the definition of "art". (Though he does)

No, it's that he tortures the definition of at least two genuinely creative works in doing so: Flower and Braid.  For Flower, he just moans about how he doesn't know anything about the game, and therefore it cannot be "art". But for Braid, well...

Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.

Yes, in Chess, that would be "taking back a move". Braid isn't Chess. The two aren't even really comparable. Various forms of time manipulation are the entire point of the experience; they ARE the "discipline of the game".  There is far more to Braid than "taking back a move", and it takes only a cursory examination of the game to reveal the sort of life experiences, emotions, and frustrations that the creator is drawing allegories to.

Ebert isn't even just ignorant here, though: he's being willfully ignorant. He's not only utterly dismissive in a situation where it isn't warranted, but he's clearly not interested in even paying attention to the counter-argument. He talks about how he enjoys the advantage of "response after consideration", but betrays not the slightest moment of consideration in the first place.  Anybody who had ever even heard of the Sims, for example, wouldn't claim that all games are winnable; yet Ebert does it over, and over, and over again, since victory conditions apparently (somehow) deny a game the status of "art".

(No, he never explained that one, either.)

It's not surprising. He's practically built his entire critical reputation on this fight these days. For reasons which baffle me, he has spent more time, energy, and devotion on tearing down games than he has building up film. One wonders why he is so devoted to it, but whatever the reason, he simply cannot be convinced otherwise at this point. He simply has too much at stake, and never did have the temperament to suffer a demeaning climbdown on the subject. Nobody who was trying to engage the subject fairly would make the sorts of rash dismissals that he does on a regular basis. He doesn't appear to want to engage it fairly, because it allows for the possibility that he may be wrong.

In any case, here's the TED talk he was responding to:



I disagree with this in one key respect: I do think that Chess is a work of art. Otherwise, it's excellent stuff. I can see why Ebert was compelled to respond. I'm just disappointed that he made such a hash of it.

Edit: Just as an added point: Ebert really, really mixes up the question of whether something is GOOD art with the question of whether it is art AT ALL. By any logically consistent definition, even bad art is art; bad art contains within it the possibility that it could have been good. 

It is also unfortunate that Ebert seems unwilling to fairly engage the question of interactivity and involvement. Winning conditions do not determine games. As I noted above, many of the most popular games (The Sims, Spore, and the multitudes of "massive multiplayer" games) have no victory conditions at all. They cannot be won. If that means they are not "games" as Ebert understands them, then that shows how limited his conceptions are, not ours.

What defines these games is, instead, direct engagement. You cannot separate that out: that would be like taking the gutters out of a comic, or editing from a filmmaker. It is what defines the form. It's what makes games like Flower and Braid unique. It's also what makes Chess unique: a Chess set is inert until somebody sits down to engage it. You cannot sit outside of the experience: you must become a part of it. And, as anybody who has played Braid can attest, becoming part of that experience will affect how you perceive yourself and the choices you have made in life. That's the point. That's the art. The "victory conditions" are in its service, not the other way around.

Sachs Problems Ramp Up

Honestly, this is incredible. It looks like the entire GS edifice is starting to crumble:

Accusations that Goldman defrauded customers who bought investments tied to risky subprime mortgages have only just begun to reverberate through the financial world.

The civil lawsuit that the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against Goldman on Friday seemed to confirm many Americans’ worst suspicions about Wall Street: that the game is rigged, the odds stacked in the banks’ favor. It is the first big case — but probably not the last, legal experts said — to delve into a Wall Street firm’s role in the mortgage fiasco.

It is a particularly sensitive time for Wall Street. Washington policy makers are hotly debating a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations, and the news could embolden those seeking to rein in the banks. President Obama on Saturday stepped up pressure for financial reform by accusing Republicans of “cynical and deceptive” attacks on the measure.

The S.E.C.’s action could also hit Wall Street where it really hurts: the wallet. It could prompt dozens of investor claims against Goldman and other Wall Street titans that devised and sold toxic mortgage investments. On Saturday, several European banks that lost money in the deal said they were reviewing the matter. They could try to recoup the money from Goldman.

And it raises new questions about Goldman, the bank at the center of more concentric circles of economic and political power than any other on Wall Street.

Come to think of it, this is somewhat surprising. It had looked like GS and the rest of them were going to get away with all of it. Sure, Matt Taibbi has been shooting holes in GS like an expert marksman, but their influence still dwarfs his.

At least, it did. They are in a fair spot of trouble:

On Friday, Goldman’s stock took a beating, falling 13 percent and wiping out more than $10 billion of the company’s market value. It was a possible sign that investors fear that the S.E.C. complaint will damage Goldman’s reputation and its ability to keep its hands on so many sides of a trade — a practice that is immensely profitable for the firm.
It is unclear whether the S.E.C. can prevail against Goldman. The bank has long maintained that it puts its clients first and, in a letter in its latest annual report, it reiterated that position. Goldman said it never “bet against our clients” in its trades but rather was trying to hedge against other trading positions.

The transaction cited in the S.E.C. complaint cost investors just over $1 billion, relatively small by Wall Street standards.

Still, Wall Street analysts said Goldman and other banks, having navigated the financial crisis, might now face a new kind of risk: angry investors. Most major Wall Street banks also created collateralized debt obligations, which are at the heart of the Goldman case. C.D.O.’s, which are essentially bundles of securities backed by mortgages or other debt securities, turned out to be among the most toxic investments ever devised.

“Any investor who bought these C.D.O.’s and lost a significant amount of money is probably looking at their investment and wanting to know: what were the details behind the sale?” said William Tanona, an analyst at Collins Stewart. “Will they contact the S.E.C. and say, ‘Here’s the transaction we participated in, and we’d love to know who is on the other side of it?’ ”

That's it in a nutshell. The SEC's actions may amount to nothing. They will probably amount to nothing. It doesn't matter. This will open the floodgates, and everybody who even suspects that they were taken advantage of will be baying for GS's blood: both in America, and around the world.
The sweetest piece of this whole thing? They're being treated like gangsters:

The S.E.C. complaint named just one Goldman employee: Fabrice Tourre, a vice president in the bank’s mortgage operation who worked on the questionable transaction.

But securities lawyers say Mr. Tourre appears to be a small fish. Federal investigators may try to gain his cooperation and extend their investigation to other Goldman employees. On Friday, Mr. Tourre’s lawyer did not provide a comment on the complaint.

A big question is how far up this might go. The S.E.C. said the deal in its complaint had been approved by a panel at Goldman, the Mortgage Capital Committee.

“It’s typical that they’d start with someone lower down on the chain and try to exert pressure on that person,” said Bradley D. Simon of Simon & Partners, a white-collar defense lawyer in New York. “Is it really conceivable that no one else was involved in this?"

This is what you do to drug dealers. You hit a small fish and roll your way up by getting them to cooperate. That they're using the same technique on GS speaks volumes of exactly how trustworthy, how honest, how law-abiding they think that GS isn't.
But all of this raises a question: how did the SEC even get the go-ahead to do this in the first place? It's inconceivable that they made this decision in a vacuum. GS alumni and allies are in every branch of the Obama administration. The SEC head had to know that; he had to know that this would need the go-ahead from the administration. He must have got it. But, in a million years, I never would have thought he would have got it.

First bit of good news in a while. First time in ages that I've actually been optimistic about something. It may pass, but it's a nice change, isn't it?

Sachs Up on Fraud Charges

Not sure if anything will come of this, but it's apparently playing merry hell with their stock price:

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS 160.70, -23.57, -12.79%) and one of its vice presidents for defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product related to subprime mortgages. The SEC alleges that Goldman Sachs structured and marketed a collateralized debt obligation that hinged on the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities. However, it failed to disclose the role that a major hedge fund, Paulson & Co., played in the portfolio selection process as well as the fact that the hedge fund had taken a short position against the CDO. "Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party," said Robert Khuzami, director of the division of enforcement, in a statement.

 So they let a short-seller dictate what they put in a CDO, so as to cash in when the thing tanked.

And they wonder why people now think of Goldman Sachs as a particularly gooey type of pond scum.

The Polish Tragedy

You don't need me to tell you what happened. I'm sure, by now, that you know that Poland has lost much of its leadership in a plane crash. Not all; the Prime Minister and many others are still fine. But the President is gone, among many others.

I'm concerned, however, over whether the tragedy will be compounded by regional instability. All signs point to the crash being nothing but an unfortunate accident. But Russia is already suspected of foul deeds by its neighbours, and the President of Poland was a notable pro-Western figure in the country.  Russia has, by all accounts, been careful and respectful. But already one Polish MP is blaming Russia for the crash. The man is a notorious crank, but I suspect there will be others.

It's Done.

For better or worse, it's done. The bill is signed. It's law. It's still surprising that the Senate didn't try to pull a fast one, but I suppose they wanted this behind them as much as everybody else does.

I still hope it is better law than I suspected it is.

"Favorite Books"

Ezra Klein linked to me while opining on books that influenced his thinking, since blogs feature as much as books in his thought.

Much of my emphasis on the institutions of American government and the processes by which they work (or don't) came from my relationship with Mark Schmitt, first through his blog and then through his editorship at the American Prospect. That was cemented, of course, by reporting deeply on health-care reform, which is an opportunity that TAP gave me but that few other outlets would've been even mildly interested in letting me pursue. I consider reading the blogger Demosthenes use the word "props" in relation to politics as something near to an epiphany; it was the first time I realized that I could speak about Washington in a language I recognized.

Before I say anything else, I'd like to point out the box to the right that describes where all this comes from. That "no further connection" is something that I take quite seriously; my opinions have almost nothing to do with any fictional characters or their authors, and I have never claimed otherwise. It's all about pseudonymity, and the importance of clear pseudonymity. The character of Demosthenes did affect my thinking in that respect, and still does, since said character predicted a lot of the strengths (and weaknesses) of pseudonymous opinion journalism.

In fact, if anything, my opinions have been reconfirmed. The conflict between public and private interest has become as much of an issue for bloggers as for other journalists. Perhaps even more so, since bloggers are often trusted as much as (or more than) journalists since they're writing as citizens, instead of elites. What's handy about an obvious pseudonym is that it's actually quite difficult to exploit it to benefit yourself. Sure, you could theoretically attack someone behind a wall of anonymity, but nobody has any reason to trust you, unless you can bring solid proof to bear. You can't hide behind your organization, nor your profession. You are no expert, and in fact cannot be an expert, since you can't prove your expertise. Even if you succeed, you can only benefit indirectly at best. You can't put a pseudonym on a resume, and you sure as hell can't leverage it into a spot at the Washington Post.

So that's why I still think pseudonymity is important. You'll never be inducted as a member of the "village" as a pseudonymous opinion writer. You remain forever an outsider. You won't go to the cocktail parties. You won't drink at the insider bars. You won't attend the events. You won't get the plum administration positions. All you can do is read, and write, and think, and try to communicate your thoughts and beliefs as best you can.

But maybe that's enough.

N-Bombs and Populists

So here's the tea party at work:

The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement's origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore. Here's only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I'm seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:

• Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was taunted by tea partiers who chanted "nigger" at least 15 times, according to the Associated Press (we are not cleaning up language and using "the N-word" here because it's really important to understand what was said.) First reported on The Hill blog (no hotbed of left-wing fervor), the stories of Lewis being called "nigger" were confirmed by Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones and Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, who was walking with Lewis. "It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a former police officer. "He said it reminded him of another time."
• Another Congressional Black Caucus leader, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, was spat upon by protesters. The culprit was arrested, but Cleaver declined to press charges.
• House Majority Whip James Clybourn told reporters: "I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus."
• There were many reports that Rep. Barney Frank was called a "faggot" by protesters, but the one I saw personally was by CNN's Dana Bash, who seemed rattled by the tea party fury. Frank told AP: "It's a mob mentality that doesn't work politically."

Two things to take away from this.

First, a lot of "tea partiers" really are racist as all hell. We all knew it, as much as folks like Carville tried to deny it—back when they thought that Republicans could be brought onside for things like health care reform—but now it's absolutely obvious.

Second, right-wing populism ain't going anywhere. The tea party isn't entirely about race; it's tapping into the enormous dislike of American elites right now. It's turning it in a destructive and racist right-wing direction, yes, but it didn't cause that dislike: the behavior of America's political and business elites did.

Health Care is now a done deal. Fine. But Dems who think that this will somehow salve this anger are delusional. The new health regime is fundamentally an elitist activity: one set of elites (in Washington) is requiring you to pay money to another set of elites (at the insurance companies) "for your own good". It's regulating things, and it might be better than the system that exists, but it is still very much a top-down approach. It will do nothing to help this fundamental alienation, and that alienation is what will dominate the next elections.

No, the only way that this will be sorted out is if one set of elites sticks it to another. It could be pro-business leaders sticking it to Washington. That's more likely than you might think: it motivates a lot of deregulation fervor, and is a favorite of Republicans that argue that government "is the problem, not the solution". People go along with it because at least some elites are getting knocked down.

Dems can't do that, though. It doesn't fit their ideology, their themes, or the public's perception of the party. The Republicans will always outdo them on that front. No, the only way they can recover is if Washington sticks it to the big business elites. They need to get populist, and get there fast, before the tea partiers distort and exploit the existing rage even more than they already have.

HCR was a good opportunity to do that, since everybody despises health insurance companies, but the Dems dropped the ball on that one. So it'll have to be finance reform. They have to go beyond wise and minimal regulation. They must be seen to be horrible punitive bastards—and when called on it, they need to frame it as a conflict between the common man and the fat cats that exploit them and grow rich at their expense. It's not difficult for a Dem to pull off, and if you contrast it with small business and businesses that actually make things, you'll do well. (Businesses that make things tend to employ more people, leading to more votes.)

Do I think they'll do anything along that line? No. Not with the Senate the way it is now. Not with the conservative Democratic Senators having been given ample proof that the White House will do and say absolutely anything they want, and that they need never fear the sort of arm-twisting that brought principled progressive Reps like Kucinich on board.

I still think 2010 will be a disaster. The Dems simply Do Not Get It, and the people who are supposed to be speaking truth to power have been almost completely co-opted to support everything the party tells them to. But I do hope that 2010 will change this. I hope that, post-disaster, those people who are so reflexive in repeating the party line will wake up and start doing their damned job. I hope that the progressive movement will finally find its own feet, and realize that its own interests can vary from those of the Dems.

No promises. But one can hope.

LieberCare is Law, But It's Still a Dark Time for Progressives

It passed the House. I wasn't sure it would; I had thought that the Stupak contingent would, perhaps, be willing to risk the wrath of their party in order to curry the anti-abortion vote. But that door was closed when Obama decided to use executive privilege to curry their favor instead.

Honestly, I hope I'm wrong. I hope the critics are wrong. I hope that the bill—as tremendously broken in creation and flawed in execution as it is—ends up serving as the foundation for something that could actually benefit America. I believe that that is still possible, if progressives are vigilant about protecting Americans' interests in the face of the now-clearly-overwhelming influence of the insurance and pharma industries.

I am no longer confident of that, however. I have seen too many self-declared liberals and progressives make the same mistake now that they did in 2002: put the political interests of a party ahead of their own beliefs and America's best interests. I have seen too many people decrying terrible legislation and then, half a year later, supporting the same bill out of personal interests and political expedience. I've seen the collapse of progressive influence in the House, the Senate, and even the Blogosphere, showing that they cannot and will not learn the lesson of their more-successful conservative counterparts.

And I've seen people I used to respect tremendously push the same sort of disingenuous talking-point bullshit that they hated so much when it came from their political opponents.

Is this legislation better than the status quo? Maybe, maybe not. It is a product of the status quo, in almost every way, reflecting every dysfunction that the American political system has to offer. That it even exists is due to the legacy of the hopefulness of 2008, but I don't believe that there's much left of that anymore. What's left might help propel it in a more positive direction.

In the meantime, though, I still believe now what I did last summer: that if a congressman voted for a bill that didn't include a public option, they should be subject to primaries. Progressives ended up looking like absolute tools over the past year, and the only way to fix that is to exert influence that makes a real difference. Many Americans thought the bill didn't go far enough: their voices must be heard, and primaries are the best way to do that. Maybe not this year, since the deadline is past; but in 2012, certainly. It is still possible that progressives can get a little power, develop a credible threat, though it is less likely than it was yesterday or the day before.

In the meantime, though, there is the Senate. I don't even want to think about that.

Digby on Walking Away

Take a look:

Contemplating Chris Bowers' interesting discussion of the progressive bloc(k) strategy, Matt Yglesias points out what should be evident to anyone who's ever done a negotiation: whoever can walk away always has more power. It's just the way things work. That doesn't mean that you can't win if you want something more than the person with whom you're negotiating. There are lots of strategies. You can ask for far more than you're willing to settle for, you can play others against each other, you can try for a "win-win." But in the final analysis, it's always going to be much tougher to walk away from something everyone knows you really want and much easier if it doesn't matter much to you. That's life.

True. But it's not that simple.

Everybody wants a lot of things. In fact, they want so much that they're often contradictory. You want lots of services and low taxes. You want to eat your cake and have it too. You want to save your money but buy nice things. That's life, too.

The real question is "what do you want more?" Do you want health care expansion, or do you want a good health care expansion? Do you want broader coverage, or do you want to reduce the power of insurance companies? Sure, you want to "raise the poor", as digby says later, but how do you want to do that, exactly?

You also have to compare personal vs. public or political goals. Do you want personal access and wealth? Do you want to be "at the table" as a reliable supporter, or do you want to be influential but, perhaps, somewhat untrusted? Are you willing to sacrifice your personal career goals for something you truly believe in, or are your beliefs flexible?

It's that latter problem that has motivated my opinions on this fight. Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias can write all they wish about how the "progressive bloc has been ineffective" because progressives aren't as willing to walk away as Conservatives are. But let's be honest: they've been part of the problem. They have access. They have notoriety. They have identities in the notorious "Village", and careers that depends on such things.

They also know that if they don't play ball with the White House, all that could go away. That suffuses every word of their arguments; particularly Yglesias. It's one of the main reasons I've been so disappointed with them of late. It's why I asked the question that, unanswered, still guides my beliefs to this day: Is there a Democratic bill that they wouldn't support, as long is it was labelled "Health Care Reform"?

That's what it comes down to, really. Are they willing to walk away? Not "the progressive movement". Obviously some progressives are, or Jane Hamsher and the rest of the anti-HCR progressive group wouldn't exist. I mean you personally. Are you willing to give up influence, notoriety and access in favor of something greater? Digby's right. That's where power comes from. It comes from the ability to walk away.

They didn't, though. Yglesias, Bowers, Moulitsas, Klein et al—they haven't provided a single reason to ever believe that they would walk away. Not one. They are as reliable as the sunrise and therefore completely ineffectual. Worse still, when people did make that decision, Yglesias et al carved them up: over, and over, and over again ad nauseum. They didn't just go along with the White House's agenda, they enforced it. They deny their own agency, but one of the major reasons why progressives didn't walk away was because they would endure withering attacks if they did. I mean, for the love of all that's holy, we had Kos saying he was going to try to primary Dennis Kucinich! This over a bill that Kos himself said was unsupportable, back before he stood the risk of actually taking some serious heat over it!

(And I'm not even going to get into Nate Silver's issues.)

Conservatives understand that the power of their movement comes from being able to walk away from the Republicans. They did it to George H. W. Bush, and they've certainly done it at lower levels. They don't attack those who disagree from the right: those people actually get catered to! They don't employ the opposition's framing during the debate, as the Dems' lackeys so often do, and they recognize those lines that they are not willing to cross.

Digby says that maybe they should take a stand on a different issue:

But as Yglesias says, there are plenty of issues where it can work. In fact we saw it with Grayson's audit the fed initiative and earlier in the year they gave Pelosi and Emmanuel big, big headaches over the first war supplemental. There's power in legislators working together across party lines and being willing to play hardball.

I don't believe there is actually precious little power in "working together across party lines" in this case. (One of the things I disagree quite severely with Hamsher about, by the way.) You will just end up supporting their arguments, and they'll judo-flip you to force legislators to move in their direction. I do agree that there is enormous power in being willing to play hardball, but that must come making it absolutely clear that you aren't going to pull a 180 and support the bill when the White House tells you to. You not only must accept that they might get egg on their faces; you have to be willing to hurl the thing yourself, or be willing to stand by those that would.

So far, they have not demonstrated that they are. I hope things change. I hate having this incredible disappointment and discouragement about people that I once respected so highly. I do hope that, when the next time rolls around, Yglesias, Kos et all are willing to say "no, Mr. Obama, this is too important and we will not compromise on it."

But, then again, I hoped that in 2003, too.

Edit: Here's Hamsher's position on it:

[I]t’s also worthy of note that it’s hard for them to withstand the assault of liberal “pundits” who sneeringly derided their efforts as naive, futile and “purist.” These thoughtful folks should be proudly taking credit for their role in delegitimizing progressive opposition to the bill in liberal intellectual circles, much the same role that the same people played during the Iraq war. After all, it’s TNR’s stock in trade.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze how corporate cash was laundered through foundations to underwrite the efforts of various “opinion leaders” in the health care debate, but it definitely deserves more scrutiny.

I had been wondering why Yglesias had been so obnoxious in this post, saying "they say they agree with me now so that proves I'm right! Hah!" Now it makes sense, though, since he really hates the Iraq analogy. Probably because it sort of hits home—a lot of the people who supported that war did it for the same political ends that causes them to support LieberCare now.

Re-Edit: Look at Kucinich here. This is not a man who enthusiastically agrees with Yglesias and the defenders. This is not a man who thinks that this is even a good bill. This is a man who has, for whatever reason, been given no other choice but to knuckle under.

To claim him as anything else is just perverse.

(Edited slightly for clarity)

The Next Question...

Does anybody actually think that the House's reconciliation bill will actually be passed?

Now that we know that the Senate bill must be law before it can be changed, what's to stop the President's beloved, coddled "centrist" Senators from walking away just as soon as they get what they want?

And what is to stop the Dems (who just want this over), the Republicans (who want the terrible Senate bill to run against), and their various spokescritters from moving on to a "there just aren't enough Senate votes, you have to live with reality" story, now that the House is proven utterly ineffective?

Does anybody REALLY think "reconciliation" will happen?

Edit: Here's a link from the Daily Caller:

Jon Ward interviewed Rep. Mike Pence today about deem and pass (AKA “demon pass”), the whole thing is worth a read, not least of which for enigmatic exchanges like this one:

[Mike Pence]: The Senate bill cannot be fixed by reconciliation. The reconciliation bill that’s been talked about and contemplated can’t pass the Senate for a variety of substantive and procedural reasons. So all that we’re really doing here is passing the Senate bill in the House. That’s all we’re really doing and the American people know that and they’re intending to pass the Senate bill without ever voting for it.

Does the GOP know something Democrats don’t?

I'd assume so, yes. But it's not about the Republicans. It's about pulling the football away from progressives. Again.

It Would Appear Kucinich is On-Side

So says the Washington Post.

His prerogative, but once again this raises the question of liberal independence, and progressive relevance. Once again, a progressive is being smashed into supporting the powers-that-be where his "centrist" counterparts, flush with health corp cash, would be coddled and catered to at every opportunity.

And, once again, progressives have to ask what, exactly, they fought for, when their supposed spokesmen and -women appear to have no belief they're not willing to jettison to get access to the halls of power. It's illusory access, of course. The progressive groups have still proven themselves completely unable to affect policy because of the lack of a credible threat. But at least they get to feast at the Village.

Edit: By the by, this is partially the result of the Republicans' obstructionism, but not in the way you think. As long as the Republicans are publicly obstructionist, they can be sure that no small number of Democratic-leaners will support the legislation, because Republicans oppose it. Opposition from the left becomes difficult as hell, because you get lumped in with the Republicans.

(As happened with Kucinich.)

This wouldn't be a problem for progressives if the Republicans had no say in legislation whatsoever. They do. They have a big impact in committees, they have a lot of friends in the media, and the President has continued to reach for "bipartisan" solutions. One of the main reasons the Senate HCR bill is so weak is precisely because the Republicans were playing this push-pull game. So, as should have been apparent a long time ago, the Republicans get to have it both ways: they get legislation that caters to their whims, and they either get divided progressives or progressives that are willing to do their work for them because said progressives think they're stymieing them.

(And then they win more seats back, because any bill a Republican has input into is almost guaranteed to be terrible, so the public punishes the Dems for passing it.)

Nothing new there, of course. And it is possible that HCR might be improved. But it won't be improved by Republicans, that's for damned sure, and I see no opportunity for the Dems to improve it outside of the very near-term. Not with 2010 looking the way it does.

Re-Edit: And it looks like he didn't get anything for his vote, either.

Ben Nelson got a big ol' kickback. Stupak is going to get women sold out for his cause. (Oh, he is. Let's just admit it.) Lieberman got the Medicare extension killed.

Do you know why that is, fellow progressives? Because if you can make a credible thread, they will concede to you what you want. Basic bargaining and negotiations. If Kucinich had held out and been the last House vote, he'd have gotten something, too.

As it is, he got nothing. His constituents got nothing. His supporters got nothing. Hell, he probably isn't even going to get an apology from Kos.

That's why the Obama administration won't listen to you. They won't, unless they need to. Your choice.

And Now They're Attacking Kucinich

There's a reason I haven't been blogging much. When the medium is associated with transparent White House spin this odious, it doesn't strike me as worth the pixels its written on.

What's sad isn't that Silver is spouting nonsense that's politically convenient. He's outed himself as a mercenary long before now. What's sad is that he damned well knows that attacking Dennis Kucinich as "not valuable" is ridiculous, because he acknowledges that opposition from the left moves the Overton Window in progressives' favor.

The only way that you could possibly reconcile that is if you believe that Democrats don't care about progre....

...oh.

Oh. Well then.

Edit: And I hadn't even gotten to Kos. Markos, you're on record as someone who has admitted that you couldn't give a rat's ass about policy. You're about the team, and handing it victories.

Sometimes, it's not about the team. Sometimes it's about something more important. So, for God's sake, stop shitting on someone who does care about policy.

I remember Kos from way back in 2002. I remember his ideals, and what he wanted to do when he got a real voice. Now he has one. What an absolute goddamned disappointment.

Re-edit: As always, you have to ask yourselves a simple question: is there anything an advocate would not support even if it would aid the interests of the party?

No?

Then he's not an opinion maker. He's not even a politician. He's nothing more than a marketer.

Damage Control! Damage Control!

So Ben Adler over at Newsweek is now trying to establish some critical distance between himself and the rather damning conversation over whether or not "terrorists live in caves", as his colleague Dan Stone asserted last week.

According to Adler, it's not as if Stark or Michael Isikoff or Kathy Jones or whoever believe this sort of thing. Oh no. They're just talking about how the media looks at it.

To which I can only respond: "pull the other one. It's got bells on it."

I'll give you credit for having made some of the more sensible comments. But they ARE the media, Ben. In a situation like that, being in that position, your colleagues (especially Daniel!) should have taken great pains to point out that these are not their beliefs, but the ones that they see floating in the aether. (Or however that works.)

If your group HAD done so, then it wouldn't look utterly self-serving for you to claim as much now. Your colleague Jan Interlandi might also not look quite so bad for saying that "we reserve the label 'terrorist' for foreign attackers". And Isikoff wouldn't have looked like an idiot for thinking that a terrorist must be "equipped and dispatched by a foreign power": an assumption which is not only ahistorical but shows how deeply the media has internalized Republican post-9/11 talking points.

Come on. It's pretty transparent that you're leading the defense here because you were one of the very few to come out of this looking like anything but a schmuck. You are taking one for the team. Good on 'ya. It still doesn't change a damned thing; even if Stone was being facetious, there's no way that Isikoff was.

It wouldn't do them any favors to claim that they were being facetious, either. This is a deadly serious issue. Why the hell WOULD Stone be joking around about it? Why would he be busting out the sarcasm, knowing that it doesn't come across well in text and that the discussion was going to be published? Why the hell would anybody have thought it was appropriate? Sure, maybe if the discussion was happening on Fark or 4chan or something, but you people are professionals working at NEWSWEEK. Get it together.

Here's Glenn's Greenwald's reaction:

Time constraints prevent me from addressing this, except to say that it's hard for me to believe that Adler actually read what I wrote, since the points he claims I overlooked were ones I expressly addressed, and the aspects of their discussion which he claims I omitted were ones I explicitly included. Moreover, Adler's denial that Newsweek was reluctant to use the term Terrorism for Joseph Stack is strange, given that the whole point of their deliberations, as the magazine's editor defined it, was to have "a discussion over here about the aversion so far to calling the Austin Tax Wacko a terrorist," and the very first response, from Managing Editor Kathy Jones, was to explain what she called her "rule of thumb" "handy guide" that the word is only for foreigners protesting "the American government," but not used for Americans. Adler's response is one of those which negates itself, and I'm content to allow readers here and elsewhere to compare what Newsweek actually said to what Adler now claims they said and decide for yourself (see also: this insightful objection to Newsweek's discussion from The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates).

That Jones bit is really the crux of it. Newsweek had already decided that it was going to equate the word "terrorist" with "foreigner". That wasn't humor or hyperbole; it was a simple statement of policy. Hirsh stating that "Al Qaeda co-opted terrorism after 9/11" wasn't humor either. It was denial of Newsweek's own culpability for equating "terrorist" with "foreigner".

What I find truly amusing, though, is that it feels like Adler was more responding to my outrage than Glenn's. Glenn is right. This doesn't really respond to his points at all. Perhaps I'm not the only one who thought that Stone et al deserved to have scorn poured on to them, but Glenn really did have a broader critique of agency in media that went ignored.

Ah well. It's Newsweek. Perhaps I shouldn't have expected any better. The last decent thing I read there was N'Gai Croal's old gaming blog. It's just too bad that Adler was trotted out to try to cover for 'em.

Edit: Kathy Jones also whines "it's not my opinion, it's just how people in the media describe things!" Well, guess what? YOU ARE THE MEDIA. You're a managing editor at one of the biggest newsweeklies in the country. You know damned well how important an issue this is, and you know how likely it is that such a comment will get misconstrued. You know that the ugly mood in America makes it quite likely that this sort of violence may become more commonplace if it is not roundly condemned, and you did not write word one to condemn it.

Indeed, the best Kathy could do is say that it was "a loaded term". That's true. It is. Your magazine uses it anyway. Your choices about whether and when to do so are therefore fair game, and you don't get to assert critical distance to try to save yourself.

Re-Edit: Case in point for how terrible Newsweek is: one of their articles blaming the public for all of America's ills. It's the sort of lovely, contrarian "I can't get in trouble for blaming everybody because I'm blaming everybody" articles that journalists adore because it won't get them in trouble or threaten their access to the Big Cheeses that ARE largely responsible for America's current plight. The kind that always includes paeans to bipartisanship that never actually existed, and which only encourages the Dems to hand the store over to the Republicans that much faster.

It includes the sentence (quoted verbatim) " Grade inflation is so out of control in the nation's high schools that 43 percent of college-bound seniors taking the SATs have A averages—even though SAT scores have remained flat or drifted slowly downward for years."

That SAT scores may have been renormalized did not even occur to them. That the biggest issue is actually that too many kids are getting perfect scores would probably blow their fool heads off.

Worthless.

"Terrorists have beards in live in caves."

So says Dan Stone at Newsweek.

Comes down to ID. This guy was a regular guy-next-door Joe Schmo. Terrorists have beards in live in caves. He was also an American, so targeting the IRS seems more a political statement – albeit a crazy one – whereas Abdulmutallab was an attack on our freedom. Kind of the idea that an American can talk smack about America, but when it comes from someone foreign, we rally together. Or in the case of the Christmas bomber, vie for self-righteousness.

Yes, this is THAT Newsweek. Where, apparently, they're struggling to find reasons to call a guy who flew a plane into an IRS building anything but a terrorist. Why? Because he's white:

Kathy Jones, Managing Editor (Multimedia)

Did the label terrorist ever successfully stick to McVeigh? Or the Unabomber? Or any of the IRS bombers in

Here is my handy guide:
Lone wolfish American attacker who sees gov't as threat to personal freedom: bomber, tax protester, survivalist, separatist

Group of Americans bombing/kidnapping to protest U.S. policies on war/poverty/personal freedom/ - radical left-wing movement, right-wing separatists

All foreign groups or foreign individuals bombing/shooting to protest American gov't: terrorists...

...Patrick Enright, Senior Articles Editor

Yeah, maybe the distinction depends too on whom you're attacking — if it's the people you think wronged you (like the IRS), you're a protester/separatist/etc., and if it's indiscriminate killing of clearly innocent people, you're a terrorist.

Jeneen Interlandi, Reporter
I agree with Kathy. Right or wrong, we definitely reserve the label 'terrorist' for foreign attackers. Even the anthrax guy (not that we ever found him) wasn't consistently referred to as terrorist.

Here is Michael Isikof, one of their chief correspondents:

Michael Isikoff ,Investigative Correspondent
ok, just to weigh in on this — I think some of the comments miss what I take to be the fundamental distinction. The underpants bomber, for all his ineptitude, was equipped and dispatched by a foreign enemy — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula— whose ultimate leader (bin Laden) has declared war on the United States and who has demonstrated his willingness and intent to inflict mass casualties on our civilian population. That makes underpants man a terrorist and had he been captured overseas, would have made himan enemy combatant— and why the Obama administration dispatches the U.S. military and Predator drones to destroy the people who sent him here. Similarly, the Fort Hood shooter may have been a disturbed "lone wolf" but he was in ideological alignment and in communication with a member of the same foreign enemy.

That makes them both terrorists.

The Austin tax protestor, the anthrax scientist wacko, the Unabomber— all did heinous things that we can describe any way we want — certainly what they did were terrorist acts— but they all remain a very different kettle of fish, which is why Mr. underpants man gets more attention that Austin tax protestor flying plane into building.

It should be immediately obvious that this is all horseshit. (Sorry, no gentler word for it.) Domestic terrorists are so old as to be trite in any number of countries around the world, and especially in Europe, so there is no reason whatsoever to believe Isikoff's distinction is in any way accurate. (Isikoff goes on to do the "of course there can be domestic terrorists" line, but then qualifies his statements by talking about how this guy isn't "a bigger terrorist deal".

Let's be honest. That distinction has NOTHING to do with ideology, and it has NOTHING to do with foreign support. It's race. Pure and simple. If you're brown, you're a terrorist. If you're white, you can't be. And, of course, there is an ideological component. If conservatives hate something, and it's attacked, the attacker can't really be a terrorist. After all, conservatives are always right, and terrorists are always wrong, so they couldn't possibly agree! I mean, look at this:

Devin Gordon
I continue to be fascinated by the divergent reactions between Austin Wacko and Underpants Man, and I think it goes much deeper than the taxonomy of what is a "terrorist." (One simple reason: Tiger Woods didn't step on the Underpants saga the very next day. Sigh.)
Fundamentally, I'm with Dan: a Texan white guy named Joe Stack isn't as interesting / enraging / anxiety-inducing as a Nigerian Muslim named Abdulmutallab. I'm also with Eve: Stack's philosophy, unlike Abdulmutallab's, is pretty kosher with many — maybe even most — Americans. We're basically with him right up to the burn-down-your-house-and-fly-a-plane-into-a-building part of the story. Other than that part, right on, Joe Stack!

If they agree with you? You aren't a terrorist. If they don't? Terrorist.

I'm with Glenn. This says nothing good about Newsweek. Nothing good at all. That this is even up for debate is horrible; that people would make these sorts of statements even more so. Those that seriously argued in favor of this have discredited themselves as analysts and journalists; to the extent that a human being is an ethical being, they've discredited themselves as people.

Considering all the dehumanization going on here, that's somewhat appropriate, don't you think?

To be fair, not all did: Mark Hosenball was absolutely right in saying "I guess it's easier and more convenient — politically correct, even — to use that word to describe someone if they have a beard." I hope that he finds a better publication to work for.

But, well, here's Michael Hersh:

Michael Hirsh , Senior Editor, Washington Web Editor
Isikoff pretty much has it right. Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism co-opted the term "terrorist" after 9/11. No one had any problem calling Timothy McVeigh a domestic terrorist before 9/11.
And Stack is pretty isolated. There was the same fear after OK City. But it turns out there aren't as many copycat killings of this nature as there are, say, school shootings.

Apologies to Sam Jackson, but I DON'T REMEMBER AL QAEDA CO-OPTING A GOD-DAMNED THING. You did that, Hirsh. You did it then, and you're doing it now, and it's so much worse now because you clearly KNOW BETTER.

But here we are. With a pack of racist bastards unworthy of the label "sapiens".

Reid to Support Public Option Through Reconciliation?

So sez Huffpo.

Me, I'll believe it when I see a bill sitting on Obama's desk, not before. Especially because, apparently, Obama's still trying to push LieberCare for some bizarre reason. Damned if I know why, it's political poison and none-too-good policy, but I suppose that he's worried that Baucus will get mad if somebody passes a bill that he didn't clear with WellPoint first.

Texan Crashes Plane Into IRS Building

From Huffpo:

A software engineer furious with the Internal Revenue Service launched a suicide attack on the agency Thursday by crashing his small plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, setting off a raging fire that sent workers fleeing for their lives.

At least one person in the building was missing.

A federal law official identified the pilot as Joseph Stack and said investigators were looking at a long anti-government screed and farewell note that he apparently posted on the Web earlier in the day as an explanation for what he was about to do.

In it, the author cited run-ins with the IRS and ranted about the tax agency, government bailouts and corporate America's "thugs and plunderers."

"I have had all I can stand," he wrote in the note, dated Thursday, adding: "I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at `big brother' while he strips my carcass."

Stack, 53, also apparently set fire to his house about six miles from the crash site before embarking on the suicide flight, said two law enforcement officials, who like other authorities spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still going on.

HuffPo goes on to note that he left a bomb at the local airport, set his house on fire, and has hospitalized two people in the attack; one is unaccounted for.

The also have republished his suicide note; it is a living, breathing example of the seething anger that's growing in America over the difference in treatment between the ultra-wealthy and everybody else. I had thought, upon first learning of the note, that it would be a left-wing or right-wing harangue. It isn't. There is no ideology anymore in saying, as Stack did, that "there are two 'interpretations' for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us... Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country."

No, it is the same anger that animates both the teabaggers' rage and the left's disgust with the current Administration and Congress. I can only hope that more don't reach the same conclusion. But I doubt it, and I am gravely, gravely concerned that this is not going to be the outlier incident that I hope it is.

Murtha Passed Away

Been unable to update for a little while. Fortunately, the situation's changed.

Unfortunately, John Murtha passed away on Monday. He was a fighter, he was a good Dem, and he'll always be remembered for speaking truth about the Iraq debacle when so few were willing. He was 77, and will be missed.