The Hidden Story About Dixie Blue Dems

Politico's going through a whole song and dance about how Dixie Dems are extinct. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. I've heard that sort of thing before.

But I wanted to highlight a somewhat buried point here.

Most people in north Alabama cannot identify with Nancy Pelosi” is how incoming Alabama House Speaker and state GOP Chairman Mike Hubbard put it.

But it also has to do with the narrative Republicans have ceaselessly driven.

“Democrats are the party of entitlement and of more government intrusion,” said Hubbard, calling health care reform “socialistic.”

And while Southern Democrats once could’ve avoided being painted with that brush thanks to personal relationships and influential newspapers in their region, the explosion of new media has made it more difficult for them to differentiate themselves from the national brand. How people get news about politics, and much else, has fundamentally changed.

Melancon, a Blue Dog Democrat, recalled how people would approach him in the final weeks of his Senate campaign to ask why he voted for health care reform. He hadn’t.

“I’d ask folks, ‘Where did you hear that?’ and they’d say, ‘I don’t know,’” he recalled.

Often, they would cite a forwarded e-mail.

“I have to tell my own friends to not forward me that gobbledygook unless they’ve fact-checked it,” Melancon lamented. “If you’re going to forward it without taking the time to figure out if it’s true, then you’re as bad as the person who sent it.”

I'm sure you noticed the key point there: it doesn't matter how you voted. Melancon voted against the Health Care Reform bill, and guess what? People blamed him for it anyway. They were convinced that he voted for it, because his party voted for it. The "D" beside his name meant "health care" no matter what he did. His actual vote didn't make a lick of difference.

ConservaDems and supporters of ConservaDems should pay very, very close attention to that. Taking a stand against a bill that your state or district won't like won't make a bit of difference.  You're going to get blamed regardless. The only hope you have is that the bill in question gets out-and-out killed, and even then you might get punished for your party having proposed it in the first place. You can't win by opposing.

So what CAN you do? Something that may be almost bizarre: you can try to make the best legislation you know how. ObamaCare is so controversial not because people think it went too far, but because of the concessions made to to try and get votes from recalcitrant conservative Senators. Those concessions were what made it such a pretzel of industry handouts and half-hearted regulation; without them, it would have almost certainly been a cleaner, more focused, more effective piece of legislation. With a public option, no less. If everybody involved had been focused on the quality of the legislation, instead of optics of "conservative" v. "liberal", they would have produced a reform bill that would stand up all on its own. Sure, the Republicans and the conservative movement would have taken shots at it, but what would have mattered would be how it improved people's lives.

Yes, this isn't necessarily going to help House ConservaDems that much, since the problem is primarily in the Senate, not the House. Senators will have to learn this lesson as well. But at least said CDs will realize that they can't run against their party like they used to. Dems, like the Founders, need to  "hang together, or hang separately". Useful lesson, that.

Australia: "WikiLeaks Is Just As Bad As Child Porn" (Edit: Not So Much?)

Yep, Australia has just added Wikileaks to its list of banned websites. Anybody who links to WikiLeaks can now get fined up to 11 grand a day.

THAT will stop Australians from reading it, I'm sure.

Edit: Doesn't this do enormous harm to the list in general? Sure, you can justify a list that blocks kiddie porn and fining people who link to it. Not a great justification, but you can.

But WikiLeaks? What's next, banning people from linking to the Government of New Zealand the next time a trade dispute comes up? Banning people from linking to Chinese websites because China said something mean about the Australian Prime Minister? Banning links to adult porn sites because it encourages "deviant sexuality"?

So the government is entitled to omnipotent surveillance, and the people aren't allowed to read SFA. Well done. You might as well put up a big banner that says "Welcome to Australia: we just proved why Assange may have a point!"

Edit: And, just as fast, it would appear that it has been removed.  But this is more interesting: Apparently the Australian government is willing to go along with any American prosecution of Assange. Assange is an Australian national, so he may be more vulnerable here.

Then again, he may just as well renounce Australian citizenship. I'm not sure how that would affect things, but if he goes to Iceland—which has basically become a WikiLeaks haven—then he might well be secure.

Either way, I don't think this will stem the tide. If WikiLeaks falls, someone else will take up the slack.

Could Saying Nice Things About WikiLeaks Get You Arrested?

Hot on the heels of that last post, I find this: WikiLeaks should be designated a 'foreign terrorist organization,' Rep. Pete King fumes.

Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to designate WikiLeaks a "foreign terrorist organization," saying it "posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," and to prosecute founder Julian Assange for espionage.

Again: Not an American.

But aside from that, this is deeply disturbing. As NPR points out, the laws against supporting supposed foreign terrorist organizations are incredibly extensive. It's not just material support: even talking to them could get you arrested and indicted, if not shipped off to one of the foreign covert prisons that we're not supposed to know about.

So is that how this is going to play out? Are Americans supposed to pretend that the site doesn't exist, for fear of getting arrested? Or are Americans only allowed to pretend it exists if they engage in the sort of kabuki dance of overt condemnation that you normally only see in salacious sixties films about the dangers of drugs and promiscuity? It won't keep any of this information out of American hands, since the Internet is global. The best that the Government could do is redirect DNS requests, as they've tried to do with BitTorrent sites. But that didn't work, and wouldn't work. It's not worth it.

As Susan Delacourt says, this is really just another revolt against "elites". America clearly no longer trusts the people that are supposed to be running it. Either they're spitting angry against a government that doesn't care that they're out of work, or simply distrustful of a state that seems to be governed BY Wall St. bond traders, FOR Wall St. bond traders.

In a country where Matt Taibbi seems to uncover fresh horrors on a daily basis, where security theatre has TSA goons laughing at your genitals when they aren't smacking them with the backs of their hands, and when Congress collectively decides that protecting mortgage fraudsters is more important than ensuring that people don't die of starvation during the Christmas season...why the hell should anybody care about whether some diplomats get some egg on their faces?

I don't know about you, but I'm drawing a blank.

"US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis"

Well, how could it not? Pretty much everything marked "noforn" is going to be utterly embarrassing for all involved. That's kind of the point.

The best part about the WikiLeaks controversy, so far, are all the right-wingers asking "why aren't they being prosecuted"? No matter how many times somebody says "you can't prosecute them, they aren't Americans", it never gets through. You can't even pass a law against it, either, or else every other nation in the world would be breaking U.S. law for engaging in their own espionage.  And the U.S. would be breaking theirs.

(The U.S. probably shouldn't bring that sort of thing up, anyway, considering they have been trying to collect passwords, encryption keys, and biometric data from U.N. diplomats. Whoops.)

Edit: I think the right-wingers know that prosecution is impossible. Their protestations aside, what they really want is for Obama to kill Julian Assange. Obama wouldn't do it because it's stupid, it would bring down universal condemnation, and wouldn't help stem the flow, since WikiLeaks is bigger than Assange.

But, hey, if the American right had realized that "beheading" attacks do not work in situations like this, they wouldn't have botched Afghanistan and Iraq so badly, would they?

Chalmers Johnson Passed Away Last Week

I had missed posting about this while I was working on redoing the site.

Dammit. He was one of the greats. His "blowback" series was incredibly insightful and blistering at the same time, and his work on Japan helped define how people thought of that country's economy and political structure. He was also, by all accounts, a genuinely decent human being.

He received a moving eulogy on TomDispatch that I'd encourage you to read, and another by Steve Clemens at the Washington Note, which also highlights his unbelievably important work fighting against the movement by "rational choice" political scientists to import all of neoliberal economics' various pathologies.

(Thanks to Avedon for the links.)

The WikiLeaks Cables Are Out

Haven't delved into the so-called "Cablegate" too much yet. Checked out the Israel stuff, since that's likely to be the most immediately explosive, but most of them seemed to primarily focus on how Israel is convinced that Iran is its greatest potential threat. (Which isn't exactly news.)

To be fair, they aren't all out. In fact, supposedly a relatively small number are out. It seems like WikiLeaks is serious about scrubbing information that's dangerous, instead of merely embarrassing. I have no doubt that there is still going to be dangerous information released,
 mind you, since there are supposedly over 250,000 cables in total. But since none exceed Secret classification, and since WikiLeaks is being more careful. I think that the potential threat that they pose may be limited. I certainly hope so.

I'm of two minds about this. These things are supposed to be secret for a reason. As an advocate of pseudonymity and anonymity in debate and communication, I can't deny that in good conscience. Privacy in comunication is vital, and too many people forget that in their rush to build their public social presence online.

But these aren't individuals, these are governments. Yes, diplomats need to be able to conduct their business privately. Governments do too. But many (if not all) of the governments in question here cannot and will not acknowledge that they should respect privacy too. The American government wiretaps the hell out of its own citizens; the Europeans and Canadians are worse, and the rest of the world is even worse than THAT. Governments, as a rule, have not recognized that there is a single line of personal privacy that they can't cross for even the most ridiculous, prosaic rules. They're tearing apart personal privacy to protect COPYRIGHTS, for God's sake—ripping up any protection that citizens may have expected just to allow private holders of government-granted monopolies to sue the bejeezus out of some dumb college kid.

In that sort of environment, in that sort of world, how can I unconditionally condemn WikiLeaks? Sure, they don't respect governments' interests. But the one thing that comes across in all of their leaks is that governments don't respect our interests either. They can get away with that principally because of the secrecy that these sorts of institutions enjoy. We don't realize what they do to us. But they work for us, so we damned well should.

If the only way to change things is through this sort of extreme response, then it may be as necessary as it is disquieting.

Edit:  Good piece by Colin Koopman about how this presages widescale information transparency. I don't know if I fully agree, since WikiLeaks itself is a product of a dizzying level of secrecy and privacy-consciousness. Assange is only the front man: the organization itself is mostly anonymous, and as far as I can tell, takes pseudonymity and anonymity VERY seriously. I've read comments pointing out that they don't even know each other's names.


Still, I agree that we've been moving to a world where,  Colin said, "transparency trumps secrecy". We were already becoming more and more transparent to our governments. Now they're discovering that they could be just as transparent to us. They were NOT expecting that it goes both ways, and that's why they're collectively losing their shit over this.

Taibbi on Friedman Last Year

I'd missed Matt Taibbi's piece in the New York Press taking down Tom Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded last year. More the fool I. As an enormous fan of his legendary demolishing of Friedman's earlier The World is Flat, I should have expected that Taibbi would return.

And why wouldn't he? Apparently Friedman is an environmentalist now. Then again, according to Taibbi, he'd almost have to be. He has nothing left:

To review quickly, the “Long Bomb” Iraq war plan Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else’s face; the “Electronic Herd” of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn’t pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved “Golden Straitjacket” of American-style global development (forced on the world by the “hidden fist” of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the “Flat World” consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife’s once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.

So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.

What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last ten years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quickly reinvent himself before angry Gods remembered to dash his brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose. Or as Friedman might say, “Better two cell phones than a fish in your zipper."

Little surprise that he came up as #3 in Salon's list of the top fifty hacks in journalism. And, like a lot of the hacks in question, the biggest problem is that he retains his position despite being constantly wrong. You'd think that that would be a problem. But Friedman, like his fellow Salon "hacks" Richard Cohen, David Broder, and Mark Halperin, acts like a sort of reverse Cassandra: his predictions are inevitably wrong, but everybody in Washington believes him regardless.

But why wouldn't they? He's defending the status quo. He's advocating the popular. Friedman's only challenging insofar as you have to decipher what the hell he's on about. Nobody ever got broke aiding the rich and powerful, and in Friedman's case, it made him wealthy as hell.

Maybe his real skill is being able to look himself in the mirror every morning. In his position, I doubt I could.

Canadian Liberal Conflict

It'll be very interesting to see how the conflict within the Liberal Party of Canada over the extension of their commitment to Afghanistan is going to play out. Apparently there will be a vote, and it's anybody's guess as to whether or not Ignatieff can get his caucus to play ball. He's not the most popular man in the country. Or even among his party:

Just about two in three Canadians (64 per cent) believe the Liberals definitely or probably should change leaders. Naturally, that number includes a lot of people who weren't going to vote Liberal anyway, but the stunning finding under the surface of this poll is that fully 59 per cent of those who say they are inclined to vote Liberal think a new leader would be a good idea.

This represents a huge "enthusiasm gap" for the Liberal Party. Its the kind of factor that could depress their voter turnout, and turn marginal victories into marginal losses. To put these numbers in context, Stephen Harper is not one of the country's most loved political figures ever, but only 50 per cent think the Conservatives should replace him. And the vast majority of Conservative voters (74 per cent) are happy with him.

Bruce Anderson, the commentator I just quoted, thinks that it's not because of a "visceral dislike" but more due to "disinterest". He isn't alienating people, but he isn't really attracting them, either. Perhaps. But we all should remember that this is the man that the Liberals dumped Stephane Dion for, who was supposed to be their Kennedy or Trudeau. Nothing of the sort has taken place. He isn't even inspiring the loathing he once did when he was espousing the now-laughable value of "American Empire".

Progressive and liberal leaders aren't inspiring much support these days. Certainly neither Nick Clegg nor Barack Obama have been very attractive progressive party leaders lately. But they're in government, and are making the tradeoffs inherent to governance. Ignatieff doesn't even have that. He's that most unfortunate of creatures: a bland, uninspiring opposition leader. If he's to have any hope at all, he needs to break out of that. He needs to give people a reason to give a damn about him.

(And while I'm discussing Canada, I'll ask again: what did the Liberals do to the Eugene Forsey Liberal? Edit: He's back now. Still, the question remains.)

Site Upgrade

Okay, after reading other people complain about the comment system that Haloscan's moved to, I've decided to both upgrade this thing and clean out the Haloscan comments at the same time. Blog will probably be wonky for a while thanks to the upgrade. Comments may be down: but you can mail me here if necessary. Blogroll may be down as well, but I'll be replacing the entries shortly.

Edit: Or not? Have to admit to being somewhat impressed with how Blogger handled the transition. Regardless, I'll probably be messing about with this for a while.

And, yes, it's brown now. I still prefer the look of light-on-dark. But this template will do for the moment.

Re-Edit: Also fixed up the links. Anybody who wants to be added, email me the link and I'll look at it. One of the nice parts about having switched is that I don't have to hand-code the links anymore. Adding them shouldn't be an issue.

War Is a Drug

This is what war does to you. (From an essay published by a former serviceman, Charles Whittington, who is being barred from attending his college because his essay a bit too...harsh for them.)

Note that I don't endorse the views in this essay.

War is a drug. When soldiers enter the military from day one, they begin to train and are brain washed to fight and to handle situations in battle. We train and train for combat, and then when we actually go to war, it is reality and worse than what we have trained for. We suffer through different kinds of situations. The Army never taught how to deal with our stress and addictions.

War is a drug because when soldiers are in the Infantry, like me, they get used to everything, and fast. I got used to killing and after a while it became something I really had to do. Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible. It is not like I have a switch I can just turn off. To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.

Over in Iraq and Afghanistan killing becomes a habit, a way of life, a drug to me and to other soldiers like me who need to feel like we can survive off of it. It is something that I do not just want, but something I really need so I can feel like myself. Killing a man and looking into his eyes, I see his soul draining from his body; I am taking away his life for the harm he has caused me, my family, my country.

Killing is a drug to me and has been ever since the first time I have killed someone. At first, it was weird and felt wrong, but by the time of the third and fourth killing it feels so natural. It feels like I could do this for the rest of my life and it makes me happy.

There are several addictions in war, but this one is mine. This is what I was trained to do and now I cannot get rid of it; it will be with me for the rest of my life and hurts me that I cannot go back to war and kill again, because I would love too. When I stick my blade through his stomach or his ribs or slice his throat it's a feeling that I cannot explain, but feels so good to me, and I become addicted to seeing and acting out this act of hate, and violence against the rag heads that hurt our country. Terrorists will have nowhere to hide because there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers like me who feel like me and want their revenge as well.

Never mind that last bit: killing "terrorists" and "ragheads" is what he was trained and socialized to do.

This is what it can do to you. Maybe it doesn't affect everybody the same way. Maybe Charles is an extreme case. But everybody should read the essay and think about its lessons, especially the odious "keyboard kommandos" who treat military intervention so lightly because they're so ignorant about it.

When the awesome explosions stop, when the pageantry is over, when the cameras showing APCs racing across the desert turn off...these are the problems that you have to deal with.

And you MUST deal with them. Or, very shortly, they'll be YOUR problems too.

Edit: Though there are questions about whether or not this fellow saw the sort of service that he's claiming. But if he didn't, and he had these issues before serving, then that just raises a question: why was he a Marine in the first place?

North Korea Shells South Korean Island

Story's at the BBC.

South Korea says it has returned fire after North Korea fired around 200 artillery shells at one of its border islands, reportedly killing one marine.

The South's military was placed on its highest non-wartime alert after the shells landed on Yeonpyeong island.

North Korea has not yet commented on the incident, in which three marines and two civilians were also injured.

Correspondents say this is one of the most serious since the Korean War ended without a peace treaty in 1953.

There have been occasional cross-border clashes since, but the latest incident comes at a time of rising regional tension.

North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il is believed to be ill and trying to engineer the succession of his youngest son. And on Saturday, North Korea showed off what it claimed was a new uranium enrichment facility - potentially giving it a second route to a nuclear weapon.

The move prompted the US special representative for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, to rule out the resumption of six-party talks on resolving the nuclear issue.

South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Hee-jung also said it was investigating a possible link between the artillery attack and a major military exercise near the western sea border which began on Monday.

It also comes just over a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, was appointed to senior political and military posts, fuelling speculation that he was being prepared to succeed him.

Un's succession is not in question, so I'm not sure what this is about. More as it develops.

Massive Insider Trading Probe?

In the United States? Possibly featuring Goldman (the Vampire Squid) Sachs? And featuring health care providers?

Whodathunkit?

The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say.

The investigations, if they bear fruit, have the potential to expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in U.S. financial markets, including new ways non-public information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies, federal authorities say...

...In another aspect of the probes, prosecutors and regulators are examining whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bankers leaked information about transactions, including health-care mergers, in ways that benefited certain investors, the people say. Goldman declined to comment.

Independent analysts and research boutiques also are being examined. John Kinnucan, a principal at Broadband Research LLC in Portland, Ore., sent an email on Oct. 26 to roughly 20 hedge-fund and mutual-fund clients telling of a visit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information," the email said. "(They obviously have been recording my cell phone conversations for quite some time, with what motivation I have no idea.) We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman's gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web."

The email, which Mr. Kinnucan confirms writing, was addressed to traders at, among others: hedge-fund firms SAC Capital Advisors LP and Citadel Asset Management, and mutual-fund firms Janus Capital Group, Wellington Management Co. and MFS Investment Management.

SAC, Wellington and MFS declined to comment; Janus and Citadel didn't immediately comment. It isn't known whether clients are under investigation for their business with Mr. Kinnucan.

You know what I love about that email? It isn't the smarmy, supercilious tone. That goes without saying.

It's the fact that (granting presumption of innocence and all that) it's very possible that he believes what he's saying. The tone of the thing doesn't imply shocked innocence, but that he believes this whole thing is a complete joke. And how could he not? Insider trading laws are for other people. Little people. The government is for keeping THEM slapped down; the real Heroes doing real Trading are to be left alone by the "dead hand of government".

It's the idea that the government has forgotten who it really serves.

So how does all this (allegedly) work? In a word, experts.

The action is an outgrowth of a focus on insider trading by Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney. In an October speech, Mr. Bharara said the area is a "top criminal priority" for his office, adding: "Illegal insider trading is rampant and may even be on the rise." Mr. Bharara declined to comment.

Expert-network firms hire current or former company employees, as well as doctors and other specialists, to be consultants to funds making investment decisions. More than a third of institutional investment-management firms use expert networks, according to a late 2009 survey by Integrity Research Associates in New York.

The consultants typically earn several hundred dollars an hour for their services, which can include meetings or phone calls with traders to discuss developments in their company or industry. The expert-network companies say internal policies bar their consultants from disclosing confidential information.

Generally, inside traders profit by buying stocks of acquisition targets before deals are announced and selling after the targets' shares rise in value.

Nice gig, if you can get it. Why make chump change working for a company that actually does things and makes things? That's for suckers. The smart players stay there just long enough to absorb everything they need to know, and then skip on down to Wall Street and (allegedly!) sell their insider knowledge to the highest bidder. THEY get fat stacks. YOU get fat stacks. Everybody wins!

(Except, of course, the people that might have benefited from experts actually doing things. Like with all those physicists, mathematicians, engineers and other "quants" going to Wall Street to rig virtual casinos instead of making the world a better place. Why do something useful when horrible useless bullshit is so much more lucrative?)

Anyway, read the story. Yes, it's in the WSJ, but it treats the subject relatively fairly. Sure, it's no Taibbi, but it'll do a good job of reminding you why America's going downhill. It isn't because of immigration, or crime, or media violence. It sure as hell isn't enough kids doing math in school: what does it matter now that all the mathy kids end up doing something so pointlessly destructive?

Nope, what's bringing down America, and arguably the rest of the world, is the Wall Street Titans who draw away everything productive in the economy and exploit it to keep on gambling. The ones that think that laws and government are to protect them from you. The TRUE "elitists". The Wealthiest One Percent.

What Did the Liberals Do to the "Eugene Forsey Liberal"?

I had mentioned yesterday that the blogger who calls himself the "Eugene Forsey Liberal" was, perhaps, the perfect indicator of the white-hot anger that the Liberal base is experiencing over the possible deceptions by the party's leadership.

Now the blog has gone invite-only. I couldn't read the entry again if I wanted to. I've seen this sort of move over personal issues, but never over political opinions, especially by someone using a pseudonym.

What happened to him? What was DONE to him? What was he threatened with?

And what does this say about his party?

Edit: And why the hell hasn't Kinsella spoken up about this shit?

Re-Edit: Oh, he did do something. He removed the link. Well, I suppose that was a reaction to EFL shutting down incoming connections to the blog. Hope so, anyway. Still provokes the question, though. What happened to spook EFL?

Another Edit: And what is the meaning of Kinsella's cryptic comment here? "UPDATE: From a friend with deep Grit caucus connections: 'Rae to Jerusalem. Smitherman to Ottawa. All’s well that ends well.'"

Does that mean "Rae's going to Jerusalem, all's well that ends well"...or does it mean "Rae says to Jerusalem 'all's well that ends well'"?

Look Out, Radioactive Man! It Looks Like the Liberals Are Exploding Again!

If the "Eugene Forsey Liberal" is anything to go by, it would appear that the Canadian Liberals are right back to the sort of bitter acrimony that the Ignatieff victory was supposed to end for good.

Conniving, lying, anti-democratic traitors to Canada who send young Canadians to die in hopeless wars for their own political ends and to please their perceived colonial masters.

I have worked in aid of Bob Rae. Many of my friends and family have. Over many years. Never again.

Even knowing politicians, I never thought Rae & Iggy were the treacherous lying scum we now know to be. Bob Rae is right about one thing. I and many others, after all these years, remain naïve, by comparison. Thankfully.

Harper must go. Ignatieff must go. Rae must go.

That is all.

This is a shocking story. Canadians want out of Afghanistan, even more so than Americans do. They believe that they've done their part, and know that their country has sacrificed more lives—as a proportion of their population—to this mission than any other in the world. While all the other countries in NATO are bailing out, leaving Afghanistan to the Americans, it looks like Canada is going to stay as "trainers".

(Of course, Vietnam was originally about "training" as well. I don't put too much stock in that, and neither should any of you.)

If this had been some ill-conceived political move by the Liberals, that would be different. Sure, it would be stupid, since you can't outflank Republican-style conservatives like the Canadian Conservatives on the right. But that's not what happened here. What happened is that the Liberal leadership negotiated an extension to the mission that neither the Liberal caucus nor the Liberal party as a whole had any appetite for. The Liberals clearly want their soldiers to come home. But the leadership doesn't.

And Bob Rae? BOB RAE? Seriously? I'll admit that I don't know as much about the man and his history as some, but everything I've seen suggests that this is not his sort of game. He's always been the relatively honest, relatively progressive leadership figure in the Liberal party. What the hell is progressive about secret negotiations with the Conservatives? Did he look at what happened with Obama on health care and shout "ME TOO!", charging into the fray without a thought to the consequences?

Is he just getting tired of being in opposition and decided he wanted to contribute to government policy SOMEHOW, even if the government is odious and the method of contribution suspect?

In any case, we're (again) seeing the value of pseudonymity here. "Eugene Forsey Liberal" would probably be risking his association with the Liberal party if he said any of this openly. Even Whatzisname Kinsella is getting with the program, which may be even more surprising than the Rae thing. (Though Jason Cherniak's unfortunately "snotty" response to Kinsella's rage over this decision may have something to do with that.)

I suspect we'll see more "Forsey"-style posts as the days go by. Anonymous sources are already leaking how unhappy the Liberal caucus is about this. Forsey's post is all over twitter, too, linked by angry Liberals and jubilant New Democrats alike.

Unless Rae and Ignatieff can convince their party otherwise, this is only going to get worse.

Memo To John A. Farrell:

Liberals don't like the deficit commission's proposals because we realized right away that it's a massive wealth transfer to the wealthy.

Amazing how Farrell misses the point so adroitly. Or, again, maybe he's acting like Brooks. Hard to think otherwise when you read this:

It does away with the tax code’s preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends, and the awful Alternative Minimum Tax, and offers fairer and flatter rates for the overwhelming number of working-class Americans who take the standard deduction.

As should be immediately obvious, flatter rates are not fairer to the working class. And they aren't going to think that the AMT is "awful", because the whole point of the AMT is to ENSURE THAT WEALTHY PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAY THEIR SHARE. That's a constant struggle, and will continue to be a struggle long after the bill is passed and the top 1%'s pet accountants and tax lawyers find new shelters.

Oh, and John? Nobody gives a rat's ass about "bickering" in Washington. Not really. What they care about is the fact that they lost their jobs and the only jobs available are flipping burgers for a few shifts a week at minimum wage.

Brooks: Liberals Are Emotionless Automatons

Or whatever the hell he's blathering on about in his latest. It's a bit unfocused.

See, what he's trying to tell us is that liberals have no emotional core to their economics. It's all dry logic and drier models. Which is a bit weird, since his beef appears to be with economists. That's ridiculously misplaced: most economists aren't terribly liberal, and most liberals aren't any more fond of economists' assumptions or dry modelling than Brooks is purporting to be. It's a bizarre strawman, and while Brooks has practically built his CAREER on erecting strawmen, this one's support is a bit more rickety than most.

But that's not what he's really talking about. It's not that liberalism and liberal economists don't have emotions, it's that they have a basis for their emotions. That's what Brooks is railing against. He's trying to repeat the worn-out Republican shibboleths about how business is avoiding investing because they're afraid of Obama, about how all America needs to do is "pay off its debts" and everything will be okay, and about how the continuing recession proves that stimulus didn't work.

All of those assertions are ridiculous. We KNOW that they're ridiculous. We know that business isn't investing because demand is weak, and because the banks are happier getting free money from the government than lending to, say, small business owners. We know that the stimulus had an effect, but was too small and too focused on tax cuts to be able to seriously make a difference for an economy as large and as troubled as the economy of the United States. And we know that not everybody can pay off their debts at the same time, because every debt is somebody else's assets: so either the people with the assets have to cut down a LOT on their assets, spending more than they're inclined, or the economy needs to completely collapse so as to make the debts functionally worthless through widespread default.

And I think that Brooks knows that they're ridiculous, too. I'm sure he's had this explained to him. I'm equally sure that he couldn't even begin to seriously rebut his colleague Paul Krugman's debunking of these notions. It's an argument he can't win. So he's trying to avoid it, by saying that "facts are irrelevant!" while appealing to a superficially convincing mantra preaching "high savings and low debt", which denies the reality that that's literally impossible.

What's maddening—hello, emotion!—is that it's Brooks that is the amoral one. There is no morality in letting the wealthiest 1% get away with acting like robber barons, or in apologizing for what they've done to the economy. Yet, again, that's what Brooks is doing. Liberals are trying to stimulate the economy because THEY WANT PEOPLE TO GET BACK TO WORK, and get decent-paying jobs that can support themselves and their families at that. They're trying to rescue the middle class that Brook's 1% buddies are working so hard to destroy. Does Brooks? I doubt it. If he were, he would have said something about how the banks are once again leveraged to the hilt, just to try to truly get himself on the side of the Middle Americans that he pretends to advocate for.

It's just another way of pushing his conservative, 1%-serving ideology that destroyed America's middle class, turned the working class against itself, and continues to damage profoundly America's culture, economy and society. An ideology that ultimately destroys itself whenever it gains traction, because it's unimaginably self-defeating and destructive.

It's profoundly immoral. And utterly irrational.

Guess those two things fit together after all.

Edit: Oh, and Brooks? Liberals are absolutely cognizant of economics that takes psychology into account. That's why so many liberals are enormously interested in the work that behavioral economists like Dan Ariely are doing. And guess what they're finding out? Your solutions DON'T WORK. Your assumptions are wrong, your morality is suspect, and your frameworks are broken.

Republicans Abandoning the Poor And Unemployed? Fancy That!

Yes, as seen on the Krug-blog, Bob Corker is now saying that the Fed should give up on doing anything about unemployment whatsoever. Instead, they should focus on price stability.

The former is unsurprising. Republicans see the unemployed as little more than a nuisance to be avoided only when they can't be distracted into fighting amongst each other over who's the most virtuous and/or faithful. But has nobody told this idiot that trying to maintain price stability is precisely what the Fed is trying to do? "Price stability" doesn't just mean "inflation". It means fighting core deflation, too. Sure, he's one of that class of idiot that thinks that Inflation Is Comin' Real Soon Now, No Really It Is. The Fed would still be making moves like QE2 if it disagreed with him. It IS still a semi-autonomous body.

Then again, maybe price stability isn't what people like Corker want. They're Republicans. They are, to a man, nestled deep in the pocket of the wealthiest 1%. The wealthiest 1% are universally creditors, not debtors. Why wouldn't they want deflation? It'd just make their bonds THAT much more valuable.

Sure, it'll screw everybody else. But I think the last ten years has showed us that they could give a rat's ass about the rest of the country, or the rest of the planet. Barring a sort of weak, puddle-deep Noblesse Oblige that nudges them into giving money to whichever charity makes them momentarily feel better, I see every reason to believe that they and their Republican creatures would gladly let the rest of us rot.

Nuking Newsweek's Website For the Beastweek Monstrosity Would Be Asinine

I'd add more. But why? The title covers it. I can understand why Beastweek happened, since Newsweek's print editors understand the Web about as well as they understand theoretical particle physics. That it's going to be an AOL/Time Warner-level disaster is not in doubt.

But it'd be a damned shame to kill Newsweek.com because of it. It's not a site that I always agree with, but it's a damned sight better than the Daily Beast. Of all things.

"Currency Debasement"?

Good Lord, the Republican shills taking shots at QE2 really are barely-concealed Goldbugs, aren't they?

They clearly think, against all logic or reason, that a healthy level of currency inflation is somehow equivalent to clipping coins.

Brooks: National Greatness For The Ultra-Wealthy

Let us leave aside the spectacle of David Brooks saying, without evidence or reason, that "Bond markets are with you until the second they are against you. When the psychology shifts and the fiscal crisis happens..." He's just repeating the babble of the right.

But if his column is to be believed, he's a big fan of the catfood commission's recommendations, pointing to them as a means by which America can regain its "national greatness". But Krugman aptly noted that said recommendations basically involve jacking the taxes of the middle class to pay for big tax breaks for the wealthiest 1%.

So is that what "national greatness" is to Brooks? He babbles on and on about America's "economic and social values", and even the possibility of "revived patriotism":

It will take a revived patriotism to get people to look beyond their short-term financial interest to see the long-term national threat. Do you really love your tax deduction more than America’s future greatness? Are you really unwilling to sacrifice your Social Security cost-of-living adjustment at a time when soldiers and Marines are sacrificing their lives for their country in Afghanistan?

David Brooks, who the FUCK is the "you" here? It's sure as hell not the tiny minority that captures much of the income, holds most of the wealth, and owns most of the Senators. They don't give a rat's ass about a Social Security cost-of-living adjustment. It'd be a rounding error on their portfolios. THEY would benefit handsomely from the catfood crew's advocacy of slashed upper-class income taxes and corporate taxes. Where is THEIR pain? Where is THEIR sacrifice?

Sure, Brooks can take weak shots at the "upper-middle class". But who the hell cares about them? They aren't the issue. The upper-upper-UPPER class walking away with an increasingly grotesque percentage of the wealth that America and its people produce: THAT is the issue. The class war that people like Brooks are waging against the middle class on their behalf: THAT is the issue. The long slide of America into the kind of inequality that you used to see only in "banana republics": THAT is the issue.

America's national greatness is not built on propping up the incomes of exploitative Wall Street traders and well-connected executive managers.

Edit: Looking around, I've run across some sad, pathetic libertarians who are whining about that "tax deduction" line. Give me a break. He advocated for the deficit commission's wholesale transfer of wealth upward. He's an apologist for the wealthy, just like yourselves. He's clearly on YOUR side. You're just too dumb to realize it.