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Picture of the week

By Ron Beasley

Big 3 Bail-out thoughts - As Ron sees it.

By Ron Beasley

While I agree that the Big 3 cannot be allowed to go under but I can't agree with a "bail-out" as such.  What should happen is a de-facto temporary nationalization.  To begin with the entire upper management team and the board of directors should be shown the door with only a final pay check - no parachutes.  Throwing money at the companies with the clowns that got them into the mess  in charge makes no sense.  Put a caretaker management team in place while a restructuring plan is developed.  Instead of at least some of the cash move the employees into Medicare which will reduce health care costs by 15 percent or more and begin the move to a single payer system which is essential if the US is going to be competitive in the world market.

Form a blue ribbon commission from business and engineering to determine the path to restructuring the US automobile industry. 

Big 3 Bail-out thoughts

By Fester:

In normal times, I would not support a massive bail-out of GM.  However these are not normal economic times as we have entered a liquidity trap.  Unusual and massive interventions are warranted to prevent a Japanification of the US economy.  Salvaging the remains of GM, Ford and Chrysler is most likely justifiable as the alternatives are worse.  It is not desirable, but it is justifiable.

Publius at Obsidian Wings argues that the spin-off and inverse multiplier effects will be massive:

  There are effectively millions of people who could be out of work if Detroit goes down (and bankruptcy doesn’t provide the potential benefits here it normally would). That sort of massive job wipeout would – in addition to literally decimating large regions of our country – trigger massive economic dislocation.

I don’t care how cool the free market seems in the abstract – these are real problems involving real non-sparrow people. And these very real problems would cascade throughout the country. They can’t simply be ignored because the market fairy (“as if guided by an invisible hand” – puke, vomit) will come and fix everything.

Bloomberg reports that the cost of inaction will be more expensive than any intervention:

General Motors Corp., seeking a federal bailout as its cash dwindles, would cost the government $200 billion should the biggest U.S. automaker be forced to liquidate, a forecasting firm estimated.

A GM collapse would mean ``more aid to specific states like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, and more money into unemployment and extended benefits,'' Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, said today in an interview.

If either $25 billion or $50 billion in government loans and bridge financing that effectively acts as debt during re-organization is needed to keep the entire Mid-western industrial economy functioning with its millions of direct jobs and tens of millions indirect jobs dependent on it, then that is worth it.  Remember, each car plant that closes down will destroy three or four times as many secondary jobs as direct jobs.

We do not need to see another three or four million people laid off at once.  We do not need to see regions embark upon a land-talent-opportunity death spiral similar to that which happened in Western Pennsylvania when the steel industry collapsed in the early 80s.  We'll be facing enough problems in the next couple of years that paying a bit to avoid another massive problem is a very good idea. 

Kilcullen And A Pony

By Cernig

There's very interesting interview today with counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen in the New Yorker.

My take - he says there's less than a year before Afghanistan is irretreivable, that Pakistan is the true central front and that he can see how to rescue both nations. I think he's being overly optimistic about the timeframe to rescue the Afghanistan misadventure. It has already slipped past, for reasons Kilcullen actually explains in his interview - the recalcitrance and corruption of US-backed governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan, too many years of ignoring the very real Pakistan problem, training the Afghan police to be an army-lite instead of policemen and then allowing the Taliban to become the party of law-and-order, insensitive Coalition military operations etc. We can see how things need to be fixed but we can't get there from here.

When you look closer Kilcullen is entirely vague both on what needs to be done in Pakistan (compared with far more specific plans in Afghanistan) and on how to get the political leadership of both nations to go along with any Western plans.

Pakistan (rather than either Afghanistan or Iraq) is the central front of world terrorism. The problem is time frame: it takes six to nine months to plan an attack of the scale of 9/11, so we need a “counter-sanctuary” strategy that delivers over that time frame, to prevent al Qaeda from using its Pakistan safe haven to mount another attack on the West. This means that building an effective nation-state in Pakistan, though an important and noble objective, cannot be our sole solution—nation-building in Pakistan is a twenty to thirty year project, minimum, if indeed it proves possible at all—i.e. nation-building doesn’t deliver in the time frame we need. So we need a short-term counter-sanctuary program, a long-term nation-building program to ultimately resolve the problem, and a medium-term “bridging” strategy (five to ten years)—counterinsurgency, in essence—that gets us from here to there. That middle part is the weakest link right now. All of that boils down to a policy of:

(a) encouraging and supporting Pakistan to step up and effectively govern its entire territory including the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], and to resolve the current Baluch and Pashtun insurgency, while
(b) assisting wherever possible in the long-term process of state-building and governance, but
(c) reserving the right to strike, as a last resort, at al Qaeda-linked terrorist targets that threaten the international community, if (and only if) they are operating in areas that lie outside effective Pakistani sovereignty.

There's a massive element of Pony Plan in his prescriptions, and it involves everything that the Coalition military cannot do on its own. How does the West get the Pakistani leadership to do a) and b), especially when that would first involve winnowing out the "fecklessness or complicity of some elements in Pakistan" which is the biggest stumbling block to finding a solution to both those massive problems and to ending the safe haven that Al Qaeda and the Taliban's leadership has enjoyed inside Pakistan?

That "and a pony too!" element in even this COIN guru's thoughts about the regions non-military problems reminds me hugely of the shortcomings in the military-led COIN strategy in Iraq, of course. And he's got this telling line on that: "we don’t want to un-bog ourselves from Iraq only to get bogged in Afghanistan while Iraq turns bad again." I thought the narrative was that we were past the chances of the latter happening...

Here Comes the Sun

By Ron Beasley

Now that the election is over we can get back to some news that was put on the back burner the last few months. About a year ago I begin talking about the new printed thin film solar panels that made solar power competitive for the first time. 

Let me be the last in the greenosphere to note that Nanosolar has shipped its first panels, and it's no exaggeration to say that this moment will likely be seen as a historical turning point.

[.....]

Nanosolar's claim is that power from their panels will pencil out at about $0.99 a watt. The implications are pretty stunning:

"With a $1-per-watt panel," [CEO Martin Roscheisen] said, "it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems." According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said.

I reported here that Nanosolar had increased their production but that most of that was going to Germany.

My own local utility has now jumped on the thin film solar band wagon.

PORTLAND -- Portland General Electric has rolled out its largest solar project ever in the Pacific Northwest.

Hundreds of solar panels are being installed on top of three Prologis warehouses.

Once installed, the 900 panels will produce up to 1.1 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 100 Portland homes.

All the electricity produced on these rooftops will go straight into the grid.

PGE says this is a major step toward its goal of supplying 25 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2025.

You can see a video of the installation at the above link.  As BJ reported below it looks like the EPA is finally going to make it more difficult for coal fired plants which will make thin film solar even more attractive.

Sentiment Indicator

By Fester:

My family has been sending a flurry of e-mails back and forth to figure out the Christmas gift exchange and wish lists.  This is quite unusual as there is more than two weeks before the holidays.  However the most interesting thing happened last night as my little brother is visiting my wife and I.  My mom called him to remind him that he had not submitted his wish list.  She said that they would not be doing gift cards because of the risk of any of the stores going bankrupt. 

Wow, what a sentiment indicator.  This was not a statement I was expecting from my mom. 

Embracing the Loop

By Fester:

In August 2007, I wrote that I believed that the GOP would be engaged in an intermediate term positive feedback loop of stupidity.  This is one of my core analytical assumptions at the moment and one of the posts that I am particularly proud of:

Positive feedback loops usually suck as they produce excesses as previous actions encourage more of the same. In the short term, positive feedback loops produce significant disruptions and opportunities. Politically, being on the receiving side of a positive feedback loop that can resist mean reversion allows for a party, or a set of interests to gain rent-seeking positions.....

Another positive feedback loop looks like it is forming now as the Republican Party is becoming more conservative and institutionally more inward seeking....

Combine these retirements with expected strong challenges in the few remaining Northeast Republican seats, the non-Southern, non-movement conservative caucus in the 2009 Congress looks to be miniscule. The internal dynamics will produce leadership elections of hard liners and bomb throwers for a couple of cycles, marginalizing the party nationally and further increasing the institutional power of resource extraction, social and political reactionaries within their own caucus.

There are a lot of verifiable predictions made in that short post, and so far the feedback loop has been established, the non-Southern or non-movement conservative groupings have taken a beaten and now via Brendan Nyhan, it looks like the GOP is electing an even more hardline leadership in the House of Representatives.  The old leadership was slightly to the right of the 2007-2008 GOP caucus, but not by a whole lot.  The new leadership is to the far right of the 2007-2008 caucus but it may not be that much more of a deviation from the 2009 caucus as the GOP's centrists got creamed in 2008 following up their 2006 ass-kicking. 

 

The late great Republican Party

By Ron Beasley

My friend and former blogging partner at Middle Earth Journal, Jazz Shaw, made the New York Times yesterday.  That's the good news - the bad news is that put him in the cross hairs of über wingnut Ted Nugent. Bad rocker turned homicidal maniac Nugent declared that RINO Season Is Now Open earlier in the week.  Jazz, who left the Republican Party in 2004, responded with a post at his post MEJ venue, The Moderate Voice, with a sensible post.

While talking heads are dashing back and forth suggesting how to “fix” the Republican party, various solutions are being offered. These include suggestions as extreme as rounding up the RINOs and executing them. Most of the plans include a return to their Reagan roots of small government fiscal conservatism, which is a good plan but doesn’t speak to the real issue. Hand wringing over the fate of a party currently backed into a corner of the deep South should not focus on how to win more elections, but rather on finding a plan for America that solves real problems which Democrats are leaving on the table for them.

Item one on this agenda is the 800 pound gorilla of Social Security and Medicare. Frantic “anti-socialist” elements in the extreme fringe of the party who would see all Federal entitlement programs ended do not hold the answer, but a solution is still required. We have no need to scrap these programs, nor would America’s voters tolerate such a move, but they are still driving us toward a national economic crisis in the next 30 to 40 years which could dwarf the one currently dominating the news cycle. The Democrats have failed to field any serious proposals to fix this because the cure is seen as too painful for an entitlement minded electorate to face. But if the cure is phrased properly, people will be willing to recognize that a little pain up front is preferable to an avalanche of agony further down the line. Take the lead on these issues and you’ll start swinging some hearts and minds back in your direction.

Now while Jazz and I might not agree on "the cure" this is indeed the only way the Republican Party can recover.  But Jazz has some company in Nugent's cross hairs.  Christine Todd Whitman and Robert M. Bostock put themselves on the hit list today -

Free the GOP

The Party Won't Win Back the Middle as Long As It's Hostage to Social Fundamentalists

They recognize that the issues of the social conservatives are on the down side of demographic realities - the "pro-life, anti-black, homophobic population is shrinking through both death and enlightenment.  The wingnuts of course responded as one would expect.

Some advice to my friend Jazz - your Republican party is history.  The Frankenstein monster created by Lee Attwater and Karl Rove has taken charge of  the Republican Party and you are not going to get it back.  It is now a regional party.  The problem is there are very few people living in that region. 

Hillary Clinton as secretary of state

by Jay McDonough

That's the rumor.  It's being reported President-elect Barack Obama has asked Hillary Clinton if she would be interested in filling the secretary of state spot in his Cabinet.  Marc Ambinder offers up one theory on Obama's motivation:

The CW in Washington is that Obama wants Clinton in his cabinet more than Clinton wants to be in the cabinet, the theory being that the moment she steps into the administration, she loses her power base, she loses her Senate seat forever, and she loses her voice on domestic policy. She concedes her political identity.  Actually, on policy: uncuriously silent in all this is Sen. Joe Biden, who has strong foreign policy ideas of his own and a bigger platform to share them with Obama.  Would Clinton become a glorified PR tool for Obama if she accepted the job? A Powell, rather than a Rice?

I don't buy it.  Obama has, at this point, over 70% approval ratings. Polling suggests folks are very optimistic about an Obama presidency. At one point, after the last primary, reconciliation of the Democratic Party was a high priority.  But by the time the election rolled around, 89% of Democrats voted for Barack Obama.  It doesn't seem to me that Barack Obama has to watch his back with respect to Hillary Clinton. 

Hillary Clinton is very smart and very capable.  But, throughout the Democratic primaries, one of Obama's most effective criticisms of Senator Clinton was her firm position in "old Washington" thinking.  How does Obama rationalize a nod to Clinton after that criticism?

There's another big issue; Bill Clinton.  Following his presidency, Bill Clinton has been involved in quite a bit of international business ventures that have appeared somewhat shaky from the outside.  It had been rumored that Mrs. Clinton had raised the vetting issue when Barack Obama was considering vice presidential running mates and those vetting issues remain.

And, finally, there's an awful lot of Clinton alumni surrounding Barack Obama.  I'm all for competency and experience, but some display of independence and "new Washington" thinking is important as well.

Sarkozy Breaks Ranks On Missile Defense

By Cernig

Well now:

France's U.S.-friendly president sent a clear message Friday to the next American administration: Plans for a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe are misguided, and won't make the continent a safer place.

... "Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security ... it would complicate things, and would make them move backward," Sarkozy said at a news conference with Medvedev. Medvedev smiled and pointed his finger at Sarkozy in approval.

...Sarkozy said he was worried about Russia's threat to deploy short-range Iskander missiles near Poland in response to the U.S. move.

"We could continue between Europe and Russia to threaten each other with shields, with missiles, with navies," he said. "It would do Russia no good, Georgia no good and Europe no good."

Sarkozy said he would discuss the missile issue with NATO counterparts at a summit early next year and proposed a pan-European security conference after that, to include Russia. Medvedev welcomed the idea.

All the more remarkable because:

1) Sarko wasn't just speaking for France - he was meeting with Medvedev as part of an EU-Russia summit and France currently holds the EU presidency.

2) His remarks came just days after the US missile defense supremo, Gen Oberling, said that US interests would be "severely hurt" if the program was cancelled. Obviously, Sarkozy doesn't think that French or European interests would be likewise negatively affected.

The Great Fall of China

By BJ

The great economic engine of China is starting to grind to a halt.

For decades, the steamy Pearl River Delta area of southern Guangdong Province served as a primary engine for China’s astounding economic growth. But an export slowdown that began earlier this year and that has been magnified by the global financial crisis of recent months is contributing to the shutdown of tens of thousands of small and mid-size factories here and in other coastal regions, forcing laborers to scramble for other jobs or return home to the countryside.

Furthermore, the slowdown inhibits China’s ability to work with other nations in alleviating the worldwide crisis.

The Pearl River Delta, known as the world’s factory, powered an export industry that pushed China’s annual growth rate into the double digits and provided work for migrants from interior provinces with poor farmland. But circumstances have changed quickly. The slowdown in exports contributed to the closing of at least 67,000 factories across China in the first half of the year, according to government statistics. Labor disputes and protests over lost back wages have surged, igniting fear in local officials.

The fuel for China’s economic growth, as it has been for many other nations, has been the appetite of the American consumer, and those consumers are tightening their belts.

Retail sales and prices of goods imported to the U.S. dropped by the most on record, signaling the economy may be in its worst slump in decades.

Purchases fell 2.8 percent in October, the fourth straight decline, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Labor Department figures showed import prices dropped 4.7 percent, pointing to a rising danger of deflation, and a private report said consumer confidence this month remained near the lowest level since 1980.

. . .

Retailers have now logged the longest string of monthly declines since the Commerce Department's comparable data series began in 1992. Excluding automobiles, purchases decreased 2.2 percent, almost twice as much as the 1.2 percent decline anticipated and also the worst performance on record.

Declines were broad based as furniture, electronics, clothing and department stores all showed loses.

Demand at automobile dealerships and parts stores plunged 5.5 percent after falling 4.8 percent in September.

Car sales are among the most affected as banks make it harder to borrow.

Little wonder the Big 3 are looking for bailouts.

However bad this economic slowdown is going to be for North America, the consequences in China are likely to be far worse.  The ruling communist government has been able to maintain their grip on power in large part by providing the promise of greater and continuing prosperity to more and more of its citizens.  Basically, so long as it ain’t broke, you don’t need to send tanks to Tiananmen Square to fix it.

An economic slowdown means people start thinking about changing their leadership, in China just like everywhere else, and China’s rulers are understandably worried.  Places like Tibet and East Turkmenistan are already volatile, and several other regions where prosperity never reached, and where it is about to go into retreat, are likely to start agitating themselves.

A China without (relatively) rich foreign customers is a country on the brink of implosion.  Definitely a place to keep an eye on.

Yon And Instie Declare Victory In Iraq

By Cernig

Michael Yon, the Right's favorite "good news" war correspondent has declared victory in Iraq, telling Instapundit Glenn Reynolds "The war is over, and we won".

And the wingnut blogosphere seems ready to take them at their word. What a pity Yon couldn't have phoned Instie before the elections, eh?

I think thats probably a bit over-optimistic of them. So do Gen. Petraeus and the entire U.S. intelligence community, but what does they know, compared with Yon, Reynolds and the Fighting Keyboarders? However, since they believe it, can we have all the troops home now? Not just over the course of a few years, but right now?

A Boondoggle To Defend Against A Fiction?

By Cernig

On Wednesday, Iran announced it had tested what it said was a new missile. But Iran has a history of exaggerating its accomplishments in weapons development, variously claiming stealth aircraft that aren't and missiles that don't exist. Western experts reckon there was actually nothing new this time either - and in fact there may not even have been a "this time":

Andrew Brookes of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "I think the Iranians just keeping on rejigging the same missile and putting a new logo on it. It's basically the Shahab 3 with a different name, and the purpose of the test firing is to tell the world, 'don't forget us', we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometres."

"However, the launching of these missiles is not that meaningful because the Iranians have not developed an advanced minituarised warhead to fit into the front end, unless they are getting help from North Korea or Russia, and Moscow says it is not supporting Iran's missile programme.

... Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane's Strategic Weapons, said:.. "What is not clear is whether the test firing took place today or whether it's a photograph taken out of the archives but from the pictures it looks like a two-stage missile with a range of 1,900-2,000 kilometres."

And Dr. Jeffrey Lewis also notes that there's even scepticism over whether this rebranded missile, by either name, is actually solid fuelled - which makes a vast difference to its military usefulness as liquid fuelled missiles need a long time sitting on their launchers while they're filled with fuel (which can easily explode anyway) during which time they are sitting ducks for airstrikes.

Even such a missile is capable of hitting Tel Aviv, however - and the Israelis are supremely confident they could shoot it down before it did. It cannot reach Rome, Athens or Prague from Iran, and as such doesn't constitute any kind of threat to Europe. (Although it could reach Tbilisi, Georgia - but then again, so could earlier, far less sophisticated Iranian missiles, it's only 500 or so miles.) Even if Iran had missiles that could target Europe - and ever has warheads worth doing that with - as Dr. Lewis has previously noted, the Aegis cruiser platform would be a better alternative to the multi-billion boondoggle the Bush administration has proposed in Eastern Europe, both more effective and more sensitive to Russian concerns.

So what's going on? Well, Spencer Ackerman recently spoke to a bunch of Pentagon officials and military experts for a piece in the Washington Independent about Obama's relationship with the military and its supporters. Their unanimous advice was: "Consult, don’t steamroll — and don’t capitulate." and to make it clear there's only one Commander in Chief. In an adjunct piece at his FDL home, Spencer directly tackles the military budget and attitudes to "big ticket" procurement:

One of my sources for the piece is a Pentagon official who requested anonymity. He made a really interesting point that, alas, had to fall out of the piece. Despite the unsustainability of half-trillion-dollar military budgets during this period of dire financial hardship, the services will cling to their favorite big-ticket programs with an icy death-grip. If Obama's really going to make painful cuts to unnecessary defense programs, he's got to go all-out, making it clear that he's in charge and the cuts are happening no matter what. If he doesn't do that, he's going to get rolled throughout his presidency.

And he specifically links that to missile defense and Gen. Oberling, who told the AP:

The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon's missile defense projects said Wednesday that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Oberling is due to retire in a couple of weeks. Does anyone doubt that his next job will be for either one of the contractors who stand to gain big-time from the ABM program or one of the neocon think tanks who have pushed it so hard as part of their "New American Century" plans? Those think tanks - themselves heavily funded by the very same arms manufacturers - have made explicit that missile defense should eventually include space-based weapons and be aimed at Russia too (thus Russia's consternation at the current plans) and intend a January push to sway the Obama administration and public opinion in an attempt to prevent Obama cancelling the program, as he has previously indicated he might.

These vested interests intend trying to steamroller Obama from word one, and Oberling is willing to bend the truth all out of shape in their service. He's pushing, as one ex-military writer puts it, "a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work to defend it from ballistic missiles that don't work either." And the Cheneyites of the Right are willing to start Cold War II to get it, and the money for their arms-making allies that it represents.

Dirty Coal Takes a Hit

By BJ

Looks like everyone will be able to breathe a little easier in the future.

In a landmark action, the Environmental Protection Agency’s final decision-making board has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated. The Environmental Appeals Board ruled today that the EPA has no valid reason for refusing to place limits on the global warming emissions from Desert Power’s proposed 110-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vernal, Utah.

. . .

The 69-page decision described the Bush administration’s arguments as “weak,” “questionable,” “not sustainable,” and “not sufficient,” and rebuked EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for failing to issue CO2 regulations, repeatedly recommending an “action of nationwide scope.”

As Matt Stoller puts it:

One of the claims of the coal industry - that there's some capacity to use coal without emitting carbon dioxide using fancy new technology - is about to be tested in a big way.  One sign to look for is squealing; if the industry gets very upset, it means they weren't really telling the truth about the ability to use clean coal technology in the first place.  If they don't squeal, then it looks like we're going to get a whole bunch of coal plants that don't emit carbon.

I’m sure we’ll hear squealing regardless, because whether or not the technology is workable, you can bet it is more costly than just allowing the coal plants to pollute away freely.  So not only will we hear squealing, we’ll be hearing how the Obama administration, (which isn’t yet in power), and the Democratic Congress, (who had nothing to do with this decision), are causing people hardship by raising energy prices because they won't allow the power companies to pollute without paying for it.

Still rather good news for the moment.

Make them pay taxes

By Ron Beasley

This is just the most recent reason why the tax exempt status of Churches should be ended.

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back. A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.

If organized religion feels obligated to involve itself in politics and government they should be required to pay for the services they receive from the government. 

We have a decent interval

By Fester:

Via the UVA Miller Presidential Recording Program:

More extra-solar photos

By Fester:

USA Today reports that astronomers are taking pictures of extra-solar systems with multiple planets.  That is freaking cool:

Astronomers reported Thursday that they have the first snapshot of another solar system — one with three planets larger than Jupiter — orbiting a nearby star.

Circling the star HR 8799, the three planets "are a scaled-up version of our own solar system," says study leader Christian Marois of the National Research Council Canada. A large star about 128 light years away (a light year is about 6 trillion miles), HR 8799 resides in the constellation Pegasus, according to the online report released Thursday by the journal, Science.

"This is the first image of a multi-planet solar system," says Marois, who headed a U.S.-Canadian team that sifted light measurements from the star in 2004 and 2006 to photograph the planets in infrared light. "Here we are actually seeing the light, temperature and size of these planets."

Who needs accountability

    By Fester:

Forgetting about Watergate and allowing for a rapid rehabitiliation of most of the Nixonian senior leadership worked out well.

Ignoring Iran Contra and allowing a President to remain out of the loop had no longer lasting harm.

Going to war based on either lies, contempt for the truth or amazing idiocy has had no long lasting harm.  Replacing US Attorneys for not pursuing spurious voter fraud cases has increased confidence in our electoral system.  Seeing a city drown has been a net positive for this country.  Burning a CIA asset with alleged sources in Iran has increased our knowledge and decreased uncertainty.

Actually requiring accountability and potential criminal liability for these actions would be completely uncivil and counterproductive.  It is not like the ghosts of Richard Nixon would ever be allowed to haunt another White House (hi Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld), our political process is too mature for that.  Who could imagine an ignorant Know Nothing could become President or nominated for Vice President for any party larger than the Constitution Party. 

That would just be uncivil.  Our institutions are too strong to be bothered with accountability. 

Or at least that is what the Wise Old Men of Washington want to argue:

"At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary CommitteeJohn Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up."

This is despite the fact that Obama really did not build up a lot of bipartisan capital if you define that in terms of the number of Republicans who self-identify as Republicans who voted for him.  This is despite the fact that we need accountability for a departure from the historical explicit and implicit constitutional norms (six years of self-pants shitting is not a valid defense).  This is despite the fact that there is a consensus that everything that has been done in the past eight years will have to be undone. 

Political considerations affected every crevice of the department during the Bush years, from the summer intern hiring program to the dispensing of legal advice about detainee interrogations, according to reports by the inspector general and testimony from bipartisan former DOJ officials at congressional hearings....

"The infusion of politics into the Justice Department and an abdication of responsibility by its leaders have dealt a severe blow," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the panel's ranking Republican, wrote in an opinion piece last month. "Great damage has been done to the credibility and effectiveness of the Justice Department."

No, it is best for this country that Georgetown cocktail parties are enjoyable and open to all. 

Fuck accountability; that is for the plebes.

Rendell to stay in Harrisburg

By Fester:

On hearing the news that Lt. Gov. Knoll (D-PA) passed away this morning, I had the same exact thoughts as the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat:

In a more cold, calculating vein: Ed Rendell will not be accepting a position in the Obama administration until his term is up, lest Republican Joe Scarnati, now Lt. Governor, take his office.

Countercyclical Carbon Taxation

By Fester:

I am a Keynesian --- I believe that government should be a countercyclical force in the economy.  When times are good, the government should build up reserves and repay old debts, and when times are tight as no one else wants to risk borrowing or lending money, government with its near infinite time horizons and ability to recoup large positive externalities should step in to alleviate the pain of a recession.  I believe that the US government should run a structurally balanced budget to a mild structural surplus which is why I think the Bush policies are a massive opportunity as well as a real cost.  Large deficits were justifiable in 2001, 2002 and 2003, but we were theoretically 'booming' in 2004 to 2007 when surpluses should have been run to pay off the past. 

Right now the US government is running at a structural deficit.  Obama's pledge to make his tax policies revenue neutral will be a good thing in the shortest of terms, but a negative over the long run as there is not enough to cut from ongoing operations in Iraq, and the perrenial favorite of 'waste, fraud and abuse' to deal with the rising claims against government resources as Medicare looks to become a budget buster in the next decade.  National healthcare or at least the Baucus plan will help on that front, but more revenue is needed.

Kevin Drum looks at a carbon tax as accomplishing both an environmental goal and a bond market goal:

If a cap-and-trade plan were passed in 2009, it would probably take effect in 2012 or so, and the revenue stream would start small the next year and then grow every year after that. That's perfect timing. We don't want to raise taxes right now, but a program that guaranteed a growing revenue stream starting a few years from now would help convince investors that the current budget deficit won't last forever.

A carbon tax would have an added advantage of being an inherently counter-cyclical tax.  It will bring in more revenue during good times as the value of pollution as a by-product of increased production and distribution of goods and power will increase.  However during tough times such as today, miles driven decrease, industrial production decreases, electricity demand decreases.  The value of an annual permit thus decreases which means there is a little more money floating out in the economy as an automatic stimulus. 

Condi Rice's History

By Cernig

Warren Strobel at McClatchy's Nukes and Spooks blog:

The Bush administration will soon be history, but that hasn't stopped its senior members from trying to rewrite history for the next couple of months ... and no doubt, long after.

We were watching a video of CSPAN's interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when we had to suddenly stop and hit the rewind button. Rice said this, and we quote:

When I go to Europe, I no longer see any difference in the view that a stable and secure Iraq is in everybody’s interest, and that an Iraq that is democratic and in which Saddam Hussein, that brutal monster that caused three wars in the region, including dragging us in twice, that used – who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, that an Iraq that is democratic and friendly to the West is better for the Middle East. I don’t see much disagreement about that.

Dragging us in twice?

Pause. Think about that.

...In fact, the record is now clear (as we reported at the time) that President George W. Bush had decided to go to war against Iraq in early 2002, just a few months after the 9/11 attacks. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction or significant, operational ties to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. The Bush administration dismissed Saddam's accounting of his WMD, ignored offers of mediation, and used bogus and false intelligence to make the case for war. It didn't let the U.N. Security Council or opposition from Europeans get in the way. All that makes for an odd definition of "dragging us in."

And this woman wants to go back into education as a career. Do you think she really believes it, or do you think she just knows that the loyal base (you know, deep thinkers like "Thomas Sowell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Governor Sarah Palin" - and Ted Nugent) will?

All Politics Is Local, Even In Iran

By Cernig

Dutch journalist Thomas Erdbrink, who is based in Tehran, has a must-read piece today in the Washington Post which details how, now that Obama is the President-Elect and offering no-precondition talks, non-trivial but junior members of the Iranian government are making noises about walking back their own offers to hold unconditional talks.

“People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous,” Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.

... In recent interviews, advisers to Ahmadinejad said the new U.S. administration would have to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, show respect for Iran's system of rule by a supreme religious leader, and withdraw its objections to Iran's nuclear program before it can enter into negotiations with the Iranian government.

"The U.S. must prove that their policies have changed and are now based upon respecting the rights of the Iranian nation and mutual respect," said Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, the president's closest adviser.

Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Mehdi Kalhor, said that "in fair circumstances" Iran would be open to talks. "But that is not when you have a bayonet pressed at your artery," he added, referring to the U.S. forces deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

All this provides neocon hawks with the perfect opportunity to bang the "prefidious Iranians" drum, and Ed Morrissey doesn't miss that chance:

This is the point that Obama and his allies never seem to understand.  Some people just hate us, and not because of our policies on trade and security.  Iran is a nation run by radical Islamist mullahs who see secular democracy as the enemy of their religion, and Western values as a temporary heresy which they plan to correct with a global caliphate under Iranian control.

Irans’ mullahs see America as the bastion of these values, and Israel as our outpost for them in the region.  Europe is mostly irrelevant to them; they can deal with Europe after eliminating the arsenal of democracy, or hobbling it so badly that we no longer make a difference.

But it's Ed who is missing the point. As Spencer Ackerman points out, Obama is more of a threat to those mullahs than Bush ever was. If you're an intransigent theocon Iranian leader:

All of a sudden, you’re deprived of a method of demagoguery that’s aided your regime for a generation. And if you refuse to negotiate, you’ve just undermined everything you told the international community you wanted, and now appear unreasonable, erratic, and unattractive to foreign capitols. Amazing how the prospects for peace are more destabilizing to the Iranian establishment than any inevitably-counterproductive-and-destructive bombing campaign or war of internal subterfuge.

That's an analysis born out by Erdbrink's past work too. Back in 2004, he co-wrote a Time piece which pointed out that "dominant hard-line clerics are worried that friendly American behavior might aid reformers, who are less anti-Western than the conservatives."

There's a presidential election in Iran next year and a moderate now heads the committee which would choose the replacement for the ailing Ayatollah. In other words, it's not about nukes or about international opinion - its about the shakier thrones Irans hardline government now find themselves sitting upon; with the best weapon in their arsenal, Bush's neocon ways, consigned to history.

Obama intends to investigate use of torture by Bush Administration

by Jay McDonough

High at the top of my wish list - the things I hope Barack Obama does immediately upon assuming the presidency - is mount an investigation into the Bush Administration's implementation and use of torture.  We know from Congressional testimony, second hand accounts and exhaustive journalistic chronicles that torture was not, in fact, carried out by some out of control nightshift staffed with bad apples,  It was orchestrated in a systematic, sanctioned program approved at the highest levels of our government.The recent news President-elect Obama  intends to close Guantanamo is a hopeful sign that Mr. Obama will address, at least tangentially, the issue of war on terror detentions.

In August, Salon wrote about an Obama plan to investigate the Administration, should he be elected.  Obama has said "If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated." Salon  reported this week that Obama advisors are developing plans for investigating abuse during Bush's tenure.

Most consider it unlikely that any criminal charges will ever be brought against Bush Administration officials.  Great efforts were made by the Administration to cover their trail (and asses) with Justice Department memos and modifications to the War Crimes Act, and the likelihood of ugly, partisan warfare makes any attempt to prosecute the guilty remote.  (That does not, however, mean these individuals won't be subject to international law and tribunals, as former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is well aware.) Any inquiry would most likely take the form of an appointed commission, chartered with investigating timelines, directives, implementation, and the Administration's claims of the effectiveness of torture.

Rumors circulated this summer that President Bush intends to issue a blanket presidential pardon to insure that any and all individuals who approved, orchestrated and implemented these brutal techniques are not prosecuted. The president is within his Constitutional powers to grant such a pardon, though it would be unprecedented in scope (thousands of people?) and the first ever granted to exempt Americans from war crimes prosecution.  It might also be construed as a tacit admission of wrongdoing and stain whatever legacy Mr. Bush has left.  Though, even if a pardon allows the guiltyto avoid prosecution, it may provide for a more open investigation.  From  Salon:

There are, in fact, some constitutional scholars who believe a pardon might actually facilitate more complete participation in a fact-finding commission, by removing the threat of looming liability. "Holding people accountable is certainly nice, but in terms of healing the country and moving forward, so is actually getting a clear picture of what happened and letting the public make an informed decision," said Kermit Roosevelt at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "If we had a pardon followed by something like a truth and reconciliation commission, that might not be such a bad outcome." (Roosevelt represents a detainee held at Guantánamo.)

An investigation, even without criminal penalties for the guilty, would send a clear signal to the rest of the world that America is back on track and not governed by leaders with contempt for the law and who believe it's acceptable and in keeping with American values to use the brutal interrogation practices employed and perfected by the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, China and the Stalinist Soviet Union.

G.laringly O.bsolete P.achyderms

By Cernig

I take it as a given that any party-based system of democracy needs a healthy and viable opposition to stop the party in power getting too big for its boots and inevitably heading down the path of hubris towards results that aren't good for democracy. It's a pattern we've seen in the UK with the conservative years that began with Thatcher and with the social democrat years begun in turn by Blair. In the U.S., you've had something not dissimiliar - perhaps now to be perpetuated by Obama following in Blair's footsteps.

However (just like UK conservatives did after Thatcher and Major) the traditional home of U.S. conservatives, the Republican Party, seems intent on making itself as non-viable as possible for the forseeable future. Ted Nugent speaks for the not-so-silent minority of angry Republicans:

Consensus building is for wimps and soulless people who stand for nothing. Compromise is not about being tolerant: these days, it’s about giving up conservative principles.

...Conservative leaders and thinkers such as Newt Gingrich, Jed Babbin, Governor Jindal of Louisiana, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Governor Sarah Palin and others need to turn up the heat and bring this less government, more individual freedom and strong national defense revolution to a boil. It is time.

My specialty is making Fedzilla punks squirm and turn into a puddle of sweat and drool. Therefore, in the spirit of famous butt kickers Generals Chesty Puller and George Patton, I say we launch an attack on all fronts. Uncle Ted hereby declares it is open season on RINOs. No bag limits or permits required. Conservative ideas, arguments and votes are the weapons we will use. Hunt them down and shine a blazing light on these RINO turncoat cockroaches. Zero in the "we the people" crosshairs of your voting assault weapon and aim for the RINO pumpstation. Double tap center mass. Whack em and stack em, track em and hack em, pack em and give em no slack. Let's do to the RINO beasts what we did to the passenger pigeon. Force out of the Republican Party out the subspecies known as RINOs.

Thus do the dinosaurs ignore their coming nadir, by impugning the adaptability of those pesky omnivourous mammals, neither carnivore nor herbivore but some unholy combinbation of both. It's a theme that other hardline "thinkers" of the right - like Malkin, Palin and Beck - have been plenty vocal about too.

And, all schaudenfreude aside, it's going to be a disaster not only for the G.O.P. but for America at large. If Obama doesn't follow Blair down the path of over-reach and broken promises (simply because, well, he'll get re-elected anyway without a viable alternative) then his Democratic successors in the Oval Office will. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, in an NYT op-ed today, sets out how UK conservatives spent their time in the wilderness and how they found their way back.

Mr. Cameron’s candidacy was built on a simple premise: modernize or die. He told the Tories they had to look as if they actually liked the country they sought to govern, rather than wishing they could turn back time. They could not hope to form a winning coalition without appealing to the Britons whom Mr. Blair had made his own: women, suburbanites, the highly educated. Relying on angry old white men was never going to get the Conservatives much beyond 33 percent.

To that end, Mr. Cameron set about decontaminating the Tory brand. Central to that mission were forays into two areas of political terrain previously deemed forbidden zones. First, he signaled comfort with gay rights, ditching the party’s previous support for laws restricting sexual equality. Second, he championed environmentalism.

It remains to be seen whether the G.O.P. will be the vehicle for an eventual US conservative comeback. It's quite possible that it will atrophy and die under the direction of the American hard right's neocons and theocons - far more virulent than their British counterparts ever were. But if so, then some other party will be the conservative party, with a vastly reduced extremist influence, and the right will eventually regain at least parity with the left again. By then, that will be a good thing.

Who needs 60?

By Ron Beasley

There is still a possibility that the Democrats could get the 60 votes they need to stop filibusters but Joe Conason makes the case that they really don't need it.  There are enough Republicans who will be afraid to block popular legislation. 

Nobody can doubt that the Republican remnant in the Senate will obstruct as soon as that seems politically safe. Right-wing pundits, from Rush Limbaugh to the Wall Street Journal editorial page are already egging them on furiously. But is there enough muscle behind that filibuster threat to block Obama's mandate?

The short answer is no -- and the new president's own political arsenal should enable him to call the Republican bluff.

Let's count the actual votes on the Republican side of the aisle, asking which senators would have both the inclination and the will to join a filibuster. Every issue calls forth different levels of resistance, of course, but in each instance the opposition would need at least 41 total. In the very worst case, should the Republicans pick up all the remaining seats, they will begin with three more than that.

For starters there are six Republicans who are up for reelection in states carried by Obama.

Judd Gregg (R-NH), Arlen Specter (R-PA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Richard Burr (R-NC). Having seen their fellow incumbents fall in the last two elections, that half dozen may well consider themselves in varying degrees of political peril. Poor Gregg watched his New Hampshire colleague John Sununu drop this year as their state turned deep blue. Martinez won his seat in 2004 by a single point and is widely considered vulnerable. So are Specter, nearing his 80th birthday, and Voinovich, now 72.

And there is John McCain who is not nearly as popular in Arizona as he used to be.

His term will expire in two years as well, and at least one poll shows that he would lose his seat to Janet Napolitano, the state's popular Democratic governor. Perhaps that is why he returned home to campaign on the eve of the election.

It's not 2000 or even 2004.

As the nation rebalances its politics away from the right, Senate Republicans may well ask whether they can maintain even their diminished numbers in the next cycle. How eager will any of these endangered incumbents be to participate in filibusters that will leave them open to the "obstructionist" label that Republicans used to slap on Democrats who fought the Bush administration?

The only question that remains is how Obama and the Democrats will use this new found power.  Will we really see change?  Or will they listen to the wrong people.

Hawks Pressure Obama To Ignore Iraqi Sovereingty

By Cernig

Some more thoughts about Gates staying on as SecDef and about Gareth Porter's article yesterday which says sources within Obama's transition team tell him that the chances of are pretty low. Gareth wrote:

Opposition to Obama's pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month timetable is wide and deep in the U.S. national security establishment and its political allies. U.S. military leaders have been unequivocal in rejecting any such rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and news media coverage of the issue has been based on the premise that Obama will have to modify his plan to make it acceptable to the military.

The Washington Post published a story Monday saying that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposes Obama's timeline for withdrawal as "dangerous", insisting that "reductions must depend on conditions on the ground". Along with Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the head of CENTCOM and responsible for the entire Middle East, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the new commander in Iraq, Mullen was portrayed as part of a phalanx of determined military opposition to Obama's timeline.

Post reporters Alec MacGillis and Ann Scott Tyson cited "defence experts" as predicting a "smooth and productive" relationship between Obama and these military leaders "if Obama takes the pragmatic approach that his advisers are indicating, allowing each side to adjust at the margins." But if Obama "presses for the withdrawal of two brigades per month," the same analysts predicted, "conflict is inevitable."

The story quoted a former Bush administration National Security Council official, Peter D. Feaver, who was a strategic planner on the administration's Iraq "surge" policy, as warning that Obama's timetable would precipitate "a civil-military crisis" if Obama does not agree to the demands of Mullen, Petraeus and Odierno for greater flexibility.

Underlying the campaign of pressure is the assumption that Obama's 16-month timetable is mainly posturing for political purposes during the primary campaign, and that Obama is not necessarily committed to the withdrawal plan.

There's certainly a gap between Obama's campaign promise of 16 months and the 36 months of the SOFA wording, but the hawks are seemingly advocating ignoring that SOFA hard limit too, if "conditions" warrant it. If Obama doesn't stick to that timetable, he has to explain why he's setting the SOFA negotiations and the stated intentions of the Iraqi government during those negotiations - that the US withdraw from urban areas by end 2009 and entirely by 2011, no exceptions or takebacks -aside. That's a no-no, as the US cannot unilaterally go ask for an extension of the UN mandate and expect to get it. A continued presence would then be an absolute infringement of Iraqi sovereignty and make the US presence clearly an illegal occupation. It seems to me that its the folks who are pushing for doing just that who are out of bounds. Not only are they asking to set international law at naught but inviting a massively renewed insurgency. That's just simply not a credible option.

Thus, it occurs to me that they're simply setting up a conservative-aiding and military-excusing narrative for when Iraq's civil war goes South again, which it must given that there's been no reconciliation of the various underlying factional causes for it. "Look at the mess - if Obama had kept the troops in Iraq like we advised it wouldn't have happened." Which will ignore, and hope no-one remembers by then, that staying wasn't a legal or sensible option.

And that's a long way of saying that the kind of brutal and mercenary "realists" who would advocate such a move for purely selfish reasons - and deliberately dump their own shares of blame on their President's head in the process -  have no business being anywhere near the triggers of the world's most powerful nation nor near the levers of power. Send them all into the wilderness.

The "realists"

By Ron Beasley

We have been having a little discussion here about the wisdom of keeping Robert Gates at the DOD and exactly how much the Obama administration should be listening to the Scowcroft "realists".  See here and here.  In the comments the Hoggers very own Ken Anderson referred us to a piece he wrote in 2006,

The Old American Century, Twenty Years of Realist Foreign Policy

Go read it - the entire thing, a few copy and pastes won't do it any justice. 

Dubya's Legacy

By Ron Beasley

As we noted the other day George W. Bush will leave office with the highest unapproval rating ever recorded.  Well the American Conservative magazine notes that that is probably his only legacy.

The 43rd President leaves office without a legacy to stand on.

When future historians argue over the legacy of George W. Bush, the question they confront may be just which bracket of presidential failure he belongs in. Nixon and Johnson? Or Herbert Hoover? President Bush earned his place in the pantheon of disgrace even before he presided over an epochal financial crisis. Absent the atrocities of 9/11, he might have been a mediocrity: a big spender too prone to trust his shallow instincts but able to clear the competence threshold and lacking the sophistication to be truly dangerous.

Then came that epic morning, which Bush answered by giving the hijackers far more than they could accomplish with four planes. His grand democratization plan reduced Iraq to rubble, drove Iran to arm, and provided terrorists with the ultimate recruiting tool. America, once renowned for her decency, became the aggressor her foes alleged.

At home, our failed attempt at global liberation has left us less free than ever before. Ancient liberties, cultural imperatives, even basic solvency were subsumed by the war effort. And the conservative movement that gave Bush his margin sanitized his radicalism at the cost of its soul. All he touched turned to dross. Yet he departs unbowed, still a Churchill in his own mind. It would be easy to leave him to that delusion and turn a more hopeful page. But Bush wasn’t alone in his failure: a country marched behind him and a movement cheered him on.

If the failings of the Bush era are to be corrected—or at least not repeated—we need a clear view of where we’ve been. History will render the final judgment, but herewith a preliminary damage assessment:

"But Bush wasn't alone in his failure", that's important for those who voted for George W. Bush once or twice.  And they have some specifics:

• Empty flight suit
• Fiddling while Wall Street burns
• Anything for the White House

How about some tough love for Detroit?

by Jay McDonough

Following up on yesterday's post about the Big Three automakers and what, if any, lifeline should be tossed their way by Washington.... 

First, some background from a former assistant secretary of Energy during the Clinton years. Joseph Romm recounts an informal partnership between the Clinton Administration and the Big Three automakers to speed the development of hybrid gasoline-electric cars.  After spending nearly one billion taxpayer dollars, the automakers walked away from the development project as soon as the Bush Administration were sworn in.  The work done in Detroit on hybrids, Romm explains, motivated the Japanese car companies to begin their own hybrid development. 

And as the effects of greenhouse gas emissions became known and the price of gasoline was creeping upwards, the Big Three chose to wage intensive legal battles and lobby to prevent fuel efficiency standards from being raised rather than begin the manufacturing of more fuel efficient cars (Congress just provided $25B to help the Big Three for this development).

Sounds like a bunch of knuckleheads, right?  No way should they be rewarded for their incompence and obstinance with a big Washington bailout. Well, there's some big time implications to letting them go belly up.  From a reader at the Daily Dish:

What's the economic impact if the Detroit 3 ceased operations now? A new study by the Center for Automotive Research estimates that 2.9 million U.S. jobs would be lost in the first year. It would reduce U.S. personal income by over $150 billion in the first year; $398 billion over the course of 3 years. The loss of state, local and federal taxes coupled with the increase in transfer payments (unemployment benefits, etc.) would cost government $60 billion in 2009, $54 billion in 2010, and $42 billion in 2011, for a total of about $156 billion over 3 years.

Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, says "On a strictly cash basis, it's less expensive to keep industry moving than have it shut down,"

The arguments for letting the Big Three drift towards bankruptcy are, as you might expect, mixed.  There have been success stories of huge corporations emerging from bankruptcy relatively intact.  And while in bankruptcy, the automakers have the opportunity to trim costs that are making them non-competitive with foreign automakers, such as pensions and health care, and trim operational costs, eliminate non-performing models and shut down underperforming dealerships.

However, the Washington Post notes a study that indicated 80% of car buyers wouldn't buy a car or truck from a manufacturer that's in bankruptcy, fearing loss of warranty, financing issues and parts availability. 

One big takeaway from this mess is the burden health care not only places on individuals, but on American corporations hoping to be competitive in a global economy.  Anderson at Newshoggers commented:

Perhaps the crushing death of Big Auto by health care costs will wake people up to the enormous burden being placed on American business by the overly expensive, near useless, capricious and often dangerous health insurance "industry."

From a 2007 article in Money magazine:

Health care is the biggest chunk (of cost). GM, for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.

Thankfully, health care is way up there on the Obama agenda and these burdensome costs will decline. 

As I wrote yesterday, some relief will be provided by Congress.  But the money ought to come with some new rules for the automakers; a commitment to developing hybrid and alternative fuel powered automobiles, significantly higher fuel standards, a new management team, commitments to maintan as much of their workforce as possible, andsome heavy lifting on the automakers part to get universal health care here in the U.S.

Holding the Gates

By Fester:

American politics can be conceptualized as a competition between reactionaries, conservatives in the traditional small 'c' sense of the word, and liberals.  Two to one wins and if the tag team lasts, it is a dominant governing coalition for a generation as the out group is marginalized to regional strong holds and discredited policies. 

Andrew Sullivan looks at the reactionaries' belle femme and draws out her implications:

Some readers think my continuing attempt to expose all the lies and flim-flam and bizarre behavior of Sarah Palin is now moot....

But even if she is history, she is history that matters....

The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again.

The reactionaries are currently insane in a political sense. And it is the obligation to form a coalition of the sane to oppose and marginalize the insane elements of the political discourse.  And we have been seeing that happen over the past couple of years as the Daniel Drezners, Andrew Sullivans, John Coles, William Welds, and others who self-identify as conservatives but also believers in the Enlightenment migrate to support (grudgingly at times) a party that is not insane in its base, views on knowledge, and believes in verifiability of an empirical world. 

I have to disagree with my colleague Ron on the desirability of keeping Gates or other Scowcroft allies on-board and involved in the Obama administration.  They may be scumbags or they may be angels (I'll vote for un-indicted co-conspirators for Iran Contra for a decent number of them) but they represent an element of the sane political spectrum.  And if picking off that group further wedges the rump GOP into the Kristol/Palin/Gingrich/Limbaugh positive feedback loop towards Peak Wingnuttery, that might be a price worth paying. 

Another Tipping Point Too Soon

By BJ

All the happy and not-so-happy news about the election having sucked up most of our time and energy, it is always harsh to realize there are several real world issues that aren't going too well.

Australian researchers have discovered that the tipping point for ocean acidification caused by human-induced carbon dioxide emissions is much closer than first thought.

. . .

Ben McNeil, senior research fellow at the UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, says the ocean is an enormous sink for carbon dioxide, but unfortunately this comes at a cost. "The ocean is a fantastic sponge for CO2, but as it dissolves in the ocean it reduces the pH of the ocean, so the ocean becomes more acidic."

This acidification makes life especially hard for marine creatures such as pteropods — an important type of plankton found in the Southern Ocean — whose shells are made up largely of calcium carbonate.

. . .

This so-called 'tipping point' of acidification had been predicted to occur when atmospheric CO2 levels hit 550 parts per million, around the year 2060.

However, the new research shows levels of the carbonate that these creatures need to build and maintain their shells drops naturally in winter, due to natural variations in factors such as ocean temperature, currents and mixing, and pH.

This means the tipping point is likely to be reached at far lower atmospheric CO2 levels — around 450 ppm, says McNeil, which also happens to be the target set by the IPCC for stabilisation of CO2 emissions.

. . .

"They're at the base of the food chain ... so right now we don't really know the ramifications."

Well, I think we can say that if the base of the food chain gets knocked out, the ramifications are going to be quite severe.

Just something to keep in mind when the usual suspects start moaning that Obama and other world leaders can't do anything to help save the environment because it may adversely affect the economy.

Report: Obama To Stand Up For Iraq Withdrawal

By Cernig

Gareth Porter at IPS has been talking to (anonymous, as ever) Obama transition team folks who tell him that the chances of Robert Gates staying on as SecDef "are now about 10 percent".

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that two unnamed Obama advisers had said Obama was "leaning toward" asking Gates stay on, although the report added that other candidates were also in the running. The Journal said Gates was strongly opposed to any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and it speculated that a Gates appointment "could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010."

Some Obama advisers have been manoeuvering for a Gates nomination for months. Former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig publicly raised the idea of a Gates reprise in June and again in early October. Danzig told reporters Oct. 1, however, that he had not discussed the possibility with Obama.

Obama advisers who support his Iraq withdrawal plan, however, have opposed a Gates appointment. Having a defence secretary who is not fully supportive of the 16-month timetable would make it very difficult, if not impossible for Obama to enforce it on the military.

A source close to the Obama transition team told IPS Tuesday that the chances that Gates would be nominated by Obama "are now about 10 percent".

The source said that Obama is going to stick with his 16-month withdrawal timeline, despite the pressures now being brought to bear on him. "There is no doubt about it," said the source, who refused to elaborate because of the sensitivity of the matter.

As Gareth points out, mainstream opposition to a set timetable has been widespread, with a constant narrative saying that Mullen, Petraeus and Odierno all oppose a fixed timetable and that Obama would wiggle on a fixed timetable to stave of an inevitable conflict with the Pentagon.

But that Pentagon opposition seems to ignoring, or setting aside as beneath their notice, Iraqi statements that there must be a complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011 and the revised "status of forces agreement" which seems to have removed any "wiggle room" without trampling all over iraqi sovereignty in a way that would announce High Noon for insurgents there. Obama, however, is reported to be ready to stand by his campaign promises and the wishes of the Iraqi people.

Obama's website makes no such pledge to "adjust" the timetable. Instead it says the "removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government." It defends the rate of withdrawal of one or two brigades per month and offers to leave a "residual force" in Iraq to "train and support the Iraqi forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism."

When Obama met with Petraeus in Baghdad in July, Petraeus presented a detailed case for a "conditions-based" withdrawal rather than Obama's timetable and ended with a plea for "maximum flexibility" on a withdrawal schedule, according to Joe Klein's account in Time Oct. 22.

But Obama refused to back down, according to Klein's account. He told Petraeus, "Your job is to succeed in Iraq on as favourable terms as we can get. But my job as a potential commander in chief is to view your counsel and interests through the prism of our overall national security." Obama defended his policy of a fixed date for withdrawal in light of the situation in Afghanistan, the costs of continued U.S. occupation and the stress on U.S. military forces.

Let's hope that Porter's sources are correct, and that the Big Media narrative saying Obama is about to turn away from his promise is just an attempt to "create reality" by the military and neo-whatever establishment.

Bush Push To Lock Policy For Obama Has Loophole

By Cernig

And now for some good news.

Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.”

... But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.

The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 days of congressional adjournment — Oct. 3, in this case — is considered to have been legally finalized on Jan. 15, 2009. The new Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.

In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Given how often the Bush administration have sidelined Congress to push their own policies, the notion that a majority of Congress can so easily sideline Bush's last six months in office has a delicious sense of karma about it.

More on Gates

By Ron Beasley

I discussed below why I thought leaving Robert Gates at Defense was a really bad idea.  Our own Anderson had this observation in comments:

Too many of these retreads are Cold Warriors, fighting imagined threats in the same old way and looking to drum up enemies that can be portrayed as "existential threats." This is exactly why Russia has been turned into the latest bad guy -- same as the old Soviet one. Stateless, rhizomatic enemies were just not concrete enough to justify massive, decades-long military budgets, but a new Russia fits that bill nicely.

Nothing has changed for the Washington FP consensus. Russia has always equated with the Soviet Union, and a resurgent Russia is the long lost hegemonic power upon which Washington can project its secret desire for constant conflict. It matters not that GM is opening automobile plants in St. Petersburg or that Europe is intimately connected by energy demands.

If we really ever wish to see a break from that thinking, a new administration will just have to boot the buggers out or we will have to waiting until they die off. I see no boot on the horizon.

Which makes this from Josh Marshall even more disturbing:

One thing to understand about Bob Gates is that he's a Scowcroft guy.

Scowcroft, to the best of my knowledge, never endorsed Obama. But he also, very pointedly, didn't endorse McCain either. And going back many months he's been an important player, far in the background and not for public consumption, in the Obama world. Remember, Hagel, who's sort of been Obama's Joe Lieberman (in the good sense) is very close to Scowcroft. He and Powell are close too. He's the guy who brings all this stuff together.

It's also worth knowing that Scowcroft has also been involved in a multi-year rearguard battle against the neocons in the Bush administration, especially in key efforts trying to block sundry wars with Iran, shut down John Bolton, etc.

This is not to say that Scowcroft is pulling anyone's strings. But to understand the Gates' decision (which I understand is going to happen) you need to look at this on-going conversation and perhaps even de facto alliance with the Scowcroft/GOP foreign policy world.

While the Scowcroft "realists" may appear sane when compared to the reign of terror of the criminally insane neocons they are really cold warriors and they too need to be given the boot.

Unofficially Official Leaks To Pressure Syria, IAEA

By Cernig

Yesterday, some anonymous diplomats at the IAEA in Vienna talked to the AP, Reuters and others in a well-orchestrated leak and told them that the atom watchdog's inspectors had found traces of uranium at the bombed "Box on the Euphrates". Cue general speculation, unwarranted by the actual content of the leaks themselves, about Syria's secret nuclear weapons plans.

But the officially unofficial leakers didn't explain whether the "processed" uranium, was lightly enriched, heavily enriched or depleted, or even whether it was in a metallic form or an intermediary UF6 form between raw ore and metal. All of those could be described as "processed" and there's a lot of difference between them. The word was well chosen to fuel speculation.

Previously, even US officials who claimed the building bombed by Israeli warplanes was a reactor had said that it wasn't yet completed and, back in September, El-Baradei told an IAEA board meeting in September that preliminary findings from test samples taken by inspectors granted a visit in June to the desert location hit by Israel bore no traces of atomic activity.

The IAEA described the leaks as an effort to prejudice the agency's conclusions. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the IAEA's evaluation of findings from a June visit to the site was not finished and a verdict was unwarranted until the report.

Arms Control Wonk Dr. Jeffrey Lewis points the finger at the US:

The real reason that ElBaradei is reluctant may have more to do with ongoing Israeli efforts to engage Syria. Hibbs has reported that the effort to pressure Syrua has “run aground on a separate diplomatic effort … to encourage Syria to isolate Iran (Hibbs, “Diplomatic efforts to engage Syria hindering US-led campaign at IAEA,” Nuclear Fuel 33:20, p. 4).

So, that’s the rub: Some countries — read the US — want ElBaradei to push for a special inspection — which the Agency has only requested twice in its history. ElBaradei has said that he won’t unless there is evidence of undeclared nuclear material. So, delegations are seizing on the uranium finding — however scant — to force ElBaradei’s hand.

You can see why the DG and the IAEA might be irritated, particularly if the evidence is less clear-cut than the diplomats are suggesting.

And, if it's the U.S. then you can be sure that the Fifth Branch Cheneyites are behind it, in yet another attempt to forestall diplomacy and create the conditions for conflict.

Robert Gates

By Ron Beasley

"Anti-war" groups are concerned about talk that Obama might consider keeping Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary.  Gates has appeared to be an island of sanity in a sea of the criminally insane.  Spencer Ackerman makes an excellent case for keeping Gates on for a year but gates has a lot of skeletons in his closet going back to the Iran-Iraq war and Iran-Contra.  Digby asks:....

Seriously. There's nobody out there who hasn't been a lying Reagan Bush whore who is competent to run the defense department?

.... and refers us to this by Robert Parry

In 1991, despite doubts about Gates’s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates’s sweeping denials.

For instance, the Russian government sent an intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move to benefit the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

“R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part” in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, according to the Russian report, which meshed with information from witnesses who have alleged Gates’s involvement in the Iranian gambit.

Once in office, the Reagan administration did permit weapons to flow to Iran via Israel. One of the planes carrying an arms shipment was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course, but the incident drew little attention at the time.

The arms flow continued, on and off, until 1986 when the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal broke. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege. For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]

Parry has a lot more.  If only part of it is true it should be more than enough to disqualify Gates.  I'm not looking for a pacifist to run the Defense Department but I am looking for someone who is sane and I'm not convinced that's Gates.  If the Obama administration wants a Republican how about Chuck Hagel? 

Obama, the Iran NIE and Honesty

By Cernig

I'm beginning to wonder what's with Barrack Obama on the subject of Iran's nuclear program, and it's worrying me. Despite the bright spot of his promise to negotiate freely with Iran - something the IAEA and Brent Scowcroft, among many others, agree with - Obama has consistently disagreed with the last US National Intelligence Estimate and the UN's atom watchdog by assuming that Iran is currently seeking nuclear weapons. He said so both during the debates and on the campaign trail. Obama has also, as a consequence of the claim that Iran is seeking nukes, refused to take military action off the table. It is, to say the least, schizophrenic.

Some might want to consider Keith Olbermann's reaction to Bush denying US intel in that way, back last year.

I firmly believe that Obama was the best of two choices and that he'll make the world safer by being less likely by far to carry through on belligerent rhetoric that ignores the facts as they are known - but let's not stick our heads in the sand about his oft-repeated words and what they in fact mean. He has ignored/denied the IAEA and NIE findings almost as much as Bush or McCain have, doubtless for his own political reasons.(I refuse to believe he's so dumb as to actually 100% believe his bald claim that Iran is actively seeking nukes in the face of the extant evidence.)

But now, it's time to lead, to tell Americans the truth rather than what is needed for electability among a US population that has been fed Iran demonization wholesale for decades, and to shuck of the Wormtongue voices of neo-liberals, neoconservatives and neo-whatevers. If Obama disagrees with the consensus finding of the US intelligence community and with the findings of the IAEA, both of whom say that if Iran ever had a weapons program it has been dead for years, then he must say so and say why. Otherwise, he must alter both his rhetoric and his policy to fit reality as expressed by those findings - we've had too many years already of, in Obama's own words, not letting facts get in the way of ideology (or political games).

Tough choices in tight times

By Fester:

My recent post on the probable desirability of increasing class room size provoked an interesting response.  And it is a response that I will continue to seek to provoke in the next couple of weeks as I believe that we, as a society and a political culture, will be forced to make multiple tough decisions over the next couple of years.  These decisions will be on where do we spend very limited and diminishing public dollars and for what services and desired outcomes. 

Most state and local governments face a hard balanced budget constraint.  There is a little bit of wiggle room, but not a massive amount for non-federal governmental units to avoid this constraint for a couple of years, but it is not a lot.  The major sources of revenues for local governments are some combination of other governmental authority pass-throughs, sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes.  Usage fees and gambling revenues make up another significant chunk of non-federal revenues.  If the recession looks like it will be as severe as it could be, then it is fairly simple to project that sales tax collections will go down as consumer spending crashes and high tax products see the quickest substitution, income taxes will go down as the labor market will not be able to hold onto net wages or hourly wage gains as more people are under or unemployed, and property taxes will fall as more homeowners see significant drops in the assessed taxable value of their homes.

At the same time, local and state government expenses will increase as relief efforts increase and more importantly, the great budget buster of municipal pension obligations will explode.  These obligations are happening because of a combination of older workers getting ready to retire and more importantly in the short run, the massive ass-kicking the market has taken over the past year.  More cash is needed just as the assets that were supposed to provide that cash have dropped twenty to forty percent in value.  Pittsburgh will be facing this problem over the next couple of years. 

So programs that are overwhelmingly funded at the state and local level should anticipate facing severe budget constraints.  We have an active responsibility to make good choices so that we can either maximize our effectiveness and impact for a given level of spending OR find a level of impact that we want and then minimize the costs that are needed to achieve that impact. 

That is why I believe that reversing the trend of class sizes is a viable option as the same level of results can be achieved for much lower costs.  That is why I think drug legalization or decriminalization or lowest prioritization will become more popular.  That is why I think expanded healthcare access will be politically potent.  That is why I think we'll make changes, even if we go into those changes kicking and screaming.  There won't be any other viable options left. 

No Audit for Obama?

By BJ

This story tugs at the old sense of fairness.

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.

Now, for obvious reasons, the government should exercise its oversight capability on anything the taxpayers are funding, and since McCain’s campaign was taxpayer-funded, he has to bite the bullet on this one.  I don’t know if such an audit will finally get to the bottom of complaints about his potential misuse of public financing to secure a loan during the primaries, but at least all those folks getting worked up about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe should get an answer or two.

But for the Obama campaign to sidestep this strikes me as unfair, and to some extent unwise.  The right has already been twisting itself into knots over how Obama was able to raise such large sums of money, and will use this lack of an audit to confirm in their own minds that the stories they’ve spun for themselves are therefore true.

While I have little faith that an audit with its pesky “facts” will do anything to change their minds, since such things will always produce findings that are unflattering to the audited, it would at the very least put to rest any questions about bias for those of us not in the non-persuadable category.

And quite frankly, we’ve just spent the last eight years bitching about a White House occupant whose fetish for secrecy was more than “We the People” should allow from any public servant.  If Obama really wants to show us all a new era of open and accountable government, he can start by opening his campaign books to an independent review.  Fair is fair, and if I were one of the 3.1 million people who donated money to the campaign, I would very much like to know that there was some kind of independent oversight in place to provide assurance that the money was accounted for properly.

In the meantime, as Alan Stewart Carl suggests, maybe John McCain can rewrite his election finance laws so that the billion-dollar industry of electing the US President will be assured of seeing the auditor’s flashlight.

Should the Big Three be put out of their misery?

by Jay McDonough

Should the government step in to save them or just let them die peacefully in their sleep?  Barack Obama and most of the Democratic caucus believes some government assistance, to the tune of $25B (remember when that seemed like a lot of dough?), will be required to keep the Big Three automakers afloat.

This comes just a few weeks after Washington provided another $25B the automakers claimed they needed to finance the conversion to building more fuel efficient cars.  (Of course, one could argue any management team with the smallest bit of competence would have directed the development of more fuel efficient cars long before now).

Henry Blodget argues let the Big Three die:

Ford, GM, and Chrysler are done for regardless, Obama. Bailing them out yet again won't fix them. It will just prolong the agony.

The companies' problems result from:

   -  Their inability to build cars (cars, not trucks) Americans love
   -  Their inability to restructure their way out of their pension and union obligations
   -  Their inability to compete on their own merits.

Throwing another $25 billion of taxpayer money down the rat hole won't do anything other than postpone the crisis. Just let the companies go bankrupt, Obama. That's what bankruptcy is for. Let the shareholders and debt holders take the hit. Not the American taxpayers.

The danger, of course, is that the companies never emerge from bankruptcy, and a significant number of folks are without jobs and pensions. 

It's likely Barack Obama and the Democrats will prevail here, and Detroit gets another $25B check from the government.  And just like banking and insurance, the American people will now have some "ownership" in American automobile manufacturers.  But how about setting up some new rules for American business:

  -  We're all about free enterprise.  But if a corporation is so poorly managed to require massive government assistance to stay afloat, that management should get the boot and the government (and, by extension, the taxpayers) get some oversight into the management of the bailed out company.            

  -  And about those companies that are too big to fail?  How about this; if a company is too big to fail, it's just flat out TOO BIG.

IAEA Head Would Welcome Direct US/Iran Dialogue

By Cernig

Add Mohammed el-Baradei to the list of those welcoming Obama's statements that he'd talk to Iran.

"If there is a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran, I think Iran will be more forthcoming with the agency," IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said.

"(A) political opening will also convince Iran to work with us to solve remaining technical issues," he told a news conference in Prague after meeting Czech Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

"That political component of the (Iran) issue requires in my view a direct dialogue with Iran and that's why I am very encouraged by President-elect Obama's statement that he is ready to engage Iran in a direct dialogue without preconditions.

El-Baradei, who was one of those that said plainly that Iraq had no extant WMD and was thanked for being right by a Bush administration push to replace him, also underlined that, to date, there is no proof Iran is seeking nuclear weapons either.

We are able to verify all their declared activities, we are able to verify their enrichment programme, which is a good thing. But we are still not able to move forward on clarifying some of the outstanding issues related to alleged studies that could have some linkage to a possible military dimension."

Iran says its nuclear plans are to make electricity so it can export more oil and gas.

"There is a lot of concern about Iran, not today but about Iran in future... whether once they develop the technology, what are they going to use it for, whether they will go for nuclear weapons," said ElBaradei.

"That is the concern shared by the Security Council." [Emphaisis Mine - C]

There's a lot in that snippet to unpack.

First of all, there's the unequivocal statement that everything the IAEA has so far checked has come up clean - a civilian program only and one that cannot now be re-directed to military uses without IAEA foreknowledge. That warning period would be at least six months and possibly a whole year long, so why is anyone still talking about keeping military options on the table? Saber rattling is counter-productive in such a circumstance - there's plenty of time to put talk of such options back in process if Iran ever makes a move to re-enrich to bomb-grade but for now there is no such program.

Secondly - the "alleged" studies el-Baradei refers to are all from 2003 and earlier, from a time when US intelligence says Iran did have a nuke program, in a very early stage, which has since been shut down. Notice all those conditionals? That's because, as Gareth Porter notes in his latest investigative report, the IAEA has serious doubts about US-provided evidence for how extensive those studies were even then. All the information the US has provided the nuke watchdog has come from a laptop provided by the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, a Marxist-Islamist terrorist organistation advocating regime change in Iran in its own favor, which has provided a long list of faulty intelligence claims about Iran, but which has even so become beloved by neocon advocates that "real men go to Tehran". All of the information on the laptop is open to question about its authenticity. Gareth notes that the "next IAEA report, due out in mid-November, will include the first response by the Agency to a confidential 117-page Iranian critique of the laptop documents, according to the Vienna-based source."

Lastly, El-Baradei makes it clear that the IAEA's only worry now is about what Iran might do in future to turn its current entirely civilian program into one with a military dimension. That's in marked contrast to Bush administration officials, Barrack Obama and other Western political figures, who have continued to talk as if Iran has an extant nuclear weapons program. El-Baradei is reminding the UNSC that the evidence contradicts that rhetoric, something Russia has publicly acknowledged already and has refused to bow to US pressure upon. Even now, the Bush administration is trying to push through a third set of UNSC sanctions before Obama comes into office (and before the IAEA report on the "Laptop of Death"'s credibility) and a new meeting is scheduled in Paris for Thursday.

The neocons may be still pushing their narrative of the need to attack an imminently nuclear Iran, in rampant denial of the collapse of their plans for a New American Century. But the truth is that other US and Western policymakers' hostility to Iran, including Obama's rhetoric, have their roots in the decades old US Embassy fiasco and the campaign of demonization that following it rather than in any actual evidence about Iran's current nuclear plans. While that means that, sans a nuclear "smoking gun" there's little chance now of an attack, the race to sanction Iran for what it isn't doing (while rewarding Pakistan, India and Israel for what they are) will continue and will continue with the threat of war ever present.

"This may be the best example in recent times of highly coordinated threat of force against a country to bring about diplomatic solution...I'm not sure," said Ret. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former head of CENTCOM, the military command responsible for the whole of the Middle East. "[...F]or people that think this is serious, I would put it in the utter folly department."

The best chance of heading that folly off is Obama's dialogue, as it can open up what Iran and the US share, e.g. on Afghanistan.

"What [the U.S.] can do and can't do with Iran is...pretty much a mystery because we have not been prepared to explore with them what the possibilities are," said [Brent Scowcroft, former Republican NSA]. "[...T]alking in itself is not necessarily a concession."

Remembrance Day

By BJ

The day the Great War ended 90 years ago, set aside to remember the fallen from all the wars, before and since.  For this year, a tune that, while more melancholy than I generally like, seems to fit the spirit.

In Remembrance

Corporal Nicolas Raymond Beauchamp
Private Michael Levesque
Gunner Jonathan Dion
Corporal Éric Labbé
Warrant Officer Hani Massouh
Trooper Richard Renaud
Corporal Étienne Gonthier
Trooper Michael Yuki Hayakaze
Bombardier Jérémie Ouellet
Sergeant Jason Boyes
Private Terry John Street
Corporal Michael Starker
Captain Richard Steven Leary
Captain Jonathan (Jon) Sutherland Snyder
Corporal Brendan Anthony Downey
Private Colin William Wilmot
Corporal James Hayward Arnal
Master Corporal Joshua Brian Roberts
Master Corporal Erin Doyle
Sergeant Shawn Eades
Sapper Stephan John Stock
Corporal Dustin Roy Robert Joseph Wasden
Corporal Andrew Paul Grenon
Corporal Michael James Alexander Seggie
Private Chadwick James Horn
Sergeant Scott Shipway

 

More on a potential export plunge

By Fester:

Last week, I argued that US exports were likely to cliff dive as heavy industrial capital equipment and raw materials used to make pretty much everything are no longer in high demand.  So prices and quantities demanded at much lower prices are dropping hard and fast. 

Now the international trade system is starting to freeze up as the large bulk carriers that transport the raw materials of the modernized world don't have enough business to make it worthwhile to sail.  It is cheaper for ship owners to keep their vessels in port with a skeleton crew than to carry cargo. 

Via Bloomberg and John Robb:

Capesizes that were attracting rates of $233,988 a day as recently as June are now available for $4,793, according to the Baltic Exchange in London. That's below the cost of paying for crew, insurance, maintenance and lubricants...

At least 20 percent of the vessels most commonly hired to haul coal and ore are sitting empty as steelmakers cut output and dwindling trade credit halts deliveries, ....

``There are simply no cargoes,'' Sjuve said from Oslo. ``It's primarily the steel market but it's even more difficult due to financial markets and letters of credit in particular.''    

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker, on Nov. 5 said its global output will decline by more than 30 percent.

No one is buying low end, raw goods, so I have doubts about people buying high value add processed goods in the intermediate term future. 

      

Joseph Stiglitz offers some economic advice to Barack Obama

by Jay McDonough

Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, wrote a sobering column the other day in the Washington Post, outlining the risks and rewards for the new president in addressing the sagging economy.  And like the emerging consensus, Mr. Stiglitz argues the way out of our financial morass includes both short and long term fixes.

During the campaign, (Obama) argued against cutting taxes on upper-income Americans, who have done so well in recent years. In addition to repealing the 2001-03 tax cuts for the wealthiest, Obama should also consider taxing dividends and capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income: It would reduce the deficit, have few short-term adverse effects on an already reeling economy and make the tax code more fair. After all, why should speculators -- whether on oil, food or real estate -- be taxed less than those who work long hours to make a living?

While the federal deficit looms over the Obama administration's economic deliberations, we must be careful not to let it block bold action. Sometimes, we're wiser to pay now rather than later. Borrowing for high-yielding investments (not just Wall Street bailouts) is common sense. The decisions not to reinforce the levees in New Orleans or upgrade the bridges in Minneapolis were penny-wise, pound-foolish blunders that we lived to regret.

Obama will also need to deal with some vast inefficiencies in our economy if we are to prevent further erosions in our standard of living. Some U.S. sectors are global leaders, such as our world-beating universities and the high-tech firms that thrive on the ideas hatched in our ivory towers. Others are embarrassing, such as health care, where Americans spend far more than citizens in many other industrialized countries and get underwhelming results. We need a bold approach here, reforming not just the way we provide medicine but also thinking more broadly about health.

Stiglitz also highlights energy policy as an opportunity.  The Obama plan includes an influx of funds into the development of alternative energy supplies, positioning the U.S. with greener energy sources and providing employment opportunities stemming from these new industries.  New energy polilcy with an eye on addressing the climate crisis will, no doubt, include a carbon tax and these taxes will provide a desperately needed, large revenue stream. To those that argue levying a carbon tax at this time risks stalling the economy, Stiglitz asserts it's a pay me now or pay me later issue - he warns if the U.S. doesn't begin to address climate control it's likely foreign importers of American goods will begin adding carbon import tariffs to U.S. goods.

Self-destructive greed

By BJ

John Robb does a pretty succinct job of explaining a good part of America’s economic woes.

At a micro level, McDonalds is a great example of decay brought on by the global marketplace. My local McDonalds recently made a wholesale transition to employing exclusively illegal Brazilians sporting fake documentation (as are most chain stores in the area). Due to competition from these illegal workers, there isn't any compunction to providing a living wage (in the range of $20 an hour), which could be done through a very small hike in prices (I calculated that it would only make the burgers 6-7% more expensive).

Without that level of income, these employees can't even afford to eat in their own restaurant. I suspect this imbalance is being repeated throughout the entire economy. The problem only reveals itself when the bubble that supported the imbalance bursts. Fortunately, for McDonalds, the downdraft hasn't hit it yet. Eventually it will, when most of its former customers earn as much as their current employees.

Pretty cool how markets, essentially dumb systems, can ultimately destroy themselves.

The old saw has it that when Henry Ford got the idea of mass-producing cars, he figured out that he’d have to pay his workers far better than the going rate if they were going to be able to afford to buy even these cheaper horseless carriages.  That kind of thinking was one of the things that led to the massive boom in manufacturing and consumerism in North America.

Recently, the CEOs began to note that they could get the same work done for far cheaper overseas, which would lead to higher profit margins for their shareholders.  Smart business in the short term, but as everyone jumped onto the bandwagon, we rapidly moved to a world were most of the people manufacturing products can no longer afford to buy them.  The wealth effect of the housing bubble managed to hide that for a time, but it is about to come home pretty hard over the next couple of years.

Between a Rock and a Minefield

By BJ

Cernig has already covered the news that President-Elect Obama is looking at ways to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay and create some kind of system to deal with the tricky class of prisoner that nobody really wants to release but that no court following due process as it is generally thought to exist would be able to convict.

If the US cannot get convictions in either civil or military courts under the full panoply of law, even if those trials have to be held partially in camera to protect necessary national security secrets as provided for in law already, then the US has scewed the pooch and tainted those prosecutions indelibly with torture, illegal rendition and kangaroo justice.  Under those circumstances even Hannibal Lecter would walk - and anyone who understands why these things are anathema to normal jurisprudence would say that was a good thing as a universal standard even if no-one would be happy about individual instances.

If the Obama administration cannot see that, then they will have made themselves complicit in the massive crime that the Bush administration has perpetrated through Gitmo, Bagram , Abu Graib, and a host of secret prisons and illegal torture flights. It doesn't matter whether travesties of justice are conducted on the mainland U.S., at the resort in Cuba or in some undisclosed location - they're still travesties of justice. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and any "hybrid" having any relationship to Bush's rigged tribunals would stink just as highly.

I certainly understand the slippery slope that is the result of abridging the universal standards of jurisprudence.  Hell, the Bush administration has provided us all with many of the examples if you needed them.  Still, as a practical matter, there are very few people who would agree that allowing the actual worst of the worst to walk is necessarily prudent.  I don’t envy Obama the task of trying to close this sorry chapter of American history without either allowing known killers to be freed to kill again or allowing the American system of justice to be permanently stained.  One suspects there will be a lingering stench.

As Tim F. put it in a must-read post on the subject, "We have thousands of prisoners that we cannot keep and we cannot charge."  And in a fair number of cases, we can’t even be sure who the really dangerous ones are.  Some we knew before they were captured, but there are a goodly number who were innocent when captured, but after years of harsh treatment are likely to be dangerous now.

And the prisoners are just part of the minefield Obama needs to navigate.  There is also the not-insignificant issue of what to do about all of the Bush administration officials and other personnel that took part in the illegal activities at Gitmo and the other black and not-so-black sites.  Do you let them walk free or do you prosecute them?

Operate under the strict interpretations that Cernig does above, and you wind up with a lot of known terrorists walking free and a goodly number of intelligence and military personnel heading behind bars.  And maybe that’s for the best.  Certainly some price needs to be paid by those who engaged in illegal activity, but I wouldn’t want to imagine the backlash that would inspire.

McClatchy’s round-up of the potential minefields awaiting the Obama administration does offer a rather unique scenario.

He predicted that Obama might sidestep the controversy with the Bush administration's help. If President Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to prevent prosecutions, the Obama administration should form a bipartisan panel, similar to the Sept. 11 commission, to oversee an inquiry, he said. Once pardoned, officials implicated in the controversy would be required to discuss details of the policies because they'd be unable to assert their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

The best person to lead such a commission? Levinson thinks it's John McCain, who condemned the interrogation techniques when he was running against Obama.

"There would be widespread support if the Obama administration did reach out to someone like McCain," Levinson said. "More people would regard it as not so much of a Democratic vendetta but as a necessary cleansing of an episode in recent American history that has had phenomenal costs to us around the world."

Maybe that will work.  Whatever happens, I’m almost certain there won’t be many people too happy with the results.  But then I can’t see too many ways to digest a sh*t sandwich that would leave a smile on your face.

How to lose a generation in six years

By Fester:

I guess the Republican Party does not want to look at any possibility of winning or at least not getting blown out in the  the 1978 to 1993 birth cohort anytime soon as the prospective House Whip is looking to actively engage and enrage on a core issue --- not-fucking over friends, family members, classmates, colleagues:

"You build those conservative solutions, Chris, on the same time-honored principles of limited government, a belief in free markets, in the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage," Pence said. [my emphasis]

Sanctity of marriage to my ears means that people I went to school with, people who I have grown up with, people who I have worked with, and people who I am friends with will have a massive target on their faces and on their backs for being who they are.  I won't vote for a party that actively looks to fuck over my friends or people who are similar to my friends.  This is not profound political science or analysis, it is a fact of life.  And if the GOP continues down the narrowing path of seeking to win ever larger sub-group majorities of its current coalition by escalating its rhetoric on this issue, it will never receive a hearing among my age cohort as it will be perceived as attacking too many people I and everyone else in my cohort know. 

Deep Local Resilience

By Fester:

The Pittsburgh Housing Authority is embarking on an ambitious project to reduce its baseline load demands, increase local resiliency and provide systemic shock absorbers to the Southwestern Pennsylvania power distribution network.  Now if I told my acquaintances there that this is what they are doing, they would look at me very funny and suggest that I get out of my cave more often.  But that is what they are doing without realizing it too much as the Post-Gazette reports on a major capital improvement campaign:

The drilling of geothermal wells is part of the transformation of the 501-apartment Northview, plus its 91-unit high rise, into models of energy efficiency.

Eventually, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority's 3,300 occupied apartments, plus 200 that are now empty, will get an energy overhaul. It's a $25 million project run by Minneapolis-based Honeywell...

In the summer, heat pumps will transfer the warmth from the air into water, which will then flow through underground tubes into the wells. There, the earth's near-constant 55-degree temperature will cool it, and it will flow back to carry off more heat. The resulting cooled air will be pumped through a central air system that will replace the inefficient window units that are now prevalent in public housing.

In winter, the comparative warmth the water carries from the earth will be used to heat the air....

Geo-thermal air conditioning will significantly reduce peak demand for expensive summer time electricity and geo-thermal heating provides a much higher and thus cheaper temperature base for winter heating.  Maintenance will be needed, but ongoing costs for fuel for these base heating/cooling needs will be massively lower.  And it is damn hard for an apartment to lose access to the earth for non-payment of a bill, so it provides for a bit of a fiscal cushion for some tenants.  This is really cool work being done by the Housing Authority as it looks to be cost-efficient, and produces multiple positive externalities that can be consumed by the general public. 

Contrasts

By Ron Beasley

George W. Bush will leave office as the least popular president ever. 

On the day that President-elect Barack Obama is visiting the White House, a new national poll suggests that the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the most unpopular president since approval ratings were first sought more than six decades ago.

Seventy-six percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday disapprove of how President Bush is handling his job.

That's an all-time high in CNN polling and in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.

"No other president's disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent. Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year," says CNN polling director Keating Holland. "That means that Bush is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned from office during Watergate with a 66 percent disapproval rating."

Before Bush, the record holder for presidential disapproval was Harry Truman, with a 67 percent disapproval rating in January of 1952, his last full year in office.

The latest Gallup poll shows the contrast;

Yes, almost a mirror image.   

Pomegranates For Peace

By Cernig

My friend Nonny at Crooks and Liars has a great story about Englishman James Brett and his one-man mission to convert Afghanistan's poppy fields into a pomegranate cash crop. In 2007, he convinced a local farmer to switch crops, and a remarkable snowball efect ensued.

In 2007, Brett was invited to Kabul to talk to farmers from various regions of Afghanistan about growing pomegranates. He flew to Peshawar and drove through the Khyber Pass heading to Kabul While driving through the Nangarhar Province, he noticed a farmer in a field of opium poppies. After the seminar in Kabul, Brett bought a large piece of card and a blue marker pen, and wrote 'Pomegranate is the Answer'. On his return drive back to Peshawar, he saw the same farmer again in the field, jumped out of the car and ran toward the farmer with his makeshift sign. His horrified translator chased after this mad ginger-haired Brit, yelling, 'Don't go in there, you could be shot!' Undetered, Brett talked to the bewildered farmer through his translator, about the farmer's life, his family, his children, how he lived and why he grew opium, about Brett's own addiction to drugs. Brett explained that pomegranate was not only the best option as an alternative crop to opium poppies, but was the only feasible one for the Afghan climate and growing conditions, and promised to return to the farmer's land a couple months later with pomegranate saplings. He went home and set up a charity called Pom354.

Brett followed through on his promise, returning a few months laster to find the farmer had discussed this idea with sixteen other families with land around his own; all of them wanted to become involved. From there, the plan snowballed – in January, 2008, Afghanistan Television interviewed him, and other farmers asked him for help in changing their fields from poppies to pomegranates. The local member of Parliament and a respected Elder in the Tribal system wanted to know more. A tribal meeting covering the entire Nangarhar Province was called, and 200 Tribal elders invited.

The tribal elders agreed to finish poppy cultivation and switch to growing pomegranates throughout the entire Nangarhar Province by next year, making the region of 1.3 million inhabitants opium poppy free for the first time in a hundred years. The elders told Brett that their decision was based not only on a desire to maintain a level of stability, but because he was the first person who had ever come to them as just an ordinary man rather than a member of a foreign government or a military advisor, someone who simply wanted to see positive change.

That's just bloody excellent. Our feel-good story for today. And the larger lesson is: trying to "nation build" using the Pottery Barn rule, when your first and last thought is for your own national interest instead of the sovereign interests of the people concerned, is always going to fail. People aren't dumb.

A Rose By Any Other Name

By Cernig

The AP reports an officially unofficial leak from the Obama team that closing Gitmo is a priority for the new administration.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

That's good. This bit isn't so good:

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

U.S. courts handle cases "entagled in highly classified information" on a reasonably regular basis and the forms for dealing with such cases are well established. That phrase is a euphemism (or "lie", to the unsophisticated).  Spencer Ackerman has it exactly right:

If there's anything the military commissions process should have taught, it's that reinventing the legal system doesn't work, as evidenced by the bevy of military lawyers who have resigned in protest of the commissions. The concern, stripped of euphemism, is that the evidentiary basis for many trials of Guantanamo detainees -- including, in many cases, torture -- would never be admissible in any court worthy of the name. That's the Bush administration's legacy. But it can't be the basis for cheapening our legal system.

So we'll wait to see what proposal actually emerges. But consider not only that this is one of the first initiatives that Obama is pursuing -- it's one of the first that he's leaking, as well. This is as clear a signal as can be sent that the Bush era isn't just over, it will be actively rolled back. How far it actually gets rolled back we'll have to wait and see. And pressure.

If the US cannot get convictions in either civil or military courts under the full panoply of law, even if those trials have to be held partially in camera to protect necessary national security secrets as provided for in law already, then the US has scewed the pooch and tainted those prosecutions indelibly with torture, illegal rendition and kangaroo justice. Under those circumstances even Hannibal Lecter would walk - and anyone who understands why these things are anathema to normal jurisprudence would say that was a good thing as a universal standard even if no-one would be happy about individual instances.

If the Obama administration cannot see that, then they will have made themselves complicit in the massive crime that the Bush administration has perpetrated through Gitmo, Bagram , Abu Graib, and a host of secret prisons and illegal torture flights. It doesn't matter whether travesties of justice are conducted on the mainland U.S., at the resort in Cuba or in some undisclosed location - they're still travesties of justice. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and any "hybrid" having any relationship to Bush's rigged tribunals would stink just as highly.

A Generation In The Wilderness? Part II

By Ron Beasley

Below I discussed the pragmatic advice from Arnold Schwarzenegger  which will go unheeded.  There is still more advice for the Republicans from conservative Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News.  He thinks that the Republicans should oppose Obama at times but they must do it with ideas and not just the same old empty platitudes.

Conservatives must return to the philosophical sources of our tradition and reinterpret its insights and truths for the world we live in now. Ideas really do have consequences - as, obviously, does the lack of same. Yes, conservatives have to oppose the Obama Democrats when they overreach, but if the only response conservatives offer is defensive and obstreperous, they will not soon recover.

But most important they must recognize the Bush presidency and the conservative movement of the last eight years for the failure that it was.

Conservatives will go nowhere until the right owns up to the failures of the Bush years. They were chiefly a failure of competence and a corruption of professed ideals. They were also a failure of ideology. In particular:

•The idea that the American military is an omnipotent tool for spreading liberal democracy died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The right's romanticization of militarism, and its crusading pieties about the universality of democratic values, are done.

•The dogmatic conviction that the globalized free market is capable of regulating itself for the greater good of society is a spectacularly costly shibboleth, as even Alan Greenspan, the high priest of this religion, confessed recently.

•The GOP's knee-jerk hostility to environmental concerns is not only a betrayal of conservative tradition but also costs Republicans credibility with young voters. Similarly, though it's tough for social conservatives like me to admit it, we've lost the gay marriage battle, especially among the young. We're going to have to come to some sort of accommodation with it to protect religious liberty.

Dreher seems to recognize that both the neocons and theocons represent a dead end.  But I see no evidence that anyone will listen to Mr Dreher either.

Over at TMV Pete Abel sees the writing on the wall.

In my evolution from a would-be reformer of the GOP to a supporter of President-elect Obama, I have been asked the inevitable “why” and “how” questions — and I have answered those questions, indirectly. But I’ve never gone so far as to admit what I will admit now: I am no longer a Republican. I am no longer a conservative.

To be clear: I still believe in many of the principles that first led me to the Republican Party. I still have a number of conservative tendencies. But of this party and movement, as they are defined today, I am no more.

There are some, I’m sure, who will ask why, rather than leaving the fold at this darkest of moments, I don’t join the countless other voices who are now in various stages of bemoaning the shape of the party, offering opinions on what went wrong, re-assessing fundamentals, and suggesting steps to reform.

Two reasons. First, I’m not convinced any of it will do any good.

Picture of the week

By Ron Beasley

Canna in Winter

A Generation In The Wilderness?

By Ron Beasley

I think it's healthy to have two relevant political parties but the Republican party is anything but healthy now and there are few signs it's going to improve anytime soon.  Joe Gandelman reports that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has some advice for his Republican party.

“I think the important thing for the Republican Party is now to also look at other issues that are very important for this country and not to get stuck in ideology,” the governor said in an interview broadcast on CNN this morning. “Let’s go and talk about healthcare reform. Let’s go and . . . fund programs if they’re necessary programs and not get stuck just on the fiscal responsibility.”

Schwarzenegger, a social moderate, long ago earned the enmity of many California Republicans, who believe he abandoned some of the fiscally conservative views he espoused when he ran for office five years ago and began proposing new spending. They cite, for instance, his failed plan to dramatically expand health insurance in the state. Last week, Schwarzenegger angered Republicans again by proposing a statewide sales tax increase to balance the budget.

But the governor has not so openly criticized the approach of the conservative bloc that dominates his party on the national level. He said he thought Republicans had “a very good party,” and he has no plans to leave it, because he agrees with their push to reduce restrictions on business and to remain strong on crime. Schwarzenegger said, however, that the GOP should support greater investment to build roads and fix schools and other “things that the American people want to have done.”

[....]

They should not “always just say, ‘This is spending. We can’t do that.’ No, don’t get stuck with that. We have heard that dialogue. Let’s move on.”

But the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity Republicans have taken over the Republican Party and this is what we can  expect:

GOP leader: Rebuild party based on 'sanctity of marriage' 

The Republican brand is still alive and well, Rep. Mike Pence said on Fox News Sunday.

When asked by Chris Wallace what "conservative solutions" the GOP would bring to their current minority-party status, Pence said social issues like "the sanctity of marriage" will remain the backbone of the Republican platform.

"You build those conservative solutions, Chris, on the same time-honored principles of limited government, a belief in free markets, in the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage," Pence said.

Yes this is the leadership of the Republican Party.  Via John Cole we have this description of Mike Pence from Matt Yglesias:

And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television.

Many of the moronic Republicans with a 16th century mindset have been defeated the last two election cycles but those who remain are still in charge of the Republican party.  My 79 year old uncle who had never voted for a Democrat before cast his vote for Barack Obama.  A party success is dependent on a base of the ignorant is destined to spend a long time in the wilderness. 

The Proposition 8 aftermath

by Jay McDonough

California Proposition 8, a referendum on same sex marriages, passed on Tuesday and the state constitution will now be amended to ban marriages of homosexual couples in California.  Reaction to the loss has been swift and startling.   Lawsuits, confusion, and now anger.  Over 20,000 protesters gathered last night in several California cities, now critical of the No on 8 campaign strategies and denouncing the Mormon church for their intensive involvement in the defeat of the initiative.  More protests are planned for today.

Steve Ramos, 46, of Los Angeles carried a banner through the streets of Silver Lake with the spray-painted words "Teach tolerance, not hate."

Supporters of the ballot proposition, he said, mixed "religion with politics" and missed the main point. "Everyone should have equal rights."

(Robin) Tyler expressed frustration over the leadership of the unsuccessful campaign to defeat the ballot measure and lashed out at those who supported it.  "The No on 8 people didn't want us to use the word 'bigots.' But that's what they are, bigots, bigots, bigots," Tyler said, bringing a round of cheers from the growing crowd. "We will never be made invisible again. Never again will we let them define who we are." (Link)

Out of state Mormons contributed millions of dollars to the Yes on 8 campaign and thousands of Mormons worked as grass roots volunteers.  A backlash against the church is emerging.

For the Mormon Church, it threatens a PR nightmare. The gay rights lobby boasts scores of prominent celebrity supporters who have already pledged vociferous support to the campaign to overturn Proposition 8.

The country music singer Melissa Etheridge, a prominent lesbian, announced yesterday that she will refuse to pay income tax until she's "allowed the same rights" as other taxpayers. Instead, she pledged to donate money to legal challenges arguing that the way Proposition 8 was put to the voters was unconstitutional.

The Mormon Church is in damage limitation mode. "No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information," it said in a statement. (Link)

The Mormon's heavy involvement in Proposition 8 is leading some to call for a boycott of Utah, home of the Church of Latter Day Saints. 

Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.

It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah, with world-class skiing, spectacular red-rock country and the film festival founded by Robert Redford among popular tourist draws. (Link)

This is missing the mark here.  Utah is not the Mormon church and the Mormon church is not Utah.  But there may be something that comes, in and of itself, from the threat of a boycott.

As recently as 1967, many states, with great public support, had laws on the books banning interracial marriage.  It seems unfathomable now that that kind of bigotry existed only 40 years ago.  Yet, it took a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Loving vs. Virginia) to finally rule those bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional.

Civil rights are nearly always gained with the convergence of several different factors; the publics awakened awareness of bigotry, the resulting shame, and a subsequent, innate desire to rise above that bigotry and right the wrong.   And just like the case of interracial marriage, the public consensus will surely evolve to an acceptance that allowing gays and lesbians the benefits and joy of making that binding marital commitment is a most fundamental right, and should not only be allowed, but encouraged in a society that values family and fidelity.

So, perhaps something good can come from the defeat of Proposition 8.   Maybe protests and boycott threats are what it takes for a not quite yet aware electorate to understand that when liberty is denied to some, it's a stain on our national character.  There's a clear trend - same sex marriage will be legal.  It can happen soon.  Or it can happen a little later.  But it will happen.

Post Election Thoughts

By Ron Beasley

While the election of the first black president is significant this election is also a reminder that race as an issue is still alive in the US.  Ronald Brownstein reminds us that this election was not about Barack Obama but about George W. Bush.

It detracts nothing from Barack Obama's achievement to note that his historic electoral success rests atop the epic political failure of George W. Bush. If Obama is shrewd enough, there's a lesson for the new president in the failure of the old one.

Bush and his chief political strategist, Karl Rove, dreamed of cementing a lasting Republican electoral majority. Instead, Bush has left his party in rubble.

The 2008 election represented a final grade on Bush's bruising and polarizing political strategy. To a degree unmatched by modern presidents, Bush governed more by mobilizing his base than by reaching out to voters and interests beyond it. His legislative strategy centered on minimizing dissent among congressional Republicans; his electoral strategy revolved around maximizing his vote among Republicans and conservative independents. On both fronts, his guiding principle was deepen, not broaden.

Through Bush's first term, that approach generated undeniable successes. The congressional Republican majority, demonstrating levels of party unity unequaled since around 1900, passed key elements of his agenda. A skillfully engineered surge in Republican turnout powered his re-election and GOP congressional gains in 2002 and 2004.

But through Bush's second term, this insular strategy grew unsustainable. By targeting so many of his policies toward the priorities of his conservative base, Bush ignited volcanic opposition from Democratic voters and steadily alienated independents. Because he had done so little to court voters beyond his ardent core, he lacked a well of good will to draw on when events turned against him, first with Katrina and Iraq, later with the economy. His disapproval rating soared to heights unsurpassed in modern polling.

That ferocious dissatisfaction fueled the Democratic recapture of Congress in 2006 by stampeding independent voters in their direction. Discontent with Bush again provided a huge tailwind for Democrats this week. Exit polls showed that a breathtaking 71% of voters Tuesday disapproved of Bush's performance. Two-thirds of them voted for Obama. That in itself effectively sealed the election against John McCain.

John McCain spent a lot of time reminding us that he was not George W. Bush but what he never said what he would do differently.  Only two thirds of those who didn't approve of Bush voted for Obama.  My guess is that if Obama had been white he would have won by 15% not 7%. 

Greatness

So what will the Obama presidency be like.  The opportunity for "greatness"  is thrust on people.  George W. Bush had the opportunity on 911 and we know how that worked out.  Bush and his administration chose greed and power over greatness which resulted in Obama's opportunity.  As little as a year ago I was referring to Obama as an empty suit - I was wrong.  He has both the opportunity and the personality and intellect to be "great". 

Schadenfreude

By BJ

Jim Cunningham offers A Progressive's Guide to Gloating for the next few years.

Iraq Provincial Elections On For Jan 31st

By Cernig

Finally, Iraqi authorities have confirmed the date of long-postponed provincial elections. There will be a roughly two month campaign season and elections on January 31.

Here's where the games start in earnest, because the Green Zone elites are in serious trouble if the elections go forward without a "guiding finger on the scales", so to speak:

According to a survey published by an Iraqi NGO, the Al-Amal Association, only 22.7 percent of 12,000 people polled in 11 provinces said they will vote for religious parties or blocks.

Voting for independent candidates is deemed a priority for 26.3 percent of the surveyed public of 11,000 Iraqis, while 23.7 percent said they will select democratic and secular blocks.

In the last provincial elections, in December 2005, religiously-affiliated parties won all the seats in the councils, with the exception of the Kurdish region and Kirkuk.

Expect every dirty trick in the book, from ballot stuffing to candidate assassinations to voter supression at gunpoint. And remember that secular candidates were meant to do a lot, lot better than they actually did in every set of Iraqi elections so far - for pretty much the same reasons.

More, the date sets aside four provinces, pointing up the "Kurdish Problem":

First scheduled for October 1, the polls were postponed when the national parliament struggled to pass an election law because of concerns over the disputed oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk.

The January ballot will be held in only 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces after the new law excluded Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.

Elections in the three Kurdish provinces will not be held until after March 2009 and the existing multi-communal council will continue to administer the province of Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is the biggest potential flashpoint in Iraq nowadays and the Kurds are using every trick they can think of to write their own writ in the areas they claim. Right now, they're digging their heels in and refusing to consider amendments to the Constitution, which have been seen as just as important to reconcilliation attempts as these elections.

I just don't see these elections, and the subsequent protracted playing out of Kurdish differences with the rest of the country, as being violence free. The question really is how bad will it be and how much will resultant bad blood retard rather than advance reconcilliation. There's no easy fix, but at least there's now a firm, Iraqi-imposed, exit date for the US and its coalition allies. I always found it ridiculous that the Pottery Barn rule had been reinterpreted as "we broke it, so we get to tell you how to run your store from now on".

Iraqis And Brits Remember Dead Together

By Cernig

It's Remembrance Sunday in the UK, the Sunday closest to the 11th of November, when at 11 minutes past 11 the Great War ended in 1918. A day to remember those fallen in Britain's wars - almost a million and a half in the two World Wars alone.

And in the middle of the desert in Iraq, a remembrance service for Britons fallen on that foreign field, along with the unknown but far larger number of Iraqis killed:

It looks like another combat mission, but elements of the 7th Armoured Brigade have gathered for arguably one of the most unique Remembrance Sunday services.

The location, a remote British war memorial, built in down town Basra in 1921, moved by Saddam Hussein in 1997, and rediscovered by troops working here in July this year.

Over 40,000 British and Commonwealth troops are remembered on the walls of this enormous building and despite the logistical problems and security risks the military were determined to conduct a final service of remembrance in the desert before they depart next year.

In recent months the British forces have been living and working with their Iraqi counterparts in 18 mentoring sites dotted around Basra.

On Sunday the Iraqi soldiers joined the British for the service, the troops standing side by side throughout the traditional two minutes of silence.

... "It was good of the Iraqi army to come to this and it was good of the Imam and the Padre to work out a combined service, it can be very difficult," Lt Colonel Felix Gedney, head of the mentoring operation in Basra, told me.

This was a good thing to do, on so many levels, on such a sad and thoughtful day when we should be remembering what we have in common as mere humans, not what divides us into warring factions.

The Double-Edged Sword of the Imperial Presidency

By BJ

The Washington Post is reporting that Obama is set to hit the ground running in regards to reversing many of the none-to-popular Bush administration presidential decrees on things like stem cell research, climate change, and reproductive rights.

From what I can see, I don’t have any objections to the actual policy goals, which is why I probably see a lot of reactions like Hilzoy’s this morning.

These are wonderful changes. After the last eight years, the very idea that they might occur not as the result of a long drawn-out battle, but just like that, is amazing.

Sure, it is nice to see your chosen policy goals being enacted without all the fuss and muss of drawn-out Congressional battles, but must I remind everyone that it was Bush enacting his policy goals without consulting Congress that got a lot of us upset about how they were concentrating authority in the Executive Branch?

Now, I’m not going to complain too bitterly about Obama using the very same power to reverse the worst excesses of Bush’s administration, but ultimately we should be working to see that this kind of power in the Executive Branch is again constrained.  One of the arguments others and I always used to try and convince so-called conservatives that Bush’s usurpation of power wasn’t a good thing was to imagine that power being wielded by a liberal Democrat.  Obama’s more of a centrist, but to the far-right that counts as a radical leftist in most matters, so they will soon be getting a taste of what we were warning about, even if they fail to understand that it was their uncritical support of the Imperial Presidency principles that handed Obama the tools he will be using.

So the right is likely to suddenly rediscover the founder’s preference for checks and balances and rail incessantly against the powers they so happily supported accruing to their own guy.  Call them hypocrites if you wish, but note that it is the right position.

The old saw about power corrupting holds ever true, and with power shifting to the left in a couple of months, you can all but smell the salivating of those looking to use that power to do what they think of as good.  It is one of the reasons that it is far easier to accrue power to the government than it is to take it away.  Once in power, people want to use it, not give it up.  It is also why I figure under even the best of circumstances, the powers accumulated to the presidency under the Bush/Cheney years will never be fully dissipated, but we need to work hard to ensure that Obama replaces at least some of the checks and balances, even if it makes passing his agenda that much harder.

Because sooner or later, power will again shift, and someone whose agenda you don’t agree with will be sitting in the Oval Office, and if Obama simply continues Bush’s legacy, then all of those “wonderful changes” will disappear at the stroke of a pen, and what could replace them may be far, far worse.

Because as the founders could tell you, you don’t put checks and balances in place because you believe the current leader is a tyrant, you do so because you can’t guarantee that no tyrant will find his way to power in the future.

Whether or not the left remembers that in the coming months will be a test of their hypocrisy.

Crowd Sourcing Transit

By Fester:

Via e-mail, the Ad-Hoc Heretic of Broken Big Apple, one of the more interesting young thinkers on operationalizing distributed resiliency and resilient communities is this interesting RFP on how to improve Chicago transit:

the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, is looking for innovative and new strategies to dramatically increase the use of public transportation to reduce the environmental impact of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by automobiles. Specifically, the Seeker is looking for innovative approaches and strategies to increase ridership on the region’s public transportation system to 1 billion rides per year. The Chamber estimates that a total of 800,000 new individuals must be convinced to ride public transportation to achieve this level of ridership.

This is from Innocentive, an open source request for proposals and recommendations to improve tough problems.  I don't have any good ideas to start with right now, but this is a very interesting challenge. 

Southwest Pennsylvania Congressional District PVI changes

By Fester:

I am rethinking my initial analysis that Pennsylvania will be the most active Congressional battleground in 2010.  I had not anticipated the size of the Appalachia versus the rest of the state effect that actually occurred in the 2008 general election.  This will significantly change the Partisan Voter Indexes for a couple of Congressional districts which will move them out of the probably competitive zones to the barely competitive absent a mistress choking incident. 

The New York Times published this very interesting chart that depicts the counties where John McCain in 2008 outperformed George W. Bush in 2004.  The obvious conclusion is that the line follows the Appalachian Mountain ranges.  The northern edge of this zone is southwestern Pennsylvania.  This zone includes PA-4, 12, 14 and 18.  PA-4, 12 and 14 are Democratically held districts.  However PA-4 has been a slight Republican lean district, while PA-12 has been a lean Dem district and PA-14 is a heavy base Dem district.  PA-18 is a Republican District with a slight Republican lean and a very conservative Democratic registration advantage. 

Without pulling any precinct level data, I am making a couple of estimates on the Obama-McCain splits by Congressional District in SW PA and this area has become significantly more Republican leaning.  PA-4 which is represented by Dem. Rep Altmire probably went to McCain by five points, which means it is roughly a R+9 or R+10 district for a one year PVI.  This is a significant change from the previous R+3 rating.  It will probably be rated an R+7 district for 2010.  This SHOULD be a natural GOP target seat.  However I am not sure who is on the GOP bench for this district. 

PA-18 saw Obama underperform by 8 points in Washington County, 14 points in Westmoreland County, and overpeformed by 5 points in Allegheny County.  However the portions Allegheny County that are in the district underperformed the Obama margins that are seen in the Mon Valley, the East Hills suburbs and most importantly Pittsburgh.  I am guessing that McCain won the district outright and probably won it by a few points.  So for this cycle, PA-18 is probably an R+9 or so district.  This should be an easy GOP hold despite the large Democratic registration advantage in the district. 

Now moving over to the other side of the state, PA-13 which is a projected open seat as its current representative, Rep. Allyson Schwartz is rumored to be considering a run for the Senate.  PA-13 is in the Philly Burbs which went heavily Democratic.  PA-11, Kanjorski's district, is still a reliable Democratic tilt district and the scare he received should be sufficient to make sure he works his ass off for the next two years. 

I had initially anticipated eight heavily contested races in 2010.  Now I think we'll see three Republican challenges (PA-3, PA-4, PA-11), two Democratic challenges in PA-15 (Rep. Dent) and PA-6 (Rep. Gerlach) and then token challengers in PA-18, and PA-12.

My side is better than your side, or is it?

By BJ

In my meanderings through the blogosphere, I came across this post at the PoliGazette where Michael van der Galien tries to explain why conservatives were so much more gracious in accepting Obama’s win than “the left” were in accepting Bush’s victories in 2000 and 2004.  The comment thread, to say the least, was quite interesting, and I have to feel sorry for Justin Gardner of Donklephant, who pointed out that 2000 wasn’t exactly the cleanest election victory in US history and that the 2004 re-election of Bush was an entirely different animal than a non-incumbent coming to power and has spent the rest of thread futilely trying to get some kind of productive discussion going.

Gardner did force the gazetteers to admit that there are some right-wing blogs that engage in hyper-partisan hackery, but of course the left is so much worse.  A couple of comments from Jason in the thread are indicative of the argument:

Increase Class Room Sizes

By Fester:

Increasing class room sizes is most likely good policy. 

We are entering a fiscal cycle of very limited resources as tax revenues look like they are cratering at the local and state level.  Almost all local and state governments have balanced budget requirements.  Most/all of these entities have some space to play with bond issues, rainy day funds and 'accidental' deficits.  However those are temporary fixes which will be quickly exhausted unless there is a massive infusion of federal dollars to the state and local governments.  State and local governments will continue to cut their budgets.  K-12 education, cops and prisons will be the areas that are politically toughest to cut as each has both a significant internal constiuency and significant public support.

However the variable portions of state budgets that are not tied to these three areas only have so much room for cuts.  These areas will be under pressure to either reduce expenditures or freeze growth rates so as to allow inflation to eat into the real value of services.  Ideally, the reductions in services will occur in ways that have minimal impacts on outcomes.  For instance, diverting marijuana possession convicts from prison to intensive probation and counseling may be such an approach.  Another is ending the trend towards smaller class room sizes.

Smaller classroom sizes is an intuitively popular program.  The theory behind it is simple --- teachers are important to educational success, and the more 'teacher experience' that a child receives, the better.  Furthermore, reducing classroom sizes reduces the probability of hard to handle trouble maker networks as three troublemakers are exponentially harder to handle than one or two and a class of 25 kids is more likely to have three or more troublemakers than a class of 17 kids, and the smaller classes reduce the number of unique learning styles so more customization is possible.  Teachers like smaller classes as their jobs become easier and it provides more jobs.  Parents like it for the above intuitive reasons.  Politicians like it because everyone else likes it, and who wants to vote against the children....

Reducing classroom sizes produces statistically significant but small positive academic improvement outcomes.  HOWEVER, it is a very expensive intervention.  Teachers are the largest single short term cost while increased capital spending to build more rooms is a significant long term cost for this intervention. The return on investment is fairly low. 

In a flush budgetary environment paying for effective but inefficient programs and interventions may be defensible, but in tight times, we need to think of something different.  Dr. Yeh at the University of Minnesota, in a talk I attended this week, and in several publications, argues that other interventions have lower initial and sustaining costs while producing similar or greater academic improvement outcomes.  He advocates for a rapid assessment/iterative loop learning system but others such as positive behavioral support also show results that are as effective and more efficient as reducing classroom sizes and student:teacher ratios.  Extending the school year in districts or basins with high levels of disadvantaged youth is another intervention that should produce significant results at lower costs as the killer for academic achievement in disadvantaged areas is the summer slide of knowledge as there are far fewer reinforcing and enriching activites available for these youth. 

Increasing classroom sizes is a policy that we should strongly consider as those resources that are currently devoted to reducing student:teacher ratio have higher and better uses.  In a tight budgetary environment, we need to think creatively on how we can get the best outcomes on a smaller budget.  Low student:teacher ratios is not the preferred system. 

Blogging Obama's Administration

By Cernig

Jeralyn Merritt has an excellent post about blogging during a Democratic administration: the short answer is that there's going to be plenty to be critical about as well as to supportive of. I feel the same way. Blogs have become an important facet of political debate and have often replaced the mainstream media in it's Fourth Estate role of providing information and interpretations of the facts independently of government spin. There's no reason to change that from Newshoggers point of view.

We'll continue to bring "news less travelled" and foreign affairs posts, as well as domestic politics. Offtimes, we will agree with President-Elect Obama's policies and broad style - as we do with his emphasis on negotiation and diplomacy rather than unwarranted belligerence. That's already showing fruit: Iraqi politicians are sure that Obama can help them make a transition to being the determiners of their own nation's future once again, North Korea is hopeful that it can come in from the cold through negotiation and even Russia, despite some hype suggesting otherwise, is hopeful that Obama won't be a saber rattler in the Bush mould.

A Kremlin statement said Obama and Medvedev "expressed the determination to create constructive and positive interaction for the good of global stability and development" and agreed that their countries had a common responsibility to address "serious problems of a global nature."

To that end, according to the Kremlin statement, Medvedev and Obama believe an "early bilateral meeting" should be arranged.

But there have also been some worrisome aspects to Obama's policy and team building, which we at Newshoggers have not and will not soft-soap. I, for one, recall all too clearly the empty promises of Tony Blair coming hard on the heels of the collapse of Thatcherism. There's a real risk that Obama, like Blair still far better than the alternative, may fall short on his promises or turn out to have misled on them.

In that respect Obama's staffing choices so far, replete with Clinton-era old guard, are a worry. There's no chance of the President-Elect or anyone who has his ear noticing this tiny blog, but I would still advise him if I could to put together a "Devil's Advocate" team of "young guns" to offer a more progressive and fresher alternative to the Cold Warrior mindset. In foreign policy, names that easily spring to mind include Vali Nasr, Juan Cole, Barnett Rubin, Marc Lynch, Travis Sharp and Matt Duss. In economics, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini and Pat Garofalo might be apposite choices.

Maybe, with such "oppo" teams contributing, Obama wouldn't be so given to saying Iran is seeking nuclear weapons when all the evidence says it isn't, or to claim Russia invaded Georgia when the Georgians were the aggressors. He'd perhaps want to rethink the potentially disasterous interventionist aspects of his policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan too. Jeralyn has a list too:

When we get a President who vows to impose a moratorium on executions, close Guantanamo, and try accused terrorists under the Code of Military Justice or in federal courts, who pushes Congress to abolish mandatory minimum sentences, put a lockbox on social security benefits and provide mandatory health care, including affordable and compassionate nursing home care for the elderly, and who has ended the war in Iraq and promised not to get us into other wars preemptively or under false pretenses

These are the kind of things that we should be keeping an eye on as an Obama administration comes together, and here at Newshoggers we certainly will, being critical when we feel we should no matter what partisan politics might ask.

Update: Nicole at Crooks and Liars comments by email:

The one thing that I would caution about being too reactionary about is the inclusion of former Clintonites in the administration.  First, just because you worked for Clinton doesn't mean that you are a DLCer. Second, just by default, because they're the only Democrats we've had in 30 years, if you hire Democrats in DC, chances are pretty good that you're going to get someone who worked for Clinton.  While there are some things that definitely detract from Clinton's legacy (NAFTA, DOMA, DADT come to mind), the prosperity and global status we enjoyed with Clinton are not exactly something we should be running away from.

She has a point and it's one I wish I'd made clearer in the original post - Clinton Dems are, mostly, the only ones available with experience of being in an administration so 'we go to the White House with the Dem staffers we've got, not the Dem staffers we wish we had', as it were. And not all of them are neo-liberal interventionists. But I think my idea of "oppo teams" would just be strengthened by the inclusion of those less awful Clintonistas.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald notes that of course it's too early to say how an Obama presidency is going to turn out, however:

It makes perfect sense -- for the reasons Digby so aptly described this week -- for people to start pressuring Obama now to pay attention to their political principles and agendas.  And it's certainly likely that Obama will end up doing many, many things that warrant and provoke intense criticism.  I have no doubt about that.   But he's entitled to actually start doing things -- on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, civil liberties, the economy, and otherwise -- before judgments are formed.

Obama's First Presser

By Cernig

It was Barack Obama's first press conference today and the consensus is that he handled himself very well indeed, a refreshing change from stumblin', bumblin' Incurious George. Only one minor fact-checking gaffe - which led to him apologising to Nancy Reagan for saying she held seances at the White House when in actual fact she consulted an astrologer, which is just as daft. It was apparently Hillary who held seances, even if that's not what she wants to call them.

However, over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau has a more substantial criticism of Obama's actual policy plans:

You know, for all the decades of talk about fuel efficiency, alternative energy, and energy independence, the most fuel efficient personal vehicles on our roads are primarily foreign brands.  So why, pray tell, should bailing out inefficient Detroit automakers be the top priority if our goal is energy efficiency?

And the easy answer is that, like the big finance houses, they are too big to fail.

Fools on the hill

By Ron Beasley

I've been quiet the last couple of days as I have tried to digest the events of the week.  The most interesting news comes from the losers and the most interesting, but not only, events revolve around the attacks on Sarah Palin.  I don't think she is the sharpest knife in the kitchen but I don't really buy much of the information about just how stupid she is.  More importantly I don't believe this is entirely coming from the McCain campaign - it is coming from the Romney 2012 campaign.  Go for it I say.  This activity well result in a long run for the Democrats.  They are attacking the Evangelicals own diva and the Evangelicals already don't feel comfortable with the Mormon, Romney.  They will feel even less comfortable when they realize he is trying to kneecap their very own Sarah. 

But it gets even better - the Republicans just don't get it.  Dick ( a nation of whiners) Armey is still trying to defend trickle down economics. But that's not all.  Many of us predicted that the wingnuts would claim that McCain lost because he was not "conservative" enough:

Moderates to blame for GOP losses, conservative leader says

A conservative leader Friday laid the Republican Party's poor showing at the polls at the feet of moderates who, he argues, led the party away from its core principles.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told CNN that conservatives need to take back control of the GOP if the party is to return to its winning ways.

"Moderates never beat conservatives. We've seen that in past elections," he said.

Rejecting suggestions that the conservative movement was viewed as being out of touch with the electorate, Perkins says the Republican Party needs to go back to basics.

"It's a return to fundamental conservative principles that Ronald Reagan showed work and that people can be attracted to," Perkins said.

Fools on the hill indeed.  I'll have more later but for now I'll leave you with the Dixie Chicks video of the Stevie Nicks' classic "Landslide", a metaphor for the week.

Bush Administration stalls on prisoner abuse photo release

by Jay McDonough

In September, a federal appeals court ordered the release of photos depicting the abuse of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photos, totaling 87, include those previously seen when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse story first broke.  The Bush Administration continues to delay the release of the photos.  Today the Administration requested a review of the decision by all 12 appeals court judges.

"This petition is a transparent attempt to delay accountability for the widespread abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad by keeping the public in the dark," Amrit Singh, and ACLU staff attorney, said in a news release Friday . "These photographs demonstrate that the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational and not confined to Abu Ghraib, but the result of policies adopted by the highest-ranking officials in the administration. The immediate release of these photos is critical to bringing an end to the Bush administration's torture policies and for preventing prisoner abuse in the future."

Although the government stopped trying to fight the full release of Abu Ghraib photos after they all were independently published in 2006, the ACLU says the Pentagon continues to keep hidden 29 additional images from at least seven different locations in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Link)

If you care to see what our government has sanctioned, here's a link to some photos of abuses at Abu Ghraib. (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES, INCLUDES NUDITY AND DEATH)

Heaping on the Foreign Policy Plate

by anderson

Mere days after Russian president Dmitri Medvedev rattled post-election sabres on missile defense, a clear sign that he intended to push Russia's concerns to the front of an Obama agenda, Medvedev has hailed the opening of a new General Motors plant near St. Petersburg. Obverse to the open diplomatic hostility recently on display since the Georgian war, the new plant signifies growing economic ties between the US and Russia and Medvedev praised GM for living up to their agreement despite the worsening economic outlook for the company.

"General Motors has done everything to carry out the responsibilities it took upon itself," Medvedev said at the ceremony, adding that it was an ideal example of economic cooperation between Russia and the United States.

The U.S. automotive giant has pushed ahead with expansion plans in Russia even as the global financial crisis cut demand and local car makers slash production.

Medvedev also called the ceremony a symbol of Russia's resilience in the face of the crisis.

"We are witnessing a project completed in spite of the financial problems which the world is facing today…"

Which perhaps indicates -- I'm speculating wildly here -- that GM might seek some financial relief from Moscow since the Bush administration has so far rebuffed a request for $10 billion in aid to grease the wheels of a merger with Chrysler, despite the already agreed $25 billion bailout measure. If merger is still on the minds of auto makers in Detroit, it seems doubtful that Moscow can or would help, both from a financial and a political perspective; I doubt Congress would approve a merger in the American automotive industry financed by Russia. That would look entirely unseemly. And Russia is in no great position to offer such help, as that country is suffering financial fallout effects as bad or worse than almost anywhere else.

But such fiscal maneuvering is probably unlikely. Plant construction began months ago, long before the shake down of Wall Street began. What the new GM plant does indicate is precisely what Medvedev said it did: the economic ties between the US and Russia are close, and the US should no more consider Russia an enemy than any other large economy

Of course, that reality does not well serve the purposes of Washington's foreign policy establishment and, by extension, its military industrial complex, which constantly seeks enemies abroad to justify a broad spectrum of weapons systems and other defense contractor boondoggles. But such cooperation could be used by Obama to indicate that Russia is an economic partner, not a threatening adversary.

I say "could be" because, in all likelihood, it won't be. Such radical notions do not easily go down the raspy throats of the Beltway consensus crowd, especially one that is looking for any and all ways to continue justifying a $600 billion Pentagon budget. And if Obama has demonstrated anything with his klatch of foreign policy advisors, which has included the likes of life-long Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski (who still thinks his advice a "great success" to fund the Afghanistan proxy war that saw a million people killed), it is that he is as much a part of the consensus on US foreign policy as anyone. Nonetheless, Obama should not be so easily dissuaded from casting off the shackles of outdated thinking on Russia and pursue overtures of cooperation with Russia. After all, we and Europe are doing a tremendous amount of business with them.

Though it seemed the new administration might be the target of Medvedev's post-election announcement -- that Russia would deploy short range missiles directed at Poland in direct retaliation for the missile shield agreement -- weirdly enough, the extant Bush administration issued forth new proposals to Moscow, hoping, it would seem, to assuage the Kremlin's concerns about the missile defense installation.

Russia on Friday received new proposals from the United States to reduce nuclear arms and provide greater access to the Bush administration’s planned missile defense system, as leaders in Washington moved to calm tensions between the two nations.

The new American proposals, reported earlier in the Wall Street Journal, would allow Russian military officials to inspect the American installations. Washington has also proposed reducing stockpiles of nuclear warheads in both countries, as well as long-range nuclear weapons.

After embarking on a policy path that seemed designed to heighten international tension for the incoming administration, that the Bush administration is making some small effort toward Moscow's concerns appears strange indeed. It won't work, of course -- Moscow understandably does not want American missile bases next door -- and this may simply be the White House's attempt to look reasonable, knowing full well that the proposals will be rejected, that the entire missile defense effort must be dumped according to Moscow. Obama should scrap the whole notion as worthless, unnecessarily aggravating and unworkable; a project that doesn't work to prevent a threat that does not exist. Unfortunately, that is what is known as "perfect pork" in Washington: billions of dollars ostensibly for national security on a project that won't ever need to actually do anything.

Meanwhile, down in the Caucasus, protesting President Mikhail Saakashvili never gets tired, as Georgia's opposition parties have decided the time is also ripe to stage protests demanding actual free and fair elections. They do so on the anniversary of Saakashvili's rubber bullet crackdown on anti-governmen protests last year.

"We are starting a new wave of civil confrontation, and we will not give up until new elections are called," opposition leader Kakha Kukava said.

While the near target of the promised protests is clearly Saakashvili, the far target should be viewed as the new Obama administration and it comes with the implicit requirement that Washington discontinue support for Saakashvili and his anti-democratic tendencies. Of course, backing away from Saakashvili will be far easier for Obama now that mainstream American media are reporting on the evidence of Georgian aggression and war crimes.

These developments and more -- much more -- will be waiting for Obama on his first day in the White House. Considering their role in instigating these and the vast litany of other problems Obama will face, it seems highly unlikely that the Bush administration will make much of an effort to reduce these many self-induced frictions. Obama surely has his plate full. I hope he has a strong appetite.

[p.s. I never considered this before now, but how pleasantly refreshing and deliciously different it is to write the phrase "Obama administration." I think we can all agree we would like that to remain so.]

Just go Joe

By Libby

Reid and Lieberman had some kind of private confab yesterday. Here's Joe's press statement afterward.



Options? He has options all right. He should opt to not let the door hit him on the way out.

Jane Hamsher tells us he's having a series of meetings with Reid to decide what to do. What's to decide? He should resign his committee gracefully and leave the caucus for his new BFFs in the GOP. Make it official already. He hasn't voted with the Democrats on anything important in literally years.

Why bother with this silly charade? They don't need him if he doesn't come through the votes anyway and if he goes to the GOP then he can be all bi-partisanish when he crosses the aisle to support President Obama's proposals.

It's a simple choice. Joe must go. If you would like to make that clear to the Dems, sign the No More Joe petition.

Cutting Environmental Protections

By BJ

Fester had a couple of ideas yesterday about shortening the time between the election date and the date of the inauguration, with a couple of clauses to prevent CYA-type Presidential pardons during the lame-duck period, and in order to avoid this kind of chicanery.

— In the next few weeks, the Bush administration is expected to relax environmental-protection rules on power plants near national parks, uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and more mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.

The administration is widely expected to try to get some of the rules into final form by the week before Thanksgiving because, in some cases, there's a 60-day delay before new regulations take effect. And once the rules are in place, undoing them generally would be a more time-consuming job for the next Congress and administration.

I’d noted the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act before, but the scope of proposed changes go well beyond that.  The “relaxation” of both the uranium and mountain-top mining regulations will put the drinking water of millions of people at risk.  And that’s not the only parting gift Bush is giving to the coal industry.

Under the Clean Air Act, plants that are updated must install pollution-control technology if they'll produce more emissions. The rule change would allow plants to measure emissions on an hourly basis, rather than their total yearly output. This way, plants could run for more hours and increase overall emissions without exceeding the threshold that would require additional pollution controls.

January 20th can’t come soon enough.

Georgian Aggression

By Cernig

Finally, the NYT is helping the American public play catch-up with Europeans on the conflict in the Caucusus. Across the pond, it's been generally accepted for quite some time now that the Georgians were the primary aggressors who turned a fairly low-scale civil war into a full-on military conflict with the local superpower, who then took a mile instead of an inch. Here in the US, it's all been about the Russians invading Georgia, as if that happened first, with both presidential candidates accepting that narrative.

But...

Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

The observers in question all being members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E. monitoring team, led by two experienced British military officers.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.

All of which had been previously reported from other sources, just not prominently here in the US. Shelling civilian targets in this way is a war crime - something the NYT even now steers clear of but that the BBC has reported on in some depth. The media here isn't reporting on Georgian leader Saakashvili's domestic troubles either. He's had to fire both his Prime Minister and his Army Chief recently, over 10,000 protestors against his continued rule demonstrated Friday and the democratically elected opposition have asked that foreign aid to Georgia be carefully monitored so that Misha and his cronies don't line their own pockets with it. Saakashvili's response has been to accuse all his opponents of being Russian agents, which is historically what he does just before he calls out the police with clubs.

Now that McCain is out of the running, it seems that the US media are rather more inclined to risk "political balance" for accurate reporting on Georgia. Which may well soon have Americans asking why they are supporting the tie-munching, dissent-bashing neocon in charge there and offering him a place at the NATO table and aid to prop up his rule, instead of just supporting Georgia the country. As Will Bunch says "Just in case you needed an after-the-fact reason to be glad we're not talking about President-elect McCain".

Crimping the right's cash flow

By Fester:

Bloomberg reports that one of the right wing's biggest funders is having some serious cash issues:

billionaire Sheldon Adelson's casino company, fell the most in New York trading since going public after saying it may default on debt and face bankruptcy.           

The casino owner, which had $8.8 billion in long-term debt at the end of June, said in a regulatory filing today that it probably won't meet the requirements of loans arranged by Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. unless it cuts spending on developments, boosts earnings at its Las Vegas Strip casinos and raises more capital.

He was the largest funder of Freedom Watch, the right wing political action group that was supposed to the be the GOP savior this cycle as it could spend unlimited money on 'educational' ads. 

The institutional right is highly dependent on a few very large individual and institutional donors that are highly dependent on the financial industry, heavy industry, and oil.  So what happens if these core foundations see their endowments fall in line with the rest of the market?  Does wingnut welfare get crimped? 

Employment Ass Kicking

By Fester:

That is an ass-kicking.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics October employment release is fugly:

  Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate 
rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department 
of Labor reported today.  October's drop in payroll employment followed declines of 
127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised.  Employment has fallen by 
1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred 
in the past 3 months.  In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construc-
tion, and several service-providing industries.  Health care and mining continued 
to add jobs.

The consensus guesstimate was roughly 200,000 jobs lost in October, and that number got smashed.  More importantly, were the massive revisions as September's revision makes October look better. 

Expect unemployment benefit extensions in the very near future. 

Focus On The Family Compares Obama To Nazis

By Cernig

Two days after Obama and the Democratic Party won a ringing 7 million refusal of rightwing fearmongering and hate, the extreme right are unrepentant and none the wiser. Smintheus at Unbossed writes:

This evening James Dobson's Focus on the Family Action sent out a fundraising email to members that likened the victories of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in Tuesday's election to the Nazi bombing of England during World War II. The author of this vile letter is Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family Action. It was nearly inevitable that anger over losing the 2008 election would soon provoke right-wing extremists to violate Godwin's Law. Obama's victory in Colorado may have been particularly galling for the Colorado Springs based Focus on the Family, which has been heavily involved in the political campaign this year advocating for conservative issues. James Dobson personally endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket this fall.

Focus on the Family has not so far posted this hateful fundraising letter on the web. Here is the opening section of the letter:

Dear Friend,

The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters.

You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II – when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler’s Luftwaffe – that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to the challenge.

It goes on in exactly the same vein, saying that:

Our nation has never faced the kind of anti-family, pro-abortion assault that we’re likely to see in the coming weeks and months. We don’t have to guess what the Left will do now that they control Congress and the White House; they’ve told us.

What are FoF so upset about? Freedom of choice, freedom of marriage and legislation to combat discrimination against gays in the workplace. The last, according to FoF, will be an assault on FoF members' religious freedom. Nice of them to state so clearly that theirs is a path of bigotry.

Obama has their number.

That new guy with the “tan”

By BJ

Well, Italy’s Prime Minister certainly knows how to step in it.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave an enthusiastic, if unconventional, welcome on Thursday to the election of Barack Obama, citing among his attributes youth, good looks and a "suntan."

Speaking at a joint news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, the 72-year-old media tycoon also said Obama's election to the White House had been "hailed by world public opinion as the arrival of a messiah."

Little surprise many American conservatives really like Berlusconi.  I’d say he was being particularly insulting, but as the article notes, he rather makes a habit of inappropriate remarks regarding other world leaders, which again makes his popularity among the Republican party of Bush not too surprising.  (Okay, technically, his popularity is because they see a kindred spirit ideologically, such as his tough line on illegal immigrants.  We’ll avoid mentioning what his policy of sending troops onto the streets says about the American right.)

In any case, reading about how Berlusconi joked about seducing the Finnish President and figured the Danish Prime Minister was handsome enough to pass his wife off to; I can’t help but feel sorry for Sarah Palin.  After all, had the Montreal comedy duo who punked her impersonated Berlusconi instead of Sarkozy, she could be forgiven for not catching on to the hoax when the imposter mentioned how good his wife was in bed and how much he enjoyed the Hustler “documentary” porno, Nailin’ Palin.

Obama Should Include Russia On Missile Defense

By Cernig

Last week, one of George W. Bush's signature policy initiatives - that of missile defense sites in eastern Europe - took a massive hit as the Czech government, which has already signed a deal to host a radar site as part of the ABM initiative, bowed to opposition pressure and said it would hold off on final ratification of the deal until Obama took office in January.

Initially, the Czechs were planning to ratify the missile shield agreements without waiting for the US presidential election results.

For months Topolanek's centre-right government has defended the agreements reached with the Bush administration, but the Czech premier's political position has weakened at home after his liberal ODS party suffered defeats in recent regional and senatorial elections.

Lawmakers and Czech public opinion have been divided over placing the missile defence system in the former communist central European country, and angering Russia.

... The Czech left-wing opposition, which is against the radar installation, called the plans just part "of the erroneous policies of the Bush administration," said Jiri Paroubek, head of the Social Democrats who wants a six-month moratorium on the ratification process.

The Czech government narrowly won a "no confidence" vote on the 27th of October brought about by heated debate over Bush's plans. Only one vote saved them from having to call a general election. Some estimates put Czech public opposition to the deal at over 70%. In Poland, too, the majority of the populace are opposed to Bush's ABM plans, but the Polish premier has pushed through those plans anyway in return for massive military aid from the US.

Neocon backers of ABM are setting up for a big push in January, no doubt in an attempt to infuence Obama who has been vocally sceptical about the $450 billion program. His election platform position was that:

An Obama-Biden administration will support missile defense, but ensure that it is developed in a way that is pragmatic and cost-effective; and, most importantly, does not divert resources from other national security priorities until we are positive the technology will protect the American public.

Right now, the technology is neither cost effective nor pragmatic, and certainly won't protect the American public from non-exiostant Iranian nukes or from all-to-real Russian ones. But, as Peter Kilfoyle points out in the Guardian (h/t Kat), ABM is destabilizing:

It sets Russian against Pole and Czech. It has created a world where Putin and his generals can point to an encircling American military. Ever since the US revoked the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, Russia has looked nervously at American expansion. Missile defence, they fear, is ultimately aimed at them, and their strategic defence capability.

The Americans point the finger at "rogue states" – nowadays, a euphemism for Iran. However, when North Korea was the prime concern, the US engaged in an ultimately successful dialogue with them on their weapons programme. If Russia and the European Union had their way, talking with Tehran would remain the way forward.

Russia has actually called America's bluff on missile defence, offering co-operation against rogue states, and the use of radar facilities within Russia. The Americans turned them down.

What's Russia to think? Especially when neocon missile defense plans explicitly include space-based weaponry sooner rather than later and when the obvious focus of neocon planning is Russia, not Iran or any "rogue state". Obama would do well to shake off the hawkish liberal foreign policy establishment, who as old Cold War warriors are reflexively Russia-hating. He should either re-open negotiations with the Russians to expand missile defense planning to include them and European nations as full partners, or nix the whole thing.

The Tests to Come

By BJ

I’ve been watching the reaction to Obama’s election from around the world.  As might be expected after eight years of Bush’s cowboy diplomacy, the reaction is mostly highly positive, and while the domestic right wing won’t be allowing him any honeymoon, (at least when the pro- and anti-Palin camps remember to stop sniping at each other), he will to some extent have a much easier go of it with America’s traditional allies and those that don’t hold any particular enmity.

For those who have reason to oppose the US, on the other hand, this transition period between the Bush and Obama presidencies presents numerous opportunities to push the envelope.  Cernig noted yesterday Russia’s announcement to possibly deploy missiles near the Baltics and Poland in response to the Bush administration’s ABM deployment.  While he’s right that this is a mess almost entirely of Bush’s making, it is also clear that this will prove to be one the first major tests of an Obama administration.

Assuming the Bush administration doesn’t muck things up more in an attempt to lock in certain options as they did over Syria recently, Obama will still face considerable pressure at home not to take the reasonable route of scrapping the ABM boondoogle and improving relations with Russia.  Cries of “appeaser!” will be shouted from the highest rooftops by probably more than just the right.  For that matter, Poland and the Baltic states may feel abandoned should the US pull out of the agreements they have with them.  It’s also hard to say what reaction places like Iran and China will have to any move he makes.

Frankly, Obama’s reaction during the Georgia crisis, while not as knee-jerkingly belligerent as McCain’s, was hardly something I was impressed with.  The anti-Russian tact of the foreign policy crowd in the US seemed to infect Obama as much as everyone else.

So will he choose reasonable compromise or unreasonable confrontation?  If he’s smart and can get away with it, he’ll do as Kennedy did and go with reasonable compromise while selling it as unreasonable confrontation, but that’s a lot harder to get away with in these days of new media.

Whatever he does, it will tell us a great deal about how much change his administration will actually bring.

Gordon Smith Concedes

By Ron Beasley

Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith has conceded to Democrat Jeff Merkley.

Republican Gordon Smith, who has represented Oregon in the U.S. Senate for the last 12 years, this morning called Jeff Merkley, his Democratic challenger, to concede their race.

Jon Isaacs, an aide to Merkley, said that Smith called Merkley about 8:40 a.m. to concede the hard-fought race, which came down to a few thousand votes. Isaacs described the conversation between the two men as "very cordial."

It would appear that Merkley will receive 48% of the votes to Smith's 46% with Constitution Party candidate Brownlow receiving 5%, most of which was taken from Smith.  Brownlow said that Smith was not conservative enough and that he ran to make sure Smith would lose.

Bush Agrees to "No Buts" Iraq Timetable

By Cernig

According to reports, the Bush administration has agreed to three out of five Iraqi amendments to the proposed new deal governing the US occupation there. The timetable for withdrawal by the end of 2011 will now be set in stone, with clauses allowing Baghdad and Washington to seek an extension for retaining troops in the cities beyond 2009 and in the country beyond 2011 dropped entirely. There's no definite information on which two proposals the US didn't agree to, but one seems likely to be the Iraqi wish for clarification of what "on duty" means when governing whether US soldiers committing crimes would be covered by US or Iraqi law.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says that Washington considers the negotiation process over and that it's for Iraqis now to decide whether they will accept the deal as is. The US embassy issued a statement saying "We've gotten back to them with a final text. Through this step we have completed the process on the U.S. side." The spokesman for Iraqi PM Noor al Maliki, however, has said that the US response "now requires meetings with the Americans to reach a common understanding."

Bush administration officials and the Pentagon had already tied to say that negotiations were closed before considering this latest set of amendments. My guess, given that the current wording would probably not pass the Iraqi parliament, is that the talking isn't over this time either. There's not a lot of time left until the UN mandate expires, though Iraq has said it will seek an extension to that mandate if needed.

Amazing though, huh? For so long the Bush administration has said they'd never agree to a fixed timetable, that any deal had to be "conditions based". And now they've agreed to a fixed timetable. Change you can believe in.

A Pictorial Representation

By BJ

Of how I spent yesterday afternoon.

Transition changes

By Fester:

Most of the people around me look like they have recovered from their hangover and caught up on their sleep since Tuesday night.  And now we wait as we enter a political twilight zone where normal electoral incentives for restrained behavior can not operate.  So we see the silly season of Bush still being in charge despite him being a non-entity and Obama's campaign attempting to convert itself into a governing formation.  Most other nations can handle a transfer of power in a week or two as the outgoing president or premier tells the incoming executive where he leaves the extra key and that the back stairs creak at night. 

I would like to propose two constitutional amendments that would go into effect four years after they are ratified.  This would allow for fairness as the rules would not change in the middle of a campaign or the middle of an administration.  I am writing this in plain language, so please have the lawyers chime in:

The inauguration of the President shall occur on December 15th.  The new term of Congresses shall begin on Dec. 10.  All electoral votes shall be counted and certified by Dec. 12. 

The intent here is to reduce the silly season time of the lame duck session.  Details can be figured out later.  The next amendment is aimed at restoring political counter-balance to the lame duck pardon power.

Any presidential pardons that are issued between two days before the general election and the next inauguration shall be subject to the disapproval of a majority of the Senate.  Inaction by the Senate shall be taken as indication of approval. 

This amendment should be a strong disincentive for Casper Weinberger and Mark Rich type pardons.  It places no other restrictions on Presidential pardon power which is subject to the effective public constraint of political pressure. 

Oregon Senate Final

By Ron Beasley

As I noted below Democrat Jeff Merkley has defeated Republican incumbent Gordon Smith in the Oregon Senate Race.  Smith had led until early this afternoon until the votes from the populous and largely Democratic counties in the North West corner of the state.  While Oregon is thought of as a blue state most of it is rural and ruby red but most of the people live in the few blue counties. 

Nader needs to go away

By BJ

I am far too tired trying to recover from staying up far too late last night and then getting up early for work to get too angry, but what the hell was Ralph Nader thinking?

It's a pretty sad end to a career and man that was once worthy of respect

870 Strategy

By Fester:

2010 should be interesting at the Congressional level as there are two large groups that will push for an 870 strategy.  And this should be a good thing for accountability, responsiveness and anti-douchebaggery efforts:

From the Next Right:

I am beginning to think that looking at House and Senate races and doing descending sorts on Bush 2004 percentages has become a seriously crippling way of targeting House seats. The President won 250 or so House districts in 2004. But building a majority solely by picking seats off this target list becomes seriously problematic. To win 218 races from this grouping, you'd need to win 87% of races. To win 200, leaving a handful to come from blue districts, you'd need to win 80%.

These need-to-win percentages are simply too high. First, you have personally popular Democrat incumbents in many of these seats. And second, any district that was within 10 points of the national median at the Presidential level is (at best) only a lean to one party or another for Congress.

We need to expand the map.

We need to get to a place where we only need to win 60% or two thirds of our "winnable" races. And that requires expanding the definition of a winnable race.

This is not a fifty state strategy. It is a 435 district strategy.

Reverse a couple of adjectives, change a few prepositions and this is the same exact argument made in the winter of 2005 for a Democratic 435 Strategy of challenging everywhere.  Most of the challenges in R+6 districts will fail, but this basic strategy has picked off a few surprise seats.  More importantly, it has reinvigorated the Democratic brand, gotten people used to seeing Democrats asking for their votes again, and provides a deeper and more experienced bench. 

National elections with large (50 to 100) numbers of credible challengers on both sides of the partisan divide should produce some very interesting races in 2010 and 2012 as well as discouraging easily discoverable douchebaggery. It will be a strategy that knocks out some Democrats in 2010 as they'll be caught by surprise, but it chips away at the concrete of entrenched interests. 

Oregon Senate Race Update

By Ron Beasley

Oregon's Senate race between incumbent Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Jeff Merkley is still too close to call.  Smith leads by just under 2000 votes  at 3:00PM PST with 74% of the vote counted.  Most of the remaining ballots are from heavily Democratic Multnomah County(Portland) so Merkley is still expected to win.

Update - 3:30 PM PST

Merkley has just taken the lead.  Looking good!

Update - 4:50 PM PST

Merkley now up buy 2500 votes with 76% of the votes counted.

Update - 6:40 PM PST

Jeff Merkley declared winner over Smith;

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Oregonian and KGW projected Wednesday night that Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley would overtake Republican Sen. Gordon Smith to win the Senate seat in the toughest, most expensive race the state has ever seen.

Multnomah and Lane County were still counting ballots Wednesday night, after numbers started to show a lead for Merkley in Multnomah, Oreogn's most populous and liberal county.

I will update as I learn more.

Bush Administration's Failed Tactics Kill More Innocents

By Cernig

Simply horrifying:

The NYT reports:

An airstrike by United States-led forces killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 others at a wedding party in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Wednesday. The casualties included women and children, the officials said.

The United States military and Afghan authorities were investigating the reports about the latest attack, the American military said in a statement, but it gave no confirmation of the strikes or any death toll.

Well, at least this time the footage of yet another care-less atrocity surfaced before the US military could do its kabuki of denial, investigation, denial again, admission and finally reluctant apology.

But this new disaster, both for Afghanistan and for the West's "hearts and minds" efforts there, underlines why Obama needs to get his act straight on Afghanistan and Pakistan fast and to change the Bush course there as quickly as possible. There are some seriously worrying parts to his policy for the region as he stated it during the campaign - suggesting he would send even greater forces across the border into Pakistan, for example - which would mean an even more hawkish stance than the Bush one in the region. On the other hand, he also offered a policy option - concentrating on civilian aid, education and negotiations - that would ratchet down tensions in the region and perhaps offer a path for more moderate Taliban to renounce violence and come in out of the cold. That latter is the only way to end the US war in the region with anything even approaching a "success" for US interests.

Update: Connor O'Steen, recently returned from Afghanistan, writes in an email:

Wedding parties are an easy target to mistake because there's a large congregation of people, and in rural areas especially there's a predilection to fire guns into the air in celebration. In addition to this the parties are sex segregated, so a drone camera would probably just see a large group of armed men firing guns in Kandahar. 'What else could it be?' they say, "2+2=Taliban."

But this leads to another question, which people are feeding the US Army intelligence about these targets, and why are we still listening to them? From an airstrike near Herat earlier this year, the Army concluded that they had been fed faulty intelligence by local contacts who were using the airstrikes as a solution to familial and tribal enmities. It wouldn't surprise me terribly if we were doing the same thing in the south.

This must in the end result in an arbitrary redistribution of power: the khans that we tap and payroll for 'intelligence' have us destroy their rivals, and their local power increases at the expense of the government in Kabul. Much like the Sunni 'Awakening,' I don't see these connections as being in the long term interests of American security.

He adds that Taliban local commanders aren't in short supply and can be replaced easily by the militants, but that " the kind of communal emnity you cause through collateral damage can't be repaired."

The audacity of hope

By Libby

It was quite a night, wasn't it? I laughed. I cried. I'm still tearing up at intervals as I look at the photos and the full impact of this historic moment hits me. I feel about as stunned as I did on this day in 04, only this time it's in a good way. I want to stand on my deck and shout, "Thank you America for repudiating the lies and the hatemongering of the extremists who hijacked our country for so many years."

I want to go out and hug every single person who fought so hard to make this moment happen. Every campaign worker who toiled beyond human endurance to get out the largest vote in a hundred years. Every person who talked to their friends and families and neighbors and sold them on the idea that hope still exists and can overcome hate. Every blogger that risked carpal tunnel in a relentless assault of pixels on the intertubes, pushing back against the false narratives that threatened to turn this election into an American Idol contest.

Of course, the election of President Barack Hussien Obama is not the end of this fight, it's just the beginning. It's clear that he understands that too. I was struck by the tone of his acceptance speech. There was little jublilation over victory in his sober rhetoric as he hoisted the weight of his new responsiblities onto his slender shoulders. One can see the heaviness of that burden already manifesting in the increasing lines in his face and the new gray in his temples.

There's much work left to be done in bringing the millions of citizens who are even now stockpiling weapons against what they apparently truly believe will be the coming of some kind of Marxist-Socialist-Communist-Muslim-Gay-terrorist coup, back into reality, (assuming that can ever be done) and the dire problems that plagued us two days ago didn't disappear with President Obama's election. The world as we knew it before Bush won't ever return again. But I don't want to deal with that today. For this one day, I just want to savor the moment.

The whole world changed last night and although the challenges ahead are great, I believe we finally took a step in a better direction. For the first time in eight long years, I woke up without that crushing weight of concern bearing down on my chest about the future of my child and my grandchild. For this one day I just want to breathe that in. I want to wallow in the audacity of hope, and relish my rekindled pride in my President and our country. It's been a long time since I've felt it. [photo credit]

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

GOP - In Search Of A Moderate Leader?

By Cernig

Commenting on a David Frum article that says the only path to Republican recovery is away from Sarah Palin and her base supporters, Charles at LGF agrees and writes:

If the GOP decides to go in the Bobby Jindal direction (fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism, aggressively anti-gay rights), it will be committing political suicide. As much as anything else, this election was a referendum on the social conservative agenda, and the social conservatives did not win.

That's very true - but what Charles doesn't mention is that it was also a referendum on the hardline neoconservative agenda, and that agenda very definitely didn't win either. Ramesh Ponnuru at the Corner:

McCain slipped by roughly the same amounts among self-described conservatives and moderates. But the losses among the moderates hurt more because there are more of them.

Neither the hard right theocons nor the hard right neocons have the GOP's answer, but both are going to be advancing their argument that they do, forcibly, for some time still. I'm forcibly reminded of what happened within the British conservative movement after the collapse of Thatcherism. Until the extreemists conclusively defeated and the GOP moves back towards the center, it will remain in the political wilderness. So, where's the US Republican Party's David Cameron?

Update: Could it be Jeff Flake? Ed Morrissey seems to think so, while arguing that the real Republican failure isn't the theocons or the neocons, but the bigspendercons. Flake's Wikipedia entry lists his positions on some hot-button issues.

Flake supports creating a temporary worker program for border security, leading some anti-illegal immigration conservative activists to give Flake the Republican In Name Only label.^[6] However, others consider him one of the most consistently conservative members of the House and strongly support him. He is one of eight House members to receive a 100% approval rating from the American Conservative Union.[6]

Flake voted against No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, Medicare Part D, Homeland Security Act^[3], and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. He joined John McCain and Jim Kolbe in sponsoring bills to increase legal immigration and establish a guest worker program.

Flake initially supported the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, but more recently has changed his position to one of cautious opposition, including voting against appropriations for both. He also supports ending the Cuba Trade Embargo and has been a proponent of reform in the House, particularly in the wake of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethical and fundraising controversies. He co-authored a letter with now former Congressman Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, which called for DeLay to step down ahead of his decision not to seek re-election to the House.^{[citation needed]}

Flake is strongly pro-life, with a rating of zero from NARAL; he has likewise received a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign for his failure to support legislation that expands the 1969 federal hate-crime law or allows for same-sex marriage.

But oh, that name. The joke-writers would love it.

More on voter turnout

by Jay McDonough

Following up on anderson's earlier post

There had been lots of talk about this election's voter turnout potential; record voter registrations, long lines at early voting stations televised daily, huge number of requests for absentee ballots.  How big was the turnout?

Politico reported today it was recordbreaking.

More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.

With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.

In 2004, 122.3 million voted in what was then the highest recorded turnout in the contest between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Turnout in the 2004 Bush/Kerry election was 56%.  The previous turnout record was 63% in the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon race. 

Before we get too busy patting ourselves on the back, some perspective may be in line.  A 2001 report placed the United States at 120th in a ranking of turnout as a percentage of registrants. 

There are a number of proposals floating around to increase voter turnout. They include making registration easier, EDR (election,or same day registration), and moving election days from Tuesdays to Saturdays and Sundays.

With Bush Still In Charge, The Right Will Blame Obama

By Cernig

Russian President Dimitri Medvedev chose today of all days to announce that Russia might deploy conventionally-armed short ranged missiles in the Baltic region if the US goes ahead with the Bush administration's planned ABM installations in Eastern Europe. Even though the Bush administration (still in power until January) and its neocon Wormtongues own the ABM boondoggle lock, stock and barrel and are clearly aiming it at Russia - and even though such military shifts are always planned months in advance - somehow today the Right are painting Russia's move as Obama's fault.

Medvedev, you see, mysteriously didn't congratulate Obama on his win in a speech which was scheduled weeks ago as the Russian leader's first "state of the union" address to his nation. Though why he should in such a speech is a mystery even the NY Times, which used the same ridiculous formulation, doesn't explain. The implication is that Medvedev is deliberately testing Obama to see if he has a spine. The truth is that Medvedev is rightly pissed with the Bush administration and Republican rule and Obama (perhaps because during the debates he repeated that dumb conservative talking point that Russia started the conflict in Georgia) is simply getting caught in the fallout.

Of the proposed deployments, Medvedev said:

“These are forced measures,” Mr. Medvedev said. “We have told our partners more than once that we want positive cooperation, we want to act together to combat common threats, that we want to act together. But they, unfortunately, don’t want to listen to us.”

That's all about the Bush/Cheney bluster and stonewalling - not Obama. He continued in the same vein:

Referring to the fighting in Georgia, he said: “The conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending NATO warships to the Black Sea and then for the forceful foisting on Europe of America’s anti-missile system, which in its turn will entail retaliatory measures by Russia.”

The fighting in Georgia was “among other things, the result of the arrogant course of the U.S. administration which hates criticism and prefers unilateral decisions,” Medvedev said, according to news reports.

Which is, simply, true. Saakashvili wouldn't have sent his troops into South Ossetia to conduct atrocities if he didn't think Bush's America and NATO had his backs, and he thought that because Bush kept ignoring NATO allies who told him he was out on a limb about Georgia and his neocon pal McCain was whispering in his ear.

Somehow, all this translates into Russia testing the "Moonbat Messiah" instead of what it should be seen as - a situation where the US desperately needs to shake of the failed Republican method and try some old-fashioned diplomacy and sense for a change.

No honeymoon for Obama.

Record Turnout

by anderson

Ed Morrissey should really stop making statements like this before all the votes have been counted, even if his motivation is simply to play down the Obama victory.

...this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic.

As they say, appearances can be deceiving.

Now Morrissey looks entirely foolish in light of this news:

More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.

With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.

In 2004, 122.3 million voted in what was then the highest recorded turnout in the contest between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Pondering an Obama Cabinet

by anderson

Speculation about the composition of Obama's cabinet appears to be the order of the day in a few circles. None of it is confirmed, of course, but this would be great news:

President-elect Barack Obama is strongly considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a Cabinet post, Democratic officials told Politico.

After eight years of industry hacks wrecking havoc on environmental law, what a breath of fresh air this would be. Literally.

Wasilla hillbillies loot Neiman Marcus

By Ron Beasley

Apparently Sarah Palin really porked out when told to buy a few suits:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Those Alaskans really do like their pork and the "bridge to nowhere" actually leads to Neiman Marcus.

Pittsburgh and Philly

By Fester:

I was just checking the Pennsylvania Secretary of State website for county by county breakdowns of the vote and something surprised me.  Philadelphia and Pittsburgh proportionally underperformed for Obama compared to John Kerry's coalition to win Pennsylvania in 2004. Below is a simple chart of Pennsylvania's state wide performance in 2004 and 2008, as well as Philadelphia County and Allegheny County's performances.

 

As you can see in 2004, John Kerry ran up his margins in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties while losing the rest of the state.  This is a traditional Democratic strategy and GOTV system of flushing the base precincts and hoping that you don't get crushed in the "T."

Obama's coalition and map is significantly different.  He actually lost votes in Allegheny County while minimally adding margin there.  Fewer people voted in Allegheny County in 2008 than 2004.  He gained margin and votes in Philadelphia but at a slower rate than he gained across the state.  This is a significantly different map, and I need to think about what this means going forward.    

The Morning After

By BJ

And the hangover begins.

Not the political one yet, just the one from staying up late last night celebrating.  I’d be interested to see what kind of dive productivity numbers take for the day.

As to election results still trickling in that are surprising.  It looks like convicted felon Ted Stevens will hold onto his Senate seat.  And here Alaskans thought people’s view of their state couldn’t sink any lower.  They’re now in a league with Louisiana, which keeps electing a guy found with bribe money in his freezer.

For Barack Obama, he is going to be glad of all of that “presumptuous” preparation he put into the transition team.  As CNN points out, Obama will have little spare time to savor his victory, (and on a sober note, there is a funeral for him to attend in the very near future).

As for Obama’s speech, it was notable for its unifying theme, but then so was George Bush’s not so long ago.  Obama’s mandate is far clearer than any Bush won, and I’m certain there are more than a few on the left who are eager to repay the right for the slights of the last eight years.  While I have much more faith in Obama’s sincerity than I did in Bush’s, it remains for him to prove himself now, and the transition team and picks he makes in the next few weeks will begin to show us which way he intends to lead the country.

As for world reaction, the Moderate Voice has a good round-up here, and another great round-up post here.

And to cap things off, world markets are experiencing a surge.

Pennsylvania is 2010 Ground Zero

By Fester:

Wow, what a night --- now it is time to start thinking about 2010, and my initial thought is that Pennsylvania will be the scene of the biggest set of contested House elections as quite a few seats are vulnerable and could be vacating.  Let's get started here on look at the moving parts.

Alyson Schwartz, D-PA-13 (Philly Burbs) is rumored to be one of the favored candidates to run against Republican Senator Arlen Specter.  The Philly Burbs have been trending hard to the Democrats for most of this decade so this should be a lean/tilt Dem hold.  However, I am assuming that the GOP or at least conservative activists will realize that the second easiest seat to win is an open seat (seats where there are mistress related scandals are the easiest it seems).  So I am assuming a strong challenge.

Next we have PA-11 where Rep. Kajorski narrowly held on.  He massively underperformed both his district's natural lean and Barack Obama's statewide margin.  This should be a natural target seat for the Republicans in 2010 as it is a culturally conservative district.

I thought John Murtha in PA-12 would have been in trouble, but it looks like he won by a good fifteen to twenty points.  I had slotted this race as a good GOP target at 5:00pm EST on Election Day but with these results, it is a longer shot race.  I could see this being a suicide seat race as the southwest portion of the state has to give up a Congressional seat in 2011/2012 and this district could be demolished if Murtha indicates he wants to retire. 

Next in PA-3 which is located up in northwestern Pennsylvania with Erie as its population anchor is a traditional swing district that now has a freshman Democrat holding it.  Traditionally the first re-election campaign is the toughest one for a new incumbent. 

Next the Democrats have one traditional first tier offensive significantly  attempt to take PA-6 which is in the Philly burbs. Strong efforts were made in 2004 and 2006 but Rep. Jim Gerlach (R) did not face a first tier challenge in 2008.  Jim Gerlach significantly overpeforms his districts Presidential, Senatorial and Gubanatorial leans.  There are few swing urban/suburban swing districts left that are still held by Republicans.  This is a natural but tough target.  A third tier challenge in the 2006 and 2008 cycle has been PA-18 which is held by Republican Rep. Tim Murphy.  This district is a slightly leaning Republican district with a conservative Democratic registration advantage.  It is a plausible but expensive challenge district and it is also my white whale. 

So with two years to go, Pennsylvania's target list is 6 House seats for one party or the other.  Throw in the Governor's race and a top tier Senate race, and Pennsyvlania politcal junkies will be working constantly from next Friday (hangover recovery time) to November 15, 2010. 

Late-Night Election Thoughts

By BJ

Well, it is all over but the lawsuits, though they’re unlikely to change anything.  As I write this, Obama holds slim leads in both Indiana and North Carolina with 99% of the precincts reporting.  That will push him to 364 Electoral Votes, assuming he loses Missouri and Montana.  If he does carry Missouri, it takes him to 375.  As the vote in the three west-coast states is being counted, Obama’s margin in the popular vote is also increasing, and should end up over 5%.  All in all, a pretty damned good night.

McCain’s concession speech was good, (though I have to disagree with Fester in that I don’t think it out-shined Obama’s acceptance speech, but then few can match Obama on public speaking).  McCain was the gracious and honorable “maverick” that only showed up once or twice during the campaign such as his convention speech.  There have been a lot of pre-mortems and there will be a stream of post-mortems for his campaign, but in the end it is not wrong to point out that no other Republican would have made the race even this close.

On that note, I do fear what will become of the Republican Party now.  While McCain was gracious in defeat, his supporters were far less so, and reading around the right-wing blogs, graciousness seems in very short supply.

I know that some are congratulating Obama on his win, such as our own John McCain. Yes, that’s fair, but if you listened to the concession speech the reasons this is such a “great moment” is because Obama is black, not because he was qualified, or even able to handle the Presidency. As I said before that makes this election even more pathetic. It was all about electing the first “Affirmative Action” candidate to office.

I can't wait to see the quality of discourse from the right over the next four years.

As for Obama, what can be said about his acceptance speech?  In the words of one of the commentators at CBC, seems to be going for the title of poet-laureate as well as President of the United States.  As with many of speeches, it was powerful, moving, inspiring, and included a call to action and for sacrifice that we haven’t heard for a long time from a politician.  Whether or not people understand just what he means by that is still debatable, but I like what I hear.  That said, I don’t envy him the task ahead.

And just for the hell of it, I’ll leave the final word tonight to my buddy salvage:

I can't believe y'all elected a secret Muslim Manchurian Marxist Fascists Liberal Black Panther Bastard spawn of Malcolm X ant-Semite terrorist radical man-dater who wasn't even born in America making him completely unconstitutional as your President.

Right now I wish I was the guy who owned the biggest paper and data shredding concern in the DC area. I would tell my guys that they'd be working straight through 'till the New Year.

Oh the wignuts, this is going to be a complete phase-shift, they will suddenly fall in hate with government "jackboots" all over again. It will be like the Clinton years only louder and oh so crazier.

Everything good that happens from now on will be because GW Bush was President, everything bad because Obama, yes we are going through the looking glass.

But that just means more things to laugh at.

1st Thoughts

By Fester

I'm tired, estactic, jet-lagged, amazed, and still processing.  But Wow, we did this.  I did GOTV planning for America Votes this year for our Pennsylvania efforts, and I am still amazed that it looks like we won the state by 10 points.  I was thinking that we would be looking at a five or six point win in the state.  I am shocked that Democrats held on in PA-11 and PA-12 so the Pennsylvania net margin was +1 House Seat for Democrats in PA-3.  But Wow!

Here are some of my first thoughts:

• WOW!
• John McCain's concession speech was gracious and outperformed Obama's acceptance speech
• The South is solid for the GOP -- seems racial polarization was enough to tighten up North Carolina and Virginia as well as other southern states
• The spread probably looks like +5 or +6 for Obama once California finishes coming in
• Still can not find good information on the House of Representatives on a national level.
• Surprised that Pennsylvania got called so quickly, and Virginia took so long
• The horns are still honking outside the hotel. 

Election Liveblog

7:18 CT by Cernig: Projections show Obama ahead in Florida 53/47% and well ahead in Ohio 65/34%

Obama is up 11% on Kerry's support with Hispanic voters.

Older voters up considerably, and voting McCian 55% of the time.

There are already two seats in the Senate which are being projected to change hands to the Dems.

7:27 CT by Cernig - ABC's Russell Goldman:

Obama's projected victory in Pennsylvania which has 21 electoral votes was a blow to McCain's White House hopes. While it was carried by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, McCain had hoped to turn it into a red state.

"We're going to win Pennsylvania tomorrow and I'm going to be the President of the United States," McCain said at a rally Monday. "Pennsylvania will do it, and Pittsburgh will be the important area."

7:35CT by BJ - I just note that Hagan has beaten Elizabeth Dole for a Dem Senate pick-up

8.01 CT by Cernig: ABC projects Minn. for Obama. Current EC projections - Obama 174/ McCain 61

8.04CT by Cernig Georgia projected for McCain. African Americans only 34% of the turnout but there'd been a massive GOP voter supression push in Georgia.

8.07CT New Mexico, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina all look to be Dem Senate pick ups.

8:15CT by BJ - I was watching Fox at the top of the hour and they accidentally called Ohio for Obama, whichwould have ended McCain's hopes.  They caught it right away, unfortunately, but I was real happy for about 10 seconds.

8:18CT by BJ - Ohio called for President-elect Obama!

8.20CT by Cernig. ABC hasn't called Ohio yet but they're showing 57% Obama/42% MCain. Axelrod is on ABC right now saying the Obama campiagn has out-preformed Bush '04 in all the swing states.

8.23 CT by Cernig. If McCain can only carry Alabama by 53% to 47%, I'm thinking he's got a problem.

8.24CT by Cernig Now we have ABC agreeing Ohio will fall for Obama. He's still ahead in Florida too.

8.36 CT Fox and ABC are calling New Mexico for Obama. EC projections: 200 Obama, 90 McCain. Given Ovbama will take CA, if he takes Florida too then McCain's toast.

But there's less than 300,000 votes separating the two, with 16 million plus in. Wanna bet the Republicans call foul?

8.40: Texas projected for Texas (Duh!) although San Antionio voted for Obama (Yay the Alamo City!). EC now projected as 200/124

8:40 by BJ - I’m very surprised with how close Virginia is.  This appeared to be a lot firmer in Obama’s camp than Ohio was, but Ohio has been called and Virginia is on a razor’s edge, though it appears Obama may win a squeaker.  You have to wonder what happened there.

8:55CT by BJ - I don’t know when the networks will call it officially, but take a look at the map and note that California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii are worth 77 electoral votes and all are safe for Obama.  Add to what’s already called, and you can see the election is funtionally over.

9.03 CT by Cernig - Iowa projected to break for Obama, another Bush state turned over.

9.43 CT by Cernig. My friend Nicole at C&L tells me the Rocky Mountain News has called Colorado for Obama. That's bring Obama to 216.

9.53CT K-Lo at the Corner has run out of Kool-Aid, for now.

... this is an opportunity, too, an opportunity for our movement, the conservative movement, to reaccess, to return to its roots, to study and renew. And to whip the Republican party into shape. It's going to be tough. But the Right is up for it.

I'm so sorry we're here. But we appear to be. So we'll buck up, build up, and fight on.

9.58 CT Fox is calling Virginia for Obama too, according to MsJoanne in comments. James Joyner thinks Florida will break for Obama too. If so, McCain can put out the lights.

10.00 CT ABC formally projects Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. They report that AP and all the major news outlets are doing likewise.

I'm signing off for now although I think BJ and Jay are still around and may make some updates to this post. I'll be back if there's any major upsets. There's plenty more at memeorandum for political junkies though, including this story suggesting Republicans may be getting ready to allege electronic voting fraud in favor of the Democratic camp.

10:05CT by BJ – You know, I didn’t think it would matter when the networks finally called it for Obama.  I mean, it was obvious once they called Ohio that he was going to win, but it still made me a bit giddy to actually hear them say it.

BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT!

I'm out

10:40CT By BJ – Well, I though I was gone.  I switched over to CBC coverage and they’re looking at a huge crowd spontaneously gathering outside of the White House yelling for Bush to get out.  Hard to tell if its just people celebrating or if it will turn into something uglier if people get carried away.  Hopefully not the latter.  I don’t want anything to tarnish this victory.

10:50CT by BJ - Seems the demonstration is of the good-natured variety, but very much caught the authorities off-guard.  Looks like they're partying in Toronto as well.  I bet we'll see a lot of happy people across the globe tomorrow.

12:23 EST --- By Fester --- Wow --- I am amazed, but my first thought is that the GOP closed harder than I thought they would have (fewer House losses than I thought).  A couple of unexpected Democrats lost (Boyda in Kansas) but held on in both PA-11 and PA-12.  The Senate massacre does not look like it will happen as the Dems look to max out at Plus 7 (NH, VA, NM, CO, OR, AK, and maybe MN). 

Early Projections: PA For Obama

By Cernig

Almost 8pm on the East Coast and ABC are projecting Vermont for Obama, Kentucky and South Carolina for McCain. Projected voting seems to heavily favor McCain in Georgia. All those states being projected for McCain were on Jay's watch list earlier.

ABC are projecting Pennsylvania for Obama!!

Obama seems to be ahead in Florida, McCain in Virginia.

7:13 CT I've just been told NPR agrees with ABC on PA. According to ABC, Obama is taking roughly an equal share of the white vote while making an almost clean sweep of the black vote.

First Results are In

By BJ

And it looks like we're in for an upset!

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

In seriousness however, a quick message for America from your friendly northern neighbours.

Update:

Since we're still in the nail-biting phase of tonight's early results, allow me to offer a couple of positive signs for all you Obama supporters out there.

First, McCain's support among white Evangelical voters, though still very high, is apparently six points lower than what Bush had.

Second, Obama is clearly outperforming Kerry in the rural Indiana ridings, keeping things very close, and we still haven't heard from the cities and areas where Obama is expected to do well.

Finally, whoever the hell came up with the idea for the holograms on CNN should be shot.  Or at least the news crews' for their over-enthusiastic explanations of it.

 

Malkin Fears Obama's A Black Panther

By Cernig

Let's get this straight - I abhor any and all voter supression and intimidation, no matter who is doing it. And I consider the New Black Panther Party to be no better a set of bigotted nutters using religion and race for their own purile purposes than are the white supremacists and Christian Dominionists they oppose.

But Michelle Malkin has headlined a post about Black Panthers turning up outside a Philly polling place "Obama’s civilian security force: Billy club-wielding security guards at Philly polls" - when she has absolutely no evidence that these people have anything endorsement from Obama, in any shape or form.

If you believe that Malkin has just revealed her own racism thereby, backhandedly exposing in her own words her irrational fear of all blacks...well, you're not alone.

Update: And it looks like the whole story was hyped up in the first place by the Mccain campaign, Fox News and rightwing bloggers. Figures.

Update 2: Oh look - another made up story from the far right, this one about the supression of Republican vote-watchers in Philly.

For Any Value Of XY

By Cernig

My friend Charlie Stross hammers in the nail on Prop 8:

Speaking as a man who happens to be married to a woman, I'm mystified as to how banning someone else from marrying can in any way protect my marriage; but this kind of Orwellian misuse of language is typical of witch hunters. When challenged, supporters of the act often bring up irrelevancies: "marriage is for the purpose of having children," they say, conveniently side-stepping the question of why they aren't in favour of mandatory divorce for childless or elderly couples, or why they oppose allowing gay couples to adopt. Or, "marriage is a holy sacrament," which kind of assumes that everybody shares their definition of "holy".

A quick search for organizations supporting this proposition throws up the usual suspects: the Roman Catholic Church, American Family Association, Focus on the Family — basically the usual sleazy mess of hard-line Christian groups — with the Church of Latter-Day Saints and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America along for the ecumenical pogrom.

Here's a good diagnostic test for whether a proposed law is bigoted: if it applies to a group of people, replace the subject group in question with "Jews" or "Blacks", and see how it reads. If Adolf Hitler or the Grand Cyclops would approve, then it's a fair bet that there's something fishy about it. In the case of Proposition 8, how would you vote if it read, "Only marriage between Christians is recognized in California"? Or "Only marriage between white-skinned people is recognized in California"?

If you are a Californian voter and you vote for Proposition 8, then I'm afraid it means you're a bigot. You favour depriving a subset of the population of their civil rights, you are willing to vote for a measure that will destroy existing marriages, and you will refuse to honour marriage contracts acknowledged elsewhere in the world. And you've tacitly admitted that your own marriage does need protecting (which is kind of pathetic).

Yup.

Voting stories

By Libby

This first one is from yesterday but I'm including it anyway. Hecate passes on a beautiful story and photo from an Obama rally in Raleigh, NC.

Hecate also pulls a Tarot card. It's a very good omen. Might be NSFW if you work in very straight-laced place. It's just a picture of a card with a naked female angel, but use caution.

Pete Abel in Missouri saw lots of young people excited about voting.

1000 students lined up at Penn State.

Twitter the vote.

Turn out stories from many different locations.

Moved to tears

By Libby

Although I weep at the end of It's a Wonderful Life every year, I'm not really one to cry over every little thing. I've been surprised how often a story about this race has made me so teary-eyed. Today's tear jerkers: First a voting story from Glen.

And I have a wonderful image from my small precinct to share. A young African-American mother can to vote with her three young daughters — we have those partially-enclosed plastic "booths." When she went to mark her vote, she told the girls "come, touch my hand, be a part of this — it's something you're going to remember the rest of your life."

Obama's first statement about his grandmother's death.

I'm just crushed that she didn't live one more day to see him to the end of his long journey. One bright spot in this dark moment is that yes, her vote will count.

Yes. We. Can.

By Libby

Election day at last. I'm so jazzed today that I almost can't focus enough to blog so I'm just going to cross posting election day stories from my place. People in my internet circles are reporting long lines and no lines. Everyone is a good mood. You can feel the hope. It's so palpable, you could eat it for breakfast.

Dixville Notch, NH, traditionally the first to report results has it for Obama in a landslide, 15-6.

Obama closes out his campaign with 90,000 at a rally in Manassas, Virginia last night. This morning in Richmond, all their voting machines broke down. Some confusion at first, but they now have paper ballots. Good. Harder to steal the vote that way.

Sean is on the road and takes a look at the Obama ground game in Georgia. I'm too superstitous to make predictions but that state could surprise us.

Over in Right Blogstantinople and Wingnut Punditryville, heads are already exploding. Take your pick of comical coverage here. Breathless posts on McCain's optimism, horrified indignation over imagined voting fraud or dire warnings about our country lurching to the left.

Meanwhile, I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing today. I'm not much for hour by hour analysis, but I expect to be sharing voting stories as they come in. In the interim, visualize victory.

[Photo credit] (Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Joe the Strummer

by Eric Martin

I must confess that I have an unfair advantage over many of my fellow citizens come election day in that my designated polling place happens to be in the lobby of my apartment building.  No distance to travel, no consulting a map, no mixups: just roll out of bed and pull the lever in my boxers.

Despite my cushy voting existence, today, things didn't exactly go as planned.  I ended up spending an hour on a line that stretched a full city block just to get back into my lobby.  The line was easily more than twice as long as 2004 - and this is New York City! Where our votes count little!  And yet, there was this interminable line of people exuding a palpable excitement, if a bit dampened with a touch of groginess.

On an unrelated note, my mind kept inserting various Clash tracks into my cerebral disc player while I was waiting to vote, and I haven't been able to get the buggers out all day.  Then I got to thinking that Joe Strummer would probably be smiling broadly at today's events - it's his kind of election.  And that's when it dawned on me: Joe Strummer has chosen me as his vessel to communicate to the people from beyond the grave on this most joyous of days.  Joe in his own words:

Is McCain's Optimism Credible?

By Cernig

Even the most optimistic of McCain backers seems to be admitting that the Dems are going to pick up substantial gains in the House and Senate today - which seems, at least in my poor brain, to be a bit of a mental contortion on their part.

I know that the McCain campaign, in desperation, called on people to vote for McCain/Palin as a balance to Democratic majorities on the Hill (and that the RNCC in response immediately called on voters to send Republicans to the Hill to counterbalance an Obama White House) but how realistic is that really?

McCain and Palin have, during their campaign, pandered to the very worst of their GOP base in the most obsequious, hate-raising and maverick-denying way possible. I just don't see it as likely that anyone who can vote for the McCain/Palin ticket as it campaigned could possibly decide to vote Dem for Senate or House. Likewise, if someone's already decided to voting Republican in a House or Senate choice, I don't see any way they will then decide to vote for Obama/Biden for the White House. It just doesn't pass the smell test, for me.

Which leaves the McCain/Palin "last minute victory" afficionados with an explanation problem - if the GOP are going to take a drubbing, I believe they're going to get it cross-ticket. And they are going to take a drubbing. Has anyone seen them try to square that with their claims, or is the credibility gap just handwaved? From what I've seen and read, it's the latter.

So, it seems to me, the "Last Minute Maverick" stuff is either 1) delusional, 2) simple cynical propaganda to try to stave off an utter collapse of the Republican vote, 3) an attempt to undermine Obama's presidency by giving conservatives excuses to consider it illegitimate, or 4) conservative bigwigs think they can swing stealing the election for McCain but doing the same down-ticket is too hard a task. My money, for now, is on option two. But it's still worth keeping an eye on Republican pre-emptive cries of foul as well as the far more widespread but less hyped stories that indicate the American electoral process, as a technical exercise, has very deep problems.

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What to watch for tonight

by Jay McDonough

There will be clues along the way; hints how the evening will play out.  Watch for the following:

6:00PM EST.  Polls close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky.  If Obama is up in Indiana, which hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, McCain is in big trouble.  In Kentucky, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is in a tight race.  If he's doing well the opportunity for Senate Democrats to reach 60 is in jeopardy.

7:00PM EST.  Polls close in Virginia, Georgia, and most of Florida and New Hampshire.  Virginia is the one to watch.  If Virginia goes Obama, it could signal a big Obama sweep.  McCain really needs to win Georgia.

7:30PM EST.  Polls close in Ohio and North Carolina.   Ohio was critical to Bush 43 wins in 2000 and 2004.  In North Carolina, Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole is running for re-election (and conducting a really slimy campaign).  Watch for how Dole is doing for a sense on Senate Democrats opportunities in the Senate.

8:00PM EST.  Polls close in Pennsylvania, Missouri and western Florida.  McCain has been investing big time in Pennsylvania, so a win there is crucial to his campaign.  If McCain can't win Florida, some analysts say he should head to bed.

9:00PM EST.  Polls close in Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  If Obama hasn't won a big Bush state by this point, he will need to win Colorado if he has a shot at the presidency.  The Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in Minnesota is tight and another key sign of success for Democrats in the Senate.

10:00PM EST.   Polls close in Nevada, Iowa and Montana.  Nevada and Montana are tight and Obama has spent a lot of time in both.

11:00PM EST.  Polls close in California, Oregon and Washington.  Polls suggest these should be easy wins for Obama.  The Senate race in Oregon would be one to watch as moderate Republican Senator Gordon Smith runs for re-election.

Dumbest thing I've heard at 4:30 AM

By Fester:

Until this morning, there have been two things that have competed for the distinction of the dumbest things I have heard at 4:30 in the morning.  Both occurred when I was seventeen:

"Let's give the dog some Jello shots"

AND

"Let's go for a run"

I'm two time zones west of Pittsburgh right now so my sleep schedule is off. So I woke up at 4:00 AM local, and turned on the television as my body was convinced it was time to get up for work. I had CNBC on and they were talking politics. The question came up would the projected gains for Democrats in the House and whether it would lead to a more liberal or a more conservative House Caucus. The respectable pundit declared that it would lead to a more conservative House because 'most of the seats Democrats would inherit (his word, not mine) would be Republican seats..." This may be the dumbest thing I have ever heard at 4:30 in the morning. Of course, any seat a Democrat wins will have been a Republican seat. There are no Greens, no NDP, no Constitutional Party, no independent House Reps. So what is the analytical point here? It could be argued that the current median House member will be displaced as the new median House member will be an even more conservative Democrat, but there are not that many Democrats who are more conservative than the median Representative already. Further more, there is ideological coherence to both caucuses as the most liberal Republican is more conservative than the most conservative Democrat, so replacing a median Republican with a conservative Democrat is a significant shift to the aggregate left. A larger House majority allows for different coalitions of the 'willing' so that median voter theorem is significantly weakened due to agenda control and option space restrictions. If there are more Democrats in the House, it will of course be a (slightly) more liberal place unless one projects that all of a sudden we see the bifurcated Democratic Party of 1962 but Johnson, Wallace and Nixon made sure that coalition is no longer viable.

The Big Day is Finally Here

By BJ

Via the Swing State Project, a handy guide for when the results will start to come in.  Well, except for the first two towns to vote, which both went for Obama.

Speaking of maps, the one over at 270towin should prove a useful toy for the evening.  Regardless whether or not the networks decide to call things early on or not, such a map will make it pretty obvious which way the night is going to go.

Now we just get to sit around and worry for a few hours.

2004 VS 2008

By Ron Beasley

For those of us who are still nervous it is good to remember just how close the race was in 2004 as compared to this election.  Below is the map from Electoral-Vote.com on this day in 2004.

>







As you can see it was very close with Iowa and Ohio tied.  Bush took both of those states and that was the election.

Not even close.

What and Why

By Ron Beasley

I spent the afternoon looking at the polls and playing with an interactive electoral map and came up with what I though would be the likely result tomorrow.  Before I had a chance to post I discovered I had reached the same conclusion as none other than Karl Rove, Obama - 338, McCain - 200.  Not quite a blowout but close. (note: I see that Larry Sabato is sticking to his 364 -174 prediction).  That's the what, the why, (or whys) is more complex.  There are a number of reasons but most of them are related to number one on the list:

1. George W. Bush:  A Republican with an approval rating of 25%.  This makes the R a toxic tag to begin with.  I made it clear to anyone who would listen eight years ago that I thought the election of George W, Bush was a disaster.  I didn't dream how right I would be - he exceeded my expectations.
2. The Economy: I made it clear two and a half years ago that the so called Bush recovery was no recovery at all but a credit driven unsustainable boom. It was based entirely on consumer spending driven by cheap credit.  I'm convinced that many in the Bush administration knew that the boom was going to go bust but had been trying to put it off until after the election.  As we have seen they failed in that.  After the major collapse in September McCain never had a prayer.
3. The Republican Model:  The Lee Attwater/Karl Rove model of using prejudice disguised as "Social Conservatism"  simply doesn't work like it has for years.  I'll discuss this in more detail below.

The Obama Imperative

By BJ

Gregory Djerejian has composed a monster post on Election Eve that I would recommend to any and all to read.  I'll give you two extended quotes as teasers:

So tomorrow we Americans will have a choice. And while it seems too easy to say McCain represents continuity, and Obama an opportunity at a major course correction and even something of a shot at redemption, we must reluctantly conclude this is the core essence of the matter. I say reluctantly because John McCain, after all, has had a storied life, whether his service as fighter pilot, tenacity in captivity, long Senate career of some distinction, and more. And yet none of this matters finally, as he is nevertheless the standard-bearer of today’s Republican Party, alas. And today’s Republican Party is a disgrace, a dim shadow of its former self.

Indeed, the cautiously deliberative, fiscally conservative, great internationalist party one associates with names like Dwight D. Eisenhower is simply dead. Replacing it we have a cacophony of imbecilic voices like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh (ask yourself—if you were a serious politician with a smidgen of intellect—would you even entertain questions from this veritable moronic inferno, or prefer to steer clear of such cheap carnivals?). Essentially, today’s Republican party is little more than a reincarnation of the Know-Nothing party (like the one of yore, this one too particularly outraged by immigrants, illegal ones only we are led to believe, of course…), a confused morass of vindictiveness crossed with fear crossed with abject ignorance (think Joe the Plumber, the supposed Country First Everyman who rants incoherently about how Barack Obama’s victory would mean the death of Israel, perhaps the greatest inanity I’ve overheard of all in the awful din of this painfully long election season, and this in a season rife with them).

And

Into this cauldron, and on the other side of the aisle, we have Mr. Obama. He is not perfect, he is no messiah delivered from the heavens, and it is true his resume is relatively thin (to which one might respond, who had bigger, more experienced resumes than Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld?). But let us be very clear: Mr. Obama has nonetheless been a tremendous gift to us, and we would be foolish in the extreme not to hope dearly for his victory. He himself is a consummate professional with undeniable potential for greatness. To have already achieved what he has been able to speaks volumes, getting to where he's gotten to alone, given all the road-blocks in his way. Yet he is humble too, and is evidently surrounding himself by very serious and knowledgeable people on the economy (think Paul Volker, Larry Summers, or Warren Buffett). On foreign policy while his posture on issues like Afghanistan and even Georgia have given me some concerns, his overall world-view and appetite to engage in robust diplomacy is light years better than the McCain approach.

Let us be plain: one man offers a continuation of the Bush Doctrine, in the main, the other, a repudiation of it. Mr. Obama's main stress on diplomacy as a neglected tool in our arsenal is of the highest importance, and lives in stark contrast to breezy 'bomb, bomb, bomb' Iran cretinism (as the saying goes, there is always a litle truth in every joke). And his election alone—in one major, fell swoop—would immediately go a long way towards helping restore much of America’s lost soft-power, by reminding the world that an African-American who was just a state senator a few years back, whose middle name is Hussein and last name rhymes with Osama, can, not only unseat the current premier Democratic dynasty (the Clinton’s, of course, who’d replaced the Kennedy’s), but then take on and likely prevail (fingers crossed!) over the hard-hitting, hyper-aggressive Republican Party, this only seven short years after the greatest terror attack ever inflicted on the American homeland.

There is a lot more where that came from, and it makes me once again wish that Mr. Djerejian would resume his blogging ways on a regular basis rather than just popping up every major international crisis or so.

I also would have preferred he put this up about a week ago so more people would have had the chance to read it before the vote, but I suppose late is better than never.

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Manufacturing the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

By BJ

Polls will start closing in less than 24 hours, and barring Supreme (Court) intervention, Barack Obama will be named the victor a few short hours later.  But to follow up on Cernig’s post below, the right is most certainly not looking to take defeat lightly.  Rather, they are already working towards a narrative as to how the election was “stolen” from them.

WHETHER or not Barack Obama wins election tomorrow, his campaign has exposed some gaping weaknesses in the electoral process

All too true, and Jay and Libby have listed many of the problems right here; voter suppression and purges, unverifiable electronic voting machines which just happen to switch votes only one way, all serious issues, but of course not the one's the right is interested in.

On the electoral side, we've seen allegations of massive voter fraud, often backed up by actual arrests and investigations. The FBI has opened an investigation into the Obama-friendly group ACORN, which has been associated with fraudulent registrations and other misconduct in many jurisdictions.

Yep.  Be prepared to hear a whole lot more about ACORN from the right wing noise machine starting Wednesday night.  Politico writer John Fund has went through the trouble to create a passably respectable argument of the ACORN allegations, and I have little doubt such stories are going to become far more common in the coming months and years

Of course, as has been pointed out before, there is no evidence that fraudulent registrations actually lead to fraudulent votes of any magnitude, but as we've seen all too often over the years, such things as "facts" and "evidence" are no deterence to the true beleivers.

So after eight years of telling Democrats to, "jus get over it", regarding Florida in 2000, the Republican base is preparing their own storyline of a stolen election to nurse their hatred on.  In the meantime, the real problems with voting in America are staring people in the face will probably continue to be ignored.

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$190 to vote

By Fester:

Ezra Klein is passing along the Rachel Maddow argument that long voting lines are not a healthy sign of a democracy, but instead a systemic poor-person voter suppression method:

voting lines are just another form of poll tax. They are a time tax. How much is four hours worth to the average voter? How many voters can take four hours off from their job, or their family, to stand at a precinct? We tend to frame long voting lines as an inspiring vision of democracy, but they're quite the opposite: They are disenfranchisement in action. A longer line does not simply mean more people are voting. It means more people are not voting, as they could not afford the time tax.

One of the standard and defensible methods of valuing individual time without massive census research is to look at regional average hourly earnings.  The assumption is that average hourly earnings will roughly equal marginal earnings which roughly reflects the work versus other/better things to do with my time trade-offs.  In 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average hourly earning in the United States was slightly more than nineteen dollars per hour. 

A ten hour wait in line should be roughly calculated as costing an individual $190 in foregone earnings or leisure opportunity cost.  That is a significant implicit cost that is not fairly or equally borne.

Sunni Awakening forces get a pay cut

by Jay McDonough

When the U.S. traded responsiblity with the Iraqi government to pay Sunni Awakening forces to stay on our side, there was plenty of concern the Shia government might drop the ball and the gains against al Qaeda in Anbar province would be lost. The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday the Iraq government intends to cut the salaries of the nearly 100,000 Awakening movement forces that have been instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq.

The U.S. military, which calls the movement the Sons of Iraq, had been paying members $300 a month to carry guns and protect their neighborhoods against Al Qaeda.

Starting this month, Awakening members will be paid 300,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $250 a month, according to government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly. Awakening leaders, who had been earning $400 to $600, will also receive the lower salary.

Shuja Naje Shaker, an Awakening leader in the Guardians of Ghazaliyah, one of western Baghdad's former hot spots, warned that Awakening members won't be happy.

"They will all quit," predicted Mohammed al-Girtani, an Awakening leader in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora who had not been told about the lower salary. "And if the Awakening quits, there will be problems in the neighborhoods because there will be no one to protect them."

The Maliki government had offered Awakening forces jobs in Iraqi security forces, but to date have promised jobs to only 20% of the 100,000 Awakening members.  Creating additional friction is the Sunni's impression the Maliki government is preferentially providing work opportunities to Shia constituents.

One doesn't have to dig very deep to recognize Iraq is simmering and ready to boil over at any moment.  We don't hear it from our politicians though.  Both parties are working overtime to convince voters that things are going swimmingly in Iraq.  Republican politicians do it hoping to convince voters the U.S. effort has succeeded and "victory" is at hand. Democratic politicians, on the other hand, sell the "everything is good" in Iraq narrative to push for a U.S. withdrawal without the troublesome guilt.  Both are blowing smoke.

Exports to Cliff Dive?

By Fester:

Last quarter's initial GDP fell as personal expenditures collapsed as consumers are out of money and out of credit.  And that collapse happened before the credit markets had a coronary.  So we can expect the 4th quarter PCE component of GDP to continue to fall.  People are either broke or fear that they will be broke, and traditional monetary policy responses won't have a significant impact as we seem to be hanging at the edge of a liquidity trap. 

Econbrowser points out that one of the strengths of the US economy over the past year has been the increase in exports and the decrease in imports.  Improved balance of trade added a significant amount of support to the GDP this quarter. 

Growth in exports and a fall in imports made a positive contribution, as did strong increases in government spending, which together kept the GDP total from being far more disappointing. But a weakening global economy and strained budgets for state governments make me doubt that we'll see as strong numbers for exports and government spending in the fourth quarter.

The US dollar has been weakening until very recently.  The weaker US dollar makes US exports cheaper which means we should sell more after a bit of a lag, and imports more expensive (we saw this a lot with oil) which means we should buy less after a while.  However the US dollar has bounced off its lows and is strengthening against most other currencies as the credit contraction is prompting a flight to safety and liquidity.  So could we see a cliff-dive in exports as global growth reverses itself and macro-factors come into play?

Bloomberg reports that US manufacturers are reporting a horrendous month:

Manufacturing in the U.S. contracted in October at the fastest pace in 26 years as the credit crisis deepened and companies reduced orders.           

The Institute for Supply Management's factory index dropped to 38.9, worse than anticipated by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the lowest level since September 1982, the Tempe, Arizona-based group reported today. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between expansion and contraction.

A good chunk of US exports are capital intensive manufactured goods.  A contraction of US industrial production implies a significant decrease in foreign orders. 

Mish at Global Economic Analysis caught this interesting piece of European news ---

Volvo's order book got destroyed to the tune of 99.63 percent, with customers signing up for just 155 vehicles in the three-month period, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based company said last week.

The Volvo division is their heavy truck division.  If there is nothing to ship, there is no need to buy new heavy trucks.  Shipping prices and demand have also collapsed as bulk commodities are not needed at the same rate that they were needed just six months ago.  American coal, steel, corn, soybeans, and other bulk exports are not in demand as nothing is in demand right now.

So will we see exports cliff-dive over the next couple of quarters?

Destroying the GOP Brand

By Fester:

Just saw this over at Barry Ritholtz's new blog, which absolutely looks great:

And by way of full disclosure, I am probably best described as a Liberal Republican – low taxes, balanced budget, strong defense, no unnecessary overseas involvement, and no government involvement in personal matters (birth control, abortion, gay marriage, etc.) Liberal Republicans are now mythical creatures that no longer exist. I do not recognize the abomination that now calls itself the GOP. I guess that makes me an Independent.

Right now that description would put Barry's politics somewhere in the Wall Street/DLC axis of the Democratic Party with plenty of company although his social libertarianism puts him further to the DFH side of the party. 

I'm betting that the coming Republican food fight will be initially won by the 'we were not conservative enough' factions and if that happens, plenty of people who still conceptualize of themselves as 'liberal'/Northeast Republicans will acclimate themselves to voting for Democrats who fit their politcy preferences with far fewer contortions. 

Obama's Grandmother Has Died

By BJ

Sad news for the Obama family a day before what is likely to be a great triumph.  Madelyn Dunham has died at the age of 86.

"She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility," their statement said.

"She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure."

This wasn't entirely unexpected, given Obama's decision to suspend his campaign for a few days to go see her a little over a week ago, but it adds a sobering dimension to tomorrow's events.

Rest in peace.

Chris Hitchens Defends Khalidi

By Cernig

Chris Hitchens appears to have sobered up enough to realize what nasty people he hitched himself to when he chose to join the warmongering Right over the invasion of Iraq.

A few feeble cracks on a comedy show are not enough to erase the memory of a vulgar and vicious attack, mounted on a rival candidate McCain has publicly called "honorable," only a few days earlier. It had been said that Sen. Barack Obama had once attended a dinner for professor Rashid Khalidi, a distinguished Palestinian academic. It was further said that the Los Angeles Times, which had first reported the five-years-ago dinner in Chicago, was deliberately withholding a videotape of the evening that would show Obama in the audience while tough criticism of Israel was being voiced. Here is how the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States described the situation in a radio interview in Miami:

I'm not in the business of talking about media bias, but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet? I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different.

... Khalidi has been known to me for some time and can easily be read and consulted by anyone with the remotest curiosity about the Israeli-Arab dispute. He is highly renowned, well beyond the borders of his own discipline, for his measure and care and scruple in weighing the issue. If he is seriously to be compared to a "neo-Nazi," then the Republican nominee has put the United States in the unbelievable position of slandering the most courageously "moderate" of the Palestinian Arabs as a brownshirt and a fascist. What then has been the point of every negotiation on a two-state solution since President George H.W. Bush convened the peace conference in Madrid in 1991? Nazis, after all, are to be crushed, not accommodated. One would have to think hard before coming up with a more crazy and irresponsible statement on any subject. Once again, it seems that McCain utterly lost his bearings.

I put the word moderate in quotation marks above because I dislike employing it in its usual form. Rashid Khalidi's family is a famous one in Jerusalem, long respected by Arab and Christian and Jew and Druze and Armenian, and holding a celebrated house and position in the city since approximately the time of the Crusades. I have had the honor of being invited to this very house. If Rashid chooses to state that he doesn't care to be evicted from his ancestral home in order to make way for some settler from Brooklyn who claims to have God on his side, I think he has a perfect right to say so. I would go further and say that if Barack Obama was looking for a Palestinian friend, he could not have chosen any better. But perhaps John McCain has decided that he doesn't need any Palestinian friends and neither do we. Perhaps he thinks it's all right to refer to refugees and victims of occupation, who have been promised self-determination and statehood at the podium of the United Nations and the U.S. Congress by George Bush and Condoleezza Rice, as if they were Hitlerites. How shameful. How disgusting. How ignorant.

They always were Chris, even when they were your BFFs. Now, of course, they hate you almost as much as they do Khalidi and Obama - and would hate you just as much if you had a deeper tan.

CIA officers could face torture trial in Britain

by Jay McDonough

British officials are considering bringing criminal charges against senior CIA officers for the abduction and torture of a British resident now incarcerated at Guantanamo.  Some background:

In April 2002, Binyam Mohamed was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan after attempting to board a flight to London with a fake British passport.  American authorities informed British counterparts Mohamed was plotting to build and detonate a "dirty bomb".  Mohamed was held in Pakistan as British intelligence was dispatched to interview him there.

In the interview with the British intelligence Mohamed admitted being recruited by the Taliban to Afghanistan to learn about explosives and weapons and confessed he was to travel to Britain (where Mohamed had been residing) to produce false passports.  Mohamed said the dirty bomb story was "an FBI perception".  The British spy concluded Mohamed was lying and brought American agents into the interrogations. (Link)

Lawyers representing Mr. Mohamed have sued, on Mohamed's behalf, British intelligence forces for their part in his detention and purported torture.  British judges overseeing the case and having received secret evidence, have become increasingly critical of U.S. conduct and are now considering charging American forces for their culpability in Mr. Mohamed's abuse.

Richard Stein, of Leigh Day, representing Mr Mohamed in the High Court proceedings, said: "Ultimately the British Government had little choice once they conceded that a case had been made that Binyam Mohamed was tortured. The Convention Against Torture imposes an obligation on signatory states to investigate torture."

In August two judges ruled allegations of torture were at least arguable and that MI5 had information relating to Mr Mohamed that was "not only necessary but essential for his defence". (Link)

Mr. Mohamed claims he was sent to Morocco following his arrest in Pakistan and tortured by the CIA for eighteen months there.  He was then rendered to the secret "Dark Prison" in Afghanistan, where he claims his torture continued.  He has been held in Guantanamo Bay since September 2004.  Mr. Mohamed has testified his torture by CIA representatives includedrepeated slashing of his penis with razor blades.

Where Are All The McCain People At?

By Cernig

Conservative enthusiasm for their nominated candidate seems to be a bit lackluster.

TampaBay Buzz:

About 30 minutes before John McCain is scheduled to lead a rally outside Raymond James Stadium, looks like there's maybe 1,000 people here. What's up with that? On the day before the election? Bush drew at least 15,000 people to a rally just across the street on the Sunday before the 2004 election.

"We are the quiet majority that goes out and gets things done. ... I smell victory,'' said state Rep. Kevin Ambler. Good thing he smells it, because it's hard to see it with this crowd.

CNN's Political Ticker:

John McCain’s first rally of the day, in Tampa outside Raymond James Stadium, only drew about 1,100 people. Local reporters noting that at almost the same spot just before the 2004 election, President Bush drew about 15,000 people. Two weeks ago, Obama drew an estimated 8,000.

Republican Gov. Crist, who had previously agreed to do interviews with CNN and various local affiliates, bolted right after the rally with no explanation.

Hey John? No more caffeine for you!

Significantly, more conservatives will turn out for McCain's "pitbull" than for McCain himself. Equally significantly, even Mitt Romney refuses to say McCain ran a dignified campaign - and yet despite one of the sleaziest campaigns in the history of the World few bought into the McCain Mud Factory. That the conservative base is happier supporting even more of the Rovian same, only stupider, is the entire reason they are headed for the wilderness.

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The most ridiculous thing Bill Kristol ever wrote

By Cernig

Bill Kristol, always wrong, today wrote:

Barack Obama will probably win the 2008 presidential election.  If he does, we conservatives will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism.

Does even Kristol believe that? There's going to be a wailing and gnashing of teeth approaching biblical proportions. Internal civil war, recriminations and witch-hunts. Oh, and plenty of renewed calls for the rightwing coup the wingnuts have been pleading for since 2006, to save the poor, dumb American people from Teh Socialist, Muslim, Baby-Killing, Malcom-X-Kin Obamination.

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Dirty Tricks Done Dirt Cheap

By Cernig

Take one cherry-picked quote, say that a newspaper has been "hiding" it when it has been on their website all along and hype the result through several different rightwing noise-makers. Result - a scandal which says that Obama would like to drive the coal industry bankrupt. One good enough for Sarah Palin to tout on the stump.

The original quote, presented in a cropped clip of an Obama interview that discussed his policy on climate change and carbon "cap and trade", looked terrible for Obama. Especially in places like West Virginia and Ohio:

That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

But it's just the Right cherry-picking its quotes again to fabricate a smear out of whole cloth.

This from the same interview - and unmentioned by the unethical smear-merchants at Newsbusters, who first floated the rightwing's version of the truth:

"But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives."

Shows clearly that Obama meant only plants not using clean-coal technology would be hit.

And that is also McCain's position.

On June 21, 2005, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told McCain in a Senate debate that his legislation to curb climate change would "put coal of out of business." McCain didn't contest that claim. Indeed McCain agreed that his legislation would "require sacrifice" acknowledging that critics said it would cost "thousands of jobs."

But you won't be hearing that from Newsbusters, Drudge, Malkin, Fox News, Palin or any of the many others who climbed on this "November Surprise" bandwagon.

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Damn you John McCain...

By Fester:

Damn you John McCain, you and your 'rally' this morning has cost me at least 45 minutes of sleep.  I'm flying out of state for business this week and my flight is scheduled to leave the Pittsburgh International Airport just as McCain is scheduled to start speaking at an aviation company at the edge of the airport property.  I figure since this is the last day of campaigning, in a critical region for McCain, there is a chance that he could attract a crowd similar to that of a good high school football game, and I just can not afford to get stuck behind that traffic.... Damn you McCain for making me get up too early!

At this point, the race is down to Pennsylvania, and even that it is not that far 'down.'   I think Obama wins Pennsylvania by 6 to 7 points, and the national popular vote by 7 or 8 points as third party votes collapse, GOTV takes effect and the organizational edge grinds out the win.  I think that Congressman Murtha barely survives (less than a 5% win) but Kanjorski in PA-11 loses.  That will be one third of the House Congressional losses for Democrats.  I think Democrats pick up a net of 28 to 32 seats for the House, and 'only' 8 in the Senate.  I am still amazed at the expectations of this cycle as 60 was plausible.  And I am expecting one hell of an intra-mural GOP food fight starting on Wednesday.  I bet the 'we were not conservative enough' faction will win the opening round. 

Iraq Demands Troop Agreement Answers

By Cernig

The Iraqi government isn't going to allow the Bush administration to run out the clock on status of forces agreements or to punt the decision to the next administration.

Iraq expects a reply from the United States within days to its proposal for changes to a pact requiring U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Saturday.

"We expect by Tuesday or Wednesday next week to receive answers from the American side about the suggestions of amendments proposed by the Iraqi cabinet," Zebari told U.S.-funded al-Hurra Arabic language television.

"We are talking about a small space of time. It is not open ended, and every side is coming nearer to the moment of truth."

... Iraqi officials have said their proposed amendments would tighten the language demanding a pullout in three years, clarify circumstances under which U.S. troops could be tried in Iraqi courts, and ban U.S. attacks on Iraq's neighbors from its soil.

That last condition is clearly aimed at reducing tensions in both Syria and Iran. But senior Bush administration offcials have already said they're likley to refuse to consider the Iraqi's proposed amendments and have been ratcheting up the political blackmail as they try to force the Iraqi hand.

If the pact should fail, Baghdad has said it will seek an extension to the U.N. mandate. Washington has said that if the mandate expires without a deal it will halt all operations, including services it provides Iraq such as air traffic control.

U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt said a failure in the pact negotiations could hurt Baghdad's efforts to attract investment now that the country was perceived as being safer.

"What business people are telling us is that they're watching that set of negotiations as they factor in the public policy component of their investment decision," Kimmitt said on the sidelines of a Baghdad investment conference.

An extension to the UN mandate is far from certain to pass the UNSC. Russia has apparently told Maliki that it won't veto such a move, but there's always the Chinese. This Iraqi move, however, will at least mean that the affair will play out on Bush's time and leave the problem obviously one that Bush owns, even if Obama ends up having to fix it.

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Israel Fears Rightwing Extremist Plot

By Cernig

Israeli intelligence says that it fears assassination attempts from rightwing extremists, designed to derail negotiations on peace in Palestine.

There has been a recent increase in violence by hardline Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and this week, Israel marks the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli opponent of his negotiations.

"Just ahead of the anniversary of Rabin's murder, the Shin Bet sees in the group we're talking about on the extreme right a willingness to use firearms in order to halt diplomatic processes and harm political leaders," Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said. "The Shin Bet is very concerned about this."

One has to wonder whether that's the kind of thing that far-right US extremists might yet emmulate, if Obama were to carry through on negotiations with Iran, Syria and the rest - or if those extremists were really as worried about Obama ushering in a "socialist" takeover as they say he is.

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Jonah Goldberg Nukes The Shark

By Cernig

I have to wonder what Jonah is smoking nowadays, and whether he really thinks his attempt at satire in issuing an "Obama 2012, Four Years Later" retrospective from the future his own addled brain is adding to the debate:

The first mistake many cite was actually made before Obama was even elected: the selection of Joseph Biden as his vice president. During the campaign, all eyes were on John McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But even then there were signs of the troubles to come (ironically, Biden's biggest "gaffe" - about Obama being tested early in his presidency - proved eerily prescient).

Still, nothing prepared the country for some of former Vice President Biden's comments while in office. Early on, when he told the Russian foreign minister he'd "rather punch a nun in the throat" than cooperate on an Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration knew they had a problem on their hands.

The strange comments and behavior kept coming: at an international summit on child poverty, he accused the Dalai Lama of issuing a "brain fart," he phoned Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts at home and called him a "[re]tard in short pants," and of course the several stories - clearly leaked by aides to the president - of Mr. Biden sitting in the president's chair in the Oval Office and being more than reluctant to get out when asked to do so by the president.

The last straw was Biden's complaint, emphatically offered at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, that he would have more influence over foreign policy if he were black. His staff's effort to dismiss the incident as a joke - at the normally comedic event - fell short largely because Biden shouted "I am not joking!" two dozens times in speech that lasted less than 10 minutes. The fact that Biden had not been invited to speak at the dinner in the first place only added to the controversy.

I mean, c'mon Jonah - Joe Biden isn't Dick Cheney!

And did Jonah really want to open the can of worms and have people speculating what "McCain/Palin, Four Years later" might look like?

Update: The Heretik laments Jonah's lack of confidence in McCain's comeback hopes and writes: "Looking ahead to 2012 means you don’t have to look at the hard reality of 2008, chump."

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What McCain should do!

By Ron Beasley

Even this paranoid pessimist has trouble thinking that Obama won't win on Tuesday especially when Republican hack and FOX contributor Frank Luntz says:

"I cannot foresee a scenario that John McCain is elected the President of the United States."

And Charlie Cook says we are looking at something quite - quite big:

It's looks like George W. Bush has beat John McCain twice - he did it in 2000 by sliming John McCain and he did it in 2008 by spending eight years sliming the entire country.

So what should John McCain do on November fifth?  The McCain campaign has been promising a monumental comeback and win in spite of evidence to the contrary.  Daniel Larison wonders:

Presumably the insiders know that they’re going to lose and are keeping up appearances, but how shocked will McCain’s voters be when the comeback that they are being vaguely promised does not happen?

There does seem to be a real problem emerging here: if McCain supporters, encouraged by the talk radio echo chamber, believe that they are on the verge of an upset win and also believe in claims of widespread voter fraud, what are the odds that they are going to accept the results on Tuesday?  It seems to me that Obama needs to win by a significant margin in the popular vote and Electoral College to quash “stolen election” theories.

In order to both save what little may be left of his "maverick" legacy and to "put the country first"  John McCain needs to make heartfelt speech where he makes it clear that he thinks the election was not stolen and that Barack Obama is his President and the President of all of the United States.  He needs to male it clear that he will work with President Obama to help cure the ills of the country.  This will put him at odds with Sarah Palin who has her own agenda and her own group of cultists who won't be doing that.  By attempting to isolate the Palinites as a lunatic fringe he may even be able to save his own party.

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And the Purge goes on

By BJ

Supporting Barack Obama can carry a heavy price these days.

The namesake of Montana-based Cooper Firearms has been asked to resign as president of the company after he expressed support for Barack Obama.

The company said it asked Dan Cooper, founder and part owner of Cooper Firearms, to resign as president after he voiced support for the Democratic Illinois senator's bid for president in a USA Today interview published Tuesday, USA Today reported Friday.

. . .

"There is nothing on this earth I will not do for my employees ... When the Internet anger turned on these innocent people, I felt it was important to distance myself from the company so as not to cause any further harm," he said.

Out of curiousity, does anyone know of any corporate heads forced to resign because they voiced support for John McCain?

Not only does this kind of stupidity help ensure Barack Obama's victory on Tuesday, but it makes it far harder for the Republicans to recover and become a counter-balancing force in American politics in the future.

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Picture of the week

By Ron Beasley

2016's Biden's Cheney Problem

By Fester

Let us assume that Barack Obama and Joe Biden win on Tuesday.  I think that is becoming extraordinarily likely.  This will produce one hell of an interesting Repubilcan primary in 2012 as there are multiple divided power blocs, but also a very divided Democratic primary cycle in 2016 as there will be no natural successor.  Joe Biden will suffer from the Cheney problem.  He'll be too old to credibly run or threaten to run for the 2016 term.  And this has caused several problems for the GOP in this cycle as there was no one to coalesce around and opposition to that coalitin to created an anti-Cheney Republican.  The 2008 Democratic campaign was Clinton v. Anti-Clinton, the 2004 Democratic primary was Dean v. anti-Dean where clear choices were made.  The 2008 GOP campaign was not that guy, hell no to the infidel, stay away from the drag queen, let's go with Abe Simpson....

Just something to think about in a couple of years if there is any specualtion that Biden won't run for VP in 2012 as that would be a natural point for a successor to be annointed.

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Americans would kinda like some wealth redistribution

by Jay McDonough

The charge from the McCain camp that Barack Obama was interested in wealth redistribution came during the two candidates last debate, and both John McCain and Sarah Palin have been on the attack ever since. (how about the "Redistributor in Chief").  Remember the debate occurred just as the financial markets were beginning to unravel and Congress had just pledged a $700B relief package and the stock market was going up and down like a yo-yo.  I wrote in my post following that debate:

I have news for John McCain - I would guess about 98% of Americans wouldn't mind a little wealth redistribution today.

Well, I was wrong.  But not by much.

As it turns out, Gallup has been polling for years this exact question: "Do you feel the distribution of money and wealth today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?"

And guess what?  A majority of Americans think the wealth of the nation should be more evenly distributed.

It's clear from the graph there's been a sudden uptick in those not supporting redistribution.  But it's still 58%/37%.  The uptick is, no doubt due to the McCain campaign hammering the issue for the last several weeks and Republicans shifting position as they realized they weren't suppose to support any concept that deviated from the McCain philosophy of preferential tax breaks to the wealthy and allowing the middle class to make do and settle for the same tax relief (i.e., very little) provided by the McCain supported Bush tax plans.

Americans clearly understand the system is out of whack.  What's amazing is how out of touch with American opinion the McCain campaign seems.

State Of Hawaii Confirms Obama's Birth Certificate

By Cernig

LOLZ!!!one!

Can we now all agree that all the conspiracy theorists who waxed at such length trying to push this non-starter are all just pathetic nutters?

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The Great Disappointment

By BJ

I’m not paranoid like Ron, and I don’t get spooked by Zogby’s ever-fluctuating poll predictions that the right grasps onto whenever they happen to swing their way.  In fact, I rather like the fact that they keep pushing these kinds of outliers, since their outsized prominence in the discussion these last few day makes it less likely that Obama supporters will think the election is in the bag and stay home instead of getting out there and voting.

For my money though, the election is in the bag, (and Gallup’s latest numbers do help in that regard), which gets me wondering as to what the fallout on the right will be when they awaken to the reality of a President Obama.  John Rogers is having much the same thought.

I don't think I'm far off in pointing out that a lot of the mainstream conservative rhetoric here is downright apocalyptic. A lot -- not all, but a lot -- of McCain/Palin supporters are utterly convinced that Barack Obama's America will be the socialist wasteland they've been fearing their entire adult lives.

So what happens when ... it doesn't happen?

Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein can disagree all they want, but when push comes to shove, most of Obama's policies are magnificently boring. I had a friend just today say "But John, you're in that top 1%! Your taxes are going to go up!" To which I replied: "Strangely, I can live with the idea of my taxes going from 36% to 39.5%. That's not exactly nationalizing the means of production."

. . .

But the best monsters are always the ones just offscreen. In their thrashing for purchase against Senator Obama, Senator McCain's campaign may have over-reached. An awful lot of conservative leaders have declared that an Obama presidency is October 22, 1844 in the great battle of freedom versus socialism. Interesting to see what happens when the people who've been fed a steady diet of terror images -- state-run medical care with month-long waits, abortion kiosks in the mall and forced gay-friendly kindergarten education -- encounter instead a higher minimum wage, guaranteed health care, and the occasional bit of science-based policy.

Of course, as the first comment points out, many of those screaming the S-word are like the dog that barks incessantly at the mailman, the reality of a centrist Obama will just never penetrate their clouded brains.  Hell, most of them still think Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were best buds who planned 9/11 together.  One suspects rather than be disappointed they will instead choose delusion and convince themselves that Barack Obama's America is a socialist wasteland.

On the other hand, there are no small number of folks out there actually hoping Obama is some kind of radical lefty socialist, (well, by American standards).  They are likely to find delusion much harder, and therefore their disappointment much greater.

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Cheney Backs McCain

by anderson

Yes, the man whose approval rating is roughly equivalent to that of eating rats on television, has endorsed John McCain, calling him "the right leader for this moment in history".

Obama naturally responded with a wicked cross-court backhand:

I'd like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn't come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington's biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney's support.

But here's my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain's going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington? ...

So George Bush may be in an undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney's out there on the campaign trail because he'd be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain. He knows that with John McCain you get a twofer: George Bush's economic policy and Dick Cheney's foreign policy -- but that's a risk we cannot afford to take.

Advantage, Obama.

p.s. Not sure why this turned into a tennis metaphor, other than the terminology is a perfect fit.

Electoral College Predictions All Favor Obama

By Cernig

We all know that it's the Electoral College that really counts - and the BBC notes that as of today the top predictors all call the College for Obama with a comfortable margin over the 270 needed for victory.

CQ Politics: Obama 311/McCain 160

Real Clear Politics: Obama 311/McCain 132

Pollster.com: Obama 311/McCain 142

New York Times: Obama 291/McCain 163

Crystal Ball: Obama 364/McCain 174

Perhaps most significantly, the pollsters see Mccain's grip on Electoral College votes in Arizona, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia weakening.

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Howard Dean's Victory?

By Ron Beasley

As this election cycle comes to an end we see Obama competitive or ahead in States and regions that would have seemed impossible just four years ago.  Yes much of it is because George W. Bush has succeeded in making the Republican brand toxic and Obama's campaign has been nearly flawless while McCain's campaign has consisted of a bunch of incomplete hail Mary passes.  But dday over at Hullabaloo reminds us that Howard Dean deserves some of the credit.

This whole thing, the Democratic resurgence, the Obama campaign, is the realization of something started about five years ago in Burlington, Vermont, of all places, and continued in Washington after the Kerry loss, at a low point for Democrats.

His hypothesis was simple: To be a national political party, you have to compete everywhere. It was called the “50 state strategy,” and it was unveiled in 2005.

Remember 2005?

That’s when Karl Rove was building a permanent Republican majority, and when President George W. Bush was going to save Social Security by privatizing it.

In 2005, Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, campaigned among grass-roots activists to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Campaigned to be head of the DNC? That’s an establishment job, hand-picked.

Howard Dean? What a loser.

But politics is all about a little prescience and a little luck. Dean had both. He had the wisdom to know Democrats could win in a lot of places if they bothered to show up and make an argument. The lucky part: The public has turned on the Republican Party.

It's a simple formula, but this article doesn't fully capture what Dean did. He put paid staffers into those 50 states so he could capitalize on any opportunity. He revitalized moribund state parties and created the neighbor-to-neighbor tool that can make Democrats a presence in people's lives all year round, not just before Election Day. He helped build a voter file that now rivals Republicans' vaunted data bank. He laid all the groundwork for Obama to build on and surpass.

In many ways, Tuesday could be Howard Dean's victory as well.

That's right, Dean built the infrastructure that Obama has been able to take advantage of.  A tip of the hat to Howard Dean will be appropriate on Wednesday morning.

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Paranoia - I'm not alone!

By Ron Beasley

As I said yesterday, in spite of all the evidence of a big Obama win I'm still very nervous and why wouldn't I be after stolen elections the last two times out.  Yes it really looks like Obama can't lose - Nate Silver has McCain's possibility of winning down to 2.8 percent, a new low.  But yes, I remain nervous but I'm not alone.  My old friend Bill in DC sent me this from the NYT:

Liberals Worry as Election Approaches

Jon Downs, 53, works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right?

Right.

Almost always, Mr. Downs ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.

“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”

He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”

To talk with left-leaning Democrats in New Hope, San Francisco or Miami Beach, to drill deep into their id, is to stand at the intersection of Liberal and High Anxiety.

Right now, more than a few are having a these-polls-are-too-good-to-be-true, we-still-could-lose-this-election moment. Their consuming and possibly over-caffeinated worry is that their prayers and nightly phone calls to undecided voters in Toledo, Ohio, notwithstanding, Mr. Obama might fall short on Election Day.

Would McCain Negotiate With Syria? (What Joe Lieberman Told The Syrian Ambassador)

By Cernig

Check out this very interesting interview with the Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha at Foreign Policy magazine.

He says clearly that the US raid into Syria was a "criminal, terrorist act", that it was done for reasons of US politics, that it blind-sided State who he had been negotiating with...and that Joe Lieberman personally assured him that McCain will negotiate with Syria if he wins.

Foreign Policy: The United States claims its Sunday night raid was undertaken to stem the flow of militants into Iraq. Why do you think this raid happened?

Imad Moustapha: Do we know why? Of course not. The only analysis we have is that they are doing this for pure domestic political reasons that have everything to do with the elections and the electoral campaign. They want to come out with a story.

But we are still waiting for the U.S. administration to come out and tell the American people: “We killed [Abu Ghadiya], and here is the proof that we killed him.” We have presented our side of the story. We have published the photos of the eight people that were killed, their names, and what they were doing. This is our side of the story. Let the United States come with its side.

... Suddenly, after everybody has recognized that the situation has improved dramatically in Iraq, [the United States] comes and they attack a village in Syria. They coldbloodedly murder eight Syrian civilians, villagers who are totally defenseless, totally innocent. This is a terrorist, criminal act.

The implication here is that the Bush administration wanted to boost McCain's standing in the poills with a little shock and awe and, since Iraq just doesn't provide the requisite level of fearmongering any more and attacking Iran would be too big a can of worms to open, they decided to launch a raid into the weaker neighbour.

Ambassador Moustapha continues by pointing out that Syria has had tens of thousands of troops trying to interdict their border with Iraq - at American behest - for years now. (And despite reports to the contrary, seems to have no intention of reducing that presence now.) However the US with its considerably greater resources has done less than Syria has to stem the flow of smugglers and militants.

Why didn’t [the United States] stop [the insurgents] for five years? They are the most powerful, advanced nation in the whole world. Their military size is at least 500 times our military’s size. Their military hardware is zillions of times more advanced than ours. If we can stop them, the United States can do a 10,000-times better job than us.

Each border in the world has two sides. I would say to [U.S. officials]: “We are doing everything possible within our means to stop them. These are porous borders. These are our means and capabilities. Prior to your war on Iraq, we used to have a couple of hundred of soldiers across this border. Because of your invasion and occupation of Iraq, we increased the numbers to tens of thousands.”

...Syria is not a rich country. We were not supposed to build dormitories and posts there just to help the American invasion of Iraq. However, we had to do this for one simple reason: If the United States believed that there are insurgents crossing the border into Iraq, we will not give the United States a pretext to attack Syria.

Well, that plan didn't work for the Syrians. Why not? The ambassador, without naming names, points to Cheney and the neocons and in so doing lays out evidence that Rice and State were blindsided:

...only last month in New York in September, while we were attending the U.N. General Assembly meetings, [U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice out of the blue requested a meeting with our foreign minister. So we sat with her, and the meeting was pleasant. Two days later, this meeting was followed with an extensive, in-depth meeting with Assistant Secretary of State David Welch. Every issue was discussed, and in general the overwhelming tone of the meeting was very positive. He told us clearly that the United States was reevaluating its policies towards Syria. We thought, “Things [are] finally starting to move in the right direction.”

And suddenly, this [raid in eastern Syria] happens. I don’t believe the guys from the State Department were actually deceiving us. I believe they genuinely wanted to engage diplomatically and politically with Syria. We believe that other powers within the administration were upset with these meetings and they did this exactly to undermine the whole new atmosphere.

That would fit well with reports that General Petraeus wanted to go talk to Syria too, but was prevented from doing so by Cheney. The purpose of all this is twofold - to give McCain and Republicans a foreign policy talking point in the lead-up to Tuesday and to perhaps complicate Obama's first few months in office. Just how much of a complication that could be came today as, in reaction to the Syria raid, Iraq wants to remove any possibility that U.S. troops could remain after 2011 from a proposed security agreement now under negotiation. If the the SOFA talks stall and the UN security agreement expires at the end of the year, leaving US forces in a legal limbo, the Bush administration will have deliberately set up Obama for the "crisis" that Republicans have been claiming would come in the first six months of an Obama presidency.

Yet despite the McCain camp's echoing of the neocon/Cheney faction's "no appeasement" rhetoric on Syria, the ambassador charges that they're lying through their teeth in public, again for partisan base-boilstering purposes.

I have reason to believe that even if [Senator John] McCain becomes president of the United States, he will also be inclined to sit and talk with Syria. I can tell you this on the record: Senator Joe Lieberman, who is supposed to be very close to McCain, has said this explicitly and very clearly to me personally.

Then again, maybe Joe was just lying to the ambassador.

Congressman Kucinch "We Must Question the Timing. We are on the eve of national elections and we must be mindful of the Administration's past manipulation of security issues in order to influence public opinion."

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GOTV Ground Game Gone

by anderson

(Sorry, fester beat me to the mark. Oh well....)

Sean Quinn at fivethirtyeight has a great post up showing the demoralized ranks, or lack, of McCain's field office forces. A series of photos from around the country of various McCain campaign offices is simply grim. Except for Democrats. In that case, you're probably smiling at the wreckage of a campaign that appears to have no ground game, no volunteers, and is now going to rely solely on television adverts in the final weekend. So much so, that the McCain team has told volunteers that they are on their own.

This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.

"The desire for parity on television comes at the expense of investment in paid boots on the ground," said one top Republican strategist who has been privy to McCain's plans. "The folks who will oversee the volunteer operation have been told to get out into the field on their own nickel."

Now, that's ballsy. It's not a great electoral strategy, either. I can't imagine many of these volunteers (volunteers!) are going hump around for McCain after being told their efforts aren't worth a dime, except for those scared so silly by McCain's version of Obama that they will happily assume debt to prevent the horrors of an Marxist regime.

Anyway, check it out. It is a fascinating look at the McCain campaign scene around the country, fascinating in the way a fly blown carcass is fascinating.

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Air and Field with Budget constraints

By Fester:

Atrios snarks the following question:

Wasting Money On The Teevee

Doing that instead of focusing on GOTV efforts seems a bit odd to me.  Maybe it's just a maverick thing!

This is in reference to the McCain campaign spending their last marginal dollars on television ads instead of an extensive field push this weekend.

It actually is a fairly rational and reasonable decision for the McCain campaign to make as a field program thrown together in six weeks will be expensive and ineffective.  It takes time to ID hard supporters, it takes time to ID soft supporters, it takes time to persuade the undecided and weak opposition supporters, it takes time to make a good four or five touches on your persuasion and mobilization universes.  And if you don't do all of these things and do them well, your field operations won't be that effective no matter how much money is shoveled at the problem with four days to go. 

Sean Quinn at 538 documented his observations of the Obama and McCain field campaigns over the past couple of months.  Obama's offices were filled and busy in every state.  Most McCain offices did not have enough people to play cribbage. 

I went by the East Liberty Obama office this afternoon and there were twenty five to thirty volunteers prepping for the weekend.  They were cutting turf, building packets, stuffing bags, making phone calls and coloring in signs.  They are building off of eight months worth of work and they'll be able to mobilize a couple hundred volunteers for the GOTV weekend.  Their efforts could see a useful expansion of effectiveness if there is a money dump but that is only because there has been eight months of voter contacts. 

So if the McCain ground campaign was not there in July, not there in August, showed up for a couple of weeks to go moose hunting after Gov. Palin was nominated, and then went back home for October, dumping several million dollars into GOTV won't do shit for him.  It is a waste of money.  TV ads have a miniscule chance of being a game and race changer, so it is rational for McCain to spend his marginal dollars there given past campaign decisions and failures.

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Dems 25 Times Better Than GOP For Stock Market Returns

By Cernig

Via BloggingStocks, Peter Siris of Guerrilla Capital has some figures:

Since 1929 both parties have controlled the White House for 40 years and Siris estimates that the $10,000 would be worth $11,733 under Republican administrations and $300,671 under Democratic ones. According to Siris, "for whatever reason, Republicans have been in office during the three worst stock market declines: The Great Depression, the early to mid-1970s, and the current market."

That may sound interesting but what about recent presidents? Under the Clinton administration, the S&P 500 rose the most in the last 60 years -- up an average of 17.4% per year. The only president who posted a negative performance is a familiar name -- George W. Bush -- under his administration, the S&P 500 has fallen 27% from 1,342 to 979.

Siris will run the figures as part of his column in the NY Post on Monday. So the Mccain camp and republican pundits have all weekend to get their spin ready. They'd better start now.

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Stealing the election

By Libby

Adding some context to Jay's post, here's a rundown of some of the voter suppression efforts that appear not to working as well as the GOP hoped they would.

McCain has taken to guaranteeing his supporters he will be victorious next week. Makes you wonder what he knows that we don't. Could be he's counting on things like the flyers being sent out by the PA GOP, targeted at Jewish voters, making false allegations against Obama and likening him to Hitler. Or the flyers in Virginia being distributed by an unknown organization falsely telling people that Democrats aren't supposed to vote until the day after the election is over?

More likely he's depending on the GOP's voter purges though. One in six voters in New Mexico are being challenged, like this supervisor of elections who happens to be Hispanic. 50,000 purged in Georgia, like this student who received notice she was struck from the rolls because she's not a citizen. Except that she is a citizen and received the notice days after the deadline to fix the problem passed. She will now be forced to use a provisional ballot. 10,000 registrations ruled invalid in Colorado.

And in Florida, "The state released a new and larger "no match" list Monday of 12,165 names, compared with 8,867 on an earlier list released Oct. 16. The list is disproportionately made up of African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats and residents of South Florida. African-Americans and Hispanics combined account for 55 percent of would-be voters on the latest list, which includes 6,194 Democrats and 1,440 Republicans."

Hundreds of thousands of voters across the country are being targeted by GOP operatives - enough to steal an election in a close contest. I urge you once again, to check your registration status before next Tuesday to protect your vote.

(Originally posted at the Detroit News.)

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The straight ticket trap

By Libby

I haven't been around for a number of reasons too complicated to explain but I've been posting a lot at the Detroit News trying to reach out to McCain supporters and inform Obama voters about the potential pitfalls of the various methods of voter suppression. With the kind indulgence of my co-bloggers, I'm going to cross post some of these in the next few days here. Here's the first one.

Here in Michigan, as in my new home state of North Carolina, they still offer the straight party option to save time when you're filling out your ballot. Don't use it. It's a trap that could leave your vote uncounted.

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat. Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have miscoded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have their presidential votes counted.

States with the straight ticket option are Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Here in North Carolina, if you use the option, it covers all the races except for president. You still have to fill that oval out separately or your vote for that office won't count. The disclaimer on my ballot is very hard to find, not to mention hard to read in the tiniest of type. So take the time to make all your choices separately even if you plan to vote only one party for every race. It only takes a minute or two more and it's worth it to protect your vote. And please pass the link on to everyone you know in these states.

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Locking in Belligerence

By BJ

A little over a year ago, the Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld looked into the possibility of pursuing a peace settlement between Israel and Syria as a way to peel the Syrians away from the Iran-Hezbollah alliance.  The argument basically breaks down to the fact that Syria, as a secular, (and majority Sunni), country, has little in common with the Shiite fundamentalists leading Iran and making up Hezbollah, but is the key linking the two together. And as links go, it is a very weak one.  Syria has neither the natural resources nor access to Saudi money that allows Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon to stave off the pressure of international isolation.  All of this makes Syria more dependent on Iran, a dependency the Syrians seem to be hoping to get out from under of.

And this isn’t some far-fetched wishful thinking, as the recent talks between Israel and Syria showed.  French President Sarkozy has also been reaching out in an effort to normalize relations between Syria and the rest of the world, and the story just came out yesterday that General Petreaus was looking to go to Damascus to discuss security in the region.  Given all of that, it would seem the realist school of foreign policy wonks see this as a highly viable option.

Not too surprisingly, the Likud right in Israel and the neocons in the Bush administration in Washington are very much opposed to such a normalization, and it is in that context that we should probably view the recent cross-border assault by the US into Syrian territory.  As fester noted earlier, "it is not a common response for Country A that is attacked by Country B to help out Country B's objectives"

As Slate's Fred Kaplan noted, this was a very high-risk operation for very little in the way of rewards and his column with:

Maybe the next president will reconsider the costs and benefits.

Assuming that president is Obama, such a reconsideration is probably assured, but that doesn't mean he will be able to do anything about it.  This stike, and possibly others in the near future if Kaplan can be believed, have set back whatever progress may have been made towards wedging Syria away from Iran, and it will take time for a President Obama to repair that damage and move forward.  Time he is unlikely to have.

Because any such progress cannot be made without considering what is happening in Israel itself.  And what's happening there is that the (currently) more diplomatically-focused Kadima party is entering an election where they are likely to lose ground and quite possibly the government to Likud, who will almost certainly throw up roadblocks to any Obama administration overtures to Syria.  (If you want a truly terrible scenario baed on this, read Bill Lind.)

Basically, the Bush adminstration has just ensured that relations with Syria remain in a state of belligerence for at least the foreseeable future.  One of its many not-so-pleasent legacies to the world.

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Hot Air And Grasping At Straws

By Cernig

Briebart today ran an AFP article with the misleading headline "US election: If Iraqis could vote it would be for McCain". I say misleading because it mentions in its first few paras exactly three Iraqis who prefer McCain - and in its last paras mentions two who prefer Obama.That's hardly all or even a representative sample of all Iraqis. That hasn't stopped a couple of rightwing bloggers grasping at straws - including Ed Morrissey, who continues his downward spiral of judgement at Hot Air and who I don't think would ever have linked such thin gruel at Captain's Quarters. Ed can count, but he chose not to mention the small sample size to his click-shy readers.

FWIW, back in July, Reuters did much the same thing in reverse. They interviewed two dozen Iraqis and came to the conclusion that Iraqis liked Obama better than McCain because "a black man would understand their plight." (Something only one of the seven quotes they printed even mentioned.) Back then, an Obama story was the one the media wanted to tell, coming off his close-run and exhaustingly covered primary contest with Clinton they needed to make it seem like Obama vs McCain was a real step up, not down, in tension and expectations. Now, they need to do build McCain again to make for an interesting nailbiter of a finish.

What it comes down to is that the media want a close horse-race because that sells better than a romp-home landslide victory. The news networks have been worrying what they're going to do election night if it's all over by teatime so they've been very relieved that McCain has been telling them that there'll be an upset in a close race and everyone's going to be up late watching election coverage.

That explains, entirely, the media push to describe McCain as closing the gap - which every indicator except some hyped outlier polls says he isn't, he's just solidifying his base support. It explains ridiculous speculation like whether or not Osama bin Laden will endorse a candidate, and whether he or AQ in general will actually mean it if he does. McCain's meant to be stronger on foreign policy -especially Iraq and the "War on Terror", so they're hyping these stories.

There'll be more of this kind of nonsense as the last few days tick by, and the media frantically tries to spin the story as one they think they can sell more of. Remember, because of the collapse of Voter News Service, the networks will be relying solely on AP exit poll data for Elections 2008. That's Ron Fournier in charge of what the networks will report, in other words. So even after the voting is over, we're likely to see a last run of hype about a close-run race.

But don't panic - Obama's got this.

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Syrian Blowback

By Fester:

Ha'artz reports on the Syrian response to the US raid on their soil:

Damascus has decided to cut off its diplomatic relations with Iraq in response to a deadly raid carried out by the U.S. on Syrian soil earlier this week, Al-Arabiya reported on Thursday.
 
Syria has also decided to reduce its troops on the border with Iraq, according to a report from Syrian television.
 
The Syrian government has demanded Washington apologize for the strike of the Abu Kamal border community and earlier this weeek threatened to cut off cooperation on Iraqi border security if there are more American raids on Syria territory.

Blowback with plausible deniabiility --- and utterly predictable as it is not a common response for Country A that is attacked by Country B to help out Country B's objectives....

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Big Win????

By Ron Beasley

I've been quiet again and I apologize. I haven't been feeling well but it's mostly because I still can't believe the Rethuglicans will let Obama and the Democrats to win next week.  Everything would indicate that Obama should win in a near landslide next Tuesday.  I feel a little better tonight largely because Larry Sabato predicts a big Obama win.

Yes, the very reliable Sabato predicts a blowout.  He also predicts a pick up of seven or eight in the Senate - not 60 but enough to get a lot of things done.  On top of that NBC's Chuck Todd says it's easier to see how Obama could get 375 EV's that it is to see how McCain gets 270.

That said I'm still nervous. 

Two weekly polls came out today with big differences.  The CBS/NYT poll has Obama up by 11 points while the FOX poll has him up by only 3.  Of course FOX changed it's methodology to get that result. 

Hopefully I'll feel better in five days.

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Beyond Parody

By BJ

This last week of the campaign, the desperation of the right is causing them to go completely off the rails.  A day or so ago, in response to McCain/Palin’s “socialist” charge, Obama hit back with a bit of humour.

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

By using such a ridiculous example, Obama was hoping to deflect the attacks, but he has most definitely misunderestimated the right-wing brain!

Ha ha.

Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely why he is vulnerable to such charges: he can't seem to tell the difference between a gift and a theft.

Who knew?

However ridiculous the above, it can’t hold a candle to the exhaustive research performed by Pamela Gellar of Atlas Shrugs in determining the True Origins of the Obama Menace!

He is the son of Malcolm X!   (H/T - Ezra Klein, and for the picture)  Seriously, reading the extraordinary long rant Gellar posted, one can only marvel at what someone like that could accomplish if they actually chose to look into something of even passing importance and why such detective skills are never employed to verify claims made by right-wing politicians.  Then again, comparatively, even the furthest right politician is highly unlikely to spout anything near as crazy as the above.

And to round out the craziness, John Cole found a 67-page treatise called “An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches”  I can only hold out hope that as the right spirals into greater and greater absurdity, they will eventually reach a point where the mainstream starts treating them like the lunatic fringe they should be.  Only then will true parody be able to make a comeback.

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GOP sponsored voter suppression efforts failing

by Jay McDonough

Yesterday, TPM had a list of GOP sponsored voter suppression actions going on around the country, particularly in swing states.  They followed up today with the status of the Republican efforts.

In some cases, the courts have rejected GOP efforts to make voting harder:

- In Indiana, for instance, a Superior Court judge declined to support a GOP bid to shut down early voting centers in Democratic-leaning cities in Lake County, and the state Supreme Court chose not to immediately intervene.
-  In Wisconsin, a suit brought by Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen -- which he later admitted had been requested by the Republican Party -- seeking to force the state election board to re-confirm all newly registered voters was thrown out by a county court.
-  In Michigan, a federal appeals court today blocked the Republican secretary of state, Terri Lynn Land, from throwing 5,500 newly registered voters off the rolls because their registration cards were returned as undeliverable, after voting-rights groups sued.

In other states, Democratic state officials or voting-rights advocates have held the line:

- In Nevada, Secretary of State Ross Miller denied a request from the state GOP to require voters to cast provisional ballots if they fixed mistakes in their voting information at the polls.
-  In Colorado, a bid by Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman -- who himself is running for a seat in the U.S. House  to purge 14,000 voters from the rolls was only partially successful. After voting-rights groups sued, a settlement was reached yesterday allowing the voters to cast provisional ballots. According to the Rocky Mountain News, those ballots would "be presumed to be valid unless state and county officials prove otherwise." A lawyer for the voting-rights groups called the deal "a win-win."

Anyone notice how the Republicans aren't talking about Acorn anymore?  They must be too busy trying to suppress Democratic voting at this point.

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Bail-out Dividend

By Fester:

I opposed the Paulson plan because I fundamentally do not trust the Bush administration, even the non-incompetent bureaucrats to be able to effectively implement a good idea much less course correct a bad idea.  This distrust has been earned by their successive and massive clusterfucks of the past eight years including the Oracles' slight (and ideological) flaw in reasoning that people are not completely rational at all times.  And some of this distrust is ideological in that I believed Paulson's blinders and constraints would not allow him to take needed actions.  He had to be pressured into a limited recapitalization plan, and even now that is a 'voluntary plan.'  And since it is voluntary, it had to be designed to be attractive to the idiots who have managed to lose a couple trillion dollars and it therefore could not be as effective as it should be:

USA Today:

Some U.S. banks will pay out more than half of the $163 billion they received from the government in dividends, according to The Washington Post.

"The Treasury plans to invest up to $250 billion in a wide swath of U.S. banks in return for ownership stakes, which the government will relinquish when it is repaid. Among other restrictions, participating institutions cannot increase dividend payments without government permission," the paper says.

"The 33 banks signed up so far plan to pay shareholders about $7 billion this quarter," the paper adds. "Companies generally try to pay consistent dividends and, at the present pace, those dividends will consume 52% of the Treasury's investment over the initial three-year term."

The Post says government officials were concerned that any restrictions on the practice would discourage banks from participating in the program.

Screw them --- investors are supposed to bear the risk of their investment --- cut the goddamn dividends if those banks 'voluntarily' request extraordinarily and cheap injections of capital from us. 

Bloomberg via The Big Picture:

"The U.S. government's $160 billion handout to banks from Niagara Falls to Beverly Hills is going mostly to lenders that need it least, putting weaker rivals at risk of being shut down or taken over, analysts say....

"This has the unintended effect of making the strong stronger and the weak weaker,'' said Gray Medlin, founder of Carson Medlin Co., a Raleigh, North Carolina, investment bank focused on banking deals. "Banks that are getting bad exams and are under intense pressure from regulators won't be successful in applying.''

As we have previously discussed, its time for triage -- close the bad banks, recapitalize the good banks, and move forward.

Poorly targeted, and expensive --- sounds like a great program and a great idea!

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Frames, beliefs and opposition groups

By Fester:

I've been keeping an eye on The Next Right because it has a couple of very interesting rights, and over the long-run a Republican Party that is not beholden to anti-Enlightenment zealots is a very good thing.  An effective counterweight should reduce the incentive and opportunity for amazing feats of Democratic douchebaggery. 

However Patrick Ruffini in a post that attempts to spark a discussion on why there is no right wing equivilant to the netroots makes a bit of a blunder that will sink the effectiveness of any group that emerges from this or many other discussions (irregardless of Tuesday's results)

Most conservative blogs are still stuck in 2003 -- both in terms of the overwhelming focus on media criticism and punditry, and the tendency to outsource electoral politics to the Republican Party. This was in some ways legitimate response to what was happening in 2003-4, when media surrender-monkeys were undermining the War on Terror, Republicans had a kick-butt political operation, and Kos was going 0 for 16. [emphasis mine]

The war on terror in his (and I assume, most right wing minds) includes both an authoritarian desire to suppress questioning AND more importantly having Iraq as the Central Front! 

As long as there is a core underpinning, the right wing bloggers will be pissing up hill and into the wind in any district that won't automatically vote for an indicted ham sandwhich with an R next to their name. 

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Court Tells CIA It Can Keep Torture Evidence Secret

By Cernig

On Wednesday, the Washington D.C. Circuit Court gave the CIA permission to keep secret unredacted transcripts in which 14 prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay describe abuse and torture they endured in CIA custody - without even looking at the evidence itself. (h/t Kat)

"The Court, giving deference to the agency’s detailed, good-faith declaration, is disinclined to second-guess the agency in its area of expertise through in camera review," Lamberth wrote (.pdf), referring to a procedure where a judge looks at evidence in his chamber without showing it to the opposing side.

The ruling comes in a case where the ACLU filed a government sunshine suit to force the government to unredact allegations from statements from so-called High Value Detainees such as 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheihk Muhammed that the CIA kidnapped and tortured them.

The judge's decision not to look at the blacked-out text to see if secrets are involved allows the Bush Administration to continue to hide its use of torture techniques, according to Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project.

The CIA says that releasing the transcripts would harm national security - by revealing torturous interrogation techniques and which nations were complicit in facillitating those tortures. That's not how they phrase it, but that's what the double-speak actually means.

"Among the details that cannot be publicly released are the conditions of the detainees’ capture, the employment of alternative interrogation methods, and other operational details," the CIA's Wendy Hilton told the court in a sworn affidavit (.pdf). "Specifically, disclosure of such information is reasonably likely to degrade the CIA's  ability to effectively question terrorist detainees and elicit information necessary to protect the American people"

The CIA also successfully argued that it needed to redact statements about what countries were involved in the program, saying that such allegations could destroy relationships with countries that helped with the CIA's controversial program of secretly kidnapping suspected terrorists and shuttling them to hidden prisons in Europe and Asia, where neither families nor the Red Cross knew of their detention.

The ACLU's Ben Wizner put it plainly (H/t Rachel M):

"This decision allows the Bush administration to continue its illegal cover-up of its systemic torture polices. The government has suppressed these detainees' allegations of brutal torture not to protect any legitimate national security interests, but to protect itself from criticism and liability. It is unlawful for the government to withhold information on these grounds."

It continues to pain me that Democratic leaders refuse to talk seriously about criminal investigations of those who ordered and were involved in illegal rendition and torture. Irealise that the extreme Right would make the issue as divisive as they could. I realise there's a lot of work to be done to roll back the damage the Bush years have done to America. But these war crimes strike directly at the very concept of America and at America's standing in the world as well as at fundamental premises of the rule of law. To deliberately not investigate - and not prosecute where needed - would be itself a crime.

As for John McCain - he thinks that Gitmo is "one of the nicest places in the world" and that allowing detainees who were tortured, illegally detained and are often innocent of all crimes even by the Bush administration's own admission was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". What a maverick.

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Praying for Poor Polling

By BJ

With only six days left before the marathon 2008 election season finally ends, and after a solid month of Obama well ahead in the national polls, we seem to be finally seeing some of the predicted tightening towards the end of the race in the national numbers.  That part is good news for McCain, who needs something to boost the morale of a Republican Party that’s devolving into splinters looking out for their own future and firing thinly veiled attacks against each other.

Rather less encouraging for the McCain camp, the state polls in the all-too-many states McCain needs to carry or turn around to his favor in order to have a chance at winning just aren’t going his way.  Hell, they’re running ads in Montana and doing robocalls in Arizona!

The right-wing blogs are leaping at every national poll that shows some tightening or a close race, while ignoring the very same polls or dismissing them as inaccurate if a day or two later they widen again.  The vast majority of polls they need to ignore outright as they show Obama with massive and insurmountable leads.  The main argument is to question the polls accuracy, that we’re heading to another Truman-Dewey upset because the pollsters are over-representing Obama’s support and under-representing McCain’s.  They point to the fact that many pollsters are using models predicting far greater turnout of African-American, youth, and new voters, never mind that McCain is also losing under the models using traditional turnout models.  To listen to them, McCain is both winning and coming back simultaneously, (belief in mutually exclusive options seems to be a trademark of true believers).

This isn’t an unusual phenomenon.  In 2004, Kerry was losing in most polls, if by far narrower margins, but his supporters convinced themselves that he was in fact doing better than he really was.  So much so, in fact, that many people now seem to accept as common wisdom that Kerry was actually up in the polls and Bush’s win was somehow unexpected.

I’m even forced to admit that I fell under the same kind of wishful thinking delusion during the primaries when I half-convinced myself that the polls were under-reporting Obama’s support in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and he was in fact on the verge of finally ending the long and horrifically damaging, (well, it certainly seemed so at the time!), Democratic primary season.  Instead, the polls turned out to be depressingly accurate.  Professional pollsters, it turns out, aren’t complete idiots who don’t know what they’re doing.  There were a few slip-ups early on, but mostly things went as predicted.  Worse for those who support McCain, the times things did go awry, it was usually Obama who benefited, though all they probably see now is Hillary’s upset in New Hampshire.

Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than when discussing McCain’s chances in Pennsylvania.  Despite virtually every poll showing double-digit leads for Obama, the McCain campaign and its supporters continue to hold out hope that somehow, some way, the race is in fact much closer and winnable for McCain.  Yesterday, the Boston Globe treated the race as though it were still up in the air.

Obama on defense in Pa. as McCain senses an opening, goes the headline.  But why should we believe that?

One of Obama's top surrogates here, Governor Ed Rendell, said yesterday that McCain's heavy campaigning in the state, especially in southwestern counties around Pittsburgh, was whittling away Obama's lead.

"I never thought it was a 10-plus lead to begin with," Rendell said in an interview. "This is still not a given."

. . .

McCain's political director, Mike DuHaime, said that the campaign, which operates a "Democrats for McCain" headquarters in Scranton, has detected greater unease with Obama among Democrats as part of the McCain campaign's direct contact with voters - in phone calls and door knocks - than is evident in media surveys showing sizable leads for Obama.

"Like us, they see it closer than the public polls," DuHaime said of the Obama campaign.

Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a close McCain ally, added yesterday, "If they thought it was a slam-dunk, they wouldn't be spending so much time here."

Is it true?  Well, at the very least it allows both campaigns a reason to continue pushing their supporters to get out there and vote and the media the ability to keep some drama in a race that otherwise would be a foregone conclusion.  Still, some have the suspicion that the “Pennsylvania is tighter than it looks” theme some Obama surrogates like Rendell are pushing may in fact be part of an elaborate rope-a-dope.

Apparently McCain drew less than 500 people to a rally in suburban PA two days ago. Then he went to Western PA and flubbed the attack lines against John Murtha's comments so that the sound bite was completely incoherent. On Monday he drew crowds of about 2000, then 15 people at an airport rally (yes, that is correct--no zeros), and then his third rally of the day was described as "sparsely attended."[...]

The Obama campaign is doing a major head fake in PA. They "accidentally" leaked an "internal" poll showing Obama up by only 2 percent in PA. I guarantee you that no such poll exists and that this was done both to motivate volunteers in the state (and maybe elsewhere) and prevent them from getting too complacent and also to sucker the McCain campaign into spending more time there. Ed Rendell has asked Obama to come back and campaign in the state-another major ruse. They know that McCain makes most of the decisions for his campaign and that they can goad him into spending more time in PA by pretending that it is close there. Let's see if Obama actually returns to PA before November 4th, but I sincerely doubt it. They are brilliant.

There is more than a little evidence for this idea.  Look at Florida, which was once solidly on McCain’s side of the Electoral College ledger, but moved to where Obama is now leading, in large part, as the New York Times put it a few days ago, because McCain wasn’t paying attention and only belatedly came to the realization that the 27 Electoral Votes there were in jeopardy.  (Speaking of Florida, there’s another story buzzing around memorandum with the catchy title that a poll shows an early voting advantage for McCain.  The catch? “Only a tiny fraction of the Florida respondents reported voting early, leaving McCain's lead [49-45] subject to a wide margin of error. A Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday, showed early voters favoring Obama 58-34, another small sample with a potentially wide margin of error.”)

At the bottom of the Boston Globe story is this:

One consequence of Obama's plan to compete in as many states as possible, Rendell said, is that it limits the time he can spend to protect a place like Pennsylvania.

"This disadvantage of contending in so many states," he said, "is it spreads you around a lot thinner."

What’s hidden in that is the advantage that contending in so many states gives.  McCain must win Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to even have a chance.  Obama, thanks to his strength in places like Virginia and Colorado, can still win even if McCain succeeds in all three big states, which is by no means certain.

And for the polls and turnout models, we know from the early voting that Democratic turnout is up, and that in particular, the turnout of African-Americans is going through the roof.  And I’ll leave the last word to Nate Silver of 538.

With no fewer than 45 polls released since our last update, covering essentially all of the major swing states, we have a pretty good idea of where this race stands -- a far better idea than you'll get by trying to discern the meaning of John Zogby's divining rod or paying any attention to what you see on the front page of Drudge Report. What we can say, when we put all this information together, is that there are two things that John McCain is NOT doing.

Number one, John McCain is NOT closing Obama's margin as quickly as he needs to (if indeed he is closing it at all). This appears to be a 6- or 7- point race right now ... that's where we have it, that's where RCP has it, that where Pollster.com has it. In order to beat Barack Obama, John McCain will need to gain at least one point per day between now and the election. Our model does think that McCain has pared about a point off Obama's margin -- but it has taken him a week to do so. Now, McCain needs to gain six more points in six more days. And he needs to do so with no real ground game, no real advertsing budget, and no one particularly strong message. Not easy.

Number two, John McCain is NOT gaining ground in the states that matter the most. The top tier of states in this election are Virginia, Colorado and Pennsylvania. There is lots of lots of polling in these states, particularly in Virgnia and Pennsylvania, and it's all coming up in roughly the same range, showing Obama leads in the high single digits (in VA and CO) or the low double digits (in PA). The second tier of states is probably Ohio, Florida and Nevada. McCain seems to be getting a bit stronger in Florida; Obama seems to be getting a bit stronger in Ohio and Nevada.

And even if by some miracle McCain can get things close to even by election day, what can he do about the millions of people who have already voted?

It ain't over 'til its over, of course, but unless Obama's supporters don't actually show up to vote, John McCain isn't going to be too happy on November 5th.  (Well, assuming he isn't secretly relieved that he won't have to deal with the mess he helped create.)

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Well, that's a relief!

By BJ

You know, I’ve been very concerned about all of those financial stocks I’ve been carrying in my portfolio.  Not only has their value dropped considerably over the last few weeks, but I had assumed with their taking on billions of government handouts and buy-ins, the odds of my seeing any dividends in the near future were looking pretty bleak as well.  So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to read this in the Washington Post this morning.

U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.

The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to shareholders don't serve that purpose, but Treasury officials say that suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program

Way to go!  And thank-you the American taxpayer for sending your hard-earned dollars into my wallet!  I bet that gives you warm and fuzzy feelings all over.  The only way you could make me happier would be to elect John McCain, who plans to cut the share of taxes I’d have to pay on those dividends.  That’s the kind of redistribution I can believe in!

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It's Finally Happened

By BJ

As if the 2008 campaign season wasn't long enough, we've already had the first candidate toss her, (presumably stylish and expensive), hat into the ring for 2012.

I mean seriously, couldn't you at least wait until you've finished losing 2008 first?

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Lame duck stimulus

By Fester:

Via Dave at the Glittering Eye is Robert Reich's comments on the probable impacts of a lame duck stimulus package:

The coming stimulus package could be even more nonsensical. It will be voted on by a lame-duck Congress, many of whose members will want to reward campaign donors with juicy pieces of pork. Other lawmakers will see it as their last opportunity to include their pet project or tax perk, and some who won't be accountable because they'll be out of office in a few weeks anyway. In other words, it'll be less a stimulus than a Christmas Tree.

Instead of this, Congress should do just one thing when it returns right after Election Day: Extend unemployment benefits.

I would argue that we should extend this to two or three things that Congress should do in the lame duck session.  I would like to see an increase in food stamp allowances and eligibility as this is money that will be very quickly spent by people who are in need of some relief.  Furthermore, and this may only be a good idea in my mind because it was snowing today in Pittsburgh, I would also like to see increased funding for LIHEAP (winter heating assistance).  Again this is very targeted relief and stimulus and playing games and pay-offs for this program is fairly tough to do. 

American Nobel Prize winners endorse Obama

by Jay McDonough

Seventy six American Nobel Prize winners endorsed Barack Obama in a strongly worded letter rebuking the Bush Administration's contempt for science.

During the administration of George W. Bush, vital parts of our country's scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant and declining federal support.  The government's scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations.  As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk.  We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy.

We have watched Senator Obama's approach to these issues with admiration. We especially applaud his emphasis during the campaign on the power of science and technology to enhance our nation's competitiveness.  In particular, we support the measures he plans to take - through new initiatives in education and training, expanded research funding, an unbiased process for obtaining scientific advice, and an appropriate balance of basic and applied research - to meet the nation's and the world's most urgent needs.

I'm sure the decision to support Barack Obama was made a lot easier last week when Sarah Palin scoffed at the use of federal money for research using fruit flies.  Most sixth graders know the dominant role fruit flies have played in the understanding of genetics, including the understanding of birth defect genetics.

Or, perhaps, it was Ms. Palin's belief that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth at the same time, about 6,000 years ago.

Oh NOESSSS --- Bob Barr wins Pennsylvania

By Fester:

Now I wonder how many political junkies of all stripes have this picture as part of a nightmare or peyote fueled trip?

Actually, this was just the Pennsylvania Secretary of State's office making sure the website works ... but it made me chuckle when I saw this....

Iraq Wants Ban On US Using Its Territory To Attack Neighbours

By Cernig

Iraq has produced four proposed amendments to the satus of forces agreement with the US - chief among them being a ban on the US using Iraqi territory to attack its neighbours. The Iraqis want to be able to declare the agreement null-and-void if the US breaks the amendment.

Obviously this is spurred by the US incursion into Syria over the weekend, for which the motives are still murky. But Iraq's friendships with both Syria and the more likely next target of such raids - Iran - is obviously uppermost in Iraqi lawmakers' minds. If the agreement was voided following a hostile act, Iraq could declare the US presence there illegal or even open hostilities after doing so.

The Iraqis also want a clear definition of "duty" when cases arise involving crimes committed off base, presumably so that the US cannot do a legal dance around a provision already in the agreement that US soldiers and contractors are subject to iraqi law when off base and off duty.

And, interestingly, Iraq also wants the right to inspect all U.S. military shipments entering or leaving Iraq. I can see why they'd want to know about those entering - it would give Iran a heads-up if the US suddenly srated pflying in penetrator bombs or tac-nukes, for instance. But I wonder what lies behind the wish to inspect cargos leaving. Illegal renditions, maybe?

The Bush administration, though, have already indicated that they consider negotiations closed and won't look at new amnendments. They're bluffing with a busted flush again, counting on the Iraqi elite wanting a US presence more than it wants and needs political approval from the Iraqi populace. If they're wrong, then January will see either a humiliating climbdown by Maliki - who swore he'd not ask for a renewal of the UN mandate - in advance of provincial elections, or it will see the US occupation of Iraq become as illegal under international law as the original invasion was.

Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq

by anderson

Listen to The Marc Steiner show as Marc talks with former CIA operative Charles "Sam" Faddis about his new book, <Operation Hotel California, The Clandestine War Inside Iraq. The section on how the White House nixed support for taking out a major al Qaeda cell in Iraq is fascinating.

(discussion begins at 14:45 into the program, drag the tracker there to skip the first segment.)

Synopsis: In July of 2002, 8 Americans crossed the Harburr River from Turkey into Kurdistan. Their mission? To strike and kill Al-Qaeda, and take down Saddam Hussein's Baathist dictatorship.

Charles "Sam" Faddis was the leader of that operation. In a new book written with Mike Tucker, he delivers a blistering indictment of the national security blunders made by the Bush administration-and for the first time, tells the story of that operation, which had profound consequences for the Iraq War.

Transcript snippet:

Steiner: This was a White House operation … this was part of a plan to go after terrorists inside Iraq.

Faddis: When we originally stood up the team, in early 2002, February, 2002 — meaning we're now pulling together guys, pulling together equipment, we're training, we're getting ready to go — number one item on our list of missions on our operational task is, begin preparation for the invasion of Iraq. So, that's the first critical thing that I think people should understand here. In February, 2002, we stood up this team because the decision had been made, we are going to invade Iraq.

Steiner: … everything we went through with the UN, all the back and forth, the machinations with the Bush administration, was poppycock. You were sent over there in advance of an invasion they already knew was going to take place.

Faddis: Apparently so.

The extent to which this is true is really kind of hard to imagine. But, in fact, when we stood up the team, and we were, say March, April, we hoped to be on the ground inside Iraq, we were originally being briefed that this whole thing would be over in about sixty days. In other words, we should only plan on being in country for sixty days. …

I can remember vividly being inside Iraq much later when this whole diplomatic initiative was launched, we went to the United Nations, and talking to people at headquarters and saying, I'm sorry, I don't understand what's going on. You sent me here months and months and months ago, telling me the decision's been made, but now we're at the United Nations, acting like we haven't made the decision and their response was, don't worry about it, nothing's changed, we're still going.

McCain's Friend The War Criminal

By Cernig

Both John McCain and his senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann are long-time friends of Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili. McCain's decade-long friendship with the Georgian leader is among the closest McCain has with any foreign leader and began in 1995, when McCain directed a search for potential leaders in the former Soviet republics after communism's collapse. He has gone on holiday and jetskiied with him, spoke to him daily on the phone during Georgia's recent conflict with Russia and even sent his wife to Saakashvili's side to offer his support during that conflict. Scheunemann has worked closely with the Georgian leader, accepting his money to lobby on Georgia's behalf on the Hill even while working for the McCain campaign.

But the firebrand, neck-tie chewing, U.S.-educated lawyer has had his problems in the past, at odds with McCain's depictation of him as - in McCain's legendary judgement - a freedom-loving promoter of democracy. In 2007, Saakashvili's government crushed an opposition protest by beating unarmed protestors, shooting them with rubber bullets and fire hoses. They also shut down a TV station critical of the government.

Now though, there's an entirely different category of problem for Mccain's judgement - Saakashvilli has been accused by a BBC investigative reporting team of ordering war crimes and atrocities during Georgia's surprise attack on its breakaway province of South Ossetia, causing the UK government to re-evaluate its support for Saakashvili himself, if not for Georgia.

Eyewitnesses have described how its tanks fired directly into an apartment block, and how civilians were shot at as they tried to escape the fighting.

Research by the international investigative organisation Human Rights Watch also points to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military, and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians.

Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and serious violations are considered to be war crimes.

The allegations are now raising concerns among Georgia's supporters in the West.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the BBC the attack on South Ossetia was "reckless".

He said he had raised the issue of possible Georgian war crimes with the government in Tbilisi.

It seems to be the case that the Georgian actions were mirrored by tit-for-tat Russian crimes, true. But this is the second time in a few short years that Saakashvili has revealed himself as more of a despot than a democratic leader. The details are horrific.

Human Rights Watch believes the figure of 300-400 civilians is a "useful starting point".

That would represent more than 1% of the population of Tskhinvali - the equivalent of 70,000 deaths in London.

Allison Gill, director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said: "We're very concerned at the use of indiscriminate force by the Georgian military in Tskhinvali.

"Tskhinvali is a densely populated city and as such military action needs to be very careful that it doesn't endanger civilians."

"We know that in the early stages there were tank attacks and Grad rockets used by Georgian forces," she added.

"Grad rockets cannot be used in densely populated areas because they cannot be precisely targeted, and as such they are inherently indiscriminate.

"Our researchers were on the ground in Tskhinvali as early as 12 August.

"And we gained evidence and witness testimony of Grad rocket attacks and tank attacks on apartment buildings, including tank attacks that shot at the basement level.

"And basements are typically areas where civilians will hide for their own protection.

Worse, the BBC team uncovered evidence that civilians had been deliberately targeted.

Marina Kochieva, a doctor at Tskhinvali's main hospital, says she herself was targeted by a Georgian tank as she and three relatives were trying to escape by car from the town on the night of 9 August.

She says the tank fired on her car and two other vehicles, forcing them to crash into a ditch.

The firing continued as she and her companions lay on the ground.

She showed the BBC the burnt-out wreckage of the car on the town's ring-road, riddled with bullet holes and with a much larger hole, apparently from a tank round, in the front passenger door.

Ms Kochieva says a nurse from her hospital was killed while fleeing Tskhinvali in similar circumstances.

She says she counted 18 burnt-out cars on the ring-road on 13 August, at the end of the war, suggesting there may have been more casualties.

..."The Georgians knew this was the 'Road of Life' for Ossetians. They were sitting here waiting to kill us," she said.

Saakashvili has, of course, denied the accusations. But the UK government is taking them seriously and is not at all happy, perhaps feeling it has been taken for a ride by Saakashvili's protestations of being the oppressed lover of freedom and justice.

David Miliband, who visited Georgia immediately after the war to show solidarity with its government, said he took the allegations of war crimes "extremely seriously" and had raised them "at the highest level" in Tbilisi.

Apparently hardening his language towards Georgia, he called its actions "reckless".

But he added: "The Russian response was reckless and wrong".

"It's important that the Russian narrative cannot start with Georgian actions; it has to start with the attacks on the Georgians from the South Ossetians and that is the tit-for-tat that got out of control," he said.

Even the democratic Georgian opposition says that Saakashvili deliberately provoked Russia's military intervention, possibly believing McCain and Scheunemann's friendship meant America would rush to his aid militarily. (They've asked that billions of dollars in aid be carefully monitored so that the Georgian leader and his associates don't use it to simply prop up their rule. In turn, Saakashvili accuses them of being Russian agents.)

That's not the way McCain sees it - in his debates with Obama he repeatedly claimed Russia was the aggressor. But while the Mccain campaign is hyping up any and all associations between Obama and Bill Ayers, there has been little said in America about McCain's extraordinary lapse of judgement in his far closer association with the Georgian leader - an association which is doubtless driven by McCain's long-term ties to rabidly anti-communist rightwing groups which have sponsored fascist despots, death squads, anti-semites and atrocities aplenty.

Entering the campaign bubble

By Fester:

One more week, and then I can breathe and sleep again.  I have it easy as I am not a full time campaign staff.  I am just a volunteer.  But I am in the campaign bubble mode where the outside world becomes less and less relevant for the next couple of days.  I'll need to intermediate that experience with the neccessity of doing my real world two jobs, but the bubble's boundaries are not flimsy concoctions of soap and air.

I would advise pretty much everyone to not to pay too much attention to rumors, anectodotes and observations unless there is some pretty hard data.  Every volunteer and paid staffer enters their respective campaign's bubble(s). 

If someone is door knocking this weekend, they are in the bubble.  They believe that they are doing well, and they will be set up to do well.  The doors being selected by Democrats, Republicans and outside groups are highly targetted doors.  Volunteers should report that they are getting great feed back. 

If your door is not knocked, it may be because the modeling and the voter file indicates that you are a 100% voter who is 95% likely to vote in a particular way.  There is no value add to reminding you to vote.  This is even more extreme if you have already voted.  If you don't see canvassers in your neighborhood, it may be because it is unwalkable, unwinnable, landslide winnable or it may not have a high value, multi-race (state rep, Congress, Presidential) precinct. 

Everyone will believe what they see, but what most people will see this weekend and on Monday/Tuesday won't be hard data. 

Until then, back to the salt mines....

Rush Limbaugh, forests, and trees

by Jay McDonough

Rush Limbaugh offered up a prescription for a post Obama win Republican Party the other day.  As a liberal Democrat, I can only pray his advice will be followed.

In essence, Mr. Limbaugh condemned the big tent strategy Republican operatives pushed as required for a win in 2008.  The operatives argued the only way Republicans would possibly garner enough votes this election cycle, given the lousy Republican brand, would be to appeal to moderates, independents and even some Democrats. Those operatives also argued the only Republican candidate with any chance at all of appealing to those voting blocs was John McCain.

Limbaugh calls the strategy a colossal failure.  The polls indicate independents are breaking for Obama rather than McCain and big time moderate Republicans are now endorsing Barack Obama with increasing frequency. 

All you intellectual conservative media types, go ahead and stay a Democrat once you move over.  By the way, we know what this is about.  This is about being invited to state dinners in a Barack Obama administration. This is about the social structure of Washington.  This is about style.  It has nothing to do with the fact that these people love Obama's policies.  They couldn't if they're paying attention.  Not if they say they're Republicans.  They couldn't possibly. 

There are probably other names I am leaving out here of Republican moderates who have fled and joined the Democrats and Obama, for whatever reasons.  I say, good riddance.

I have lost all respect for these people.  And, folks, when I said at the beginning of this that I wanted to turn around and pat myself on the back, it's because I (and so many like me) knew this exact thing was going to happen and tried to warn people about it during the primaries and so forth.  I am not happy it's happened except for one reason.  We flushed 'em out. We found out they're not really Republicans and they're by no means conservatives, and now they're gone.  Now the trick is to keep 'em out.

I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure this is called a messiah complex.  And it's a measure of how far afield some of these voices are from the mainstream of American thought.  The idea that these Republican moderates were somehow seduced by the prospect of hanging with an Obama Administration and couldn't possibly be a result of finding Obama's policies a bit more grounded in the real world is just laughable and demonstrates Limbaugh's unwillingness toface up to a well deserved defeat of modern Republican orthodoxy.  In Limbaugh's world, "true" Republicans are the ones enamored by his toxic mix of sarcasm, petty hatred and pious rhetoric.  And any that aren't swooning over his words need to be kept out of the Republican Party he envisions.

Go for it, Rush Limbaugh.  I support you 100%.

John Who?

By Cernig

Why does GOP.com hate John McCain (and, presumably, America)?

Could it have something to do with the war between McCain's original realist supporters (belatedly coming to their senses about the disasterously bad decision Kristol and the Corner strongarmed McCain into) and the Palinites who make up the rump of the party that nominated him? As one Republican apparatchik said the other day "if your against Palin, you're dead to the party".

A Leak Of A Leak, Or Just Made Up?

By Cernig

This story in Israel's Haaretz newspaper is getting a lot of notice from conservative hawks.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is very critical of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's positions on Iran, according to reports that have reached Israel's government.

Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content."

Sarkozy has certainly been fairly hawkish on Iran - more so than he has been bout any other nation, in fact. But this story isn't even a leak coming out of the French cabinet, its based entirely on what an anonymous "senior Israeli government source" says - an Israeli leak. So it's actually a leak of a leak - or a leak of Israeli espionage - if not made up out of whole cloth.

I say that latter because Israeli hardliner policy is to keep the pressure on Iran by continually releasing or placing stories designed to make it feel isolated and under threat, in the hope that will convince Iran's leaders to give up trying to break Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region. Pretty much every lurid or hyped story which takes a very hawkish line on Iran, or that threatens an attack on Iran, is coming from Israeli "officially unofficial" sources right now - even if it's actually being printed in UK conservative papers or some part of Murdoch's far-flung. empire.

So, to be honest, I don't believe a word of it, except for "according to a senior Israeli government source", unless and until there's some independent confirmation coming directly out of the French government in some manner.

P.S. And if you see a complicit connection between this and GOP mailers that say Obama is "no friend of Israel" or Joe the Plumber's campaigning on behalf of the McCain campaign and his hyperbolic claims that Obama's election would mean "the death of Israel" - well, so do I. Birds of a hardline feather flock together.

Update: Oh look, Sarkozy calls the leak of a fairytale "groundless".

Delusions are fun

By BJ

Well, fun to mock anyway.  You do have to feel somewhat sorry for the poor buggers who believe in them.  First up is Michael Graham at the Boston Herald, who asks some very important questions:

Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

Um, no, not that I recall.  How about you?

You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it

Those bastards!  How dare they hold on to what apparently is the only extant copy of a clearly damaging videotape instead of providing it to the McCain campaign to turn into negative ads?  I bet they’re behind the inexplicable failure of Scott Johnson to produce the “Whitey” tape, too!  And while we’re at it, where is that tape of Obama sacrificing his grandfather’s goats to Allah when he returned to his birthplace in Kenya?  We demand that the media stop withholding these tapes and show Obama for the Islamofascist, terror-loving, anti-non-American pacifist commie we believe him to be!

He blathers on for a time about how much he loves journalists, even as he acknowledges he isn’t one of them, and points to a couple other conservative opinion columnists who agree with him that the media hasn’t been pushing their storyline vetting Obama as much as they think they should, he brings up the recent Pew study that Republicans are grasping at like drowning men at straws.

At the risk of violating union rules, allow me to do a bit of reporting: A new study by the Pew Research Center found that, while 71 percent of Obama’s recent media coverage has been “positive” or “neutral,” almost 60 percent of McCain’s coverage over the same period has been “decidedly negative.”

And how much positive coverage did the media give McCain? Fourteen percent.

Note how he cleverly adds the neutral coverage to Obama’s positive coverage while ignoring it with McCain to make the gap seem even larger than it is.  The actual number of positive coverage for Obama was 36%, which, to be fair, is more positive coverage for Obama than McCain, but as the guys at Politico put it when confronted with the very same data,

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

Or as Campbell Brown roughly said last night on The Daily Show, “When one side says its raining and the other says it’s sunny, I should be able to open the door and when I see it’s sunny, saying so isn’t bias.”

Of course, back when Obama was getting harsher treatment from the media back when the Jeremiah Wright story blew up, the Republican complaint was that he was getting more coverage than McCain, it’s negativity notwithstanding.  Spin doesn’t have to be consistent, just consistently tilted in your favour.

In that I suppose calling Graham delusional is a bit harsh.  He just has his ideological blinders on, and there is at least the suspicion that he knows it.

No, for sheer delicious delusional thinking, one has to go to the folks over at Hillbuzz, who have this to say about Pennsylvania.

On November 4th, the news networks are going to be spinning and sputtering and playing catchup, but everything we see on the ground in PA is what we saw during the primaries: Obama has no shot of winning the Keystone State.

Here is specifically what we talked about tonight: never in any of our careers have any of us ever seen members of one party switching sides and voting for the other party as we see in this election with Democrats for McCain. There has never been anything like it.  Not even the “Reagan Democrats” who voted for Reagan over Carter, for the simple fact that these “Reagan Democrats” weren’t identified and labeled until AFTER the election.

No, Democrats for McCain are real, are voting for McCain right now, and are open and organized, as well as self-identifying.  Lynn Rothschild might be our poster gal, as one of the most prominent of our ranks, but it’s telling that everyone from Team Hillary that we know now works for McCain.  ALL OF US. Whether they are open about it, like we are, or are working quietly behind the scenes, we can’t think of a single person we worked with on a daily basis for Hillary who is now working on behalf of Obama.

Now, I’m sure some of you naysayers out there may feel inclined to point out that whatever their labeling, the “Reagan Democrats” were actually noted in the polling swinging towards Reagan before the election, and that for all their self-identifying and organization, no such phenomena seems to apparent in the polling this time around.  Well you of little faith, the folks at Hillbuzz have news for you!

Union members repeatedly tell all of us that they are lying to pollsters because the unions have been polling these people — and the unions will threaten people’s jobs if they don’t tow the union line. So, the people lie when asked whom they are supporting. But, the unions can’t control who they vote for on Election Day. And that’s when things are going to get interesting.

See!  Nothing to worry about.  All those polls showing McCain getting his ass handed to him are just because the union members are lying to the union pollsters!  (Since when are the polling companies run by the unions?)  Shut up inner troll!

Now, of course some of you out there might be wondering just why all of these DEMOCRATS, particularly of the unionized variety, are rushing to support a man on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum from them and promises to continue the ruinous policies of the last eight years that haven’t been very kind to them, all in direct contradiction to the stated preference of the woman they claim to be the die-hard supporters of.  Well, they provide the answer:

There are two things Hillary Clinton and John McCain have in common that we’re thinking about right now: (1) both love America more than anything and truly want what’s best for the country, and not themselves and (2) Clinton has a framed photo of McCain in her office, while McCain has a similar photo of Clinton in his.

Oh.

Well.

Framed photos of each other.

Well.

How can you argue with framed photos?

Oregon's Senate Race

By Ron Beasley

The Senate Race between Republican incumbent Gordon Smith, Democrat Jeff Merkley and Constitution Party candidate Dave Brownlow is gaining national attention and has taken some interesting twists and turns.

-Details and videos below the fold-

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Agree To Talk To Taliban

By Cernig

As the U.S. plans to escalate its military component in the region, Pakistan and Afghanistan are moving to defuse the reasons for fighting as a high-level meeting of delegates from the two countries agreed to open the doors to reconcilliation talks with the Taliban.

Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said both countries would talk only with those militants who "accept the constitutions of both nations," but did not explicitly say they must first disarm.

Another delegate to the two-day talks between political and tribal leaders in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad said that the offer was not open to al-Qaida members blamed for some of the worst violence in both countries.

"We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition," said Abdullah, the head of the Afghan delegation.

"Those who are willing to take this opportunity and come forward, the door is open," he said.

Neither Pakistani-based nor Afghan-based Taliban spokesmen were immediately available for comment.

He said the meeting, or "jirga," had formed committees to seek contacts with "all parties in this conflict." They would then report back to a meeting in two months with their findings, he said.

Eventually, you have to talk to the terrorists you believe you can convert into non-terrorists. If that wasn't the case, the entire state of Israel, for example, wouldn't exist.

But you can bet that one of the conditions any Taliban offer to lay down its weapons will include is a withdrawal of Coalition forces from the region. The Afghan government knows that, and knows that the Taliban is still largely controlled and supplied by the Pakistani military and ISI intelligence agency. It seems that Afghanistan has decided to swap its independence for peace and become a Pakistani satellite - which was always the long-term aim of Pakistani foreign policy and use of the Taliban as proxies in Afghanistan. That's understandable but it may be as well for the US, India and others to start getting used to the new reality in the region.

Into The Future, With Blinkers On

By Cernig

Over at The New Atlanticist, Senior Advisor to the Atlantic Council Robert Manning notes that a new world order is being forged, with Americans largely oblivious to what's going on.

Don’t look now, but much about last week’s Asia-Europe Summit (ASEM) – from its remedies for the financial meltdown to its obscurity in the U.S. – spoke volumes about emerging multipolarity and the historic shift in global power.  Was America watching?

The milieu in Beijing, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy schmoozing with China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jibao, suggests that when President George Bush hosts what will be the first of several summits aimed at shaping new rules to govern global finance, he will hardly be the center of attention.

It may have been coincidence that the annual Asia-Europe gathering occurred smack in the middle of the worst financial crisis since 1929. But the symbolism was hard to miss. An Asia Rising holds the majority of global foreign reserves, over $4 trillion in foreign currency; Europe for all its flaws and lack of dynamism still boasts an economy as large as the U.S.  Yet most in the U.S. were largely oblivious, with coverage even on cable news networks nearly non-existent, and relegated to the back pages of the business section of the New York Times.

...What does all this mean for the U.S. as a global actor?  Well for starters, the stock of those clinging to the myth of a unipolar world makes the current Dow look robust. It was never quite true even in the one dimension where the U.S. is and will remain for some time indisputably overwhelmingly dominant: military power.

But a nation’s power, as the Chinese like to say, is a question of Comprehensive National Strength, with military capability one important indicator. In the real world, a nation’s usable power will differ, depending on the nature of the particular issue. In the world now taking shape, the most sensible operative model for U.S. foreign policy will in general terms shift from Single Superpower to Primus Inter Pares, first among equals.

Now, as a European living in America I'm undoubtably biased, but what Manning is pointing to seems to me to be a manifestation of American Exceptionalism, one so comprehensively pushed for so long that even self-confessed lefties who would like to see America's status as single and biggest bully on the block trimmed fall prey to it. Americans have been told for so long that America's status and power means that it doesn't have to care about the opinions of those beyond its shores unless it wants to that - surprise, surprise - Americans have stopped caring about what goes on beyond their own shores unless Americans are doing it. I've noticed this in my contributions to Crooks and Liars, where I mostly post foreign policy and foreign affairs pieces. With the exception of hot-button issues having an impact on domestic politics such as Iraq and, lately, Afghanistan, foreign affairs posts get about a third of the comments that domestic affairs posts do. And it's not just my posts - anyone writing such posts gets the same lackluster response. Quite often, several of the comments will be along the lines of "Who cares? Get back to the domestic scandal de jour."

(That lack of interest seems to be pretty pervasive on other sites too. The very best progressive or bi-partisan foreign policy analysis sites and blogs get a fraction of the readers that sites devoted to more domestic issues do. Of course, rightwing sites have the same ostrich attitude in spades, with the twist that they want America to continue doing it to foreigners as if it were still a sole superpower and are simply snearingly dismissive of any hint that such simply isn't possible any more.)

Sure, people are naturally more interested in what's close to home. But in today's world what's going on 'over there" is close to home. America's fall from sole superpower will effect every single American's life in immediate ways, from their bank account to their job to their sons and brothers fighting in foreign realms. I wrote once that American foreign policy consists of inflicting domestic policy on foreigners. In the new multi-polar world that's going to have to change some, but there's scant sign on either Right or Left that the bulk of Americans are ready to admit it in their hearts, rather than their heads.

US Forces Plan To "Step Aside" From Any Iraqi Civil War

By Cernig

And it's 1..2...3..what are we not fighting for?

Via Kevin Drum comes a piece in the NYT looking at the powderkeg of factional tensions in Mosul.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeezing out Kurdish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, sending the national police and army from Baghdad and trying to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kurdistan Regional Government led by Massoud Barzani.

....“It’s the perfect storm against the old festering background,” warned Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, who oversees Nineveh and Kirkuk Provinces and the Kurdish region. Worry is so high that the American military has already settled on a policy that may set a precedent, as the United States slowly withdraws to allow Iraqis to settle their own problems. If the Kurds and Iraqi government forces fight, the American military will “step aside,” General Thomas said, rather than “have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker.”

As one of Drum's commenters notes:

As I recall it, the program was: (1) increase troop levels (2) to reduce the violence to make space for (3) political reconciliation that will provide the foundation for (4) a reduction in violence not dependent on American troops (5) that will enable us to gradually withdraw without having to worry about whether Iraq will blow up again.

We never got past step 2. Now the reckoning.

That reckoning will involve violence, in more than one place and between more than just two factions, in the lead up to Iraq's provincial elections. The only real question is: how bad will it get? I totally understand Brig. Gen Thomas' wish not to have his people die policing a civil war six years into the U.S. occupation but doesn't this blow wide open the conservative talking point, so beloved of both Bush and McCain, that US troops have to stay in Iraq to help prevent such violence? Why are we still there?

Of course, if there's no new status of forces deal by January Thomas' plans become moot, since it's likely US forces would be confined to base anyway. In fact, they're using the threat of exactly that to try to strongarm Iraqi into accepting an agreement it isn't happy with. McClatchy reports:

The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

But if the US military is planning to stay out of any faction fights anyway, just how much of a threat is that?

Confused Official Unofficial Leaks On Syria Raid

By Cernig

The usual anonymous suspects continue to be unable to get their anonymous stories straight on what happened in Syria at the weekend. This from Fox News:

Abu Ghadiyain, the target of Sunday's Special Operations raid in Sukkariyeh --about 4-5 miles away from Syria's border with Iraq, was at one point in the custody of U.S. forces, the official said. However, another U.S. official from a separate agency said Monday that latest intelligence shows Ghadiyain was killed.

Meanwhile, the official Bush administration line is "no comment" - leaving the field clear for these unofficial officials to spin as they wish. You'd think that if they actually did know the Special Forces folks had captured or killed an important AQI middleman, the supposed Commander In Chief might know about it and the Republican Party would be making hay with it at a time when their electoral prospects are as dismal as...well, the life of a rural farmer on the Syrian border when US Special Forces come calling by mistake.

But hang on a mo' - haven't we seen this particular melodrama before? Back when Israel struck the Box on the Euphrates in September 2007, there was no official confirmation for months, giving plenty of time for neocon "sources" to create all kinds of fairy stories for the world's press. Then, once they had their powerpoints and photoshops right, the powers that be announced it was a nuclear reactor and an imminent threat to world peace. (Thing is, I have my unofficial sources too - and more than one nuke expert has told me off the record that the presentation was better fabricated than the "reactor" was.)

If the administration even knows who it's commandos hit, and that it wasn't a bunch of poor construction workers, then let it say so clearly and present what evidence it has instead of sending out officials to speak anonymously and to contradict each other. Otherwise, Occam's Razor demands that the most plausible explanation is the Syrian one - that mistaken intelligence led to the massace of innocent civilians just as it has so many times before in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Update: I said there's be all kinds of lurid speculation based on less than spectacular sources. Here we go - from Murdoch's Sky News in the UK.

Publicly America is still saying nothing but US officials are making intriguing claims off the record.

Now, a respected Israeli intelligence expert says he has been told the operation was carried out with the knowledge and co-operation of Syrian intelligence.

Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, makes the claim in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, based on briefings with two senior American officials, one of whom he says until recently "held a very high ranking in the Pentagon".

...He claims the Syrian government told the Americans: "If you want to do this, do it. We are going to give you a corridor and carte blanche. We will not harm your troops."

Hang on - how would two "senior officials" - one of whom isn't at the Pentagon any more - know this for a fact, rather than just be speculating? And even if they did, why would they be blowing tacit Syrian co-operation (and the intel coup that would represent) wide open by revealing the fact to an Israeli journalist who works for a tabloid newspaper described as emphasizing "drama and human interest over sophisticated analysis"?

The Three Ashleys

By BJ

This pretty much sums up the race and what we'll be seeing for the next week until its over.

Well done.

Socialists For McCain!

By BJ

And you thought the endorsement by al Qaeda was going to be the worst news McCain got this election cycle.  Man, you haven't seen nothing yet.

The plan took shape during a particularly intense criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an Akron IHOP. We realized that we'd been recruiting no more new members per year than the Green Bay Packers and that, despite all our efforts, more Americans have been taken aboard UFOs than have embraced the historic promise of socialism. So we decided to suspend our usual work of standing on street corners and hissing, "Hey, how'd you like to live in a workers' paradise?" Instead of building socialism, one worker at a time, we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.

First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che T-shirts, suited them up in Armanis and wingtips and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss. Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, and as soon as the money starts rolling in, send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find--subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes--anything goes. And oh yes: Spend your own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of--$10,000 martinis, fountains of champagne--so as to fan the flames of class resentment.

. . .

Things were going swimmingly until about a week ago, when the capitalists suddenly staged a counter-coup. We had thought that the nationalization of the banks would bring capitalism to its knees, but instead, the capitalists were craftily using it to privatize the government.

. . .

Ah well, we socialists still have the election to look forward to. After months of studying the candidates' economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses John McCain!

Remind me I have to read Barbara Ehrenreich more often.  (h/t Levenson)

Crashing the party!

By Ron Beasley

Now I'm a proud liberal but I'm not a registered Democrat.  I'm what's known as an unaffiliated voter here in Oregon - an independent. It's up to the political parties here in Oregon to decide if unaffiliated voters can participate in their primaries and neither the Democrats or the Republicans allow it.  As a result I had no say as to what choices I would have this November.  The good news is we have a fix on the ballot this time - measure 65 - the open primary. Former Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber  makes the case for yes on 65:

As a lifelong progressive democrat, I believe that Measure 65 – the open primary proposal -- is the one measure on the 2008 ballot that presents a truly progressive foundation for our representative form of government. This ballot measure offers an opportunity to undo a fundamental injustice in our voting system and lay the foundation for more effective governance in the future. It will immediately invite all Oregonian voters to meaningfully participate in elections and -- over the long term -- it will create a space in which Oregonians can rebuild their trust in government as a tool for positive progressive change in their communities.

In many legislative districts across Oregon, only members of the two dominant parties may help choose the nominee who – if elected in the general election – will represent all the citizens in the district.

I believe that this kind of exclusion is fundamentally wrong and is incompatible with the democratic and progressive cause. Our history has been one of expanding participation in the electoral process, not restricting it: from the 17th Amendment which provided for direct election of the United States Senate; to the 19th Amendment which granted women the right to vote; to the 24th Amendment which prohibited the restriction of voting rights due to the inability to pay poll taxes; to the 26th Amendment which lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18. This progressive record of inclusion is based on the belief that the people, not the parties they choose to join are best equipped to govern and to solve our problems.

The current closed system has practical consequences as well. When legislators are sent to Salem by the party members of their districts, rather than by all those who reside there, genuine interests go unrepresented and public trust in the legislature to represent its interests is diluted.

In a progressive democracy, we must always be attentive to the needs and concerns not only of the majority, but of those who don't have a prominent voice. Whether we are developing a framework for health care in Oregon, reworking the tax code, or improving the quality of our schools, we need to have input from all Oregonians if we hope to get it right.

But if an Oregonian never hears from their elected officials during a campaign, what reason do they have to trust the legislature to represent their interests? If we ask them to approve the expansion of a program within a government in which they have no meaningful stake, how should we expect them to respond?

The 2005 Oregon Legislature -- recognizing the low regard in which this institution is held by the general public -- convened the Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature to seek out and address the root causes of this problem. The commission’s first recommendation was to open the primary process to empowering voters without regard to their party affiliation.

Now is the time to heed this considered recommendation and pass Ballot Measure 65.

This year I would have voted for Barack Obama in the primary but there have been times that I would have voted for a moderate Republican to give me a real choice in the general election. 

If We Can't Have Gun Control...

...can we at least have better gun-nut control?

By Cernig

This from J.S. O'Brien at Scholars & Rogues:

Yesterday, an idiot father and and even more brain-dead “instructor” allowed an eight-year-old boy to fire a fully automatic Uzi submachine gun at an event billed as, “all legal and and fun! — No permits or licenses required!!!” Naturally, the gun kicked up, as it is designed to do, flipping toward the child who managed to shoot himself in the head with it.  Since kids’ heads aren’t all that heavily armored, we now have a little boy who will never see his ninth birthday.

So, little Christopher Bizilj is dead, dead, dead.  His father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, director of emergency medicine (if you can believe it) at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, got to watch his son bleed out from a head wound on the floor.  And the people who put this little event together have to look at themselves in their mirrors and ask themselves the simple question, “What the FUCK made me think it was a good idea to put a submachine gun in a child’s hands?”

Words fail.

McCain's 'gonna test them'

by Jay McDonough

Obama supporters collectively cringed when Joe Biden predicted U.S. enemies would "test" a new President Barack Obama with an international crisis.  At this point in the game, up in the national polls and in good shape in state polling, it would be smart to error on the side of caution and avoid gaffes at all cost.  Not unexpectedly, the McCain campaign ran with Biden's gaffe, claiming even Biden was questioning Barack Obama's preparedness. 

Whether or not our enemies intentionally "test" U.S. presidents, international crises will certainly arise regardless of who is elected. So, the question is; what kind of a president would best confront these crises?  My preference would be someone with a calm resolve, a steady hand, and surrounded by sensible advisors and not someone who's erratic, tactic driven, short fused and surrounded by the same group of neocons who've held sway during the Bush Administration. I suspect the reason the McCain campaign attack never gained much traction is because most folks felt a lot more secure imagining Barack Obama and not John McCain managing the helm in one of those crises.

Perhaps because that McCain campaign attack didn't take root, John McCain doubled down yesterday.

"I'm gonna test them,'' Republican John McCain said at a campaign rally in New Mexico this morning. "They're not gonna test me.''

Let me get this straight; John McCain, in an attempt to demonstrate his preparedness will initiate an international crisis?  And that's going to prompt folks to vote for John McCain?

McCain, Short On Black Volunteers, Hires Obama Supporters

By Cernig

Classic.

Two women walk out of John McCain’s Mid-West headquarters carrying a pile of voter canvassing sheets, one sports a baseball hat declaring her a “team leader” of the Republican campaign. And both are black — an unusual sight in an election where Barack Obama’s support among African Americans is almost monolithic.

Are they volunteers? They look at each other sheepishly. “Not exactly,” replies one. “We work for an employment agency,” says the other. Who are they voting for? “I don’t want to say,” says the first woman. “Obama — of course!” whispers the braver of the pair.

They laugh, then look over their shoulders at the office behind them. “Don’t give him your name, he’ll put it in the paper,” says the cautious one, explaining that they cannot afford to lose their $10-an-hour (£6) jobs. “This is embarrassing. We’re doing this because we have to live. At least none of our friends can see us. We’re from Chicago — like Obama.”

Republicans have had to hire mercenaries for this ground war. And, if the experience outside the McCain headquarters was any guide, they may not all be shooting in the same direction.

Got to have those tokens as a smokescreen to distance Johnny and the Neocons from zealots like this (h/t C&L):

Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday.

In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The men also sought to go on a national killing spree, with Obama as its final target, Cavanaugh told The Associated Press.

"They said that would be their last, final act - that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."

Yet the GOP crawls ever closer to being a party only for dangerous rightwing extremists. Now, conservative critics are being told by one wing of the GOP that if they're against Palin, they are dead to the Republican party and by another that Mitt Romney, not Palin, is the heir-apparent. Jason Linkins writes:

the GOP is set splinter into a trio of factions: the Palin-philes, the Romney remainders, and those excommunicated from the movement for daring to make a lick of sense at one point.

Playing Craps for a Senate Seat

By Fester:

The news that Senator Stevens (R-AK) has been convicted on all seven counts of making false statements pretty much guarantees that Democrat Mark Begich will win the Alaska Senate race. It is also an example of a crappy gamble biting the GOP own ass…

Senator Stevens would always face a tough race for re-election as the Democrats recruited a good candidate, Sen. Stevens was known as corrupt as hell, and the political tide is favorable for Democrats. After he was indicted, his re-elect numbers crashed. However over the past couple of weeks, the race has closed to a slight lead for Begich in the public polling. It would be a tough win but it was vaguely plausible. 
 
However Senator Stevens pushed for a quick trial in the hopes of an acquittal. This is despite the fact that 85% of defendants who go to trial for money laundering or related crimes are convicted. If he was acquitted before the election, he stood a good chance at holding the seat. However this is only a 1:7 play which is roughly the same odds as Any Craps. 

This was an optional play for Senator Stevens, he did not have to request a fast trial. It provided the maximal pay-off but it also had the maximum regret in that he could be convicted and if convicted he was guaranteed to turn over a GOP Senate seat to a Democrat. The better strategy from a mini-max perspective would have been to push for a slow trial and discard the maximal opportunity (conviction, win the Senate election) for a mixed strategy of riding the Republican tilt of Alaska for a narrow Senate win with the contingency option after the election of either being acquitted OR being convicted but being replaced by a Republican appointed by a Republican governor.

Instead, the gamble was an all-in, low odds, maximal risk gamble which failed. 

 

Primaries to prevent Idiocy

By Fester: 

Ideally, politicians would not need federal indictments or the threat of losing their seat to be personally non-corrupt, but politicians are people and people are absolutely stunning in their ability to rationalize and self-justify almost any behavior. Furthermore, there is a steady stream of opportunity for personal graft. So it is necessary for counter-vailing forces to push back against the incentives towards corruption and self-dealing.

I am a firm believer in the value of primary elections, especially for Democrats as the Republican Party looks like it will be spending at least a couple electoral cycles in a very nasty circular firing squad as the theo-cons duke it out with the money-cons and the debate is between the beer halls, Sam’s Club and country-club Republicanisms. The GOP will be able to take out the most idiotic and vulnerable House Democrats such as Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fl) but the electoral incentive to behave will not be a significant nor credible threat in the general election.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that it will be the job of progressives and open government/good government types of all ideologies to create strong pressures to prevent complete douchebaggery because there will not be a strong internal caucus incentive for self-policing. The Republicans will be shut out of power so they won’t be able to market their access to power while Democrats will be fighting a tug-of-war with significant factions being ensconced and insulated from electoral consequences. We’ll see behaviors as outrageous as the $90,000 block of ‘alleged’ cash found in Rep. Jefferson’s freezer and working down the outrageous list, behaviors similar to Rep. Rangel’s rent deal in Manhatten.

Credible threats of prosecution are severely lagging indicators as a good lawyer and a non-drunk political strategist can drag the motions through for at least one electoral cycle. Competently run primary challenges against a quasi-random sample of the most egregious offenders in 2010 should provide a decent deterrent while producing positive partisan externalities as bad behavior by a small group of Democrats can be used to tar the entire brand, much like the behaviors of Sen. Stevens, Rep. Young and a few other GOP representatives have marginally contributed to the Republican problems over the past two cycles.

 

 

Ted Stevens Guilty On All Charges

By Cernig

The end came faster than I thought it would.

Stevens, 84, was found guilty on all seven counts of lying on Senate disclosure forms to hide more than $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts from the head of Alaska oil services company VECO Corp.

Stevens, who had maintained his innocence, declined to comment when he left the courthouse.

He faces up to five years in prison on each of the seven counts, but under federal sentencing guidelines he would likely receive much less prison time or just get probation.

Do you think he has the nerve to keep fighting for re-election?

And what does this say about the judgement and morals of folk like Sarah Palin and Colin Powell, one of whom was a close ally and the other a staunch defender of Stevens?

Clueless

By Ron Beasley

It's really too bad that Iraq is not more in the news.  It's become obvious to anyone paying attention that the al-Maliki government is now taking it's orders not from Washington DC but from Tehran.  The most obvious example is the lack of a status of forces agreement.  The majority of the Iraqis want the US out of their country sooner rather than later.  Joe Conason explains that John McCain is just as clueless about the situation in Iraq as he is on what to do about the economy.

The absence of headlines has allowed John McCain to pretend that his insistence on maintaining the American occupation until "victory" is still relevant.

But despite McCain's claim to greater experience and judgment in foreign policy, he just doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. If he did, the latest developments in relations between Baghdad and Washington would dampen the Republican nominee's enthusiasm for a prolonged occupation.

Negotiations between the Bush administration and the government of Nouri al-Maliki over the presence of U.S. forces have reached an impasse that no longer seems certain to be resolved until George W. Bush has left office. If any resolution is achieved over the coming weeks, moreover, it will render McCain's hard-line position on the war null and void.

Bush administration folds but not John McCain:

But having presented the Iraqis with a draft treaty last spring that would have permitted an indefinite occupation, the White House has folded so completely and so often during the course of the ensuing negotiations that such warnings have little credibility.

Meanwhile the Iraqis are obviously well aware that Bush has forfeited his influence at home and abroad and will be leaving office at the end of January anyway. Their latest proposal is to ask the United Nations to "extend" the coalition mandate for one more year, allowing the Iraqis to enter talks with the incoming administration.

So much for the fantasies of the neoconservatives, who once imagined the new Iraq as a permanent base for American troops in the Middle East, with a client government that would reflect U.S. priorities. What has come to exist instead is an Iraq much closer to Iran than to the United States, one that will countenance no permanent U.S. bases and prefers that our troops depart sooner rather than later.

Yet McCain still seems to believe that we will be able to have a "conditions-based" agreement with the Iraqis that allows the withdrawal of our troops according to the judgment of American commanders and the president. Someone should try to bring him back to reality, and soon — just in case he wins this election.

So John McCain is supposed to have all the foreign policy experience but he doesn't have a clue as to what's going on.  Sorry John, the war is over and as many of us predicted from the beginning the winner is Iran.

The Purpose Of Rightwing Outrage

By Cernig

Today's rightwing outrage, "Obama the redistributionist", is explained and debunked by Andrew Sullivan and Maha. The McCain campaign's attack is such thin gruel that even Oliver wouldn't go back for more.

Sully asks if this is the best McCain has left in the last days of the election campaigns. I think he's missing the target audience. McCain has entirely stopped trying to convince the electorate to vote Republican. He and the entire GOP are now far more worried about keeping their base intact, staving off the worst of the coming civil war of recriminations. To that end, dog-whistles about terrorists, socialists and other ne'er-do-wells serve a useful purpose, giving Republicans a buffet of ready-made excuses to choose from and get angry about - instead of getting angry with the Party apparatchiks who have presided over the collapse of their Big Tent.

P.S. And isn't it ironic that the man who could lead the GOP out of the wilderness and back into a position of contention is an apostate heretic according to the idolaters, Golden Moose worshippers and Mammonites of the far Right?

Military Defense Lawyer, Client, Boycott Gitmo Trial

By Cernig

The Gitmo trails are beginning to assume the appearance of an Oscar Wilde farce.

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, facing a possible life sentence, sat mutely at the defense table. His lawyer announced the prisoner was boycotting the trial because he did not want a military attorney and because the judge had denied his repeated requests to represent himself.

The appointed defense attorney, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, asked to be relieved in deference to his client's wishes, but the judge refused. Frakt then said he could not participate either.

"I will be joining Mr. Al-Bahlul's boycott, sitting silently at the table," said Frakt, who then refused to respond to several questions from the judge.

The judge, Air Force Col. Ronald Gregory, said Frakt was obligated to participate and that both the lawyer and defendant, despite their wishes, would be required to attend the hearings — even if they stay silent.

"The commission will not proceed with an empty defense table," Gregory said.

This is only the second tribunal to actually convene, out of around 80 trials of detainees expected (from 255 still held). What's it going to be like by the time the 20th, 40th rolls around? And what about the other 170+ detainees?

It's quite clear the process is deeply flawed - so flawed that in a real court some very bad people would walk free because their trials are contaminated by tortured evidence and official interference in due process that, in truth, are just as much war crimes as the offenses detainees are accused of. Despite the howlings of the rabid Right, though, that's the way the civilization cookie should crumble. If they wanted it otherwise, the Bush administration's actions were entirely the wrong way to go about it.

Amy Goodman talks to Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights about Gitmo

Little Regard For International Boundaries

By Cernig

Syria has released footage it says is of U.S. helicopters on their way to an attack inside Syrian on Sunday.

The post headline is taken from NBC's Richard Engel in Baghdad, describing special forces crossing the border into Syria on Sunday, the first time U.S. forces have invaded Syrian territory in all these years occupying Iraq. The U.S. military, in an officially unofficial leak to the AP, are claiming hot pursuit of Al Qaeda fighters out of Iraq and have said little else about it other than that the U.S. is "taking matters into its own hands". Syrian eyewitnesses are claiming that US forces shot and killed seven men and a woman, perhaps even abducting two, while the Syrian government are taking it a step further and alleging children died too. So far, though, the only funerals that have been held were for the seven dead men, which locals and the Syrian authorities say were simply construction workers (and which Fox News' Mike Tobin, pulling faux facts unsupported by evidence or even official U.S. statements out of his ass, says were known Al Qaeda operatives).

What is certain among the conflicting reports is that U.S. forces have now ignored international laws and trespassed on sovereign territory in Pakistan and Syria in pursuit of dodgy intelligence, in both cases with reasonably credible reports of civilians wrongly slain. Technically, these are acts of war and only U.S. military might prevents them becoming so. We know that Bush has ordered that he must personally approve any incursion into Pakistan, and it seems that he must have done so for this Syrian trespass too, one that is unique in all the time that the U.S. has occupied neighbouring Iraq.

So why? Why now? Well:

Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, commented last night: "The Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favour with the new administration. Thus White House analysts may assume that it can have a "freebee" - taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price."

There's also the possibility that this is partly just another attempt at boosting flagging Republican support, since there's only one hot-head Bush ally running for president who is likely to approve of creating an international incident at such a late stage of the Iraqi occupation. But it's a move that is likely to backfire badly in the region. Arab states, including Iraq, will be angered by this mini-invasion and will point to a continued U.S. prssence in Iraq as destabilizing. Iran will, of course, back its Syrian ally. And even Israel won't be happy. As BJ noted, Israel's been progressing quite well with negotiations involving Syria on Lebanese peace and this incursion will work to derail those negotiations simply because of guilt by association. Israel also has an election coming up, and a mood of belligerence and instability can only help the hardliners, allies of the neocons who largely steer Bush and McCain's policy thinking on the region.

It helps the White House, if it is simply after a "freebie", that all of these incursions are being carried out by U.S. Special Operations forces, which have their own independent command structure (and an independent budget) headquartered in the U.S. - allowing Proconsul Petreaus and his subordinates to have some plausible denial of culpability when talking to local officials. But it's hardly likely to help long-term strategic planning. Still, the Bush administration now wants to send thousands more of these troops to Afghanistan, a move that Senator Russ Feingold has said will "only perpetuate a counterproductive game of cat and mouse that has has led to a steep erosion in Afghans' support for foreign forces."

These raids are arguably illegal war crimes by international law, destabilizing in and of themselves, counterproductive in the long term, but unlikely to lead to war with either Pakistan or Syria on their own. However it's worth thinking about something - Iran appears to be the only possible target nation for such raids that's been left out so far. If the Bush administration decide to attempt a "freebie" there, it's far more doubtful that the blowback will be so containable.

Update: Iran expert Kaveh L Afrasiabi writes at the Asia Times that Iran is spooked. (H/T Russ at Scholars and Rogues)

"The chances are that the US incursion into Syria is a dress rehearsal for action against Iran and the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards [Corps], just as they often portray Israel's aerial attack on Syrian territory last year as a prelude for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities," said the Tehran political scientist, adding that since the US had already branded Iran's Guards as terrorists, it had the necessary rationale to do so.

In the event the US indulges in such a gambit, the issue becomes whether it will be a one-shot single incursion or a series of raids and, more important, what will happen should Iran fight back and respond in kind, within Iraq's territory.

There are serious scenarios for major escalation nested in every micro action and US policymakers would be remiss to focus on their own action without taking into consideration the likely chain reaction that could lead to a regional flare-up.

(Many thanks to Heather from the C&L team for video links)

Monday Morning Musing on Syria

By BJ

Following up on a couple of points Cernig noted in his Instahoglets round-up yesterday, I find myself asking why the US would, after more than five years engaged in Iraq, and after the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq has dwindled to a trickle, decide to launch an attack against Syria within a week of a presidential election that promises a new and temporarily vulnerable administration regardless the winner.  You would almost think that they were trying to provoke some kind of international crisis

Of course, one of the presidential candidates has indicated that provoking a crisis is just the kind of thing he’d like to do, and not too surprisingly, it’s the one with close ties to the current White House.  Of course, that’s a large part of the reason many people don’t want such an irresponsible hothead to win next Tuesday.

And the musings don’t stop there, as any international incident with Syria is certain to affect its neighbour Israel.  The two countries have been moving towards peace talks through Turkey, which the current US government has been very much set against, and it just so happens that Israel is soon to go to the polls as well, an election where the hard-right led by Likud is predicted to make significant gains, though it is still slightly short of Kadima in the polls.  As elsewhere, a close-fought election is likely to be nasty, and as with the US, the distraction that the turmoil of electioneering and manoeuvring to form a new government causes is the kind of opportunity a country’s enemies salivate over.  Just the kind of time you’d want an ally to throw matches on the kindling, isn’t it?

I doubt things will grow into some kind of conflagration, since few leaders are as dangerously irresponsible as the US’s appears to be.  Still, it is another in a long list of reasons why everybody will be much better off the sooner those matches are passed to an adult who won’t make reckless plays with America’s and its allies future.

McCain supporters making fraudulent contributions

By Libby

The A-list wingers at The Corner and their cohorts in Right Blogstantinople have been busy trying to gin up a fundraising controversy in their latest ploy to smear Obama, with an eye to cast doubt on an Obama victory. I see the WaPo finally picked up on the theme and is asking if campaigns funded by the people instead of big money interests isn't really a threat to democracy.

Leaving aside that we're talking about 1% of Obama's fundraising here at best, hardly a massive problem, the WaPo is asking the wrong question. The Corner's minions have embarked on a huge effort to deliberately make fraudulent contributions to Obama's campaign in order to 'prove' the fraud exists. This is illegal. The perps are making public confessions, boasting of their criminality. So why aren't they being arrested?

Update: Thanks to the commenter who complained in comments, Mark Kleiman confirms the fraudulent contributors are breaking two different laws.

[Cross-posted from The Impolitic where the comment section is not amused]

Woo-Hoo!

By BJ

University Researchers Developing Cancer-Fighting Beer

I've always said beer is health food, and here they are making it even healthier!  And to think some people don't understand why we fund scientific research.

The Wild West (Coast Of Africa)

(Or, Blackwater vs Blackbeards of the Somali Main)

By Cernig

Mercenaries Security contractors think they may have found their next nice little earner. As an adjunct to thei Iraqi swashbuckling they're going to try some more of the same off the Horn of Africa.

Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms — some with a reputation for being quick on the trigger in Iraq — are joining the battle against pirates plaguing one of the world's most important shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia. The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq.

Blackwater and others are in negotiation with shipping firms to put armed guards on vessels sailing past Somalia, and Blackwater already has a ship with response squads and helicopters in the region. But, given the heavy-handed (even bloodthirsty) actions of some security contractors in Iraq, not everyone's as gleeful as the US Navy is about the development.

Cyrus Mody, the manager of the International Maritime Bureau, says private security personnel can offer useful advice to ship captains, but he worries not all companies have clear rules of engagement or have sought legal advice about the consequences of opening fire.

... Mody says armed guards onboard ships may encourage pirates to use their weapons or spark an arms race between predators and prey. Currently, pirates often fire indiscriminately during an attack but don't aim to kill or injure crew. The pirates usually use assault rifles but have rocket-propelled grenades; some reports also say they have mini-cannon.

"If someone onboard a ship pulls a gun, will the other side pull a grenade?" Mody asked.

British contractors stress the importance of intelligence and surveillance, a safe room for the crew to retreat to if the ship is boarded, and the range of non-lethal deterrence measures available.

"The standard approach is for (pirates) to come in with all guns blazing at the bridge because when a boat is stopped it's easier to board," said David Johnson, director of British security firm Eos. "But if you have guns onboard, you are going to escalate the situation. We don't want to turn that part of the world into the Wild West."

Some would say it already has - but only one victim has been shot out of 63 hijackings this year. That could soon change.

Instahoglets October 26th 08

By Cernig

It's been a while since I did one of these, but with the elections dominating the news cycle there's some interesting foreign affairs "news less travelled" getting next to no notice right now.

- AIG, even after it had taken a bailout deal that left it 80% taxpayer owned, was still actively lobbying. The millions of your money it has spent influencing your representatives included a big chunk in favor of the US/India nuclear deal. Say whaaa?

- The Pentagon are preparing for a period of increased danger as various undesireables might decide - as they did during Brown's transition in the UK - that a new guy in charge is a good time for an attack. They don't think it matters whether the new guy is McCain or Obama, though, proving they're saner than the average Cornerite.

- Syria is claiming US helicopters attacked a village just inside its border with Iraq, killing 9 civilians and wounding 14, in a possible sign that cross-border strikes based on crappy intel aren't just for Afghanistan. If true, it's technically an act of war unless the US military claim "hot pursuit" of militants, which might be difficult to do if no militants were there. One worth watching.

- Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, there are reports that US aircraft mistakenly bombed and killed 20 private security contractors guarding a road construction project which came under attack by the Taliban. Airstrikes account for the vast majority of coalition-caused deaths in Afghanistan, and are vying with the Taliban to be the major killer of Afghanistan civilians. Its a tactic that has alienated the populace, handed propaganda victory after victory to the militants and weakened the Karzai government, but the military keep doing it.

- Newsweek says that Iran's nuclear facillities are too deeply buried for Israel to harm with conventional weapons even if it wanted to - which always leaves nukes. Meanwhile Obama's nuclear-weapons expert is suggesting getting rid of all nukes but in the meantime adopting a posture "limiting the purpose of nuclear weapons to preventing their use by others". If that sounds like a First Strike Doctrine to you - well, it does to me too.

- Georgia is still bubbling. "The leader of Georgia's pro-Russian breakaway Abkhazia region has ordered Abkhazian military forces to retaliate against what he calls all "provocations" from the Georgian side." And: "Georgia says Russia has deployed 2,000 additional troops in the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia, a move Russia denies."

Update: The US has confirmed the raid into Syria in an "official leak".

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military's reach.

"We are taking matters into our own hands," the official told The Associated Press in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

A Syrian government statement said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown and fired on workers inside, the statement said.

The government said civilians were among the dead, including four children.

If the Syrians choose to make it so, America has a new war. It's unlikely that they will, for one since the U.S. is calling it hot pursuit even as the Syrians say only civilians died. It's still an escalation in the region, though, the first such cross-border raid into Syria in all this time.

The coming battles for on-line freedom

By BJ

While most of the on- and off-line communities have heard of the Great Firewall of China, perhaps not enough of them realized that it was probably only a matter of time before the same technologies came to be used in what we like to think of as free and democratic countries.  It appears that Australia may be the first to see the internet fall under the censors muzzle.

Is the Rudd government about to erect a Great Firewall of Australia - introducing a form of internet censorship that will infringe upon the freedom of computer users to browse the worldwide web?

That is the concern of online civil liberties groups, as the Rudd government prepares plans for a field trial of internet service provider (ISP) filtering products, with a view to introducing them nationally.

ISP filtering is the blocking of certain sites which the government deems illegal or inappropriate, and is the central plank of the Rudd government's "Plan for Cyber-Safety".

As with similar plans being proposed in North America, it is being done in the name of protecting children, either through child porn or just the regular stuff deemed inappropriate for minors, but as with everything governments do, there is always more than meets the eye with these plans.

Much of the angry online chatter and speculation has centred on whether internet users will be able to opt-out of the filtered "clean feed".

Senator Conroy has stated that Australians would be given the opportunity to opt-out, and that the scheme would therefore not be mandatory.

But a network engineer from one of Australia's leading net suppliers, Internode, has challenged that assertion, arguing that there would be two black-lists. One would contain unsuitable and harmful material for children; the other would include inappropriate material for adults.

Mark Newton of Internode wrote in an online forum: 'The much-touted 'opt-out' would merely involve switching from blacklist number 1 to blacklist number 2….Regardless of your personal preference, your traffic will pass through the censorship box.'

Senator Conroy has since indicated that there would be a two-tier system: a mandatory one that would block all "illegal material" and an optional tier that would block material deemed unsuitable for children, such as pornography.

So everything the government can access will be going through these filters, and they’ll be the ones determining what gets passed.

Of course, in its initial phase, it is very hard to argue against such a system.  I mean, who is in favour of child porn?  How could you possibly be against a system that protects children?  But the issue isn’t about where the system starts, its about where it will evolve to.

"Even if the filtering system only targets child pornography to begin with, we have no confidence it will stay that way," says Dale Clapperton of the online civil liberties organisation, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA). "It will be subject to creep. Everyone with any lobbying clout will be after the government to ban their pet peeve websites.'

It doesn’t take too much imagination to think of things that social conservatives would like to see removed from public access, from “inappropriate” language and nudity to euthanasia, abortion, and even ordinary and legal birth control methods.  But the liberal-minded shouldn’t be the only ones concerned about this kind of thing.

Take all of those right wing sites screaming hysterically at the coming Democratic take-over and how those dastardly radical leftists will use their newfound power to silence right-wing blogs and media outlets.  And while I think a fair bit of that is projection of what they themselves would like to do given the power, there certainly is a subset of the left who take the term "politically correct" to clearly absurd levels and wouldn't blink at shutting down sites based on their own interpretations of what is "inappropriate". 

In very simple terms, it does nobody any good to give government, (or anyone else), the power to control what information you can access.  Be prepared to fight for it.

Picture Of The Week

By Ron Beasley

Fall in the Columbia River Gorge.  (Click on Picture for Larger Image)

Accepting Reality

By Ron Beasley

Now the Republicans as we know are not very good at accepting reality.  Well David Frum may be a temporary exception - he advises the Republicans to write off John McCain and spend the money they have trying to save a few Senate seats.

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.

A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he'd hew mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations -- most notably, his support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn't yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.

That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign has Palinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

So none of it's working and McCain is going to lose big and take a lot of other Republicans down with him.  So what should the Republicans do?

In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

Of course he's right but I hope nobody listens to him.  Of course even though he came to a logical conclusion it was for all the wrong reasons.  I think Robert Stacey McCain is right when he blames John McCain's ill fortunes on Sarah Palin and not on McCain's erratic reaction to the financial crisis.

Quote of the Day

By BJ

Daniel Larison discovers the key to understanding the McCain Campaign.

Lost, I also like Lost. ~John McCain in an interview with Radar magazine

This explains so much.  Now we have found the real reason why McCain’s campaign has been an interminable series of twists and turns that promises some payoff but always leads nowhere.

What is with the Pennsylvania GOP?

By BJ

It would appear that the Pennsylvania GOP has got some pretty serious issues.  Most recently in the news because they attempted to push an exaggerated version of the race-baiting hoax perpetrated by one of their staffers, they’re back again today with another piece of absurdity.

A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

At first blush, it was typical of the sorts of e-mails floating around with false, unsubstantiated and incendiary claims this year.

But where most of the attack e-mails against Mr. Obama have been mostly either anonymous or from people outside of mainstream politics, this one had an unusually official provenance: It was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s “Victory 2008” committee.

And it was signed by several prominent McCain supporters in the state: Mitchell L. Morgan, a top fund-raiser; Hon. Sandra Schwartz Newman, a member of Mr. McCain’s national task-force monitoring Election Day voting, and I. Michael Coslov, a steel industry executive.

Now apparently the state party fired the guy who drafted said e-mail after being contacted repeatedly about it, but they don’t seem too put out by it.

“There were some points that were accurate, there were two that we cannot substantiate, however; as a result of them we’ve let him go,” said Michael Barley, the communications director for the Pennsylvania state Republican Party, who said other issues had contributed to Mr. Rudnick’s dismissal. “There are points that could have been made and he touched on some of them, but he definitely went a little bit farther than the facts would support.”

So comparing Obama to Hitler and accusing him of conspiracy to commit fraud is not enough in itself to account for the guy’s dismissal.  After all, its only a little bit farther than they probably though they could get away with.

Man, I hope they get the proverbial shit kicked out of them on Nov. 4th.  (Somewhere between a whipping and rout will do, though I'd settle for a thumping.)

The Amazing Mr Swift

By Cernig

Jon Swift is a genius. Not the old dead-tree satirist (well, him too) but the new-media e-Swift, the deftest hand with a poison keypad I've ever read.

Just go read his latest on the many paranoid ramblings of the Right. Here's a teaser:

What would an election be without a sex scandal?...Once again the conservative blogosphere’s most respected blogger Ace of Spades led the way. “Having now spoken to someone tracking the story, I can say: 1) It's not just a silly little rumor. 2) It will break in some form shortly,” he wrote. Ace even noticed that Obama had vacationed in the Caribbean, noting his source “hadn't even made that connection.”That’s just how Ace’s mind works, making connections that don’t even occur to peddlers of sleazy gossip.

George Packer is just one of those who has noticed Mr. Swift's abilities. One day, I'll be saying I knew him when he was an obscure psuedonymed blogger, instead of a pseudonymed A-list satirist.

Sarah Palin A 'Rogue' And 'Diva' - McCain Aides

By Cernig

The circular firing squad continues over at the Mccain-Palin campaign. CNN reports:

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue” recently, while a Palin associate says she is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a mishandled roll-out that damaged her.

McCain sources point to several incidents where Palin has gone off message, and privately wonder if they were deliberate. For example: labeling robo calls “irritating,” even as the campaign was defending the use of them and telling reporters she disagreed with the campaigns controversial decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to now be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser, “she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

It's dog eat pitbull and pass the popcorn!

The Shape Of A Cabinet

By Cernig

The NYT today has a speculative piece on how each candidate might build their White House team. Most commentary on the article so far has focussed on a possible Obama cabinet - mainly because McCain's campaign just seems to be "going through the motions" at this stage. It quotes anonymous advisers (aren't they always?):

Obama advisers mention Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, as a possible White House chief of staff, and Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as Treasury secretary. To demonstrate bipartisanship, advisers said Mr. Obama might ask two members of President Bush’s cabinet to stay, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

...Mr. Obama has several possibilities for White House chief of staff, most notably Mr. Daschle, his close adviser, although that could be complicated because Mr. Daschle’s wife is a lobbyist. Other possibilities mentioned by Democrats include Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, former Commerce Secretary William M. Daley and Mr. Obama’s Senate chief of staff, Pete Rouse. Mr. Podesta, who held the job under President Bill Clinton, could also be recruited for another tour of duty.

Besides Mr. Gates, some Obama advisers favor keeping Dr. James B. Peake, the veterans affairs secretary. But Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has made clear to colleagues that he has no desire to stay on no matter who wins, and neither nominee is inclined to ask him, associates say. Instead, Obama advisers are weighing a short-term appointment of an elder statesman to get through the current crisis and help instill confidence in global markets. The names being mentioned include the former Federal Reserve chief Paul A. Volcker and former Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers.

Matt Y is sure it'll be a fresher face at the Treasury, though, and Booman is sure he doesn't want gates to continue as SecDef even though he thinks he's done a creditable job as one of the very few adults in the Bush administration. I'm not going to argue with either of them.

Looking at a possible McCain administration, there's a couple of names that jump out as "not just no, but F**k No!"

Many Republicans believe Mr. McCain would bring his top campaign staff with him to the White House, including Rick Davis, the campaign manager, whose history as a lobbyist has come up repeatedly during the election. Others who would most likely accompany Mr. McCain to the White House include Mark Salter, his adviser and alter ego; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, his economics adviser; and Randy Scheunemann, his national security adviser.

I've no real objection to Holtz-Eakin, although he's a campaign shill who is holding a book until after the election that, no matter what his boss might say on the stump, admits the next administration is going to have to raise taxes if it wants the books to be anywhere near balanced.

But Rick Davis - friend to Russian oligarchs and Italian fraudsters - would probably get tapped as McCain's chief of staff, which would in short order explode the myth of the maverick reformer, bane of K Street, and should give even conservatives collywobbles. And Scheunemann as NSA? My mind positively reels over the many conflicts this war-boosting, lobbying neocon could embroil America in.

It's just as well that the McCain campaign are treating transition as a purely intellectual exercise and that the wider conservative base are settling down to four years of Clenis-esque innuendo, argument from assumption, and downright paranoid mythmaking to excuse their own abject failure in being a viable alternative for government.

Back in August 2007, Obama outlined his criteria for choosing a cabinet at a private rally.

A Quick Question

By BJ

A quick question

Which do you think hurts McCain’s campaign more:

a)    The endorsement from al Qaeda?
b)    The endorsement from George W. Bush?

I've having a hard time trying to figure out which would be worse.  I'm leaning to the Bush one, because there isn't any way the McCain camp can spin it as not being sincere.  Over and above that, you have to say that the last week really hasn’t been too kind to the McCain campaign, as Kevin Drum notes:

Let's summarize the past couple of days: (a) Politico reports that La Palin has spent $150,000 on campaign outfits, (b) John McCain's brother calls 911 to complain about a traffic jam and then curses at the operator for telling him to get off the line, (c) the New York Times reports that Palin also spent $30,000 or so on hair and makeup over a period of two weeks, and (d) a white woman who claimed she was attacked by a black Obama supporter admits that the whole thing was a hoax.

It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for the guy.  He’s way behind in the polls with very little time left to turn things around, his campaign is beginning to devolve into finger-pointing to the targets for back-stabbing, and pretty much every major news story coming out that effects his campaign does so in a negative way.

But never fear!  The right wing blogosphere is on the case with ever-more tenuous relationships from Obama's past and apparently a mission to "expose" Obama's mistress.  (Boy, the next few years are going to be fun.)

What a Shock!

By BJ

Turns out the Bush administration has decided it doesn’t feel the need to comply with yet another law designed to protect American’s privacy rights.

The Bush administration has informed Congress that it is bypassing a law intended to forbid political interference with reports to lawmakers by the Department of Homeland Security.

The August 2007 law requires the agency’s chief privacy officer to report each year about Homeland Security activities that affect privacy, and requires that the reports be submitted directly to Congress “without any prior comment or amendment” by superiors at the department or the White House.

But newly disclosed documents show that the Justice Department issued a legal opinion last January questioning the basis for that restriction, and that Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, later advised Congress that the administration would not “apply this provision strictly” because it infringed on the president’s powers.

There’s nothing really new here.  It is the same pattern of ignoring any law they don’t like that has defined the Bush/Cheney administration, with particular emphasis on any regulation that might require oversight of their actions.  The theory being, if you don’t have to report your crimes to anyone, you can never be held accountable for them.

What does make me wonder, is that this news comes when in just over a week from now, the US is highly likely to be electing Barack Obama to the Presidency.  All of that massive concentration of power without proper oversight that the Republicans have imbued the Executive Branch with is about to fall into somebody else’s hands.

Will any of those who pushed so hard and defended at every turn this “Executive Privilege” have any second thoughts now that they won’t be calling the shots?

Well, of course they will.  Such concentrated power is only okay when it is they themselves who get to wield it, but it would be nice to think that somewhere out there, there are a few rational observers who will come to understand why so many of us were opposed to these kinds of power grabs all along.

Report: Maliki Won't Sign US Forces Deal

By Cernig

According to a senior Iraqi lawmaker, Maliki-ally Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, neither Maliki nor Iraq's parliament are ready to sign the status of forces agreement with the U.S. as it is currently written.

"The problem is that when we were given the latest draft, we were told the American negotiators will accept no amendments to it, and the Iraqi government has more requirements," said Sagheer, an Islamic cleric who later led the Friday prayers broadcast on national television.

He said that Maliki had come to the Political Council for National Security, a top decision-making body, and said the new accord was the best he could obtain, but it didn't include everything that Iraq wanted.

If Maliki signed the accord and turned it over to the parliament, "I'm sure that the agreement will not be approved for 10 years," Sagheer said.

The cleric said the draft accord was "good, in general," but its timing was bad. If an Iraqi negotiator accepted the agreement, "he will be taken as an agent for the Americans," and if he were to reject it, "he will be taken for an agent for Iran."

A second factor is that the accord comes just before the U.S. elections, and an Iraqi negotiator had to ask whether it was best to negotiate with the lame-duck Bush administration or wait for its successor. More important, Sagheer said, are the approaching provincial elections in Iraq, which could be held early next year.

"Iraqi politicians don't want to give their competitors the chance to use this agreement to destroy them," he said.

Sagheer also said that Maliki is thinking about asking for a six month extension of the UN mandate instead, after receiving assurances that Russia wouldn't veto any UNSC resolution to that effect. The trouble there is that Maliki has already promised he wouldn't ask for any extension and an extension of the mandate, with its far looser terms for U.S. operations, would be even more unpopular and even more of a club in the provincial elections than the status of forces agreement would be. Everyone expects there to be an uptick in violence for those elections, the question is just how big a one. Trying to re-impose the UN mandate would be certain to make that uptick a nastier one.

The other option, if nothing gets done, is to at the very least confine U.S. forces to their bases - and that's if the expiry of the mandate even leaves the U.S. the legal standing to do even that much.

Meanwhile, John "watch my judgement" McCain is still trying to spin the status of forces agreement as being exactly what the Bush administration and he himself were looking for - and his adviser Randy Scheunemann is hinting McCain would just ignore the wishes of the Iraqis and international law anyway.

Quote of the day

By Ron Beasley

The quote of the day is from Sully:

We will see a serious conservatism again when Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are banished from the Republican party and from the conservative media. The Republican implosion is primarily their doing, their achievement, their legacy. It was when McCain ceded his campaign to Schmidt and Palin (creatures of Rove and Kristol respectively) that he threw it all away. As long as they are given any credence, Republicanism will not recover.

This is a good time to repeat my favorite Bill Kristol quote:

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
~Willaim Kristol, April 4th, 2003, NPR

Google clueless and the first hit should be Bill Kristol.

Why have an election "day"?

By Ron Beasley

There is an op-ed in the NYT today, Everybody’s Voting for the Weekend, where they make a great case for changing election day from Tuesday to the weekend like the rest of the world.  I say good idea but why bother.  Here in my own state of Oregon we don't have an "election day" we have a last day to turn in your ballot.  It's called vote by mail and most eligible voters in Oregon had received their ballots in the mail by Monday of this week.  I received my ballot on Saturday, voted on Monday and put my ballot in the white mail box in front of city hall on Tuesday.  I could have mailed it.  This from a  January, 2005 op-ed in the Washington Post.

While many states were embroiled in fights over touch-screen voting machines and provisional ballots and struggling to find enough people to staff polling places, Oregon once again quietly conducted a presidential election with record turnout and little strife.

Oregon's vote-by-mail system has proved reliable and popular. Critics said that vote-by-mail is prone to fraud. But signature verification of every voter before a ballot is counted is an effective safeguard against fraud.

[....]

Vote-by-mail is voter-friendly, and high turnout in every vote-by-mail election shows that voters like the convenience. Oregonians receive ballots in the mail two weeks before Election Day, allowing ample time to research issues, review and mark the ballot, and eliminating the need to stand in long lines waiting for a polling booth.

Voters are busy, but voting fits their schedule if they may return their ballot at any time during those two weeks and up until 8 p.m. on Election Day. Voters may mail their ballots or save a stamp by dropping them off in person at any of the official sites located throughout the state. The earlier that ballots come in, the more time election officials have to check for any problems and to process the ballots to ensure that every vote counts. With a large number of ballots received before Election Day, the first tally released on election night contained nearly 50 percent of the vote and proved to be an accurate predictor of the final numbers.

Vote-by-mail provides an automatic paper trail. Every vote-by-mail ballot is read by reliable optical scan machines, and the paper is available should a hand recount become necessary. Mailed ballots are not forwarded by the post office, and the constant updating of voter rolls provided by returned ballots allows Oregon to have accurate and updated voter rolls without the risk of partisan purges. 

Without polling places, vote-by-mail eliminates the expensive and time-consuming recruitment and training of poll workers. As a result, the cost of a vote-by-mail election is nearly 30 percent less than the cost of a polling place election.

Centralized supervision and control of ballot processing by elections officials in county elections offices, instead of dispersed polling places, maintains uniformity and strict compliance with law throughout the state.

It is estimated that as many as a third of voters will vote before the official election day this year so why not make it official, more convenient and save some money at the same time.

Local McCain Staffer Pushed Hyped Version Of "B-Attack" Hoax

By Cernig

You might have noticed that we hadn't posted a thing on the Ashley Todd "B for Barrack Attack" hoax that has been burning up the internet since yesterday eve. That's because, in our opinion, it wasn't a story. If it were true then it was a story about a mugger who is also a dumb-ass. There's plenty of those out there. When Todd admitted that the whole tale was a hoax, it became a story about an attention-seeking brat who never grew up. There's plenty of those too.

If you cover one, you should cover as many as possible, but this is a politics blog not a local news blog. I don't intend to denigrate the experiences of those who have been assaulted or mugged, in the least. I've had friends it has happened to, it's an awful experience when it really happens to someone...and I didn't blog about those either. Those who did were mostly dealing in faux-outrage and hyperbole.

Now, though, it's real news. TPM has the story.

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

...A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman...

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

Two different TV stations have removed paragraphs from their original web coverage of the story - paragraphs provided by the PA McCain campaign - as the story turned out to be not what that campaign hyped it to be.

Feldmen's actions, trying to pre-empt a police investigation with an anti-Obama narrative that tied McCain's opponent to a nasty assault, are shameful. He really must resign. And we also want to know whether McCain's local campaign staff prompted or pushed Ashley Todd in any way.

The next stimulus package

by Jay McDonough

Talk of a second stimulus package has been making the rounds in Congress for awhile now - since the effects of the $120B tax rebate Congress approved in the spring petered out at the end of the summer. A new stimulus package received the big nod of approval earlier this week when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea.  The Bush White House, which had been dragging it's feet on a stimulus to that point, had no alternative but no roll over and cry uncle. 

A number of Democrats have argued the second stimulus package should be mostly about infrastructure, proposing this approach kills several birds with a single stone, pumping desperately needed money into infrastructure improvements, puting folks to work and providing them wages to spend to jumpstart the economy.  Sounds good. But critics argue the lag time for large infrastructure projects is so long the approach doesn't address the immediate need to pump money into the economy.

Reid Cramer makes the case Congress should consider short and longer term solutions.

This economic security bill will be most effective if it combines provisions designed to ameliorate immediate hardships with policies that provide access to economic opportunity over the long term. In other words, we need both a safety net and a stronger economic security platform.

The safety net should include provisions to help viable homeowners remain in their homes and communities. No one will be served by allowing massive foreclosures to spread across the country.  Government action should also support a number of perennial proposals designed to help vulnerable families make it through hard times. These include such good ideas as increasing the funding for food stamps, extending unemployment insurance, and offering targeted relief for rising home heating and utility costs.

Besides these insurance protections, constructing an economic security platform will require dusting off an old-time virtue -- savings.  Although lost in recent years under an avalanche of easy credit, savings is an essential component of economic security which is capable of stimulating the type of growth that can power the economic recovery. This is because savings can be used to weather unexpected changes in income at the household level.   Savings provide a foundation for the risk taking, creativity, and entrepreneurship which creates economic opportunity and drives economic growth.

President Bush wasn't being flippant or delusional when he told Americans to just go shopping after the 9/11 attacks.  The economy was teetering after the attacks, and while there was a relatively short term setback, the results could have been so much worse.  The President knows full well the American economy is fueled by consumer spending, and his encouragement to get out there and spend some dough was, no doubt, an effort to keep that teetering economy upright.

Federal economic policy has made the concept of saving something that went out of style about the same time as avocado colored kitchen refrigerators and shag rugs. Easily available credit has allowed those slipping under due to stagnant wage growth the opportunity to live that American dream.  It's a cold heart that's critical of that desire.  But it's had some devastating effects we're now able to see very clearly.

Today's Defections - 10/24

By Ron Beasley

Well John McCain got one endorsedment today - George W. Bush voted for him. Boy that's going to help. Now for the defections.  First we have Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican.  No real surprise here, he is one of the few remaining moderate Republicans.  But this one has to hurt:

Reagan Appointee and (Recent) McCain Adviser Charles Fried Supports Obama

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.

It's pretty bad when your own advisors endorse your opponent.

McCain Pal Gets 54 Months For Fraud

By Cernig

Raffaello Follieri, perhaps most famous for being Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend, has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison this Friday after being pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering.

Raffaello Follieri, 30, pleaded guilty in September to fraudulently obtaining US$2.4 million by leading investors to believe he had Vatican connections that enabled him to buy the Roman Catholic Church's unwanted US properties at a discount.

..."I have dishonored my family name and embarrassed the church I love," Follieri told Judge John Koeltl in US District Court in Manhattan in a statement in Italian that was translated into English.

"I will never be able to wash away the stain. I hope that someday those hurt by my actions will forgive me," Follieri said before the judge handed down the sentence.

He'll be deported after serving his sentence.

Follieri had good connections to both McCain and Rick Davis, for whom he had promised to "deliver Catholic votes", and was the host of John McCain's 70th birthday party, celebrated onboard the yacht of another dodgy character - a Russian oligarch who pretty much owns the tiny state of Montenegro.

In mid-September The Nation's website published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by convicted Italian felon Raffaello Follieri and his movie-star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as "Putin's oligarch": Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth. By mid-2005 Deripaska had already virtually taken control of Montenegro's economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP--which accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's GDP and some 80 percent of its export earnings--in a nontransparent privatization tender strongly criticized by NGO watchdogs, Montenegrin politicians and journalists. The Nation has learned that Deripaska told one of his closest associates that he bought the plant "because Putin encouraged him to do it." The reason: "the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean."

Deripaska is himself involved in some political scandal right now - involving both a high level Labour Party cabinet minister, Lord Peter Mandelson who was one of Tony Blair's closest advisors and the current shadow chancellor, the Conservative Party's George Osborne. Both McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis have dubious ties to Deripaska too. Other McCain campaign advisers, lobbyists to a man, have their own shady connections.

John McCain keeps saying he's a reformer and a maverick with no time for the incestuous and often shady dealings of the K Street crowd - but his actions speak louder than his words.

McCain Surrogate -War With Iran Is Certain

By Cernig

Republican William Grayson, president of a San Francisco hedge fund company and former general counsel for the San Francisco Republican Central Committee - and "cleared by the McCain campaign to serve as a McCain surrogate":

"Let me assure you of this," Grayson said after the student presentation on foreign policy. "The next president, whether it is Senator Obama or John McCain, will go to war, and he will go to war with Iran.

"They are very busy developing nuclear weapons. They will use those nuclear weapons against Israel or any of its allies, and that is a war that we're going to fight," Grayson said.

This in a speech to students at Dominican University, CA.

His opposite number, Tony West, there as a representative of the Obama campaign said simply:

"I do not believe it is a foregone conclusion that this nation will go to war with anybody in the next four or eight years."

Well no, it isn't - at least not if McCain and his couterie of angry neocon nutters are kept out of the White House.

Retribution and Incentives

By Fester:

John Murtha's campaign is in trouble after stating that Western Pennsylvania has a lot of racist voters.  I think he'll pull out a squeaker, but this will be toughest race he has faced in at least the past decade as Political Wire notes a case of dueling polls:

Yesterday, a more public Susquehanna Poll showed Murtha leading by just four points....
A Pennsylvania source leaked a new poll to Michelle Malkin showing Republican challenger Bill Russell (R) leading Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), 48% to 35%.

And then Michelle Bachman (R-MN) is in trouble as her challenger is now up by three according to Survey USA.  She went from a tough race that was highly winnable to becoming an underdog in a deeply Republican district because she channelled her inner McCarthy on national TV. 
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings looks at Bachman's case and makes a generalizable statement that I think is a hopeful sign ---

if they paid a price for saying genuinely hateful things, their self-interest would line up on the side of basic decency.

We might be getting closer to that world.

Michele Bachmann may yet win. But in her district, she should have won easily. She has paid a serious price for what she said. A few more episodes like this and we might just see politicians thinking twice about vileness as a political tactic.

That would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Generalize this to Rep. Murtha facing the toughest race of my political memory, and the incentive structure to not be a complete douchebag is starting to firm itself up.  There may be plenty of douchebags in Congress, but the smarter ones will learn to keep their mouths shut and not reveal their inner idiocy. Hopefully we can start burying the 60s and work and speak as if most voters are functional adults.

The Pre-Election Post-Mortems

By BJ

I have to admit, much like Tim F. and Cernig, watching the circular firing squad forming in the Republican ranks is rather amusing.The Politico story on this phenomena looks at several of the decisions that have led to McCain’s implosion, but its this explanation that catches my attention.

One current senior campaign official gave voice to this “Law of the Jungle” ethic, defending the campaign against second-guessers who say it was a mistake to throw away his "experience" message in an attempt to match Obama’s “change” mantra.

"Everybody agreed with the strategy,” said this official.  “We were unlikely to be successful without being aggressive and taking risks.”

Running as a steady hand and basing a campaign on Obama’s sparse résumé was a political loser, it was decided.

“The pollsters and the entire senior leadership of campaign believe that experience vs. change was not a winning message and formulation, the same way it was no winning formula with Hillary Clinton.”

Let’s call this what it is, bull! This election was always going to be a tough slog for McCain, but during the summer, with the assistance of the war in Georgia, suddenly the steady hand with the foreign policy reputation that McCain has built up was looking pretty good to people and he had all but ate away at Obama’s poll leads. Even Obama’s selection of Biden as VP candidate was being spun as an acknowledgement of his weakness in this area, and all sorts of comments that McCain wouldn’t need any “on the job training”.

So what really happened to cause such a massive swing in their strategy? Two words: Sarah Palin. The whiplash-inducing turnaround of the Republican party faithful on the issue of experience when the non-vetted Palin was announced as McCain’s VP choice was stunning to watch. In one fell swoop, McCain undercut what was becoming a reasonably effective campaign storyline and a plausible strategic path for victory for a short-term tactical bounce. When the economic crisis hit, McCain was no longer the steady hand at the helm, and his dice-rolling instincts got the better of him and fed into the risky, erratic theme that the Obama camp was peddling, and that the VP pick was the paramount example of.

Look at many of the conservative newspaper endorsements, or the endorsements of former big-name Republicans like Colin Powell’s for Obama, and they nearly all list this irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin among their reasons for not backing McCain.

It isn’t that McCain didn’t face other problems or make other mistakes, but they were generally of the survivable type. Whatever else the coming post-mortems of McCain’s campaign bring up, it was the pick of Palin that turned the race from a close-run thing into a probable rout.

Palin Appeases Some Terrorists

By Cernig

There's a clearcut distinction for Sarah. Bill Ayers is a domestic terrorist. Abortion clinic firebombers and those who assassinate clinic doctors are her base. That makes them 'freedom fighters for unborn babies imprisoned in lefty-socialist wombs'.

Update: Dave Newiwert has a list for Palin - of the wingnut domestic terrorists she should be concerned about.

The Collapse Of The Republican Circus Tent

By Cernig

There's got to be more than a little schaudenfreude involved for Dems watching the G.O.P.'s meltdown as the worst-run Republican campaign in recent history gasps its way towards the finish line. The theocrat Family Research Council is accusing the NRCC of "abandoning social conservative candidates". McCain aides are already sending out resumes because they're already certain they won't be getting jobs in the next administration. Sarah Palin seems to be working for herself, rather than her running mate, even while the old wardog is still trying to guard her back from media spotlights.

E.J. Dionne calls it a conservative civil war - which is hardly the one the extreme Right have been looking forward to for so long. He writes:

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him as creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.

... Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as "Joe the Plumber" often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

It isn't working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.

For years, the Right has had a big tent - full of bread and circuses for Joe Sixpack, Joe Biblebelt and not-so-poor Joe Plumber - while the Left has been herding cats in a fractured coalition that couldn't find anyone or anything worth coalescing around. Now the tabels are turned, bigtime. Schaudenfreude? Pass the popcorn!

Todays Defections

By Ron Beasley

There were a number of new Republicans who endoresed Barack Obama today.  The first doesn't mean that much - that slimy weasel Scott McClellan who can simply see which way the wind is blowing.  The next is former Republican Governor of Minnesota Arne Carlson:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Arne Carlson, a former Republican governor in Minnesota, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Carlson said Thursday that the Illinois senator's stances on the Iraq war, the economy and green energy goals won him over. Carlson, who served from 1991 to 1998, also cited recent comments by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioning whether politicians have "pro-America or anti-America views."

"Regardless of our party, regardless of our partisan inclinations, there is no interest more compelling than the interest in the well-being of the United States," Carlson said at a gathering of Obama supporters at the state Capitol.

The big one today though was the defection of much of the family of conservative icon Barry Goldwater represented by Goldwater's granddaughter and biographer CC Goldwater.  Perhaps it's not really a surprise, CC and the rest of the Goldwater family have been very critical of George W. Bush but it could have an impact in Arizona and other western states.

Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.

What is it about the hard right.....

By Fester:

What is it with the hard right engaging in behaviors they attack:

From Austria:

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.

In emotional interviews with the national broadcaster and a tabloid newspaper Stefan Petzner spoke openly about his affair with Haider, who died at the age of 58 in a high-speed car crash after heavy drinking session at a gay club this month....

“He was the man of my life. Our relationship went far beyond friendship,” Mr Petzner, 27, said after only a week in the job, adding that Haider’s wife, Claudia, 52, “did not object” to their relationship...

Okay, sex clubs --- saw that in Illinois -- are not that unusual... but where are the hookers, wet suit or the diapers....

Quiet --- Matlock's on

By Fester

Somehow this story does not reinforce any theme that John McCain wants to advance:

Republican John McCain is not going to make his election night remarks in the traditional style — at a podium standing in front of a sea of campaign workers jammed into a hotel ballroom. Oh, the throng of supporters will hold the usual election night party at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4.

But the Republican presidential nominee plans to address another group of supporters and a small group of reporters on the hotel lawn; his remarks will be simultaneously piped electronically to the party inside and other reporters in a media filing center, aides said.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was the result of space limitations and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

                                                 

When the election comes down to Change v. 'Stay off my Lawn' Grandpa Simpson, this is exactly the image McCain wants....

Palin '12 a rerun of Clinton '08?

By Fester:

These is a new round of analysis by both bloggers I respect and the professionals that the McCain campaign is beginning to see incentive divergence.  As Kyle Moore at Comments from Left Field notes, the probability of a loss means a widely variant future for the different staff members on the McCain team. 

On this last point, what I mean to say is that when a campaign begins, most staffers will agree that a win for the campaign will be good for them. But when it begins to appear that the campaign can no longer win, what is good for them is no longer necessarily good for the campaign. This causes more in-fighting as well as encourages a break down in campaign discipline.

For instance, when we look at the end of the Clinton campaign, we started seeing an awful lot of post mortem articles......

Marc Ambinger outlines the CW argument for Palin 2012 ---

With Republicans completely out of power, and President Obama running what is likely to be a bigger government that spends more on social programs, Republicans are likely to run the most anti-government, anti-Washington campaign this side of Barry Goldwater. Again, Palin is perfectly positioned for this campaign. Republicans tend to pick the next guy in line. Strangely enough, the next guy in line is now Sarah Palin, by virtue of her being the VP nominee this year...

Her main obstacles to the nomination are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee....

The Republicans are going to want someone willing to really go for Obama's throat, and be able to do it with a smile. Depending on the outcome of the GOP's War of the Roses, the evangelical community might be a stronger force in 2012 than it was in 2008, at least when it comes to dominating the GOP nominating process. They are a solid bloc of voters and footsoldiers amidst a rapidly splintering coalition.

This is all interesting speculation, but the first analogy that comes to my mind for a hypothetical Palin 2012 run would be Hillary Clinton.  Each will be coming into an election cycle with a divided party split between those who want something different and those who think the same thing can be tweaked.  There is no natural successor, and there is a significant base and elite split.  Each candidate will lock in a fairly significant portion of their respective party's primary electorate at a fairly early point. 

However Gov. Palin probably shares the same basic problem that doomed the Clinton campaign.  Looking at Pollster.com, the problem for the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2007-2008 primary season was that she had minimal space to grow her coalition.  She started off in the high 30s and never got past 45%.  Pretty much anyone who was willing to vote for her had declared their support very early on.  Everyone else rolled down their preference list to any other surviving candidate until Obama built a slightly larger winning coalition.

Mitt Romney will lock down the money-cons, Newt Gingrich would make a hard play for the neo-cons and Mike Huckabee can play for the Southern theo-cons while Bobby Jindal will attempt to be the hot new thing that is not corrupted by being too close to Washington and power. 

She may start with a decent size base but there is not a whole lot of natural growth areas for her to win.  Much like Hillary Clinton, her best shot would be to face a sustained divided field as she has a good chance of being the top candidate in a contest of five but the anti-Palin cascade buries her in a one on one contest. 

Quote Of The Day

By Cernig

Quote of the day comes from a Guardian report on the falling fortunes of Crawford, Texas, now that Bush is the lamest of ducks.

“A man who cuts cedar in 100 degrees in the summertime in Texas - there's something wrong with his brain”  Keith Lynch, 70, 4th-generation Crawford rancher.

Amazingly, every Texas resident knows that - but still a majority of Texans voted for the rancher who doesn't own cattle.

Iraq Agreement Leaves Bush, McCain Policy In Tatters

By Cernig

By any stretch of the (sane) imagination, the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, as currently written, is a humiliating debacle and crushing defeat for Bush policy and neocon dreams of permanent hegemony. As Gareth Porter points out:

The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces.

Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty makes the prospects for passage of even this agreement by the Iraqi parliament doubtful. Pro-government Shiite parties, the top Shiite clerical body in the country, and a powerful movement led by nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that recently mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in protest against the pact, are all calling for its defeat.

At an Iraqi cabinet meeting Tuesday, ministers raised objections to the final draft, and a government spokesman said that the agreement would not submit it to the parliament in its current form. But Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told three news agencies Tuesday that the door was "pretty far closed" on further negotiations.

In the absence of an agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops in Iraq will probably be confined to their bases once the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.

The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced U.S. negotiating power in the final draft is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees and over U.S. troops in the case of "major and intentional crimes" that occur outside bases and while off duty. The United States has never allowed a foreign country to have jurisdiction over its troops in any previous status of forces agreement.

Gareth goes on to note that the administration seriously underestimated Maliki's opposition to a Bush agenda seriously opposed to it's own, and has also underestimated Iraqi opposition to the deal even as currently written - which could yet mean that there's no deal at all in place when the UN mandate expires, leaving the U.S. presence in Iraq clearly illegal.

But if the Bush administration have been shocked and surprised, John McCain seems to have been driven into abject denial. Spencer Ackerman points out that McCain flat lied about the provisions of the agreement in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.

Long story short: Either McCain hasn’t read the latest text or he’s just making stuff up. (Transcript courtesy of the Mighty DeLong and his Amazing TiVo Device.)

Blitzer: The Bush administration seems to be close to what is called a “status of forces” agreement with the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It calls, in the draft agreement at least, for the complete withdrawal of combat forces from villages and cities by July 30 of 2009, and out of the country by December 30, 2011. If you’re elected president, would you, as commander-in-chief, honor this agreement if, in fact, it’s formalized?

McCain: With respect Wolf, and you know better, my friend. You know better. It’s condition-based. It’s conditions-based, and Ryan Crocker, our ambassador to Baghdad, said, “If you want to know what victory looks like, look at this agreement.”

You know better than that, Wolf. You know it’s condition-based, and that’s what the big fight was all about.

Actually, my friends, it’s McCain who should know better. I’ll have much more on this in a piece tomorrow morning, but if you read Article 25 of the Oct. 13 text — as I blogged yesterday — you’ll see it says that “The U.S. forces shall withdraw from Iraqi territories no later than December 31st, 2011″ and goes on to say “U.S. combat forces will withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages as soon as the Iraqi forces take over the full security responsibilities in them. The U.S. withdrawal from these areas shall take place no later than June 30th, 2009.”

The only way to square McCain's circle, unless you assume that he really has lost it completely, is that McCain has no intention of letting the Iraqis have a say in what happens to their country should he become President. His chief foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, suggested as much in a conference call on Wednesday.

But either way - insane or imperialist - these people should in no way be allowed to continue to hold the reins of power or control of America's military.

In Defense of Racism

By BJ

You know, there’s been times during this election, watching some of those opposed to an Obama presidency, that I’ve been embarrassed to be a white male.  Granted that I’m far less moronic when it comes to race than these idiots, but I certainly recognize the attitudes, and I lament the fact that people could look at me and privately wonder if I was one of them.

Now, I was also of the opinion that people with attitudes like that are a terrible drag on society, preventing others from reaching their fullest potential.  However, Ta-Nehisi Coates points out that these kinds of folks actually do serve a greater purpose.

Here is the thing. We've all noticed that the public persona of black folks has taken a tumble over the past few decades. We went from Otis Redding and the Four Tops, to 50 Cent and Dip Set. We went from Jesse Owens and Joe Louis to Pacman Jones and Mike Tyson. Are today's Negroes of a lesser breed? Nope. What's changed is that white folks are now letting anybody through the gate. White racists have taken a lot of heat on this blog. But the truth of the matter is that they may be the single biggest promoters of black excellence in this country's history. There is a reason Tony Dungy was the first winning coach in Tampa Bay's history--he had to be.

Think about this whole Joe The Plumber foolishness. There's no way in the world Barack Obama could pull off the same trick with, say, Rashid The Barber. Rashid would be laughed off the stage--as he should be--and Barack's campaign would be dead. Joe The Plumber is stupid and it isn't working. A little bit of bigotry would have prevented all of this. So to all the Ferraros out there I have one request--more racism please. It improves our stock. It makes black people, a better people.

It’s a good point.  If it weren’t for the still-present bigotry out there, there wouldn’t have been any need for the Democrats to nominate someone as inspiring as Barack Obama, and we could be left facing a nation run by a guy who thinks Sarah Palin is the most qualified VP candidate ever.

And as to those who like to bitch about “reverse racism”, seeing that all too many of my white brethren also seem to think Palin is not only qualified for the VP slot, but are salivating at the chance of her running in 2012, it is pretty clear that we have set the bar way too low and should consider encouraging such an effect so as to improve our stock as well. [/snark]

Palin Backs Immigrant Amnesty

By Cernig

Oh dear. Sarah Palin, in an interview with Univision, has backed an amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Interviewer: To clarify, so you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?

Palin: I do because I understand why people would want to be in America. To seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here. It is so important that yes, people follow the rules so that people can be treated equally and fairly in this country.

Needless to say, the wingnuts, those few mentioning it so far, are not at all happy.

The Corner leads the charge:

What Palin's response shows is that, first, she's completely open to whatever kool-aid they want her to drink — i.e., she has no innate resistance to amnesty for illegals that would cause her to look for less-unappealing ways of saying what the campaign wants her to say. And second, it shows what the campaign is telling her about McCain's views on the issue — if McCain's talk of "border security first" were anything but boob bait for Bubba, his operatives would have made it clear that Palin was supposed to include that in her discussion of immigration, but she didn't even make a passing reference to it.

Daniel Larison:

I have given up trying to understand what Palinites see in their favorite candidate.  If this does not drive home how malleable and unacquainted with the relevant policy options she is, I’m not sure what would.

With 12 days to go, this is going to hurt the McCain/Palin camp even worse than the $150k blown on Sarah's make-over. I'm waiting to see what the Malkinites will make of it.

(And I wonder, are immigrants the "barbarians at the gate" that Neo-Roman elitist Andy McCarthy is so afraid of?)

Update: Malkin - "We're Screwed, '08!"

An Elitist Hater Of Democracy

By Cernig

Andy McCarthy at NRO's Corner blog approvingly quotes this bit of nonsense from science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.

A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.

I mean...wtf? Let's leave aside the thought that the authoritarian Heinlein would undoubtably have included McCarthy, who doesn't produce anything except bloviating, in his definition of "parasites". McCarthy approves of the notion that democracy should only be for an elite, not "the plebs". Why does he hate America, where the notion of all men being equal and equally enfranchised is enshrined in the very fabric of the nation?

So which definition does McCarthy want to use for "the plebs" who should be disenfranchised, leaving only an elite he's surely defining to include himself? And which invaders, exactly, does he expect to enter his New Imperial State? Maybe he could explain.

Redistributing the wealth? We already did that

by Jay McDonough

The McCain campaign is like a dog on a bone with the charge Barack Obama intends to redistribute wealth in the U.S and his policies are tantamount to socialism.  But, in fact, a serious redistribution of wealth has been going on for the last ten years and fully supported by the Bush Administration and John McCain.  Scott Lilly has an interesting article at CAP offering some badly needed facts:

For many years in this country it was understood that as worker productivity rose, the benefits of that increase should be shared equally between workers and their employers. That is exactly what happened during the 30 years between 1950 and 1980. Worker productivity rose by 93 percent during that period, and wages rose by 89 percent. (American presidents) simply respected one of the cardinal rules of economic growth—if you want output and profits to grow, you have to have consumers with the buying power to purchase those products.

Since 2000 the productivity of American workers has increased by 20 percent, while the wages of the average worker have grown by less than 1 percent.  Between 2000 and 2006, corporate profits grew at an average rate of more than 10 percent a year—more than five times the average rate of growth in corporate profits during the previous 50 years. Corporate profits as a percentage of national income skyrocketed from around 9 percent to more than 15 percent during the same period—higher than at any point in the past half century.

Well-to-do individuals also did extremely well. Based on data prepared by the Internal Revenue Service from tax returns filed during the post-9/11 recovery (2002 to 2006), household income grew by $863 billion during the period. The 15,000 families at the top of the income scale saw their annual incomes go from about $15 million a year to nearly $30 million. They alone accounted for more than 25 percent of all of the growth in income for the entire country. The remaining 1.7 million families in the top 1 percent of households accounted for nearly another 50 percent.

And much of our current economic trouble can be traced to the policy making that allowed this redistribution.  As the middle class wage growth stagnated, credit (either coming from credit cards or home equity loans) became the established means of maintaining a standard of living and, in some cases, just getting by. 

We ended up with a booming stock market and a middle class that was collapsing under it's own weight.  The folks who managed the economy failed to recognize what all those previous American presidents thought was obvious - if middle class consumers can't buy, the whole system falls apart.  And the system has, finally, fallen apart.  But hey, that top 1% of American income earners sure did well! 

Narrative Push Back on McCain Campaign Themes

by anderson

The themes of the McCain campaign are simple. Two of them lately have stood out amongst others: voter fraud by ACORN will steal the election, and McCain and Palin love "real America," which comprises small towns and small town folk. These folks are real Americans and are people who happily do not inhabit, nor have any wish to inhabit, big city freak zones, which are nothing but barren sectors of seething anti-Americanism. Narrative push back has since appeared across a spectrum of news outlets.

Now that Stephen Colbert has tagged the ACORN voter fraud narrative as a joke, a number of recent stories have created a narrative push back against the GOP and the McCain campaign that has all but neutered the ACORN attack.

Firstly, Republican operative Mark Jacoby was arrested in California for voter registration fraud, having fraudulently registered himself and then committed further fraud by registering others while being falsely registered. It is also alleged that he "duped" voters into registering as Republicans, for which his firm, Young Political Majors (YPM), were paid per GOP registration. YPM was hired by the California Republican Party, which claims the arrest was "politically motivated."

Secondly, and though the story came out several months ago, CNN is re-presenting the case of convicted Republican election fraudster, Allen Raymond, who published an expose, How to Rig an Election, Confessions of a Republican Operative, detailing his 2002 role in election fraud in New Hampshire. Allen and Republican party official James Tobin were both convicted, but Tobin won on appeal (Tobin has recently been indicted again for making false statements to a federal agent). New Hampshire GOP chairman, Charles McGee, also served seven months in prison for the same scheme.

Thirdly, though it seems off the American mainstream media radar for now, Murdoch's own The Times, opened up another narrative front with the story about Republican voter registration fraudster Nathan Sproul and his firm Lincoln Strategy (a name I feel certain Lincoln would not appreciate).

John McCain paid $175,000 of campaign money to a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, it has emerged.

As the McCain camp attempts to tie Barack Obama to claims of registration irregularities by the activist group ACORN, campaign finance records detailing the payment to the firm of Nathan Sproul, investigated several times for fraud, threatens to derail that argument.

The documents show that a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the Republican National Committee and the California Republican Party, made the payment to Lincoln Strategy, of which Mr Sproul is the managing partner, for the purposes of “voter registration”.

Mr Sproul has been investigated on numerous occasions for preventing Democrats from voting, destroying registration forms and leading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to leach the Democratic vote.

The Republican National Committee previously paid Sproul's earlier voter suppression firm, Sproul and Associates, over $8 million in 2004 for "voter registration" activities in several states that workers testified were scams which sought to register voters and then discard Democratic registrations. Sproul and Associates instructed workers to "act as if they were non-partisan, to hide that they were working for the RNC, especially if approached by the media."

On the theme of small town "real America," a narrative push back has created quite a furor, with the story that the Republican National Committee has spent $150,000 on Sarah Palin's debutante appearances. This included big city shopping sprees of $49,425 at Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York, a Nieman Marcus binge in Minneapolis of $75,062 and hair and makeup expenses of $4,716 during the month of September. Bloomingdales and Barney's in New York City, den of big city iniquity, also made the shopping hit list, as did men's store, Atelier, where $4,902 in fashionable accoutrements were most likely dropped on the first dude. Karl Rove protege, robocall expert Jeff Larson, whose company FLS, slimed McCain in the 2000 GOP primary, is shown on FEC documents as one of the purchasers extraordinaire.

While the big city spending by the RNC on Sarah Palin is an obvious ode to Republican disingenuousness, right wingers, as can be expected, are crying foul, or at least wondering what all the fuss is about. Which is nothing if not hilarious, considering the obsession they had with John Edwards' haircut. Now expressing befuddlement over this "latest kerfuffle," right wingers then wondered whether the Edwards' haircuts were not, in some manner, "a disguised form of campaign money laundering," and that Edwards' haircuts really did demonstrate that there were "two Americas." Ed Morrissey's long ago lament:

I guess there really are Two Americas. One believes that it contributes to presidential campaigns to support electoral events and efforts, and the other thinks that those contributions can go to personal grooming and luxurious living....

Money that people send to his campaign for his election should not go to his hairstylist and manicurist. If Edwards has this kind of judgment about his campaign contributions, imagine the kind of judgment he will have about federal funds while in charge of the executive branch.

Yes, imagine.

Nonetheless, what we are seeing is an obvious narrative IO push back against the recent McCain campaign themes, and it may render these inoperative in the waning weeks of the campaign. Unfortunately for McCain, his campaign doesn't have much left.

2011 and Pennsylvania Redistricting

By Fester:

I had a few beers last night with a good friend and a very astute observer of Pennsylvania politics.  Our conversations meandered and wandered for a while until we started to talk about redistricting and partisan advantages and leverage points in that process. Western Pennsylvania looks to lose one Congressional seat.  Assuming Democrats control at least one veto point in the Pennsylvania state government in 2011, the Western PA Congressional caucus could transform from the current 1 core Democratic seat (PA-14), 1 lean Democratic seat (PA-12), 3 swing seats that will probably be a 2:1 Dem advantage (PA-3, 4, 18), and 2 core Republican seats (PA-5, 9) to a six seat caucus.   

Within those six seats, aggressive redistricting could probably produce 1 heavy lean and 2 lean Democratic seats (Pittsburgh based, north of Pittsburgh suburbs, south and east of Pittsburgh suburbs), 1 swing seat that will mildly favor a Democrat (the remnants of PA-3) and two more heavily core Republican seats in the central part of the state as PA-12 loses a good chunk of its eastern edge as it migrates west.

The basic premise is that the 4 western most districts (PA-3,4,14 and 18) have an aggregate partisan voter index of roughly D+12.  Right now the map has four districts, three of which are slightly lean Republican with PVIs of R+2 or R+3, and then a super-concentrated Pittsburgh district of D+22.  This pool of voters is where there is an opportunity for unpacking the Democratic coalition. 

PA-18 could be seriously squeezed from Republican Rep. Tim Murphy if Rep. Doyle is willing to make his D+22 district into a D+15 district by absorbing significant portions of Bethel Park, Upper St. Clair and other near Pittsburgh but heavily Republican suburbs.  The North Hills district that is currently PA-4 could be moved from a Republican leaning district to a Democratic leaning district by Doyle taking in Fox Chapel and the Rte 8 corridor while giving up a chunk of McKees Rocks, Stowe and Coroapolis to Altmire.  PA-14 would expand further down the Mon Valley and out the Rte 22 corridor to pick up the population the area has lost.  This will squeeze PA-12 a bit but it can expand by cutting up a good chunk of PA-18's southern and eastern communities. PA-18 would be the seat that is destroyed to balance the population.  The big question would be whether to have Murphy face Doyle or Murtha.  I think my preference would be for Doyle to knock Murphy out.   

Who's really ready to be President?

By BJ

A couple of days ago, Joe Biden made the comment that Obama would be tested by an international crisis within six months of taking office.  (What, the economic meltdown and two ongoing wars don’t count?)  Rightwing blogs leapt upon the statement as proof that Obama is in fact a weak-willed Chamberlain appeaser whom America’s enemies will leap to take advantage of.  Daniel Larison did an excellent take-down of such a piece by Ralph Peters, which while worth reading in full, can be most easily summed up with the following line:

Maybe, if everyone in the region is as clueless as Obama’s domestic critics (this would be difficult), but why exactly would that be the case?

Replace region with world and you have the right-wing argument against Obama as a “strong” President in a nutshell.  The right has done its best for quite some time to paint Democrats as being “soft” on national security, that as soon as a Democrat is elected President, all of America’s opponents will feel that they have carte blanche to run roughshod all over the planet and the weak appeaser in the White House will be left stuttering, “C-c-c-can’t we all just be friends?”.

Of course, the caricature doesn’t fit the reality, but they’ve fallen for their own propaganda, and assume that America’s enemies are buying the same lines they’ve peddled to their base.  As Larison points out in his column, there is very little to suggest that Obama is much less hawkish than Bush.  (That McCain is Bush without even the minimal foresight is probably why he gets the coveted al Qaeda endorsement.)

Not that the same problem isn’t going to plague the left, who probably think Obama is actually less hawkish than the evidence would suggest, but while he’ll be metaphorically eviscerated, he’ll probably still get the pass as the lesser of the two evils on that front.

But the question of readiness brings me to another point that Cernig included in his post about the Al Qaeda endorsement of the “impetuous McCain”, the quote from Michael Chertoff noting that the upcoming transition phases between administrations is the most vulnerable time for the United States.

“Any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distraction,'' Chertoff said in an interview yesterday. ``You have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists.''

You see, whatever the right-wing glee that stemmed from Biden’s remarks that Obama might be tested in the early months of his administration carried with it the assumption that America’s enemies wouldn’t dare to test their man McCain in such a fashion.  But as Chertoff points out, the risk is the same with either man assuming a new presidency, and the question that arises from that is; which of the two candidates is better prepared to make the transition to President?  As it happens, someone has already looked into this, and much like the election itself is beginning to look, it isn’t even close.

As the 2008 campaign nears its conclusion, the presidential transition efforts of the two major candidates have become a study in contrasts: Sen. Barack Obama has organized an elaborate well-staffed network to prepare for his possible ascension to the White House, while Sen. John McCain has all but put off such work until after the election.

The Democratic nominee has enlisted the assistance of dozens of individuals -- divided into working groups for particular federal agencies -- to produce policy agendas and lists of recommended appointees. As evidence of their advanced preparations, officials provided a copy of the strict ethics guidelines that individuals working on the transition effort are required to sign.

John McCain, by contrast, has done little. Campaign spokespersons did not respond to requests for elaboration. But one official with direct knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed concern with McCain's approach. The Arizona Senator has instructed his team to not spend time on the transition effort, according to the source, both out of a desire to have complete focus on winning the election as well as a superstitious belief that the campaign shouldn't put the cart before the horse.

. . .

Governance scholars consider the process invaluable, particularly as the nation struggles with a major economic crisis, two active wars, and a range of domestic security threats. "Our enemies understand how potentially vulnerable we are in the transition from one administration to the next," Clay Johnson III, former Executive Director of the Bush-Cheney Presidential Transition, said recently at a forum on transition planning. "This is something we need to be very, very seriously prepared for."

. . .

"Government is becoming more complex and the time it is taking to put a leadership team in key departments is taking longer," said P.J. Crowley, who heads the Homeland Security Presidential Transition Initiative at the Center for American Progress. "I think that if a campaign is waiting until November 5 to start the transition process, they are going to be behind. It is not being presumptuous -- it is being prudent to be prepared before the election so that you can at least make the transition process effective as possible and be ready to govern on January 20."

. . .

But [McCain’s] approach could create significant obstacles down the road. For example, as Crowley notes, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only a fraction of his leadership team in place on 9/11 - roughly eight months after President Bush took office.

Now absorb all of that and then tell me who you think would be better prepared to face a possible terrorist attack on the US, or any other (further) major crisis for that matter, in the early spring of 2009?  Or really anytime thereafter.

Size, scale and structures of power

By Fester:

One of the big undercurrents in Pennsylvania state politics has been an effort to make the state legislature smaller.  This idea is being advanced for numerous reasons.  The soundest is that this will significantly reduce costs.  A bit more dubious one is that this will weaken the influence and power of party leadership and make representatives more responsive to their districts.  I think the kernel behind this argument is that more districts will be more heterogeneous in its population so that there will be fewer overwhelmingly partisan districts. 

However I think this second argument is wrong on the practical side as it neglects the cost of entry into a district.  One of the major methods of party control/discipline is fundraising.  Established incumbents and party leaders are excellent sources of funds either through direct transfers or more often by opening up rolodexes and pushing their networks to donate or not to donate to a given candidate in a given district.  Reducing the number of districts and thus increasing the size of the minimal winning coalition means that all else being equal, the cost of running a competent and competitive race with the requisite field, GOTV, media and advertising components will increase. 

An increased cost to run will deter candidates from running unless they are independently wealthy, or able to access existing party networks (thus incurring substantial political debts) or are able to access independent sources of funds.  Since these races are very low visibility and salience races, the small donor model which is becoming effective on the national level is currently less viable at the state representative level. 

So I don't think that reducing the number of districts while maintaining the basic structure will produce representatives that are more responsive and in-tuned to their constituents. 

I think that changing the electoral system would be a better avenue to approach this goal.  The change that I think would make legislaturers more responsive would be to move from single member, first past the post systems to either the Louisiana open primary or more likely towards multi-member districts with each voter getting a single vote.  For instance, creating a three person district by combining three current districts would dramatically change the incentives for representatives and voters.  Instead of only one winning position, there are multiple winning coalitions and positions.  This allows for more pressure and more shifts within the electorate to credibly threaten incumbents from multiple vectors.  This increases ideological diversity as representatives are more responsive to their districts. 

And since the winning coalition is not N+1 where N is the number of votes received by the 2nd place contestant, but instead, P+1 where P is the number of votes received by the 4th place recipient, the value of money has decreased.  And since the value of money has decreased, party discipline also decreases. 

This change can be implemented with or without changing the size of the legislature.  Either way, it should force representatives to be a bit more responsive to public pressure and opinion. 

33 Minutes of Fearmongering

By Cernig

The Russians aren't fooled by continual protestations that America's missile defense plans are aimed at "rogue states" - none of whom yet has the capability of throwing a nuke at the U.S. and who probably would choose infiltration as a delivery method in any case. They've been beefing up their missile force, introducing a new mark and modifying existing missile types with decoys, in the face of American righwing zeal for destabilizing the balance of deterrence that has served the world so well for decades.

That's not surprising. I'm sure that Russian intelligence and military planners can read, and surf the sites of those rightwing think-tanks who have provided the intellectual impetus for the Bush administration, Mccain and others. They know that missile defense, despite the spin of the Bush administration, has always been about the Soviet Union, and then Russia. It's all about Reagan's Star Wars dream, which had as its focus the "Evil Empire" still described in such belligerent terms by John McCain.

For instance, they'll have already noticed that the Heritage Foundation is planning a major publicity push on missile defense in January, planning to pressure President Obama to continue funding the multi-billion program.

The wingnut think-tank will be releasing a documentary, called 33 Minutes, and is already boosting it on its own website. The fearmongering blurb for the film says:

A ballistic missile from a foreign enemy would take 33 minutes to reach the United States. With each passing day, this becomes a growing danger to America, yet our government has failed to build the missile defense systems capable of defending us against such attacks.

Our enemies are attempting to stockpile arsenals that threaten our freedom and prosperity. North Korea and Iran are the most prominent, but this also includes Russia, China and other nations that have missiles capable of killing Americans in very large numbers and threatening our allies.

The time has come to revive the strategic missile defense system that America uniquely can develop, maintain, and employ for its own defense and the peace-loving world's security.

This documentary aims to do just that by highlighting the disastrous consequences of a nuclear explosion on American soil - one that could happen in just 33 minutes.

North Korea is dismantling its nuclear arsenal and Iran doesn't have one. Nor does it have anything close to the technology to land a warhead on American soil. So it's on to the next on the list - Russia. The website's blog today bears out that emphasis, with most posts about Russia. One that's worth noting, though, extols the need for treaty-breaking space-based weaponry.

The Washington Times reports that the Pentagon is on board to study space-based missile defenses. Congress appropriated $5 million for the endeavor.

Given the ever expanding threat of nuclear proliferation, the U.S. needs to be prepared to defend on all fronts, including protecting satellites. Developing wide-ranging protection should be a top priority. An anonymous defense official said, “It’s really the only way to defend the U.S. and its allies from anywhere on the planet.

This exposes yet another administration fib - that space-based weapons aren't being considered because they'd present a clear red line to Russia and seriously escalate tensions between the two nations, probably triggering a new arms race and a return to the Cold War for real. This is, after all, the same administration that unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2001.

Space-based weapons are a red line for much of the American public too, since many are aware of just how destabilizing such a move would be and few want to return to the dark days of the nuclear clock. The conservative think-tank proposal for dealing with American public perceptions is a simple one. Misdirection.

Arms control advocates are currently focused on preventing the weaponization of space. They base their proposals on the assertion that space is not already weaponized,[23] which is valid only if prop­erly defining the term "space weapons" is irrelevant to the exercise of controlling them.[24]

The fact is that space was weaponized when the first ballistic missile was deployed, because ballistic missiles travel through space on their way to their targets.

... Congress needs to reject the charge that space-based ballistic missile defense interceptors would constitute an unprecedented move by the U.S. to weaponize space. It can do so by adding a preamble to the amendment to provide more robust funding for construction of a space test bed.

This preamble should take the form of a congres­sional finding that the deployment of ballistic mis­siles weaponized space

Umm, yeah. That'll convince the Russians not to join in the wingnut arms race. And this is the same as hanging Reaganesque "Brilliant Pebbles" weaponry permanently in space, as the Heritage folks advise, because?

But let's cut to the chase, shall we? The wingnuts don't want missile defense systems to protect against rogue states. They want them so that the U.S. can attack Russia or China with a better chance of success than Russia or China could attack America.

Is there a potential threat of space wars taking place in the near future? It is a distinct possibility due to the actions of China and Russia. The two nations are attempting to update the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to limit the ability of the U.S. to develop and employ space-based missile defense systems. Is this just a noble effort on the part of China and Russia to declare the use of space for peaceful purposes alone, or are they individually and possibly together seeking to create a situation that would limit the U.S.'s research and development of space-based missile defense systems while giving them the opportunity to get up to speed with similar systems of their own. The space wars have begun to take shape with China and Russia seeking the update of this 41 year old treaty.

... What China and Russia are really seeking with the updating of this treaty is more time to research, develop, and test their own missile defense systems. They are highly threatened that the U.S. has not only nuclear weapons, but missile defense installations that are capable of eliminating any nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon delivered in a ballistic missile from anyone, including Russia, China, or ? China and Russia know they are behind in the development of these missile defense systems, and they want to limit the U.S. any way possible to allow them the time necessary to catch up.

What exactly is wrong with those nations having their own ABM shields - or even sharing one with the U.S. and other nations? Wouldn't that protect everyone from rogue states?

No, the neocon think-tanks who are advising the Bush administration and the McCain campaign are quite clearly looking for a U.S. first strike capability as part of their dreams of American hegemony. That's incredibly dangerous. The Russians and Chinese know this already - they can read. The only people who don't are the bulk of the American populace.

Stimulating Stupidity

By Fester:

What should be done to provide stimulus to an economy that is reeling from a credit crisis that is partially caused by bare bone underwriting standards and massive defaults?
Why not encourage and re-legalize one of the behaviors that contributed to mass stupidty?  According to CNN, that is what some Democrats want to do as part of a second stimulus package:

Democrats have also been pushing for a reinstatement of seller-paid down payment assistance, which was prohibited in a housing bill signed into law this summer. The Federal Housing Administration, which backs affordable loans for borrowers with low-income or less-than-stellar credit, has said down payment assistance leads to too many homeowners defaulting.

Republicans are hitting their hobby horses of reducing capital taxes:

Republicans would prefer that stimulus measures include more tax breaks than direct payments. Among them: a temporary reduction or elimination of the capital gains tax on stocks and lower income tax rates for companies that buy distressed assets.
House Republicans are also calling for purchasers of homes that are not primary residences to be entitled to the same capital gains exclusion as owners who sell their primary residences. Currently, a single homeowner can exclude $250,000 of capital gains on a sale, while couples can exclude $500,000.

As we saw just a few weeks ago, cutting capital taxes in a capital intensive economy such as the United States is an amazingly inefficient and ineffective use of money if the intention is to stimulate consumer demand and provide a bit of employment support.  However it is a great way to pay off the ideologues and their funders at the Club for Growth.

A good stimulus package should put money into the hands of people who will spend it quickly because they are broke.  Food stamps, extended unemployment benefits, larger unemployment benefits, expansion of scale and scope of the Earned Income Tax Credit, increased Medicaid assistance are all the types of policies that would actually be effective.  Infrastructure funding is a bit slower but it also has a good multiplier effect.  More importantly, infrastructure built during a recession tends to be cheaper than infrastructure built during a boom as labor, materials and property purchases are all cheaper.  We get a better bang for the long term buck. 

But we are in political-policy silly season, so expect nothing serious until January. 

Levi and the Calvinists

By Ron Beasley

I was surprised that more wasn't made of the fact that young Levi Johnson dropped out of  high school because he found himself in a fartherly way.  While few if any noticed here Muhammad Cohen of the Asia Times did.

Alaskan Gothic

But Johnston's most startling revelation in his interview was that he's dropped out of high school to work as an apprentice electrician in Alaska's North Slope oil fields due to his impending fatherhood. Back in school, Johnston was reportedly a big man on campus, star of the school hockey team. Now he's playing out the great American loser cliche embodied by Al Bundy in the TV series Married ... with Children, , a dead-ender doomed to a life of drudgery and bitterness by an accidental high school pregnancy. By all accounts, Johnston seemed marked for better things.

The Christian right can talk all about the blessing of life, but teenage pregnancy is really a cruel curse, and Johnston won't be the only victim here. Unless her mother wins the vice presidency, it's a good bet that Bristol Palin won't be going back to high school either. In the days before Christian morality held sway in the Wasilla school district and decreed abstinence-only sex education in high schools, Sarah Palin managed to avoid having her first baby until after she'd attended five colleges in six years and gestated a diploma.

Levi Johnson and Bristol Palin's inability to control their hormons may result in a "blessed event" but will condem them to a life that is much less than it could have been.

A high school graduate typically earns 50% more than a dropout. You would think that the Palins and the Johnstons would have the good sense to insist that a teenage mistake - this pregnancy was, ahem, unplanned, and the blessing of birth aside, last time I checked, the Bible calls what Levi and Bristol did a sin - doesn't ruin their futures.

This is the Calvanism of the Religious Right at work.  Faith is more important than education, you must pay for your youthful failures for the rest of your life.  And what was McCain's reaction?

In last week's debate, instead of talking about Joe the Plumber, whom he'd never met, McCain might've addressed someone he does know, Levi the Dropout. Without criticizing the accidental parents in waiting or their families, McCain could have at least made the humanizing point that the US's educational needs must be modernized to be ready for a host of 21st century situations, whether technological or personal, so that everyone can keep learning. Instead he trotted out the traditional right-wing appeal for school vouchers.

Right-wingers like the idea for its politics, not its educational outcomes. Giving public money to private schools is a blow against government services, government employees and labor unions, and a boon for religious groups that run many private schools.

If it's a return to the 16th century you want then you should vote for the Palin McCain ticket.

The New Space Race - in Asia

By BJ

India just launched an unmanned mission to the Moon, where its probe is set to join those launched by Japan and China.  China, of course, recently launched its third manned mission and included a spacewalk among its feats.  Even South Korea is eying the lucrative satellite launch business, and where India goes, Pakistan is sure to attempt to follow.

All are putting considerable resources into their space programs. looking at them as symbols of national prestige, much as the US and former Soviet Union did back in the day.  Those old workhorses, with their current substantial lead in this area, seem to be spending most of their time plugging away at the monstrosity of the ISS, and the US particularly is looking at a future without a manned space capsule for several years as the Shuttles go into retirement and they have no replacement on stream to replace it.

Outside of private ventures, space exploration in North America, with all of the attendant scientific advances that accompany such exploration, seems to have lost its luster.  I wonder if we'll live to regret that?

Al Qaeda Endorses McCain, Chertoff Undermines His Spin

By Cernig

Wingnuts from John McCain on down have been breathless in the last couple of days about Joe Biden's remarks that a terrorist attack would almost certainly try to test President Obama in his first six months in office. The spin is that Obama is too risky a choice and Mccain has already been tested (P.O.W.!). McCain even had a "mushroom cloud" moment!

Unfortunately, Michael Chertoff has already undercut McCain's spin by saying he would expect terrorists to try to test either candidate if they should become president - and suggested that any test of Obama would be likley to come from domestic bloodthirsty nutcases, not foreign ones.

``Any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distraction,'' Chertoff said in an interview yesterday. ``You have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists.''

The risk is the same whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain is elected president on Nov. 4, he said. That comment undercuts McCain's argument that the U.S. would be more in danger of an attack if Obama, 47, wins.

... Still, he said, he's concerned about the effect of rhetoric from some hate groups or individuals during the campaign.

``There's a general level of intemperateness in the discussion as we approach the election,'' he said. ``Do I worry that it could trigger in a disturbed individual a desire to do something? Absolutely, I worry about it.''

And now, there are reports that McCain has the backing of Al Qaeda. The logic, for them, is simple:

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.

"If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

The WaPo adds:

the comments summarized what has emerged as a consensus view on extremist sites, said Adam Raisman, a senior analyst for the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist Web pages. Site provided translations of the comments to The Washington Post.

"The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful 'son of Bush' -- someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk," Raisman said. "They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain."

And Eric Martin notes that this should come as no surprise. "The CIA concluded that bin Laden attempted to swing the election for Bush in 2004 with the release of a videotape in the last weeks of the campaign." McCain is like Bush on speed when it comes to belligerent, unthinking words and actions. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that equation.

Update: Spencer Ackerman relates a "panicked" conference call with Mccain advisers.

Political Haiku

By Cernig

The Heretik is leading a political haiku writing stint. He leads with this:

Meltdown, bailout, no

Pirate Wall Street bankers, yo

What they make, don’t know.

Go on, have a try.

Socialism is Racist?

By BJ

Well at least according to some guy at the Kansas City Star

The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Now, maybe its just me, but this seems a bit of a stretch. Now, certainly as the author points out later, McCain and Palin are doing their level best to make Obama out to be un-American and his supporters as not belonging the to “real” America, but that’s not about his being black. Its about his being a closet Arab/Muslim/baby-killing/terrorist loving radical leftist. Or in other words a Democrat.

I mean, when you’ve got things like this, this, this, this, this, this, and these folks in the clip below to work with, the whole, “Socialism means Black”, business just helps the Republican apologists pretend there’s nothing to see here.

OTOH, Kyle E. Moore feels its worth taking a look at.

Problems with the Connectiveness

By Fester

Thomas Barnett made a name for himself by arguing that the overriding geo-strategic imperative for the next two generations would be to create a massively interconnected globe and a common minimal rule set.  He theorized that the new rule set would allow strong members of the Core to coerce and invade the Gap for their own good as well as for positive global externalities. 

He then theorized that mutual interconnectedness would lead to a positive feedback loop of market state creation and Gap areas plugging into the Core via Core based System Administration forces.  Connectiveness is his Holy Grail. 

Daniel Gross over at Slate has a very interesting column on the problems of connectiveness:

In the entire continent of Africa, whose banks don't stray too far, I count just three (in Egypt). We haven't heard much about bailouts in Central America, where Starbucks has no presence. South America's banks may be buckling, but they haven't broken. Argentina, formerly a financial basketcase, and now a pocket of relative strength, has just one store. Brazil, with a population of nearly 200 million, has a mere 14. Italy hasn't suffered any major bank failures, in part because its banking sector isn't very active on the international scene. The number of Starbucks there? Zero. And the small countries of Northern Europe, whose banking systems have been largely spared, are largely Starbucks free (there are two in Denmark, three in the Netherlands, and none in the Scandinavian trio of Sweden, Finland, and Norway).

My tentative theory: having a significant Starbucks' presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess. It's also a sign of a culture's willingness to abandon traditional norms and ways of doing business (virtually all the countries in which Starbucks has established beachheads have their own venerable coffeehouse traditions) in favor of fast-moving American ones.

He goes on for a while that the best predictor of serious financial trouble is the degree of connectedness to the Anglo-American financial systems. The big problem with this theory is Canada has numerous Starbucks, but due to effective regulation, it does not have a significant liquidity or deleveraging problem right now.

The interconnectivity of the financial system allows for far higher degrees of damage from mutually reinforcing and reverbating shocks. Problems from California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida have taken down Iceland, and is forcing the IMF to consider mass bail-outs of Eastern and Central Europe. Infections can spread very quickly.

One of the better defenses against the financial crisis has been disconnecting. Countries that have not bought significant numbers of mortgage backed securities and derivatives of those securities have gotten out of this round of the crisis far easier.

Dead Bear Marketing

by anderson

Offered without comment.

A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said.

Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.

“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.

University police called in N.C. Wildlife Resources officials to remove the body and help in the investigation. Bear season is currently under way in Western North Carolina.

“This is certainly unacceptable,” Johnson said. “Someone was wanting to draw attention to the election. If we find out who they are, we’ll make sure they’ll get some attention themselves.”

"Western Carolina University deplores the inappropriate behavior that led to this troubling incident," said Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor "We cannot speculate on the motives of the people involved, nor who those people might be. Campus police are cooperating with authorities to investigate this matter."

Anyone with information should call WCU police at 828-227-7301.

White supremacy on the march

by Jay McDonough

Gone are the shaved heads and brown Nazi uniforms.  Swastikas are being replaced and social networking sites developed to cater to the new white supremacy movement. 

Supremacist groups are on the rise as they market themselves to middle America, according to leaders of the groups and organizations that monitor them. They are fueled by the debate over illegal immigration and a struggling economy.

"Many white supremacist groups are going more mainstream," says Jack Levin, a Northeastern University criminologist who studies hate crime. "They are eliminating the sheets and armbands. … The groups realize if they want to be attractive to middle-class types, they need to look middle-class."

"Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," (Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement) says. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people.

"And now this immigrant thing in the past couple of years has been the biggest boon to us," Schoep says. "The immigration issue is the biggest problem we're facing because it's changing the face of our country. We see stuff in English and Spanish. … They are turning our country into a Third World ghetto."

"It appears they are tapping into and fanning the flames of mainstream America's fear of immigrants," says Ann Van Dyke of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. "They are increasingly using the language of Main Street, things like, 'We want safe communities to raise our children.' " (Link)

They're going to have lots to talk about at the clubhouse.  From the last census:

- Non-Hispanic whites, who are two-thirds of the population today, are older, dying off faster and producing fewer children than other groups, Vincent said. By 2050, they'll number 203 million in a nation of 439 million.

- Hispanics are projected to triple by 2050, when they'll be nearly a third (133 million) of the population. Spurring Hispanic growth is the group's large natural increase — birth rate minus death rate — which Vincent attributed mainly to its youth and fertility. Immigration is an important but lesser factor, she said.

- The black population is projected to increase by just 1 percentage point, from 14 percent this year to 15 percent (66 million) in 2050. At that point, Hispanics will outnumber blacks by two to one, the report said.

-  The Asian population will grow from 5 to 9 percent of the population (41 million) by 2050, according to the projections.

-  American Indians and Alaska Natives are projected to rise from1.6 percent to 2 percent (9 million) of the population.

The same report indicated less than half the children in the U.S. will be non-Hispanic whites by 2023. 

Today's Must Read

By BJ

The Rev. Paperboy analyzes, predicts, and offers sage advice on the US political scene.  Enjoy.

Torturing Legality

By Cernig

What a surprise. Dubya had his fingers crossed when he said his administration was looking at ways to shut down Gitmo.

Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Bush’s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House this summer after a Supreme Court ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American detention center. But Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable, now or any time soon, the officials said.

Spencer Ackerman:

The “legal risks” are called “due process of law” and “adherence to universally-embraced standards of civilization.”

The place rightwingers profess to believe is some kind of "holiday camp" is still full of innocents who were tortured into confessions, too.

Like 17 Uighurs a federal court had ordered released, who now won't go free.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a federal judge's order releasing the men, and it ordered oral arguments in the government's appeal, to be heard Nov. 24.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered the government Oct. 7 to release the men, all Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years. The same panel temporarily stayed Urbina's order a day later.

The government has been trying to find new homes for the Uighurs for years. It no longer considers them enemy combatants and provided no evidence in court that they posed a security risk. The men cannot be returned to their homeland because they face the prospect of being tortured and killed. China considers the men terrorists.

Judges A. Raymond Randolph and Karen L. Henderson sided with the government and issued the order without comment; Judge Judith W. Rogers dissented, writing that the Bush administration's legal theories were flawed. The government has argued it can detain the Uighurs without cause until it locates a new home for them.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that only the president or Congress has the legal authority to order the Uighurs' release into the United States.

And if Congress ordered their release, Dubya's henchmen would doubtless refuse on the grounds of his Supreme Executive Authoritay.

The Uighurs aren't the only ones held purely because they are evidence of Bush administration war crimes.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday it dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor for all cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense.

America's first war-crimes trials since the close of World War II have come under persistent criticism, including from officers appointed to prosecute the alleged terrorists. The military's unprecedented move was directly related to accusations brought by the very man who was to bring all five prisoners to justice.

Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld had been appointed the prosecutor for all five cases, but at a pretrial hearing for a sixth detainee earlier this month, he openly criticized the war-crimes trials as unfair. Vandeveld said the military was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense, and was doing so in other cases.

The chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has now appointed new trial teams for the five cases to review all available evidence, coordinate with intelligence agencies and recommend what to do next, a military spokesman, Joseph DellaVedova, said in an e-mail.

DellaVedova said the military might renew the charges against the five later.

Clive Stafford Smith, a civilian attorney representing detainee Binyam Mohamed, said he has already been notified that charges against his client would be reinstated.

The Independent has more on the "farce" the Bush administration are passing of as due process:

Mohamed, 30, who lived in west London, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo in 2004. He was accused of planning an attack that included the use of radioactive material and chemical weapons.

But Mohamed insists he admitted to plotting the dirty bomb attack only after being tortured, which included having his penis cut with a razor. Mr Stafford Smith said: "The Bush Administration will not even admit in public that they rendered Mr Mohamed to face torture in Morocco, let alone allow him a fair trial. Meanwhile he sits in solitary confinement in Guantanamo, in total despair, contemplating whether he should just commit suicide."

Reprieve, which has long campaigned for the case against Mohamed to be dropped, says he should be returned to the UK. They say he is a victim of "extraordinary rendition" and torture. The charity says Mohamed was sent to Morocco by the CIA in July 2002, where he was tortured for 18 months before being rendered to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

Mohamed has been fighting a long, high-profile legal battle in both the American and English courts for access to 42 documents. Lawyers for the Muslim convert believe the secret papers may contain information backing his claim that he only confessed to terrorist activities after being held incommunicado for two years and suffering ill-treatment. The US government has been accused of using a strategy of delay to avoid having to disclose the evidence that could support the torture allegations.

So keen were the administration to prevent Mohammed's papers coming to light that they threatened the UK government with an intelligence-sharing embargo if it let a UK court rule in Mohammed's favor.

I continue to believe that, if President Obama thinks war crimes trails in America would be too devisive, all he has to do is step aside when The Hague comes calling with warrants for Bush and the rest and use the their own line: "if they've done nothing wrong then they have nothing to fear". With a smile.

I Dream Of A Netroots Gini

By Fester

The Gini co-efficient is a monopoly power measuring system used in economics. It is a simple number based on a firm's market share and thus the firm's ability to engage in monopoly pricing. The higher the Gini Coefficient, the more likely a market is a de facto monopoly. The US Justice Department uses a high Gini coefficient as a screening tool when they look at mergers. It is not perfect but it is a quick way to determine whether more extensive and expensive techniques are needed.

We can apply the same type of analysis to political donors and actions. Political donors are competing for candidate and staff attention and actions. Donors want their preferred policy outcomes to be at least discussed if not be the default assumption of the candidate/incumbent and their staff. Candidates and incumbents want to ease their re-election bid and aligning their interests with their funders' interests is a common way of doing so. This explains why every Congress(wo)man and Senator from any state that is part of the Great American Cornfield supports ethanol subsidies.

A candidate following parochial interests over national interests is a good strategy when there are limited number of interests that are invested and active with a candidate. In this case the Gini coefficient for the candidate's interest is very high. However a candidate is more likely to follow broader, public interests when his or her funding and support base is very diffuse and the funding market Gini co-efficient is very low. In this case, there is minimal concentrated power.

Publius at Obisidian Wings frames a very similiar anaylsis in Madisonian terms:

the massive number of contributions makes it less likely (not more) that any one group of donors will have excessive influence on him....

one reason for the Obama model’s success is that it incorporates the lessons of James Madison’s "theory of the big republic" — which is essentially "go big." Remember that, in Madison’s time, the chattering Halperins of the day were skeptical of republics. Too unstable, they said. Too easily corruptible by a powerful faction taking over. To succeed, a republic had to be small and homogeneous. So sayeth the Halperins.

Madison’s great contribution to political theory was that he flipped this view on its head. The way to stabilize republics and prevent factions, Madison reasoned, was not to go short, but to go long. Make the republic bigger — defeat factions not by limiting them, but by multiplying them....

The Gini co-efficient of any single donor to the Obama campaign is effectively zero even if that person donated the maximum allowable donation of $2,300 for the general, or $4,600 for the primary/general combination. Obama's September haul would have required 65,000 max donors. Being 1 in 65,000 is insignificant. The Gini co-efficient for any Ranger size bundler ($250,000) is barely noticable, as the Obama September haul would have required 600 Rangers. His entire campaign would require 2,400 Rangers. There are definate network effects at play, so these raw ratios understate some influence, but the ability to raise big money from high dollar donors looking for access is not as valuable for outside players now than it was in 2000, 2004 or from the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign model.

So what should groups that seek to significantly influence public policy and politics do if they accept that no matter what they do, their Gini co-efficients at the national level will be miniscule?

Since early 2007, I have advocated that netroots activism abandon Presidential level politics as we are too small to be significant as a fundraising source. Netroots activism is highly valuable for media narrative formation, rapid response and volunteer mobilization but as a funding stream, it is too small to really matter. This analysis excludes any possibility that the Very Serious People who are consistently wrong will listen to Dirty F*cking Hippies, it is an analysis of revealed economic power. Instead, the area that is less impacted by the decline in candidate funding Gini co-efficients is down ballot.

Congressional races are still funded by narrower and more interested parties. The most expensive races in the country seldom top five million dollars per campaign, while the top tier candidates will often spend between two and three million dollars. At these dollar levels, an identifiable and logically coherent funding stream of $500,00 that is supplied by donors who have discrete policy objectives is a significant bloc in the candidate's considerations.

Targetting House candidates will be more effective than targetting most Senate candidates as even the cheapest competive Senate races are at the same price points as expensive House races. Progressive internal caucus strength can be strengthened if the targetting candidates are capable of becoming network nodes. Congressional network power increases at an exponential clip for small and medium size caucuses and not at a linear pace. Adding three or four good voices who are willing and able to assist, and strengthen 20 other colleagues strengthens those colleagues' power and effectiveness by more than 15 or 20%.

This opportunity has passed in 2008 as the last weeks of the campaign is the final read through of a script that was written from January 2007 until the early spring of 2008. Candidates and incumbents know who their supporters are, know who their base is, and will win or lose on what they have already done (unless there is a massive exogenous event). This is a thought piece for 2010 and it is a narrow window of opportunity before the Congressional campaign fundraising Gini co-efficients crash as the diffused donor model spreads down ballot.

Liberal GOTV Urban Legend

By Fester:

I'm going to call bullshit on a story that is starting to float around on the liberal blogosphere about the experience of some Obama canvasser:

First from 538:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

Okay, as a canvasser in 2006, I heard all kinds of crazy shit from voters.  My favorite was from the parents of an indicted Republican state representative who said they were going to vote for the Democrats because Repuoblican Senator Rick Santorum, Congresswoman Melissa Hart (then R-PA-4), and Denny Hastert were out to get their son.  So bizarre things are said. 

However I saw this over at Americablog:

An anecdote from one of our regular commenters:

A friend was telling me about calling people in Northern Fla. to ask how they're voting.

ne woman had to ask her husband (first tipoff, ask her husband?)... the response was "We're voting for the ni***r"

That kinda says something about the repugnican ticket. These people still refer to Obama as 'the ni***r', but they're going to vote for him anyway.

Structurally these are the same stories.  An anonymous or a friend of a friend canvasser goes into the 'sticks' and talks to the wife.  The wife asks her husband for whom they are voting for, and it is the surprise answer.  This is a standard inversion of the Archie Bunker frame.  Unless there are names, dates and verifiable facts, I think this is an isomorphic story and an urban legend. 

The flailing McCain campaign: Joe, robocalls and socialism

by Jay McDonough

We're in the closing two weeks of the presidential campaign and John McCain seems to have settled on his strategy going forward to November 4th; building a narrative around an "everyman" (Joe the Plumber), a set of slimy robocalls and labelling Obama policies as "socialism".

The Joe the Plumber narrative doesn't seem to be working however.  Senator McCain first told the story (or what he claimed was the story - much of what the Senator said about Joe proved to be false) in the third presidential debate.  By the time the debate had ended, polling of viewers indicated they were already tired of the metaphor and a recent Suffolk University poll of Ohio and Missouri votersconfirms the narrative just isn't working:

While 68 percent of Ohio respondents said they recognized Joe the plumber, only 6 percent said that Joe's story will make them more likely to vote for McCain. An additional 4 percent said the tale made them more likely to vote for Obama; and 85 percent were not affected. In Missouri, where 80 percent had heard of the plumber, 8 percent said they were more likely to vote McCain, 3 percent more likely to vote Obama, and 86 percent said they were not affected by his story  (Link)

The McCain campaigns use of robocalls was an odd choice to begin with, given that robocalls were famously used against McCain by the Bush campaign in the 2000 Republcan primaries.  Those robocalls were particularly scurrilous and, for many voters, emblematic of the absolute nastiest of campaign tactics.  That John McCain would choose to employ the same slimy tactics so unfairly used against him in 2000 must strike most voters as the last cynical move of a campaign completely out of ideas.  There appears to be some resistance even within the McCain campaign over the use of robocalls.  Here's Sarah Palin (not exactly timid when it comes to using borderline campaign tactics) arguing against the use of robocalls yesterday:

“If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand,” Palin told her traveling press corps as she stood on the tarmac here, “I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls and includes spending so much money on the television ads that, I think, is kind of draining out there in terms of Americans’ attention span.” (Link)

The McCain campaign first began by calling Obama policies socialistic, later evolving to Obama being a socialist.  The true test of these tactics is whether they work; do voters believe the accusation, does it make sense to them, does it stick?   NBC's Chuck Todd explains why it's not working:

Has the McCain campaign made a fundamental mistake in attack politics -- don't charge your opponent with something that doesn't seem to pass the smell test beyond your base? This "socialist" charge is going to be hard for many middle-of-the-road voters to believe, particularly after Powell endorsed his candidacy. Saying Obama’s a "liberal," well there are facts to back that up. But the socialist charge feels like an over-reach, and it may be falling on deaf ears. Of course, with the government getting so involved with our financial markets right now and McCain wanting to use federal money to buy up bad mortgages, it's hard for McCain to back up his socialist charge since he wants a similar amount of government intervention.

Should Barack Obama be elected president on November 4th it will be because 1) he advocates traditional Democratic Party values and is unashamed about expressing them, 2) he lucked out and was able to run against a terrible candidate representing the Republican Party (who doubled down with a magnificently dumb choice of a running mate), and 3) Democrats, most Independents and many Republicans are absolutely incensed by the management and lack of accountability shown by Republicans for the last eight years.

And at this stage in the campaign, those Republicans that still try to sell Joe narratives, endorse slimy robocalls and hope voters fall for some tired old name calling are just barking at the moon.  The rest of us listen to the McCain campaign and it's supporters and can't help but be struck by their stubborness and unwillingness to cowboy up and take any responsiblity for the deep, deep mess they've gotten themselves into with their inept governance the last eight years.   

That's What You Get When You Misuse What I Invent, Your Empire Falls and You Lose Every Cent

by Eric Martin

Rich Lowry neatly summarizes the political advantages inherent in claiming the mantle of morality in foreign policy making, as Bush and his neoconservative supporters have attempted to do rather ostentatiously:

Bush’s emphasis on the inherent hunger for freedom is powerful. It clothes his foreign policy in an undeniable idealism. It puts his liberal opponents in a tight spot, because it is awkward for them to object to the kind of sweeping universalism they have always embraced. It might be simplistic, but that is often an advantage in political communication.

Lowry is right in as much as he decscribes a short-term, domestic, political expedient, and Bush has been able to capitalize on this uplifting narrative to great effect, especially early on in his tenure, both in terms of achieving his policy objectives and commanding the public's support.  Part of this has to do with the attractiveness of the message, especially for those that have the luxury of thumping their chest from a safe distance.  As Rob Farley observed while reviewing an interesting back and forth between Stephen Walt (realist) and Joshua Muravchik (neoconservative):

Indeed; the moral component of neoconservatism has always been the appearance of moral rectitude, rather than any practical effort to achieve moral goals. This makes it particularly appropriate for creatures of the Beltway, who endure no real costs for their moral postures.

However, there are underlying contradictions that limit the effectiveness of using this facade of idealism and, in the end, the rhetoric itself can serve to box-in its purveyors and/or accentuate the hypocrisy.  Take, for example, the pervasive anti-Muslim bigotry amongst the population that Bush draws his support from - a demographic reality that co-exists, uncomfortably, with the fact that Bush's policies are sold, at least publicly, on the basis of bestowing the gifts of freedom and democracy on various Muslim nations at great cost to the American people. 

Along these lines, Neoconservatives seem to have a tough time deciding if Muslims are uncivilized brutes, congenitally incapable of embracing democracy, or if, to the contrary, they are so ready for American-style governance that simply conducting airstrikes on Muslim nations will cause pro-American democracy to spring up organically like shoots through bomb-tilled soil. 

Then there is the inability of the Bush team to make accommodations for democratic expressions that go against predictions and preferences, such as the outcome in Gaza where elections that were pushed for on a rapid schedule by the Bush administration (against Israeli and moderate Palestinian warnings) resulted in Hamas coming to power.  The Bush administration reacted with hostility to the newly elected government, casting its democracy promoting agenda as a cynical, self-serving and highly contingent brand of idealism.

Iraq, too, has been an interesting case study neoconservative rhetoric on democratization confronting real world democratic outcomes and popular opinion. 

Recall, initially, that the Bush team hoped to put off elections in Iraq for several years, allowing for stewardship by viceroy (kicking it colonial school) and then later a limited sovereign.  However, relenting to pressure from Iraqi leaders like Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Bush team first handed the reins over to CIA asset Iyad Allawi and, next, to an elected Iraqi government that, despite Bush administration hopes/predictions, did not include Ahmad Chalabi or, in any significant measure, Iyad Allawi.  Instead, a coalition, comprised mostly of religious fundamentalist Shiite parties with significant and long standing ties to Iran, emerged as the dominant force.

This was less than ideal from the Bush administration's perspective, to understate the frustration of purpose: the new Iraqi government would not be a friend of Israel's, would not countenance being a base for launching attacks on neighboring Iran and would, in fact, quickly open warm relations with Tehran.  And these were the positions of our "allies" - our adversaries were openly attacking our troops and civilian personnel.

Still smarting from the results of the Gaza elections and, to some extent, the Iraqi elections, the Bush administration took a more proactive role in trying to shape the political landscape ahead of regional Iraqi elections - targeting the factions most hostile to a prolonged US military presence (the Sadrists), while bolstering Maliki's power and authority vis-a-vis the Sadrists and his other rivals.  These actions were pursued under the (most likely false) assumption that Maliki would welcome a prolonged US military presence.  While Maliki's hand has indeed been strengthened by US efforts (to the extent that he has even begun challenging his closest Shiite allies in some arenas), the end result may be of little value to US policymakers seeking to establish an enduring military foothold in Iraq. 

Months ago Maliki began making noises opposing certain aspects of the rather one-sided strategic framework and SOFA agreements put forth by the Bush administration: specifically, Maliki demanded an actual timetable for complete withdrawal of US troops, control over important national security decisions (actions launched internally and externally, ie) and limitations on the immunity for US personnel sought by the Bush administration.  At the time (and since), there was much speculation about the source of Maliki's assertiveness: whether he actually found the proposed terms repugnant, or whether he had been forced to oppose them because of their extreme unpopularity amongst the Iraqi population. 

As I wrote at the time: Regardless, our position is untenable in the long run.  Maliki will either push us to the exits as he desires or, eventually, be forced to respond to the dictates of the ballot box or other popular upheaval/challenges even if he would prefer to keep his bodyguards around for longer.  So how would the neoconservative set handle the fruits of its democratization efforts in Iraq when the outcome does not suit its long term designs? 

Unsurprisingly, the McCain camp prefers the "Maliki-is-forced-into opposing us for domestic political concerns" storyline.  As if this would be reassuring to those that favored a long term military presence in Iraq. "Don't worry, he just has to say that to the Iraqi people to get their votes, but after elections, he'll go back on his word and the Iraqi people won't notice."  Or something.

It's all about McCain

By Ron Beasley

The McCain campaign tried to make this election about Barack Obama because they knew they couldn't win on policy or ideology.  What happened instead was that the election became about John McCain.  A number of conservatives have said they will vote for Obama including Chris Buckley and this weekend Colin Powell because they question John McCain's judgement.  It's now reached the point where even some of the lunatics find they can't support John McCain including lifelong conservative and friend of Cheney and Rumsfeld, Ken Adelman.

Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.

Yes once again it's McCain's Hail Mary Passes, including the choice of Sarah Palin, that have even conservatives decided that perhaps McCain is unfit to serve.

Just Voted

By Fester:

I handed in my absentee ballot just a few minutes ago.  I'm a banked vote and my name should be scrubbed from any GOTV lists in the next couple of days as I am now officially irrelevant.

I had to vote absentee as I'll be two time zones away from home on election day.  Pennsylvania has a fairly strict good excuse only absentee/early ballot policy, but 1,500 miles is a good excuse. 

Time to get back to work on the GOTV side of the equation. 

Former Embassy Hostage - Obama's Right On Iran

By Cernig

The folks at WhirledView have a bit of a scoop. Career diplomat Victor Tomseth was one of the 50 Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. It's thus particularly significant that he should be one of over 300 former diplomats who have backed Barack Obama, and that he should have written an op-ed for the Register-Guard of Oregon and for WhirledView specifically backing Obama's Iran policy of negotiation.

As McCain’s friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked by Goldberg to name something unusual about McCain, put it: McCain believes that “some political problems have military solutions.”

...Obama’s comments demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of Iran’s relative power than the McCain view that Iran poses an existential threat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, in 2006 Iran spent approximately $7.35 billion on defense... Even tiny Israel has a military budget more than half again as large as Iran’s.

Granted, the possession of nuclear weapons is a qualitative advance in military capacity (provided it is accompanied by a capability to deliver such weapons). At the moment, however, it is highly doubtful that Iran possesses either a nuclear weapon or the capacity to deliver one against even Israel, let alone the United States.

Could that change? Obviously it might at some point. However, it does not appear that day has arrived or that it soon will (see the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”

An understanding that Iran does not hold all the nuclear cards — and indeed that its hand in certain fundamental aspects is a weak one — underlies Obama’s policy approach to the Iranian nuclear issue. He believes that the United States has not exhausted nonmilitary options, and in many respects has not even tried seriously to apply them. He proposes a comprehensive settlement with Iran: In exchange for abandoning dual-use nuclear technologies and support of terrorism, the United States will offer incentives such as support for Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization, economic investment and a process leading to normalization of diplomatic relations.

If, however, Iran continues its troubling behavior, the United States will instead step up efforts to isolate Iran economically and politically.

Experience shows that Obama’s approach can work. Nearly 30 years ago, Iranian authorities first condoned and then facilitated the holding of more than 50 American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. At that time, too, there was a war faction in the United States that called for bombing Iran back into the Stone Age.

President Jimmy Carter chose a different course, one of patiently negotiating a resolution using nonmilitary sticks and carrots. It took 444 days to drive home the point to Iranian leaders that there are real costs for international isolation, not the least of which was Iran’s discovery that it had few friends when Saddam Hussein seized the hostage crisis as an opportunity to launch a military attack.

The hostage crisis contributed significantly to President Carter’s 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan. But he succeeded in resolving the crisis without resort to war...

Remember, Tomseth was one of those hostages, held for 444 days. He was no casual observer.

Meanwhile, even Israel appears to be coming around to the idea that negotiating with Iran makes sense - leaving McCain and the neocons entirely isolated out on the belligerent fringe of world opinion. Trita Parsi, co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council, writes at Rootless Cosmopolitan:

On the eve of his departure from political life, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Olmert...argued that Israel had lost its “sense of proportion” when stating that it would deal with Iran militarily. “What we can do with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese, we cannot do with the Iranians,” Olmert said, in stark contradiction to his own earlier warnings on Iran as well as the rhetoric of many of his hawkish cabinet members. “Let’s be more modest, and act within the bounds of our realistic capabilities,” he cautioned.

... A more nuanced rhetoric on Iran may have the down-side of reducing pressure on the U.S. to act - “If we don’t talk about Iran, the world will forget about Iran,” as Israeli Iran expert David Menashri put it – but has the up-side of enabling new options to emerge for the Jewish state.

Warning about being “boxed into the corner,” a recent Haaretz editorial offered a clear break from Israel’s Plan A: “The best chance of calming the atmosphere and reducing the threat lies in starting negotiations between the United States and Iran… [I]t is the only route not yet tried and is likely to help moderate Iranian policy. Israel must encourage an American rapprochement with Iran, with the understanding that this will serve the Israeli interest as well.” And in a video by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, several high-ranking Israeli generals throw their weight behind U.S.-Iran diplomacy as a path towards advancing Israeli security.

... Unlike Olmert who recognized the unfeasibility of Plan A while leaving office, Israel’s new Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, may enter office with Plan B in sight. She rejects the idea that Israel “will not be able to live” with a nuclear Iran and says Israel must deal with the challenges it faces. Though Livni won’t go as far as Barack Obama in promising direct diplomacy with Tehran, she may help Israel find a few more options on Iran.

There's always a possibility that a more moderate president in Iran in 2009 may help find a few of those options too. Sidelining the zealots, be they Iranian, Isreali or American, is the best chance for solving all of the issues in the region. Even Churchill, hero of the Right, preferred talk to war.

Watch your back, Senator McCain

By BJ

Because you’re likely to find more than few knives in it.  One of the many reasons McCain is likely to rue the day he ever decided to gamble on Sarah Palin as his VP pick is her tendency to turn on her benefactors when she sees advantage in it.  With John McCain’s electoral chances looking as likely as Angelina leaving Brad for me, his back is apparently too inviting a target.

Wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and standing on a breezy tarmac, Palin said that if she had her way, the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee would not be flooding battleground states with automated phone calls tying Barack Obama to former radical William Ayers, as they have done over the last week.

. . .

"If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand," Palin said, "I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war, and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls, and includes spending so much money on the television ads that, I think, is kind of draining out there in terms of Americans' attention span.

Palin is also on record criticizing McCain for abandoning Michigan and for not “taking the gloves off” enough during the debates.  Of course, her sudden opposition to the robocalls linking Obama and Ayers stand in stark contrast to her earlier calls to make the Ayers association a bigger part of their campaign, but that merely shows how much of a true disciple of Bill Kristol she really is.  She has all of the answers so long as she can’t be held to account for their failure.

When this is all over, McCain’s back is going to look like a pincushion as the party turns him into a scapegoat for the loss, (far easier than examining their lack of ideas), and Palin is lining herself up to be on the side of dagger-wielders so as to avoid as much blame as possible and set herself up well for the future.

No idea whether or not it will work, of course.  Those Republicans of sense, (a vanishingly rare breed these days to be sure), are smart enough to realize that Palin was one the major anchors dragging McCain’s prospects down these last several weeks.  Still, it is hard not to be awed by the sheer gall of the move, in a sickly, slightly horrified way to be sure, but awed none the less.

A Grand Bargain In Afghanistan?

By Cernig

While the presidential candidates try to outdo each other on hawkishness on their Afghanistan/Pakistan policies and violence rises even further, the military seem to be the ones really running U.S. foreign policy in the region. And they're looking for a Grand Bargain.

This week's Sixty Minutes has eye-opening footage from a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, which includes up-close combat with Taliban militants.


Watch CBS Videos Online

The footage underscores what a recent draft of a National Intelligence Estimate called Afghanistan's "downward spiral", with a 30 percent increase in attacks in the last year.

These soldiers had not come this close to their enemy in Afghanistan before - close enough to lob hand grenades. Staff Sgt. Jake Schlereth had to crawl into a cornfield in pursuit. "You couldn't see [the enemy]…and…I had to get down on the ground and look and see if they were down there…you knew they were in there," he tells Logan.

At least twelve enemy fighters were killed in the skirmish and one U.S. soldier was wounded. The soldiers found a camera left behind by the enemy that contained images of at least 50 heavily armed fighters, showing details of their training and actual attacks. But it also showed enemy surveillance of U.S. soldiers on patrol. Says Capt. Thomas Kilbride, who leads such patrols, "This is showing a [U.S.] unit driving. I don't know if this is us or not." Does he think he and his men are being watched every time they go on patrol? "Oh, yeah," he says.

The images on the camera prove the enemy is better armed and organized. One of the men killed was carrying an identification card issued across the border in Pakistan. The U.S. military plans more fighting ahead in the winter months, when violence is usually less. "I'm here to predict this winter will be the most violent winter so far," says Gen. Schlosser.

But with experts saying that an Iraq-style Surge and Awakening, as advocated by John McCain, won't work among the Pushtun tribes who are implacably hostile to outsiders and occupiers - and likewise saying that Obama's more hawkish policy on Pakistan is a step too far that would touch off a larger regional conflict - General David Petraeus has put together a team of advisors who are saying the the best bet is to make a deal with the Taliban to return them to some sort of respectability as long as they give up Al Qaeda in the process. One of those advisers, Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid, has joined with New York University Prof. Barnett Rubin to write an essay entitled "From Great Game to Grand Bargain: Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan" published this week in the influential 'Foreign Affairs' journal. Jim Lobe at IPS News writes:

Both Obama and McCain have called for increases in U.S. and NATO troop strength, and President George W. Bush currently intends to send 8,000 more U.S. troops to join the 34,000 who are already there before he leaves office. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, who commands a total of nearly 70,000 troops, said last week he will need yet another 15,000 more next year.

But while those forces may help keep the lid on, they cannot defeat the Taliban, particularly so long as their Pakistani allies provide a safe haven, according to Rashid and Rubin, whose article criticises the Bush administration’s "war-on-terror" rhetoric that "thwarts sound strategic thinking by assimilating opponents into a homogenous ‘terrorist’ enemy."

"(The) United States must redefine its counterterrorist goals," they argue. "It should seek to separate those Islamist movements with local or national objectives from those that, like al Qaeda, seek to attack the United States or its allies directly – instead of lumping them all together." Those willing to sever ties with al Qaeda should be engaged, according to the authors.

"...An agreement in principle to prohibit the use of Afghan (or Pakistani) territory for international terrorism, plus an agreement from the United States and NATO that such a guarantee could be sufficient to end their hostile military action, could constitute a framework for negotiation. Any agreement in which the Taliban or other insurgents disavowed al Qaeda would constitute a strategic defeat for al Qaeda," according to the two authors.

It's almost certainly a good idea. Bob Gates has said that "There has to be ultimately, and I’ll underscore ultimately, reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this. That’s ultimately the exit strategy for all of us," and I've agreed with that concept for years. But one would think the State Dept. under the next President, rather than Petraeus, in the role of regional proconsul, should be doing the running.

However, Rashid and Rubin want to take it a step further - and that's where I think their plan becomes highly problemmatic.

At the same time, Washington and its allies should pursue a "high-level diplomatic initiative designed to build genuine consensus on the goal of achieving Afghan stability by addressing the legitimate sources of Pakistan’s insecurity...," they argue.

They call for the UN Security Council to establish of a contact group consisting of its five permanent members, and possibly NATO and Saudi Arabia, to promote dialogue between India and Pakistan on Afghanistan and Kashmir, and between Pakistan and Afghanistan on delineating their border with the central aim of "assur(ing) Pakistan that the international community is committed to its territorial integrity." The group should also provide security assurances to Russia and Iran about U.S. NATO intentions and to promote regional economic integration and development.

The problem is that Pakistan isn't only concerned with its own territorial integrity. Pakistan's foreign policy has always been run by the Pakistani military, primarily aimed at India and always seen the use of proxy terror groups as a way to counter the assymetric balance of conventional forces. The Pakistani military has always had one primary mission - India. One of its primary objectives has been to bring Afghanistan into its own orbit and deny India influence there. While India must worry about the other regional power, China, Pakistan has always co-operated with China both militarily and politically on the local stage - the two nations develop fighter jets together, exercize together, vote together in local forums. India was the only reason why Pakistan developed a nuclear arsenal (India worried about Pakistan and China) and you can be sure that every nuclear weapon in Pakistan's inventory is assigned to an Indian target and to no other - something that it is doubtful is the case for India's weapons.

Throughout their short history as seperate nations - which has included four outright wars - India and Pakistan have been burdened by extremists who define themselves in terms of opposition to their neighbour and in supremacist religious rhetoric. Both have always had to cope with militant portions of their own military and political spectrums who define themselves in terms of a perceived military threat from the other nation. In India's case, although offtimes these factions have gained ascendancy, the democratic process has kept their influence from being total. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been a military dictatorship more often than it has been even slightly democratic and, when a democracy, was constantly threatened by coups from one of its two militant factions - the religious and military extremists. Accordingly, the military has made a de facto trade off with the Islamists. The military runs the nation and the Islamists use it as a safe base to preach, recruit and stage their worldwide Jihad. Neither rocks the other's boat all that much and so a balance of power has evolved, teetering on a precipice of civil war which spills over locally from time to time. Rashid and Rubin's plan doesn't provide an incentive to either group to change that equation.

Instead, as so often in the past, India should offer concessions to a nation which has talked the talk far more often than it has walked the walk. There is no mention anywhere of curtailling Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, and its alleged sponsoring of terror groups in Kashmir, Afghanistan and India. No mention of the tens of thousands of Taliban and Al Qaida trained militants in Pakistan (Jane's in 2004 estimated 20,000 such in Karachi alone). No mention of Pakistan's inability (reluctance) to capture Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar - and other major terror/crime figures such as Dahwood Ibrahim - who are certainly hiding on their territory. It's a plan the Pakistanis will love - because it enables them to keep on doing what they've been doing, playing the West for all they are worth while asking concessions from their main rivals. It's highly unlikely that the Indians or anyone else in the region will want to play ball just to give the U.S. cover as it makes for an exit.

Crossposted from Crooks & Liars

Upping the US Military Ante in Pakistan

By anderson

Things are getting weirder and more entangled by the day in Pakistan, as the US military presses the front of its increasing footprint in Pakistan. And news that the US is expanding its Pakistan presence with a base outside Islamabad cannot be viewed as separate and apart from the recent financial snub Pakistan received from China over a request for an emergency capital infusion.

Asia Times reports that Pakistani arms manufacturer, Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT), has been contracted to build 1000 Humvees for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Production is apparently already underway.

KARACHI - Pakistan's seven-year association with the United States' "war on terror" has moved to a new and dangerous level: the US has given it a contract to build 1,000 Humvees for use by troops in Afghanistan against the Taliban-led insurgency.

The fact that Pakistan is now providing the hardware for the "war on terror" is a highly sensitive issue, given the already inflammatory situation that exists in the country over Islamabad siding with Washington in this fight against terrorism.

Asia Times Online has learned that Pakistan's Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT) has been given the order for an undisclosed sum for the Humvees - high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles. HIT, located 35 kilometers to the west of the capital Islamabad, is theleading engineering and manufacturing center for the armed forces in Pakistan, with a workforce of over 6,000.

Work on the Humvees has already begun, although the task is being undertaken in secret. HIT has the capabilities to build main battle tanks, armored recovery vehicles, armored personnel carriers and other military equipment. Humvees are currently produced by AM General, an American heavy vehicle manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana.

No doubt this agreement has been reached in part to assuage -- or buy off, if you prefer -- Pakistani concerns about escalating US presence in a military base at Tarbella, 20 km from Islamabad. While claiming that US personnel will be there for "training" purposes, the base had been used by the CIA in 1990's and vacated after the Musharraf coup in 1999.

the US has bought a huge plot of land at Tarbella, several square kilometers, according to sources directly handling the project. Recently, 20 large containers arrived at the facility. They were handled by the Americans, who did not allow any Pakistani officials to inspect them.

Given the size of the containers, it is believed they contain special arms and ammunition and even tanks and armored vehicles - and certainly have nothing to do with any training program.

There is little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the American activities at Tarbella that preparations are being made for an all-out offensive in North-West Frontier Province against sanctuaries belonging to the Taliban and al-Qaeda led by bin Laden. Pakistani security sources maintain more American troops will arrive in the coming days.

Indeed, with local production of military hardware, US military presence in Pakistan is destined to grow, and with it, more strife, war and killing. It seems unlikely that jobs producing American weaponry is a ticket that will soothe the larger, savage breast that a US military presence in Pakistan has, or is about to unleash.

Must read of the day

By Ron Beasley

My major house remodel should come to an end today and I should be back to regular posting soon.  Today I would like  to send you over to The Excrescence Of Right-Wing GOP Hate by Shaun Mullen for the must read of the day. 

Here is the intro:

The racist and xenophobic bile that has flowed from the right-wing Republican base and spokesmouths like Rush Limbaugh has been unprecedented in this campaign season, and it was easy to predict that the moment Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama that he was no longer a war hero and brilliant diplomat but just another uppity Negro.

If the hate mongering of these people was not so destructive, the knots into which they tie themselves would be amusing.

Go read the rest.

Army Recruiting Standards

By Fester:

The US Army has continued to decrease its standards to recruit new soldiers as its primary mission is Iraq and Iraq is not popular.  The Surge brigades dictated to all that the 15 on, 12 off schedule was an aberration, but not much of one.  And when Sheetz gas stations offers $8.75 an hour as a marginal employer, there is significant competition at the high school graduate entry level. 

The Boston Globe reports on the continued decline in standards:

For the third year in a row, the Army fell significantly short of its goal for recruiting high school graduates. It was the latest sign that the military's largest branch is lowering education standards to meet quotas, possibly at the expense of the long-term health of the force.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, fewer than 83 percent of new active-duty soldiers were high school graduates, according to Army statistics provided to the Globe.

The share was slightly higher than last year - leading some officials to say they have stemmed the drop - but still far below the Army's stated goal of having more than 90 percent earn their diplomas before joining the ranks.

In another worrisome trend, the percentage of active-duty recruits who scored in the bottom category on the Army's entrance exam remained among the highest of the decade,

This is an army with more moral and criminal waivers, weaker boot-camps, compressed training and lower quality recruits to begin with.  This is an army that is attempting to wage counter-insurgencies.  Counter-insurgencies require smart and disciplined troops that are able to think and act on their own with minimal guidance. 

Whoops

An Assault On Democracy

By Cernig

In 2008, faced with a groundswell of public opinion that should deliver a landslide of disapproval for the Republican party and send it into the political wilderness for years, the poor losers of the GOP are more than ready to prevent that end by any means. Few, if any, of the tactics it is using are illegal - often the result of careful legislation designed to preserve the Republican majority forever - but added together they comprise an assault on democracy which would stun even the cynical and sly politicians of Old Europe.

In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

The GOP and the McCain campaign have been trying to drum up a Bradley Effect, with campaign and party apparatchiks trotting out racist whistles against Obama (and by extension against the party he now leads) at every opportunity while party leaders pretend to be oblivious and unknowing. McCain, Palin and the GOP's Congressional leaders would condemn any overt racism, of course, and attribute it to some bad apples - but they seem remarkably dense in not spotting anything other than utter hate speech racism from their followers (or the candidate himself) when it occurs. The merest veil of deniability conceals their deliberately looking the other way while their supporters run riot.

Nor have their smears stopped at racism. Calling Obama and Dems in general traitors, terrorist abettors, "feminazis" and (oh, horrors) socialists has become a substitute for debating issues. (Actually, Obama's just echoing Lincoln.) From an early stage, the GOP knew it was going to run on personality smears as a substitute for facts. Again, much of the groundswell of hate on the Right is implausibly deniable by the leadership, but since any media attention only fuels their base's paranoia and engenders new smear attacks, "implausible" is all they need to keep the ball rolling independently.

But even all that isn't sufficient to either cage the vote or at least to provide plenty of excuses to keep Republican leaders in charge of their party after the elections. So we now have the ACORN faux-scandal, which John McCain has hyperbolically called 'an assault on democracy" and which seeks to provide a ready-made narrative for de-legitimizing the election.

It also serves, through the time-honored tactic of calling your opponents out for what you yourself are doing, to conceal very real Republcan voter registration fraud - not just individuals cooking up daft names to register as a way of getting paid for no work but a concerted effort to cook the books by making Republican support seem stronger than it really is.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

... The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

And, of course, we still have that mysterious glitch in electronic voting machines - the one that only ever seems to work in favor of Republican candidates - in places like West Virginia. They're out to prove Florida 2000 wasn't a one off. It has often been said that, to prevent such "glitches" having an effect, Obama has to not just win but win handily. That's inconvenient to network bosses who are already wondering how they'll fill election evening coverage if it's all decided by teatime. John McCain has assured Chris Wallace today that there will be a full election night to cover and some polls seem to help his case for that (and, obviously, influence voter's perceptions) - even while others don't.

But at the end of the day the GOP is prepared even for a Democratic landslide. They'll just package up all the hate, all the smears, all the Alien Nation rhetoric and throw caution to the wind.   

We've crossed some more lines ... in a long series of lines that have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party and an explicitly fascist political movement. And John McCain and his political handlers appear to have no moral compunctions whatsoever about whipping this movement into a frenzy and providing it with scapegoats for all that hatred, simply to try to shave a few points off Barack Obama's lead in the polls.

To call this "country first" only works if you assume your opponents (and scapegoats) are not really part of that same country. And we all know where that leads.

Yes, we do. And the extreme Right has been happily contemplating violent resistance or even a coup to defend themselves from what they see as a hostile and un-American Democratic takeover for years now. They even write books about it.

Fiddling while Wall Street Burns

By Fester

Tom Brady's worth is being proven every Sunday as the Patriots can not score more than 20 points against a competent defense.

Manny Rameriz can hit nasty curves to straight away center and see the ball land several forlongs away.

Sidney Crosby makes the game of hockey look easy.

All of these guys make a lot of money because they do something that is desirable and they do it extraordinarily well. 

It used to be conceivably claimed that the investment banks and bankers were able to do something desirable and difficult and do it extremely well.  That is why they earned the big bucks... Several hundred billion dollars in losses and between a quarter trillion and a two trillion dollar bail-out price tag later, depending on how you want to account for the federal guarantees, that claim has been significantly weakened. 

The Guardian reports that Wall Street does not get this --- it can hire thousands of people who can lose billions of dollars as efficiently as their current staff.  It does not need to give out massive retention bonuses:

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned....

executives such as former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, who was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007.Last year Merrill Lynch's chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, taking a final pay deal worth $161m. Citigroup boss Chuck Prince left last year with a $38m in bonuses, shares and options after multi-billion-dollar write-downs

I offer my services to lose billions of dollars at a far more reasonable rate of 5 million dollars per year, with an option to convert that salary into a basket of foreign currencies.  I can do that job pretty damn well. 

I fear for this country

By Ron Beasley

No, I'm not afraid Palin/McCain will win, I'm afraid of what will happen when they don't.  It was not too surprising that Colin Powell endorsed Obama this morning but what he said was:

As you see is not so much an endorsement of Barack Obama but a condemnation of the current Republican party and the Rovian McCain campaign.  Lee Attwater sparked the wildfire that is the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party.  Karl Rove fanned the flames and the Palin/McCain campaign has been throwing gasoline on the fire.

What passes as the Republican party these days is attempting to do is make the almost inevitable Democratic sweep illigitimate.  This from Bilmon :

With the prospect of a bone-crushing election defeat staring them full in the face, the diehard rump of the conservative movement is already busy fashioning a narrative to explain the dissolution of its world -- the one that Ronald Reagan built and that George W. Bush (with an assist from Wall Street) has thoroughly trashed.

And the emerging story line appears to be, roughly, that ACORN did it.

Given the underlying proclivities of the modern conservative movement (Sarah Palin division) we should have understood that sooner or later it would come to something as absurd as this. Failed authoritarian movements needs scapegoats the way fecal coliform bacteria need a steady supply of raw sewage, and this one has a lot of failures that need explaining.

The remarkable thing, of course, is the right's effort to make the ACORN boogie man do double duty: responsible not only for the looming "theft" of American democracy (per John McCain) but also for bringing the US and global financial system to its knees (per any number of conservative quacks economists and cranks pundits).

You have to admit: That's a damned impressive revolutionary track record for an obscure group of community organizers operating on a shoestring budget. I mean, who needs the Red Army when you've got ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act?

So what will this do to Karl Rove's lunatic fringe?

We don't need to hark back to the unfortunate history of a certain Central European country in the 1930s to understand how poisonous this kind of political myth making can become. Powerful elements of the Republican Party and the conservative "movement" aren't just preparing themselves to go into opposition, they're preparing themselves to dispute the legitimacy of an Obama presidency -- in ways that could, if taken to extreme, lead to another Oklahoma City.

It's hard to tell to what degree the GOP high command fully understands or is trying to feed these dynamics (indeed, it's becoming increasingly difficult to even tell who the GOP high command is these days). The last thing I want to do is get into an arms race with the wingnut right when it comes to paranoid conspiracy theories. (That's one race the left will always lose). Still, the recent statements of John McCain and his Bircher-influenced running mate aren't exactly reassuring:

My opponent's answer showed that economic recovery isn't even his top priority. His goal, as Senator Obama put it, is to "spread the wealth around."

You see, he believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that help us all make more of it. Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism.

I've been following politics for going on 35 years now, and I don't think I've ever heard a Republican candidate publicly refer to his Democratic opponent as a "socialist" -- not even while hiding behind a cardboard cutout like "Joe the Plumber". This from a man who told the entire nation on Wednesday night that believes an obscure nonprofit group is "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Likewise, I don't think there's ever been an American vice presidential candidate who explicitly referred to entire regions of the United States as "pro-American" -- with the clear implication that other regions are something less than "pro-American." Not since the Civil War, anyway.   

We've crossed some more lines, in other words -- in a long series of lines that have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party and an explicitly fascist political movement. And John McCain and his political handlers appear to have no moral compunctions whatsoever about whipping this movement into a frenzy and providing it with scapegoats for all that hatred, simply to try to shave a few points off Barack Obama's lead in the polls.

To call this "country first" only works if you assume your opponents (and scapegoats) are not really part of that same country. And we all know where that leads.

Now not all or even most of the Palin/McCain lunatics are going to resort to violence - but it only take a few of them as was demonstrated years ago in Oklahoma City.  And we can expect that the Secret Service is going to be very busy trying to keep Barack Obama alive the next few years.

Powell's Endorsement

By BJ

Added to the record fundraising totals announced earlier, the Obama campaign has to be smiling at how the day is progressing. Powell's reasoning for backing Obama is both powerful and persuasive, and well worth watching.

The important points against McCain are his erratic responses to the economic crisis, his pick of Palin for VP, campaign tactics that have went over the line, (his story of the mother weeping over the grave of a Muslim-American soldier was particularly powerful), the increasingly narrow focus of said campaign, and a Republican Party that's moved too far to the right for him to be comfortable with. Obama's considered response on the economy, his excellent pick of Joe Biden for VP, and the more inclusive nature of his vision for America all count in his favor.

Granted that many on the left aren't too fond of Powell due to his invaluable role in helping to start the Iraq War, but he remains one of the most popular and recognizable Republicans out there, and is still highly respected by many. And while endorsements haven't meant all that much this election cycle, his is among the last, if not the last, of the really big names out there to be won.

I don't expect all of this good news will actually impact the poll numbers too much. As noted some time ago, Obama has been scraping up against his ceiling for a while now. However, it should solidify his support among the moderates and independents that have swung his way recently.

Picture of the week

By Ron Beasley

$150 Million

By BJ

Wow.  Just wow.

The Obama campaign announced this morning that it had raised a record $150 million last month, and had added 632,000 new donors to its total.

The amount shattered the campaign’s previous record from August.  The McCain campaign also had a record-breaking month in August, but is now operating with the $84 million provided by public financing for the general cycle and assistance from the Republican National Committee under certain limits.

In announcing the Obama figure, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, said the average donation for September was less than $100.

Little question now how it is that Obama has been going 3 or 4 to 1 in its TV ad buys.  All that and he probably still has a healthy reserve. 

It is impossible to say at this point, but I would be willing to bet that the negative tone of the McCain campaign helped drive that number to its record-breaking level.  There has been more than a few times during this election cycle where attacks on Obama have resulted in boosts to his campaign contributions, and the McCain camp got steadily uglier as September progressed.

In any case, Obama now has the ability to simply overwhelm McCain's ads during the last couple of weeks and continue to be aggressive in more states than McCain can possibly defend.  The L-word is looking more and more likely.

150,000,000 anvils

By Fester:

The BBC reports that Obama's campaign raised roughly $150,000,000 in September.  This is a number that crushes the rumored amounts:

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised a record monthly total of more than $150m (£86m) in September, his campaign says.

The figure brought Mr Obama's total fundraising to $605m, dwarfing the total of his Republican rival.

John McCain is limited to $84 million dollars for September, October and the first week of November.  He has access to RNC money and is being supported by 'uncoordinated' outside groups.  But his accumulated braided funding streams are probably no larger than Obama's hard money budget.

I want to speculate for a minute here.  Let us assume that Obama wins in November.  What happens to the American political system when the Democrats have this type of fundraising advantage?  I grew up in a political environment where the GOP could outspend Democrats, so a marginal race really meant a slightly tilt GOP race.  But those advantages were never as pronounced as this advantage could be.  It is conceivable that Obama's campaign will keep his committee openfor 2012 and take in 2 or 3 million dollars a month in recurring donations for two or three years before he starts campaigning again. 

Democratic fundraising will be significantly aided by their control on power.  Lobbyists want to deal with people who can get things done for them.  Democrats will be the ones with power even if Pelosi continues to run a caucus on majority of the whole instead of majority of the majority rules.  So besides the Christian Right and the neo-Birchers, who will fund the GOP, especially after the GOP looks to beat down the Paul supporters who have demonstrated a willingness to open their small donor wallets?

Hopkins-Pavlik

By BJ

I just finished watching the broadcast of the boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Kelly Pavlik.  I have a long history with the sport of boxing, and I have to say that it was wonderful to watch a master at the game perform his craft.  Hopkins was the master strategist, and Pavlik was simply out of his league.  Of course, Pavlik did have a few moments during the bout, and did manage to close the gap between the two towards the end, but Hopkins was simply too far ahead and capped his performance with some brilliant flurries during the last round.

A couple of quotes from the broadcast that made me perk up were from quotes that Bernard Hopkins made to the reporters prior to the fight.

“When it comes to ring generalship, I’m the Harvard grad and Pavlik is the guy from the community college.”

“When I beat Kelly Pavlik, I will bring hope to the hopeless.”

"Hopkins says that in the corner, he's the President and the other guys are his cabinet."

And regarding the fight itself:

Pavlik seems to be taking more risks.  He has to if he is to have any chance.”

“Pavlik just ran into something they never anticipated they would and they haven’t been able to adapt.”

In the eighth round, one of the commentators said that it looked like Pavlik would need some kind of bailout if he were to have any hope of winning, to which another quipped, “Well, at least it shouldn’t cost $700 billion”.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, Hopkins corner men were wearing Obama/Biden T-shirts, and Hopkins gave a shout out to Obama and Michelle after the fight.  And much like Obama, Hopkins is known for being very conservative with his finances, and just bought a rather nice house out of foreclosure that just happens to make him a next-door neighbour to Joe Biden.  The analogy seems just too easy, though in this case, Hopkins was actually the old guy, even if he didn't look it tonight.

In the end, the scoring was a landslide for Hopkins.

The Republican Provenance of Obama's Rhetoric

by anderson

At his speech in St. Louis, Barack Obama asked what appears on its surface to be a rhetorical question, but which more largely presents the long running dialectic between labor and capital.

"It comes down to values in America. Do we simply value wealth, or do we value the work that creates it?"

After watching real median income decline over the last thirty years, while income inequality grew substantially -- especially true during Bush's terms in office -- it would seem the answer is pretty obvious. Capital assumed preeminence in American society, and not by accident. That it has done so at the expense of labor is perhaps the root cause of our current and worsening economic situation. Capital markets are in turmoil precisely because the middle and working class in American cannot afford to pay their bills, which have only experienced inflation, while wages have dropped. It was a recipe for disaster, one day or another.

But Obama's rhetorical question is really a statement that harks back to an earlier American epoch, also a time of duress when another Illinois senator broke onto the national stage.

Abraham Lincoln, newly elected as president in 1860, addressed the country in his first State of the Union speech and plainly stated the relationship between labor and capital.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor.
...
Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Such plain speaking about the value of labor and its obvious preeminence in the relationship to wealth, and society in general, seems scarcely imaginable in today's capital worship climate. But here is Obama, raising the spectre of Lincoln with his question to the American public.

Notable also in Lincoln's speech is his obvious disdain for another argument we hear much about from the now Republican party, which surely would blanche were they to be scolded by the man they often consider their own greatest president. Reaganomics gave us the "trickle down" scam, still trying to be pawned off today, which Lincoln saw as ridiculous on its face one hundred and forty years ago.

Of course, Lincoln would be skewered by his Republican party as it exists today. But it is refreshing to finally see someone evoke -- if only in the simplest of terms -- the dialectic of capital and labor, and, more importantly, rhetorically place importance, not only on the value of labor itself, but on its preeminent relationship to capital in society.

The Heretik Returns

By Cernig

Good news.

The Heretik is back, in all his Kafka-esque glory.

The Calm Before The Storm?

By Cernig

John McCain's declarations of victory in Iraq are likely to turn out just as premature as Bush's famously-flightsuited "mission accomplished", simply because the various faction fights underlying violence in Iraq have been postponed, not solved.

A few days ago, Mariam Karouny of Reuter's Baghdad bureau posted this on the Reuters blog:

Conversations with senior Iraqi officials in the past few days suggest the optimism may be premature.

Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians spoke of “bad news” ahead. They talked of deep political divisions, and assassinations ahead of the provincial elections expected in January.

A senior Sunni Arab official, wishing me a happy Eid last week, said: “I wish I could mean this. Nothing has really changed since you have last visited.”

A Shi’ite official pleaded: “Please be careful, we are expecting lots of problems. Don’t be fooled by the current security situation.”

No-one sane expects there to be anything other than a rise in violence focussed around the provincial elections. The real question is: how bad will it get? If it's bad enough to kick off another round of recriminatory attacks and counterattacks, Iraq will revert back to pre-Surge conditions very quickly. If not, then Iraq has a chance at merely having the kind of background violence experienced in Lebanon or Palastine. With a split in the ruling Shiite elite,between Maliki's Dawa and Hakim's ISCI, to contend with and an insurgency that appears to be gathering its strength again and which seems capable of pre-Awakening attack levels, the latter seems a slimmer possibility than the former.

Can We Use The L Word Now?

By Cernig

Not quite- although there's a 89.96 probability of an Obama victory, there's only a 32.75% chance of a landslide (375 plus electoral college votes) according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.

But it certainly looks like one in this pic. "All I can say is wow," Obama said as he took the stage.

The One Way "Glitch"

By Anderson

And so it begins.

Numerously reported in the 2004 presidential election, early voters in West Virginia today are seeing exactly the same behaviour on touch screen voting machines as then: the touch screen visibly shows the virtual "box" for John McCain light up when voters touched the screen for Obama. In 2004, of course, voters saw the marvelous sight of Bush lighting up when Kerry was selected.

I always enjoy the ad hoc, on-the-spot poll workers suggestions about how to correct the odd and always one-way behaviour: you oaf, use your fingernail! How can you not know this?!

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

Thomas, who brought his daughter with him to the polls, said she had the same problem.

"After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain.

Election day has already been promised to be an unmitigated disaster. This is just one of many preludes to the looming meltdown.

The vital state of Colorado is also promising to be a likely electoral disaster area, where daft machines, secret voter roll purges, and other poll challenges will likely prevent huge numbers of citizens from actually casting a vote. The day's outlook: uncertain, with periods of increasing machine failure, poll worker confusion, conflicting instructions, vote challenges, a gobs of the voting public walking away from polling stations having been told that, oh well, you're not on "the list."

Obama's Best Line Yet

By Cernig

Via Steve Benen comes what I think is Obama's best line of the whole campaign.

It comes down to values -- in America, do we simply value wealth, or do we value the work that creates it?

Perfect. It encapsulates all that is wrong with the unstated Republican theology political philosphy America has lived with since Reagan. Obama continues:

"Lately, Senator McCain has been attacking my middle class tax cut. He actually said it goes to, 'those who don't pay taxes,' even though it only goes to working people who are already getting taxed on their paycheck. That's right, Missouri -- John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare.'

The only 'welfare' in this campaign is John McCain's plan to give another $200 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations in America -- including $4 billion in tax breaks to big oil companies that ran up record profits under George Bush. That's who John McCain is fighting for. But we can't afford four more years like the last eight. George Bush and John McCain are out of ideas, they are out of touch, and if you stand with me in 17 days they will be out of time."

Zinger!

The McCain Plan for Health Insecurity

By Cernig

At the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Blumenthal reviews McCain's healthcare plans - and finds the same old Republican "I'm alright, Jack" philosphy. (h/t Avedon)

John McCain emerges not as a maverick or centrist but as a radical social conservative firmly in the grip of the ideology that animates the domestic policies of President George W. Bush. The central purpose of President Bush's health policy, and John McCain's, is to reduce the role of insurance and make Americans pay a larger part of their health care bills out of pocket. Their embrace of market forces, fierce antagonism toward government, and determination to force individuals to have more "skin in the game" are overriding — all other goals are subsidiary. Indeed, the Republican commitment to market-oriented reforms is so strong that, to attain their vision, Bush and McCain seem willing to take huge risks with the efficiency, equity, and stability of our health care system. Specifically, the McCain plan would profoundly threaten the current system of employer-sponsored insurance on which more than three fifths of Americans depend, increase reliance on unregulated individual insurance markets (which are notoriously inefficient), and leave the number of uninsured Americans virtually unchanged. A side effect of the McCain plan would be to threaten access to adequate insurance for millions of America's sickest citizens.

The main purposes of Mccain's plan appears to be to dump more money into private health insurer's coffers and enable insurers to dump bad risks (those currently covered but paying high premiums) onto the State by making insurance unaffordable for them:

In the individual market, administrative costs consume 30 to 50% of premiums, as compared with 12 to 15% in the large-group, employer-sponsored insurance market. The McCain plan, therefore, could cause administrative waste to skyrocket. Because of these high administrative expenses, and because insurers want to avoid sick people, individual health insurance tends to be less generous than employer-sponsored plans, requiring higher deductibles and copayments and offering less coverage of preventive and catastrophic care. Perhaps most worrisome is that many chronically ill patients who lose employer-sponsored coverage will have trouble finding any insurance at all in the individual market. The McCain plan calls for deregulating private insurance markets — eliminating, for example, state requirements that insurers offer plans to persons with preexisting conditions.

To counter these side effects, McCain will offer a $2,500 tax credit for individuals and a $5,000 tax credit for families to help them purchase health insurance. But consider the math. The average family policy in the United States now costs about $12,000, of which the average employer contributes about 75% ($9,000). Thus, if they could find comparable insurance in the individual market, that coverage would cost families losing employer-sponsored insurance $4,000 more than they previously paid ($9,000 minus $5,000). Many of these families will enter the ranks of the uninsured.

All those new uninsured would join the ranks of those who wait until their health problem becomes an emergency and then head to EMS, increasing the cost of their care dramatically and leaving many unable to pay - at which point the State picks up a huge bill which could have been far lower if it had only been the healthcare provider in the first place.

The choice facing health care professionals, like all Americans, is basic: Who deserves to be trusted with the stewardship of America's health care system? The McCain proposal violates the bedrock principle that major health policy reforms should first do no harm. It would risk the viability of employer-sponsored insurance and the welfare of chronically ill Americans in pell-mell pursuit of a radical vision of consumer-driven health care. Senator McCain's plan does not demonstrate the kind of judgment needed in a potential commander in chief of our health care system.

Blumenthal is an unpaid Obama campaign adviser, so he's certainly biased - but the situation is actually worse than he admits. Not only is McCain's healthcare plan a disaster, but so is Obama's - although one on slo-mo - because there is no long-term viability in employer-sponsored health insurance. Companies and corportations are collapsing under the weight of such schemes. It';s significant that in 2004 big auto manufacturers begged Canada to keep its national healthcare system, so they could keep their own costs down and saty in business across North America. In 2003, GM spent $4.5 billion on health care for its US- based employees and retirees, at a cost of $1,200 per car, according to a GM spokesman. "If we cannot get our arms around this [healthcare] issue as a nation, our manufacturing base and many of our other businesses are in danger," warned Ford's Vice Chairman Allan Gilmour.

But the correct alternative to pick is a national health service, which could be funded at a level of 11% of GDP, higher than that of any other Western nation, without a single tax raise - if only insurance company profits and beaurocracy weren't sucking all the good out of the system. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-author of a 2001 study and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, put it best:

We pay the world's highest health care taxes. But much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks. And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers' expense. But politicians claim we can't afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don't get it.

Deborah Burger, President of the California Nurses Association, says that in a supposedly civilized nation healthcare should be a right, not a responsibility:

The new McCarthyism

By Libby

Apparently mistaking a recent Hardball appearance as an audition to become the latest face of reckless demagoguery, Rep. Michele Bachman gave voice to the most rabid and vile imaginings of the increasingly violent GOP base. She hints darkly of widespread anti-Americanism within the Congressional chambers. The video is at the link, I can't bring myself to repeat it here.

Immediately after the segment, Katrina Vandenheuvel issues the appropriate, and surprisingly impassioned, rebuke.

Chris, I fear for my country. I think what we just heard is a congresswoman channeling Joe McCarthy, channeling a politics of fear and loathing and demonization and division and distraction. Not a single issue mentioned. This is a politics at a moment of extreme economic pain in this country that is incendiary, that is so debased, that I'm almost having a hard time breathing, because I think it's very scary.

Bachman's hateful remarks are not only scary, they verge on criminally irresponsible. I think she should be immediately censured by her peers. If you agree, join concerned Americans and sign the petition and pass the link on. The signators have already doubled in number in the last few hours.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic)

Senator Smith's Dilemma

By Ron Beasley

One of the hotest Senate races is on my own state of Oregon.  Incumbent  Republican Gordon Smith is in a battle for a third term.  Now most Republicans are running from George W. Bush and the Republican Party this year but as I noted here this is nothing new for Gordon who is a reliable wingnut for four years but makes a left turn before the next election.  His ads this year have shown him with Democrats including Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama but John McCain and George Bush have been absent.  Well it may not be working this time.  He may be picking up a few independents but he may have lost the uber wingnut faction of the Oregon Republican Party to the Constitution Party candidate David Brownlow.

Will Constitution Party candidate swing Oregon's Senate race?

U.S. Senate candidate David Brownlow doesn't have any TV advertising, didn't participate in the debates and isn't accepting campaign donations. But polls show the Constitution Party candidate picking up as much as 8 percent of the vote, and he could end up playing a crucial role in determining whether Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., or Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley wins Oregon's red-hot Senate race.

The polls show that Democrat Merkley is leading Smith by three to five points which would qualify Brownlow as a spoiler and his is the wingnuts dream.

In some respects, Brownlow is far to the political right. He wants to phase out Social Security, Medicare and other federal entitlement programs, saying they are unconstitutional. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and return to "sound money." And he supports outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.

Ans how does Brownlow feel about being a spoiler?

Brownlow said he doesn't see much difference between Merkley and Smith on the issues. But Brownlow, a former Republican who campaigned for Smith when he first ran for office 12 years ago, is particularly disdainful of the senator.

"I want Gordon Smith to lose, big time," said Brownlow, 51, an industrial automation salesman who speaks in staccato bursts. "Gordon Smith, for too many reasons, has lost the right to a third term. ... Conservatives don't like Gordon Smith, and you've got to make a decision: Are you willing to put him back again, even though you really don't like him and he's done a poor job?"

Gordon Smith may be about to learn that you can't have it both ways.

Obama, McCain and encouraging innovation

by Jay McDonough

During that portion of his stump speech where he talks about wasteful federal spending, John McCain always brings up the example of Montana's use of federal funds to study grizzly bear DNA.  The punch line comes when the Senator wonders aloud whether it's for investigating paternity or criminal issues.  Pretty funny.  (At least it was the first ten times I heard the Senator tell the joke).

There was a time when a good size chunk of change went to federally funded scientific research.  For decades, the United States led the world in technological innovation and the country's science and engineering skills provided the U.S. great gains in productivity and wealth.  Signs of trouble emerged in 1995, when the trade balance of technology products shifted and the U.S. began importing more high technology products than exporting, and that trend has continued to the present. In 2007, the trade gap between imported and exported high technology goods was $53B.  The New York Times had an interesting article yesterday on the issue.

“If we don’t have an innovation agenda, if we don’t invest in science research, if we don’t provide encouragement for our kids to pursue careers in math and science, I don’t see where our country can go economically in the future,” said John Edward Porter, a Republican former congressman who is the board chairman of Research!America, an advocacy group.

As you might expect, the the current economic problems and the rapidly increasing federal deficit are placing added pressures on applying federal monies to scientific research.  Add to that the resistance from anti-science Republicans, and the prospects for any real progress in the area seems unlikely.

(In 2003) the National Academies issued its influential report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The academies, the nation’s most eminent scientific and engineering organization, called for an urgent effort to strengthen American competitiveness.

The report said industries like chemical, semiconductor and automotive were growing in other countries while comparable American efforts atrophied. The patent office issued most of its information technology patents to foreigners. The United States ranked 17th among industrialized nations in high-school graduation rates, and the country had become “a net importer of high-technology products,” many from China.

In 2007, Congress passed, by an 88 to 8 margin, and President Bush signed the America Competes Act, written around the recommendations set forth in the "Gathering Storm" report.  For those keeping score, Barack Obama voted for the bill and John McCain abstained.  Congress has yet to finance the program, expected to cost $43B for the first three years.

While the teaching of science and the state of American innovation isn't up at the top of the candidates to-do lists, each has proposals for addressing the problem.  And there are quite a few similarities in approach: each acknowledges the importance of scientific research, each would make R&D tax credits permanent, both pledge to make it easier for foreign born scientists to come and work within the U.S.,and both recommend moving science advisors back into the White House sphere.

But there are some major differences as well between the two candidates approaches.

Mr. Obama looks to encourage basic research with infusions of federal cash. Mr. McCain says easing regulatory and tax burdens will encourage private spending on research. (Experts say industry now tends to focus on near-term applications, while government finances more basic research that has greater breakthrough potential.)

Mr. Obama has proposed doubling federal financing for basic research in physics, life sciences, mathematics and engineering over 10 years. He has promised to review export rules he calls outdated and sees as having “unduly hampered the competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry.”

The McCain campaign has said he will encourage corporate research by reducing the capital gains and corporate taxes and promoting “conditions favorable to investment.” In response to a survey by Science Debate 2008, a private group that tried to arrange a debate on science issues, he cited “burdensome regulations” as inhibiting innovation in the United States and said he would work to remove them.

In preparing the article, the Times asked the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to put a price tag on the two candidate's plans. The Foundation estimates the Obama plan would cost $85.6B and the McCain plan $78.8B.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that falls through the crack.  Other problems seem so much bigger and so much more urgent.  There's a strong case to be made the current economic problems will be addressed and solved - it may take a few painful years - but things will be fixed and order restored.  Losing the technology leadership position in the world, on the other hand, has some very large, very long lasting implications on future generations of American's quality of life.

Nir Rosen: How We Lost the War We Won

By Cernig

Nir Rosen imbedded with the Taliban for his latest report on Afghanistan, out now in Rolling Stone. His experiences included almost being executed by a fanatical Taliban local warlord, but he came away with the conclusion that adding more troops to Afghanistan won’t work, and that we should prepare an exit strategy.

Simply put, it is too late for Bush's "quiet surge" — or even for Barack Obama's plan for a more robust reinforcement — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on the ground will only lead to more contact with the enemy, and more air support for troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, the American government will be forced to the negotiating table, just as the Soviets were before them.

"The rise of the Taliban insurgency is not likely to be reversed," says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar and the author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. "It will only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on the fence right now — or are even nominally allied with the government — are likely to shift their support to the Taliban in the coming years. What's more, the direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be tempting to attack the safe havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda across the border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario for the United States. Attacks by the U.S. would attract the support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, the collapse of its military and the possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal."

In the same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that he would never allow the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan. But they have already returned, and only negotiation with them can bring any hope of stability.

John McCain's strategy - following the Bush administration in handing policymaking to General Petraeus - isn't going to work any better. Talking our way to an exit from the doomed adventure in Afghanistan really is the only way out of that grim trap.

Spencer Ackerman calls Rosen's report an instant classic of war reporting and I totally agree. Just read it, ok?

Amy Goodman talks with Nir Rosen about his Taliban embed.

Systems Disruption during slumps...

By Fester:

With oil prices hanging out near , this is putting a significant squeeze on the state capacity of commodity exporting states that have few other options.  This is because recent import bills have risen so that national accounts balance at much higher commodity sales levels today than they did five years ago.  There will be far less reserve accumulation, and far less easily switchable expenditures that can be financed without accessing the chaotic international debt markets.

My question is how will system disruption/global guerrilla groups operate in an environment of lower commodity prices and chaotic international markets? 

MEND in Nigeria has been conducting an aggressive system disruption/global guerrilla campaign to leverage the Nigerian state to both leave their bunkering activities alone AND send more money back into the Delta Region.  Under the previous price environment, there was significant surplus to be distributed and fought over.  However under the combination of lower prices, higher import bills, chaotic international markets and the new normal of significant disruption with attendant higher security costs, there is far less surplus to fight over.  So will continued system disruption work as a strategy to force the Nigerian state to send more money to the Nigerian Delta region?

Continued systems disruption will be successful in creating local hedgehogs against intolerable, centralized and brittle.  System disruption will keep certain rigs and fields from operating, and if a credible promise can be tacitly gained that well behaved groups will be off limits, it may change behavior.

System disruption is also spreading.  BJ noted yesterday, system disruption efforts are spreading.  A second natural gas pipeline was attached in British Columbia,Canada.  But I am still struggling with system disrpution in an already disrupted world --- what can it accomplish, and who benefits from it?

International Regulation For The Global Economy

By Cernig

The UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, has rediscovered his "small-s" socialist roots during the current financial crisis he helped create by forgetting them and thus allowing US-style unregulated risk-taking in UK financial markets. It hasn't hurt Brown in the polls either - where once he had trailed so badly that everyone had written him off, now he's ahead of his Conservative Party rival by 11 points.

His credibility on the international stage is high too. He was the most successful treasurer of a Western nation since WW2, with 13 straight years in the black, and is the architect of the current international plan to restore liquidity to the world economy by having governments take equity stakes in banks and other institutions. It's a process known as "nationalisation" but somehow the U.S. media doesn't want to use that word or remind voters that the conservative Bush administration has been forced to socialist policy by its own maladministration.

Now, Brown has an op-ed in the Washington Post setting out the next stage of fiscal recovery - international laws to regulate the financial sector. He's even using the words "new Bretton Woods".

We must deal with more than the symptoms of the current crisis. We have to tackle the root causes. So the next stage is to rebuild our fractured international financial system.

This week, European leaders came together to propose the guiding principles that we believe should underpin this new Bretton Woods: transparency, sound banking, responsibility, integrity and global governance. We agreed that urgent decisions implementing these principles should be made to root out the irresponsible and often undisclosed lending at the heart of our problems. To do this, we need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation; a more responsible approach to executive remuneration that rewards hard work, effort and enterprise but not irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.

Such an international regulatory framework, if enshrined in a treaty, will have the force of international law - and that's clearly what Brown and the other European leaders intend. It will then be largely immune to Republican deregulatory zeal even in the U.S., because laws adopetd by treaty have the force of federal laws but international treaties cannot be changed just by enacting domestic legislation to do away with them. Free market conservatives (and neocons, who hate any restriction on American hegemony and freedom to act as it sees fit) are going to hate Brown's plan, but what choice do they have? The medicine will taste bitter but a little bit (not too much) socialism will be good for what ails the world economy.

But what I would find really interesting would be if someone asked John McCain, "maverick reformer", if he thinks the fiscal socialism that the Bush administration has already enacted and the socialism to come are good ideas. And if not, what would be his alternative?

Gordon Brown answers questions on the future of the economy, bankers bonuses and global co-operation

Update: Nobel winner Paul Krugman is all for some fiscal socialism and nanny-stating on the domestic scene too.

there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.

And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.

Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”

...The responsible thing, right now, is to give the economy the help it needs. Now is not the time to worry about the deficit.

That's something Dems have already argued (as have I), but having the Nobel winner back you up is nice.

Deflation, COLA and Social Security

By Fester

Mish at Global Economic Analysis is pulling some charts on basic food commodity prices.  They are falling hard and fast:

Judging from a broad basket of commodity prices, we are likely to see declining prices at the grocery stores in the weeks or months ahead. Lower commodity prices will eventually pass through to prices in the grocery stores and thus be reflected in the CPI. Some very favorable year over year comparisons are coming up, especially if prices continue to decline.

The Social Security Administration just approved a 5.8% cost of living increase in their baseline checks.  Seniors are arguing that they need more money as the non-elastic consumptions goods of living have been consistently rising in price.

I'm just speculating here on a massive political fight next year if there is either minimal CPI inflation or CPI deflation on the SSA COLA.  Can any politician survive an attack ad accusing them of cutting Grandma's Social Security check?

Working Class Heroes

By Cernig

And the Right wonders why the word 'socialist" is losing its sting. The WaPo:

A national survey by The Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University found that large percentages of low-wage Americans struggle to pay for life's staples. Eight in 10 find it hard to pay for gasoline or save for retirement, while more than six in 10 said it was tough to afford health care. And roughly half said they were having difficulty affording food and housing.

Workers are more productive than ever, as the output per person has hit new highs in the past eight years. But rather than funding wage increases for most employees, the fruit of that new efficiency has largely bypassed all but the people in the best-paying jobs, as inflation-adjusted incomes for typical Americans edged downward from 2000 to 2007.

Now, as the global financial system strains to absorb its biggest shocks since the Great Depression, the once faraway world of Wall Street is making things worse for low-wage workers.

Even before last week's dramatic declines on Wall Street, credit markets had tightened, making borrowing more expensive -- or impossible -- for people and businesses whose credit histories are less than stellar. Already, most lenders are requiring higher down payments for mortgages and more collateral for other loans. Tighter credit means less spending and fewer jobs. Inevitably, those at the bottom of the income ladder are most vulnerable to all of those changes.

"Low-wage workers have had a difficult balancing act in terms of matching their expenses with their limited incomes," said Margaret C. Simms, director of the Urban Institute's Low-Income Working Families Project. "They are very limited in their ability to deal with an emergency."

The WaPo illustrates these stark statistics with a look at the life of Regino Romero, a single father of three kids earning "just over $13 an hour, which he calls barely enough to survive". There are plenty with less to get by on. It isn't easy being working class in Bush's America.

Sing it, John.

Spreading The Wealth

By Ron Beasley

After eight years of the wealth being spread to the top one or two percent the majority of voters is probably ready to have some of it spread their way.  That's why I thought it was strange that the McCain Campaign and The Weekly Standard Republicans thought they had a game changing issue when Obama suggested he was going to spread the wealth down to the middle.  I was going to do a post on it but as usual I procrastinated long enough and someone did it for me - The American Conservative's Daniel Larison:

There is an idea circulating out there that the killer combo of Joe the Plumber and “spread the wealth” may save the election for McCain.  Now you might say that this is just whistling past the graveyard, but that doesn’t do it credit.  This is really more like four-part harmony singing in a freshly-dug grave as the dirt is being piled on.

This is something that I didn’t elaborate on last night, but the idea that the message of Spread The Wealth would be a political loser at the present time is bizarre, which makes McCain’s insistence on identifying Obama as the “spread the wealth” candidate even more bizarre.  I mean, does McCain want to get crushed in a landslide?  Let’s think about this.  There is an economic downturn coming on the heels of an era of wage stagnation and growing economic inequality, the financial sector has imploded thanks to the combined blunders of government and holders of concentrated wealth and Obama’s use of a phrase that on its own could easily be mistaken for an expression of neo-Harringtonian distributism is supposed to be politically radioactive?  Consolidation of power, concentration of wealth and centralism all stand condemned for having created the present fiasco, and there is supposed to be a political downside to talking about distributing wealth?

It took eight years of the Bush administration and their smoke and mirrors recovery to hopefully discredit trickle-down economics one and for all.

Bail out friends

By Fester:

What was that old t-shirt --- Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies

The new saying is that Friends help you make money, real friends bail out your currency ---
Via Obsidian Wings is the follow-up report on Pakistan’s foreign currency reserve crisis:

China has assured Pakistan it will not allow its south Asian ally to be forced to default on upcoming international debt payments, according to Pakistani officials.
Such a pledge would offer a potentially crucial boost to Pakistan, which faces a $10bn (€7.5bn, £5.8bn) gap in external financing in the financial year to June 2009, amid a falling currency and declining liquid foreign currency reserves.

Iceland is looking for assistance from Scandinavia and Russia.  Norway and Russia have large reserves available because of their hard currency oil exports. 

Hungary is facing a massive run on its foreign reserves.  The IMF and energy exporters are about the only sources of liquid hard currency available to the Hungarian government as the European Union lacks sufficient marginal capacity to worry about anything besides the bank crisis in the core of the EU.  Bailing countries out allows the bailer to buy the bailee’s assets cheaply, strengthen influence and relationships and if done well, realign international interest profiles. 

The New Atlanticist - The "Unanswered Question" Of NATO Expansion

By Cernig

If you follow foreign policy and foreign affairs, here's one for your bookmarks - the New Atlanticist blog. It's the online mag of the Atlantic Council of the United States, which is a think-tank expressly devoted to being a support group for American interest in NATO. Given that, it has a decidedly realist, center-right and hawkish tinge to it but under the excellent editorship of moderate conservative James Joyner (of Outside The Beltway) the blog has been producing some thought-provoking posts by some foreign policy luminaries and by James himself.

For instance, James notes a new study by the Congressional Research Service, "NATO Enlargement: Albania, Croatia, and Possible Future Candidates," [PDF] which says:

U.S. officials continue to view NATO as the primary institutional mechanism to ensure transatlantic security. They argue that although NATO’s primary purpose is the defense of its members, the alliance has become a force for peace throughout Europe.

This provides a clear U.S. answer to what James says is "the unanswered question" about NATO enlargement.

Inherent in the discussion, but not answered in the report — which is, after all, intended to prevent Members of Congress and their staffs with information, not dictate policy — is the goal of the Alliance.  Albania and Croatia add little strategic value, Macedonia creates friction within the Alliance just by its name, and Georgia and Ukraine are on the other side of a "red line" drawn by Russia.  So, if NATO is primarily a defensive military alliance, adding any of them in the near future is counterproductive.

If, on the other hand, NATO is only incidentally military but mostly a means of spreading and institutionalizing Western values and cooperation, then cautiously adding those states as they meet the required political, economic, and military standards promotes the Alliance's mission.

Spreading American values, rather than broader "Western" ones, is an integral part of every hue of Very Serious Person foreign policy ideology and has been for decades. Indeed, it's one of the defining criteria for admission to the VSP set instead of being dismissed as an isolationist crank or a DFH. It's the very epitome of "soft power". And NATO has been one of the main platforms for diseminating such values since the collapse of the Soviet Union raised the question of what NATO was going to do once it's declared enemy wasn't around anymore.

The real unanswered question is whether pushing American soft power through a NATO expansion is worth the risk of armed conflict with a resurgent Russia. Neo-whatevers (liberals and conservatives) seem to think it is, or think that Russia will blink, while those less burdened by ideology and more concerned by their position near the front lines of any conflicts (Germany and France) do not. Both nations have made it clear that they will veto, indefinitely, any nation's membership if the applicant is or is highly likely to be involved in military confrontation with Russia. It's a red line dictated by realpolitik and the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty.

For the neocon camp, of course, this is an opportunity to further one of their most pernicious bits of ideology. They hate treaties, all treaties, even ones that enshrine military alliances - each one, they feel, undermines America's ability to act without compromise as a supposedly hegemonic sole superpower. Even the NATO organisation demands compromises of American power, and so they're quite happy to undermine and weaken the Alliance from within just as they have with the UN. Pushing NATO's role "of spreading and institutionalizing Western values and cooperation" actually works to destroy the organisations effectiveness as a purely military alliance, leaving the way open for "coalitions of the willing" or some "League of Democracies" (the McCain/Krauthammer plan to endrun around the UN). At the end of the day, neoconservatives still want military and soft-power coalitions, but they want the U.S. to be able to dictate the terms.

McCain and Obama Roast Each Other

By BJ

I have to say, had these been the two guys who showed up at the three previous debates, I would have certainly have been happy rather than feel obligated to tune in.

Barack Obama

John McCain

And on this one, I have to say McCain probably won.

Joe the Plumber works for McCain

By Libby

I don't mean he's replacing the toilets in McCain's eight homes or that he was a plant as I've seen suggested, but I'm wondering if McCain's repeated invocation of the his new blue collar BFF, was really just another wildly implusive gimmick or a deliberate pre-emptive trick to manipulate the news cycle. Think about it. On the day after another poor debate performance by McCain that could easily have been anticipated by Steve Schmidt, the media has been talking about Joe the Plumber all day long. They're still talking about him this morning instead of focusing in on McCain's obfuscations and false talking points. On those terms, the Joenanza frenzy is working in McCain's favor.

Anything that takes the focus off McCain specifically is a net plus at this point. Starting from the 'leaked' reports that Schmidt was furious at McCain for repeatedly bringing him up because of the man's connection to the Keating Five, which now may turn out not to be true, to the myriad of details that emerged in the media feeding frenzy, it suggest to me that the campaign actually did vet Joe the Plumber before deciding to make him the sacrificial lamb for one last distraction in the final days of the race.

As a poster boy, Joe is obviously fatally flawed but it fired up the wingnut noise machine and today their narrative has turned to hypocritical accusations that the "angry left" is irresponsibly destroying the man with undue scrutiny. Joe provides a new focal point to reinforce the ongoing meme of beleaguered conservatives as victims just at the moment that Palin's popularity, and thus usefulness in that regard, has tanked. And it keeps the whole "spreading the wealth" socialism theme that so charges up the base alive for the duration. So is it coincidence or contrievance?

That Joe the Plumber will live to regret his casual confrontation with Obama is clear enough. Every ugly detail of his personal life has been revealed to a national audience. He's been exposed as a fraud. That's embarassing, but this, in particular, will surely come back to haunt him.

“All contractors are licensed, and he does not have a license, either as a contractor or a plumber,” the union official said, citing a search of government records. “I can’t find that he’s ever even applied for any kind of apprenticeship, and he has never belonged to local 189 in Columbus, which is what he claims on his Facebook page.”

The upshot being, he's been plumbing illegally and will probably find himself unable to work before his fifteen minutes of fame are over. Instead of a poster boy, he's now set to become a martyr in the eyes of the rabid base and it might just work to get some of those who were planning to sit the election out after the Palinmania wore off too soon, to get to the polls after all.

It appears it will work. The base, of course, is blaming the left, rather than admit McCain is so crass that he would sacrifice one of their own simply to keep their hate of all things liberal alive long enough to get them to the ballot box.

Do we know the real Barack Obama?

By BJ

While Jay has been doing his best to expose the real story behind the ACORN scandal and Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, new information has come to light about Obama’s past activities and connections that put all the previous work to shame.

A few examples:

In 1969, Obama was indicted and put on trial along with Hoffman and Rubin and other activists who together became known as the Chicago Seven.

"They were originally known as the Chicago Seven and a Half Men," said Hazelbaker, "But Obama's lawyer succeeded in having his case severed from the others and ultimately dismissed on the grounds that he was missing too much school."

. . .

But Hazelbaker says the McCain campaign has uncovered evidence that the young Barack's hatred for his country began well-before third grade.  In fact, Hazelbaker says, it may go back to his infancy.

"We think he was just born not one of us."

Hazelbaker produced computer enhanced enlargements of several key frames from the Zapruder film that she claimed clearly depict a two year old Barack Obama in his stroller beside the man with the umbrella on the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Hazelbaker says that the enlargements show the sun glinting off of what can only be the telescopic sight of a rifle in the toddler's hands, although some experts not affiliated with either candidate suggest that it could be the sun glinting off a baby bottle.

There’s far more details and other stories at the link, including how Barry O’Bama may be tied to the IRA and plotted an elaborate scheme to take down Richard Nixon.

Why does the MSM continue to ignore this?  We must do everything we can to keep this terrorist-loving America hater from completing his nefarious plan to hide his sordid history so he could sneak into the White House and destroy America.

Et Tu Fredus

By Ron Beasley

The Washington Post has endorsed Barack Obama.  There was a time  - pre Fred Hiatt - where this would not have been a surprise but with Fred at the helm of the editorial page it is.  Now the reasoning is sound and not surprising:

There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.

Obama's threat at this point is not from John McCain or the Republicans but from his own supporters.  If they think the game is over and not vote he could still lose.  If he does win he will need a mandate to do the things that need to be done - a mandate that he will only have if each one of his supporters actually votes.  The only thing that is between Obama and that mandate are his own supporters. 

The Acorn scandal

by Jay McDonough

There's a sense of panic developing in the hardcore right.  They just never believed there was a chance they could end up losing this presidential election.  And particularly to Barack Obama.  But as the national polling margin increases between John McCain and Barack Obama, and as those cable news guys with their red and blue maps keep pointing out, this is starting to look pretty bad for Senator McCain. 

And these folks are starting to freak.  A Republican loss is just flat out unacceptable.  It just won't do.  So, these folks have been very busy over the last couple weeks coming up with various excuses that they can use to explain away a McCain loss.  After all, it can't have anything to do with Republican accountability for running the economy into the ground, doubling the national debt, standing by idly while 47 million Americans go without healthcare insurance, stagnant wage growth,mismanaged wars or abandoning the Constitution.

They need some excuse.  Solar storms?  That probably won't fly.  Magnetic winds?  Most people aren't going to understand magnetic winds. Extraterrestirals and mass hypnosis?  That could work....Acorn voter registration fraud?  BINGO!  JACKPOT!  That's a winner!

So, here's the logic; claim that no voter registration conducted by Acorn is legitimate and demand all those votes not count.  Since the Acorn registrations are predominantly Democratic voters... voila.  Problem solved.  Except that sounds an awful lot like vote tampering...

But experts in the field call the complaints against Acorn bogus:

"There's no evidence that any of these invalid registrations lead to any invalid votes," said David Becker, project director of the "Make Voting Work" initiative for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Becker should know: he was a lawyer for the Bush administration until 2005, in the Justice Department's voting rights section, which was part of the administration's aggressive anti-vote-fraud effort.

"The Justice Department really made prosecution of voter fraud of this sort a big priority in the first half of this decade, and they really didn't come up with anything," he said.

"This stuff does not threaten the outcome of the election," said (political science professor at Barnard College, Lorraine) Minnite. "How many illegal ballots have been cast by people who are fraudulently registered to vote? By my count, it's zero. I just don't know of any, I've been looking for years for this stuff."

And while the RNC has labeled Acorn a "quasi-criminal group," not all Republicans share their party's concern. Florida Gov. (and big time McCain supporter) Charlie Crist, whom McCain once reportedly considered as a running mate, told a reporter recently that he wasn't worried by Acorn's registration efforts in his state.  (Link)

"Is it going to cause headaches for election officials? Yes," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School and a specialist in election law. "Are they going to have duplicate or false names in their registration databases? Yes. Is it going to change the election outcome? No. ... Duplicate registrations don't lead to fraudulent votes being cast. You don't get Joe Montana voting 400 times even if he's registered 400 times in San Francisco." (Link)

Here's what Factcheck.org said about Acorn and voter registration fraud:

There's been no evidence that the ACORN employees who submitted fraudulent forms have been paving the way for illegal voting. Rather, they're trying to get paid for doing no work.  Dan Satterberg, the Republican prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., where the first ACORN case was prosecuted, said:

Satterberg: [A] joint federal and state investigation has determined that this
scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.

Instead, the defendants cheated their employer. ... It was hardly a sophisticated plan: The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets looking for unregistered voters. ...
[It] appears that the employees of ACORN were not performing the work that they were being paid for, and to some extent, ACORN is a victim of employee theft.

It was announced today the FBI will be investigating Acorn to assess whether the organization abetted voter registration fraud.  This seems appropriate to settle the matter once and for all.  If Acorn executives are found to have conspired to commit fraud, they clearly should be punished.  Hopefully the results of the FBI investigation will be available before election day so as to not cast any doubt on the results.  It also seems reasonable that organizations like Acorn not pay their employees based on number of voter registration cards they submit.  But the testimony of experts and empirical data demonstrates voter registration fraud, if it exists, does not lead to the casting of fraudulent votes.

In the meantime, perhaps the folks pushing the Acorn voter registration fraud story so hard should consider developing a contingency plan - something to blame a McCain loss on should the Acorn thing not work out for them.

Perhaps extraterrestrials and mass hypnosis...

Pipelines being targeted in Northern BC.

By BJ

It appears someone is targeting the oil and gas industry around Dawson Creek, possibly using explosives stolen from a nearby work site a few months ago.

A second explosion has occurred along an EnCana pipeline east of Dawson Creek, B.C.

RCMP say the explosive charge was deliberately set next to a natural gas pipeline and detonated sometime overnight Wednesday, but was not discovered until 9 a.m. MT Thursday.

Investigators believe it is linked to an incident on the weekend that damaged but did not rupture a sour gas line in the same area.

The sour gas line that was targeted was a particularly dangerous target given the toxicity of hydrogen sulphide.  When I first heard about the original attack, my mind went to the “Nigeria North” video, but this is on the opposite side of the province.  Still, this is exactly the kind of tactics local people anywhere in the world can use to disrupt oil and gas operations, and its use in northern Canada shouldn’t be too unexpected.

And talk about protecting such critical infrastructure should be taken with a grain of salt.  Pipelines run thousands upon thousands of miles.  There simply isn’t any cost-effective way to properly guard them, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Nigeria.

Now, this is probably just one individual or small group at this point, but if the idea catches on in other areas where the local people are not too happy about multi-nationals and the government turning their lakes into toxic waste dumps, things have the potential to get really, really ugly, particularly in tight economic times.

Ireland's Biggest Bookie Pays Out On Obama Win

By Cernig

It's a publicity stunt by Ireland's biggest bookmaker, sure. But the odds on a McCain win are now terrible.

Paddy Power PLC says it is so sure Barack Obama will win the U.S. presidential election next month that it paid off Thursday on all bets it had taken backing the Democratic candidate. It said it shelled out more than euro1 million, about $1.35 million.

"We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama — your winnings await you," the company said in a statement.

They did the same with the Irish referendum for the EU Constitution, calling it early for a "yes" vote and getting egg on their faces (and millions in free publicity) when they had to pay out on the "no" result.

But Powers, which is still taking bets even after calling the race, is offering odds of 5 to one on McCain winning, while a euro on Obama only gets you 11 cents on a win. I'm of the opinion that those odds are pretty accurate.

Petraeus' Foreign Policy

By Cernig

There's little doubt that General David Petraeus is a smart cookie, and quite a few people I respect highly as foreign policy reporters and analysts have good opinions of his abilities. But when did a four star general get handed the authority to act as if he were Secretary of State?

The WaPo reports today (h/t Russ at Scholars & Rogues):

Gen. David H. Petraeus has launched a major reassessment of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the surrounding region, while warning that the lack of development and the spiraling violence in Afghanistan will probably make it "the longest campaign of the long war."

The 100-day assessment will result in a new campaign plan for the Middle East and Central Asia, a region in which Petraeus will oversee the operations of more than 200,000 American troops as the new head of U.S. Central Command, beginning Oct. 31.

The review will formally begin next month, but experts and military officials involved said Petraeus is already focused on at least two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war. [Emphasis Mine - C]

All of this seems like a good idea to me. But, crucially, neither of those themes are military ones and the military shouldn't be leading the way on them. It's about seperation of power and having the military subordinate to civilian policymakers rather than the other way around.

So where are the US ambassador, State Dept. and Condi Rice, who should be leading the way on them while the military man concentrates on military matters? For that matter, won't the leaders of other nations involved in the region wonder why America has appointed a de facto proconsul (again) and want their say?

"When you look at a lot of these problems, you see considerable regional connections," Petraeus said yesterday. The effort would embrace all of Afghanistan's neighbors and possibly extend to India, which has had a long-standing rivalry with Pakistan. "There may be opportunities with respect to India," he said.

An overview of the review team's mission obtained by The Post says that including other government agencies and other nations in the planning will "mitigate the risk of over-militarization of efforts and the development of short-term solutions to long-term problems."

Nevertheless, some experts questioned whether Petraeus will have the authority to carry out such a sweeping strategy.

"General Petraeus is not in charge of our diplomacy. He can't decide whether we try to form an international contacts group on Pakistan," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University.

Moreover, in dealing with Afghanistan at Central Command, Petraeus will face limitations that he did not encounter as the top commander in Iraq, such as the lack of a unified military command and serious resource shortages.

"We don't own it. It's been a NATO effort since 2006. He won't have the same sway with Karzai and the ambassadors and a bunch of other people that he had in Iraq," said a former senior military official with experience in Afghanistan.

Perhaps most worrying of all, Petraus' mini foreign policy is being described as "a policy bridge from one administration to the next" by one of his team members, Clare Lockhart, co-founder of the New York-based Institute for State Effectiveness along with former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani. Does Obama know and approve of Petraeus' and the military's intended hijacking of his administration's foreign policy and the authority of his SecState in Afghanistan and the surrounding region?

Welcome Back To The World, America

By Cernig

That headline may seem premature to some, after all McCain the neocon hasn't lost the election yet. But at this stage does anyone really think he's going to win? As Eric pointed out earlier, it's not just that Barack Obama has outperformed McCain in the race, it's that Obama's been riding a wave of American public opinion - rich Republican loyalists like Joe the Plumber to the contrary - that has had enough of "I'm alright, Jack", "me, myself and I" Republicanism in all its permutations both foreign and domestic.

Americans actually want a new social contract between themselves for mutual support, between themselves and government so that there are some safety nets against the ups and downs of life, and between their nation and others so that they don't have to look to unwilling coalitions for goodwill any more. That sea-change in opinion, fuelled by the current crisis of faith in rampant capitalism and military adventurism, is bringing America back into the mainstream of opinion in the free world, from way out on the right wing.

I saw one conservative pundit opine that Obama will be to the Left of all his European allies (I think it was at The Corner, but I didn't bother saving the link). That's ridiculous hyperbole from someone who thinks his readers won't bother checking his claims. Obama isn't the most leftwing senator as the Mccain campaign has claimed - Bernie Sanders is. And even Euro-conservatives like Sarkozy, Merkel and British heir-apparent David Cameron are to the left of Obama on some important issues - like national healthcare, military interventionism and fiscal regulation. In Euro-terms, Obama isn't a socialist or even a democratic socialist - he barely scrapes into the realm of being a center-right social democrat. The Republican Party, though, has more in common with the far-right fringe in Europe - the Thatcherite rump of UK diehards and other nationalistic browbeaters - than what anyone across the pond would recognise as modern electable conservativism.

America will vote for Obama, I'm certain - not because America wants to move left but because America is heartfelt sick of being too far Right. The adjustment is one of rejoining the mainstream center. That's a good thing for America and the world. And, it just might leave room for a real Left in American politics, as the far Right stomps off grumpily for its time in the wilderness. Bernie Sanders might actually have a reasonable chance at a run on the White House in 2012, if he were so inclined.

Oops! That's going to smart

By BJ

Turns out the newly-famous "Joe the Plumber" isn't the "Joe Six-Pack" type, but the "Joe Keating-Five" variety.

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

All right, that isn't actually fair to poor old Joe, given one doesn't get to choose one's family, but in the guilt-by-association game that the presidential race has devolved into, this isn't going to help the McCain campaign any, and they aren't exactly in a position where they can recover from further shooting themselves in the foot

My Two Cents on the Debate

By BJ

The final debate is now behind us, and if the polls can be believed, it is now a clean sweep for the Obama/Biden team, (partisan mileage may vary).  I have to admit, I never listened to much of last night’s debate, so I will leave comments regarding any actual substance that managed to slip in between the rehearsed talking points to my colleagues.  (Fortunately I did read enough live-blogs to not be entirely surprised, though somewhat amused, to find that “Joe the Plumber” is the story of the day on Memeorandum.)

However, while I didn’t listen to the debate, I did watch it, with the sound off, and I do have a few comments related to what I saw.

There’s a recent commercial for some laundry detergent or aid where a guy is being interviewed for a job, and instead of listening to the quite substantive answer the interviewee is giving, the employer is staring at the stain on the guy’s shirt, which is drowning out the answer with its own ramblings.

Like it or not, we make a lot of our decisions based upon almost unconscious reactions to people’s body language and appearance.  Appearance being a determining factor has been a truism of the presidential debates since Kennedy-Nixon, and it is almost sad that while Obama has pushed beyond TV into new media, McCain hasn’t progressed out of the radio era.

The reaction shots were particularly brutal.  Obama relaxed and smiling,  McCain eye-rolling, grimacing, sneering, and so forth.  What really astounds me about this, is that it’s the same story over and over.  McCain has been lambasted for his poor performances in the previous two debates, (and even during the few primary debates the Republicans had), on just these kinds of reactions, and yet he can’t help himself but make the same mistakes yet again.  McCain just seems incapable of learning.

Contrast with Obama, whose performance in debates has improved dramatically since last year.  The stumbling stutterer of a year ago now looks the master of the game.

Finally, I have to ask, what the f**k is with McCain’s eyes?  Did he have an eye exam just before the debate and the dilation drops hadn’t worn off?  The few times he actually opened them all the way, the pupils looked unnaturally large.  The rest of the time his eyelids were fluttering so much I was beginning to suspect he was sending out secret messages by blink-code.  Seriously, that was disturbing.

You Say that Like It's a Bad Thing

by Eric Martin

Joe Klein saw what I saw:

Pundits tend to be a lagging indicator. This is particularly true at the end of a political pendulum swing. We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities.

Again, these arguments have "worked" for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected President during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads last night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.

But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals--government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example--used to be. We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class. The wealth has been "spread" upward. The era when Democrats could only elect Presidents from the south, who essentially promised to take the harsh edge off of conservatism, is over. Barack Obama is the most unapologetic advocate of government activism since Lyndon Johnson--which is not to say that his brand of activism will be the same as Johnson's (we've learned a lot about the perils of bureacracy and the value of market incentives since then)--and he seems to be giving the public exactly what it wants this year. Who knows? Maybe even the word "liberal" can now be uttered in mixed company again. [...]

The point is, this is a very good year to be Senator Government. Ronald Reagan used to say that the most frightening nine words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." That is no longer true. This year, the most frightening eight words are "I'm John McCain and I approved this message."

I was saying the same thing to people in the room watching the debate last night: does McCain really think that "spreading the wealth around" is going to sound like a bad thing to a middle class that has been taking a pounding under the upwards-redistributionist Bush years?  Does McCain really think that people will be frightened by the thought of "government provided health care" (it's not, it's government provided insurance, but either way), when tens of millions are uninsured, underinsured and tens of millions more face the prospect of losing health care?

Quite the contrary.  The middle class is hurting.  The thought of tax cuts for the wealthies isn't selling the way it did when people either assumed that they, too, would soon be part of "the club" or that wealth trickles down in copious amounts.  This is an election in which even people who think Obama was himself in a terrorist outfit with Bill Ayers are going to vote for him anyway because he promises government provided health insurance.

With that in mind, what an odd choice McCain made when he chose a plumber making over a quarter of a million dollars a year (who thinks Social Security is a joke that should be eliminated) as his "everyman" poster boy.  Does McCain really think that most Americans are going to worry about the plight of poor rich Joe the Plumber?  Joe the Plumber, meet Joanne the Trickled-On:

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

John McCain should be careful.  If he keeps shouting "class warfare," the people might in fact take up arms.  And won't he be surprised when the angry mob doesn't attack the guy trying to spread the wealth with the masses, rather than horde it in his myriad palatial estates.

Quote of the Day

By Ron Beasley

The quote of the day comes from conservative Rick Moran:

McCain needed Obama to show up drunk. He didn’t.

And Rick has more:

Last May, when it appeared that Obama had the nomination wrapped up, I wrote a post predicting how the race in the fall would unfold:”Party Like it’s 1980 All Over Again” wasn’t breaking any new ground nor was it necessarily prescient. Democratic strategists had been predicting for months that the mood of the country and the trends were all breaking their way and that the November election had an excellent chance of being a “change” election.

But what really resonated with me back then and what recalled similar feelings from 1980 was the nature of the matchup between McCain and Obama; untested and relative unknown versus incumbent (experience). The way the 1980 race developed, people were unsure of the unknown commodity until after the one debate held between Carter and Reagan. When Reagan showed himself to be a reasonable alternative to the status quo, the floodgates opened and he won going away.

I believed then and believe now that Obama’s comfortable 6-8 point lead will mushroom in the next 3 weeks and make election day a holy living hell for the GOP with a landslide in both the popular vote and electoral college for Obama and a sweeping away of many Republican stalwarts in the House and Senate. It will be an historic repudiation of Republicans and will place the party in a position where it will probably spend a decade or more in the wilderness.

Obama won all three debates because he proved to enough people that he wasn't too inexperienced or too scary to be president.  The issues were always on Obama's side.  On FOX last night Charles Krauthammer said he didn't even think Ronald Reagan could have won this year.

Rick says it's time for the Republicans to try to prevent more loses in the House and Senate, especially try to avoid a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.  He thinks McCain could help with that but will he.

TED still clenched

By Fester:

The proposal to buy preferred shares at give-away rates in order to build capital in American banks, and partial nationalization to rebuild European bank capital has been announced, but it is still not doing a whole lot.  Bloomberg is showing that the TED spread is still at near record levels.

Bank credit is squeezed tight enough to produce high quality anthracite coal today instead of diamonds last week, but there is absolutely nothing flowing through the system.

What next?

Last Debate 1st Thoughts

By Fester:

This was by far the best debate for John McCain.  However that is like saying this is my most typo-free post this week.  It may be true, but it is not a high bar to clear. 

Just a couple more points:

• Going to Ayers and staying there was classic Rope a Dope --- McCain wallowing there reinforces' Obama's meta theme of the smallness and pettiness of the past's politics. 
• The last 45 minutes was actually a really good contrasting policy conversation on most issues.
• No one does that sophisticated of probablistic non-cooperative strategic cash flow analysis for a plumbing business.  I have severe doubts about Joe the Plumber's argument that the probability of an Obama tax policy kept him from buying a business. 
• Economy, Economy, Economy!
• McCain had moments of sounding like a right wing blogger --- 'Joe you're rich, you're rich, congratulations' and ' bought an overhead projector'
• My wife was looking at the reaction shots and noted that McCain's grimaces depicted him as a 'prick'
• Both candidates pissed me off by suggesting that we govern by the Dow
• Obama reinforced the Villager narrative of the sacronescent balanced budget --- aim for a structurally balanced budget over a business cycle and not a balanced budget near the trough.
• The CNN ass kicking in the snap poll basically suggests that any Republican thought McCain won the debate, any Democrat thought Obama won the debate.  Those results are not surprising.  However almost the same proportion of independents as Democrats thought Obama won the debate. 
• Hillary Clinton was an excellent Obama surrogate on CNN. 

3 more weeks to go, and it can not get here soon enough. 

CNN's Electoral Map

By BJ

I just clicked on the Electoral Map feature that CNN has.  It's defaulted to what they project as safe and leaning states for each candidate with the rest as toss-ups.  What I found interesting is that they now have Obama over the magic 270 number with just his base of safe and leaning states.

An interesting precedent for one of the major networks.

Update:

Okay, turns out they actually announced this.

For the first time in the election cycle, CNN’s Electoral Map estimates that Democrat Barack Obama has moved over the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the White House. The hotly contested state of Virginia moves from “tossup” to “lean Obama.” North Dakota moves from “safe McCain” to “lean McCain,” and New Jersey moves from “lean Obama” to “safe Obama.”

As a result, 13 electoral votes swing from the tossup column to the Obama column. Obama now leads McCain by 103 electoral votes, up from 90 when the CNN Electoral Map was last updated on October 7. CNN now estimates that if the presidential election were held today, Obama would win 277 electoral votes and John McCain 174. There are 87 electoral votes up for grabs. Again, 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House.

Barack Obama and William Ayers, Part 2

by Jay McDonough

Continuing from the earlier post:

The McCain campaign has alleged Barack Obama continued to "pal around" with William Ayers when the two served on the boards of two government and privately funded projects in Illinois in the 1990's.

The first was the Annenberg Challenge, a Chicago public school reform project from 1995 to 2001.  One of 18 Annenberg Challenge sites, the Chicago group was funded by approximately $50M from the Annenberg Foundation, $50M from private donations and $50M from government grants.

(Walter) Annenberg (said)...: "Everybody around the world wants to send their kids to our universities. South America, Asia, Europe, all of them. But nobody wants to send their kids here to public school. Who would, especially in a big city? Nobody. So we've got to do something. If we don't, our civilization will collapse."

The original grant proposal for the $50M from the Annenberg Foundation was written by William Ayers, Anne Hallet, and Warren Chapman and was awarded in January, 1995.  The Board of Directors was handpicked by Adele Smith Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and consisted of eight indiviiduals representing community, business and civic leaders.  The original BOD included Barack Obama serving as chairman.  The Board did not include Bill Ayers.  It has been reported Bill Ayers attended approximately 6 of the Board meetings over the 6 year life of the program.

A 23 member group (the Chicago School Reform Collaboration), consisting of parents, activists, fundraisers, administrators, school council members and academics was established to administer the project.  Bill Ayers was chosen to chair that group. (Barack Obama was not included in this group).

Ayers and Obama also crossed paths while both worked on the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty group established in 1941.  The charter of that group:

"a grantmaking foundation whose goal is to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities in the metropolitan area, including the opportunity to shape decisions affecting them. The foundation works primarily as a funding partner with nonprofit organizations. Woods supports nonprofits in their important roles of engaging people in civic life, addressing the causes of poverty and other challenges facing the region, promoting more effective public policies, reducing racism and other barriers to equal opportunity, and building a sense of community and common ground."

It's reported Barack Obama joined the group in 1993 and served until 2003.  Bill Ayers jointed the Board in approximately 2000, and Obama and Ayers, co-board members, attended about a dozen quarterly meetings together in Ayers three year term.

Wikipedia notes Obama and Ayers have appeared together in panel discussions at several academic forums in the Chicago area; including one in 1997 on juvenile justice and another in 2002 at a panel sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

It's pretty clear Bill Ayers is a big gun in the public education field in Chicago.  One can cast whatever judgments one wants about the appropriateness of working with Bill Ayers, given his history, but if you want to work in this field in Chicago, you're going to cross paths with Ayers.  And a lot of very respected folks in Chicago have ended up working with him.

Now, John McCain continues to assert Barack Obama should come clean about his associations with Bill Ayers, implying there's more to the story than we know.  The above is on the public record.  If John McCain knows something more, he ought to raise the issue to Barack Obama's face. Tonight.

Barack Obama and William Ayers, Part 1

by Jay McDonough

Since John McCain has now vowed to raise the issue at tonight's debate, the extent to which Barack Obama and William Ayers are "palling around" warrants some investigation.  After all, were Obama and Ayers hanging at the sports bar every Friday night drinking beer and eating pizza (big time palling) or neighbors who nodded to one another when passing (barely palling)?

Both Sarah Palin and John McCain have asserted Barack Obama began his political career in Bill Ayer's living room.  Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times has an article today exploring the Obama/Ayers relationship.  After some investigation, Ms. Sweet claims the McCain campaign is misleading the public.

Obama's formal kick-off to announce his run for state senate was at the Hyde Park Ramada Inn on Sept. 19, 1995. Obama was introduced by (state Sen. Alice) Palmer (Obama's mentor at the time) in a room filled with supporters at the Ramada, fronting Lake Michigan on South Lake Shore Drive, a stroll from the Museum of Science and Industry.

Around this time, Obama started to attend a series of coffees in the Hyde Park community where he lived, standard operating procedure for political rookies running in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Chicago.

"I was certainly (hosting) one of the first," said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, rabbi emeritus at Chicago's KAM Isaiah Israel--located across the street from the Obama home.  The Ackermans, Sam and Martha, longtime Hyde Park activists in independent Democratic politics, also held an early event for Obama in their condo on E. Hyde Park Boulevard.

Sam Ackerman told me Tuesday when we exchanged e-mails that "as I recall, the event at Bill Ayers' house (prior to ours) was a fund-raiser for Alice's congressional campaign at which she also introduced Barack as the successor she would like to see elected."

So, Mr. Ackerman's recollection is that the reception at Ayers house was actually for Sen. Alice Palmer.  It is also Mr. Ackerman's recollection that Barack Obama attended and piggybacked, if you will, to be introduced to the movers and shakers in the neighborhood.

Certainly not as the McCain campaign has portrayed it.  Not that it will matter to some.

Bush busy behind the scenes

By Libby

While the nation worries, watching their investments melt away and their fellow citizens meltdown into pockets of partisan rage, Bush has been making the most of his remaining 96 days to quietly complete the total destruction of corporate oversight. Steve Benen has the story.

Corporate America has been calling for some mechanism to "preempt" product-liability litigation for years, and Bush had promised to deliver. The White House, however, had limited options in dealing with a Democratic Congress which cares about consumer protections.

So, the Bush gang is adding provisions to obscure federal regulations that will block product safety lawsuits by consumers and states. The scheme would affect products ranging from cars to prescription medication to railroad cars.

And don't be lulled into thinking there's a easy fix with a new administration taking power.

These new rules can't quickly be undone by order of the next president. Federal rules usually must go through lengthy review processes before they are changed. Rulemaking at the Food and Drug Administration, where most of the new pre-emption rules have appeared, can take a year or more.

And that's not all. Bush is also busy cementing unitary executive privilege with yet more signing statements.

In the authorization bill, Mr. Bush challenged four sections. One forbid the money from being used “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq”; another required negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there.

The sections “purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations,” including as commander in chief, Mr. Bush wrote.

In the other bill, he raised concerns about two sections that strengthen legal protections against political interference with the internal watchdog officials at each executive agency. One section gives the inspectors general a right to counsels who report directly to them. But Mr. Bush wrote in his signing statement that such lawyers would be bound to follow the legal interpretations of the politically appointed counsels at each agency.

The other section requires the White House to tell Congress what each inspector general said about the administration’s budget proposal for their offices. Such a requirement, Mr. Bush wrote, would infringe on “the president’s constitutional authority” to decide what to recommend to Congress.

He may only have a little over three months left in office, but clearly he can still do a great deal of damage in that short span of time. I think it could take generations to undo it all. The Democrats may find they will rue not impeaching him in 06 when they had the clear mandate to do so. As the full scope of the Bush regime's misdeeds are exposed over the coming years, the public's anger will yet turn on them for their failure to follow through.

On the bright side, this may finally be the way we get rid of Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the entrenched and corrupted old guard and replace them with better Democrats. One can hope anyway.

Obama's Clincher

By Fester

Via Americablog is the best mailing that the Obama campaign could ever count on:

I lost 16% of my retirement in the last quarter

The quarterly statements are in. What does yours say?

Another Number Two?

By Cernig

The Pentagon has announced that US troops have caused "major disruption" to Al Qaeda in Iraq by killing the network of terrorist cell's alleged second in command. He is the third "Number Two in Al Qaeda" to be killed in Iraq and was a complete unknown as far as press reports go. Googling either of the names he used according to the Pentagon - Abu Qaswarah and Abu Sara - turns up no previous mentions before this announcement of an Al Qaeda leader, just a Baghdad chicken restaurant owner and a Shiite guy getting a haircut.

Over at Think Progress, Amanda Terkel writes:

Al Qaeda continues to remain resilient in the face of these attacks from the U.S. military, who are trying to undo a situation created by Bush’s invasion. No matter how many times troops kill top leaders, new ones emerge, because the insurgency continues to be, in part, fueled by the U.S. occupation. As counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said in 2005, “If I had a nickel for every No. 2 and Nov. 3 they’ve arrested or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d be a millionaire.”

The nature of a cell system is that decapitating the leadership doesn't really effect day to day operations and, if Abu Sara really was an AQI leader rather than a conveniently timed patsy (he died on October 5th but the announcement was made today, the day of the last presidential debate), his death is likely to have just as little effect. Meanwhile, the real reason for the terror group's loss of relevance in Iraq, the Sunni Awakening, is under threat of disbandment from the Shiite-led central government. That threat, most prevalent in the region around Mosul, has led to a minor resurgence of AQI in the area. Elsewhere, the underlying destabilizing faction fights which make Iraq a place no-one sane would want to declare a successful victory continue unabated.

ARM and Hammer: Bailout Ascends Toward $2.25 Trillion

by anderson

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture points to the ballooning size of the financial bailout, which is now leaning toward $2.25 trillion under the latest incarnation of unfettered government largesse aimed at Wall Street. How did it get that big?

• 250 billion of capital into banks;


• Guarantee $1.5 trillion in new senior debt issued by banks;


• Insure $500 billion in deposits in noninterest-bearing accounts (primarily businesses accts).

Riholtz is estimating that the whole cost of this fiasco will approach $4-6 Trillion.

He also has a draft of an article for The Economist on the incipience of the mortgage meltdown, the tension between the forces of regulation and deregulation. It's a clear and concise summary of how Wall Street and Washington managed to screw up things so badly and well worth a read.

Notable passages are highlighted, with special attention to the mention of Adjustable Rate Mortgages, so-called 2/28 ARMs, and the complete -- completely disastrous -- shift in the lending paradigm that followed deregulation of the financial industry.

Salient points:

Free-market deregulation became a misguided rallying cry of conservative ideologues. The U.S. moved from a state of excess regulation to radical de-regulation.

In 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, allowing insurers, banks and brokerage firms to merge. In 2000, Derivatives were exempted from all regulatory, supervisory or reserve requirements by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

During the early 2000s, the Federal Reserve, under Alan Greenspan Fed elected against supervising new mortgage lending firms. This act of nonfeasance, based upon Mr. Greenspan’s free market philosophy, had enormous repercussions.

The final act of deregulatory zeal were the net capitalizations exemptions granted by the SEC to five firms. This exemption allowed firms to exceed rules limiting debt-to-net capital ratio to a modest 12-to-1 ratio. After the 2004 exemption, firms levered up as much as 40 to 1. Not surprising, the five brokers that received this exemption – Goldman Sachs, Merrill, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley – are no longer in existence; they either failed, merged, or changed into depository banks.

To show the impact of deregulation, consider the underlying premise of all credit transactions – loans, mortgages, and all debt instruments. Over the entire history of human finance, the borrower's ability to repay the loan has been the paramount factor in all lending. With mortgage, this included elements such as employment history, income, down payment, credit rating, other assets, loan-to-value ratio of the property, debt servicing ability, etc.

Greenspan’s decision to not supervise mortgage lenders led to a brand new lending standard. During a five year period (2002-07), the basis for making mortgages was NOT the borrowers ability to pay – rather, it was the lender's ability to sell a mortgage to firms that securitized them.

This represented an enormous change from the past.

These new unregulated mortgage brokers no longer cared about a standard 30 year mortgage being repaid over time. In the new world of repackaged loans, all that mattered was that the loan did not come back to the originator. By contract, this was typically 90 or 180 days. As long as the borrower did not default in that period of time, it could not be put back to the originator.

It turned out that the best way to do that – to put people in houses that would not default in 90 days – were 2/28 ARM mortgages. Cheap teaser rates for 24 months, with an eventual large reset.

This monumental, unprecedented change in lending standards led directly to the key to the current crisis. It also shows what happens when we remove supervision from the financial sector. Most of these mortgage originators – nearly 300 – have since filed for bankruptcy.

I have previously pointed out my own warnings (3.5 years ago) about the insidious use of ARMs as an inflationary driver of housing prices and how it was all doomed. Doomed!

In 2001, adjustable rate mortgages accounted for less than 2% of all mortgages. As low interest rates encouraged home buyers, and with real estate agents and the industry pushing Americans to buy bigger and more, ARMs became the financial vehicle by which buyers could qualify for mortgages that would normally be well beyond their means. As housing prices inflated because buyers could pay more via ARM's, ARMs became an increasingly popular way for people to finance their dream home.

And so the cycle began: low-rates and artificially low monthly payments induced people to buy more than they normally could have, which led to inflationary pressure on the housing market, which then convinced more people to buy, which increased ARM demand, which pressured prices further. Now, ARMs account for almost 50% of all mortgages and housing in many medium to high demand markets is generally considered overpriced.

Since ARMs were combined with interest-only terms for the first few years of the mortgage, this lulled people into thinking their mortgage payments would be entirely affordable. But with our nation afflicted by ADD, thoughts beyond this month's payment never entered the equation. Buyers were generally of the mind that they could leverage themselves to the hilt without a thought toward the day when those sweet ARMs would begin to demand increased monthly payments that would go toward the principal of the mortgage. Many appeared to only be concerned with how much that first monthly payment would be. These interest only periods usually run for the first few years of the mortgage term and, for many, those interest-only periods will soon be coming to an end. The dream home is now beginning to look like a financial nightmare.

Banks and other lenders partly -- maybe mostly -- have themselves to blame for this, as standards for mortgage qualification were dropped during this whirlwind of inflationary buying. Today, almost anyone can get a home loan.

In bubble-space, no one can hear you scream.

A Modern Day Robin Hood

By BJ

You won't find it in his campaign ads, but Barack Obama let slip his plans to become a modern-day Robin Hood in the White House, confiscating money from the rich to give to the poor.

I’m not entirely sure they’ve thought this framing through, though given it’s the New York Post, that shouldn’t come as a surprise.  I mean, have you not paid any attention to all the books, movies, and TV series about Robin Hood over the past several decades?  He’s the hero.

Yes, when you consider it objectively, the whole, “rob the rich to feed the poor”, thing is a very socialist mantra at that. And granted that the stereotypical, hardhearted, “you’re on your own”, “tough luck”, “need the money for our crusade and creature comforts”, Sheriff of Nottingham does fit well with the current Republican Party.  Not to mention the all too easy “King John” jokes.

But given just how bad McCain’s situation is at this point, do you really want to cast the Obama campaign as a band of merry, honorable warriors looking to usurp the power of a bunch of corrupt, greedy, out-of-touch, and unpopular hacks who only got their positions because their fathers and grandfathers did well?

Hmmm.

Anyone know how Obama would look like in a green cap?

Rick Davis Blasted Smear Campaigning In 2004

By Cernig

In tonight's debate, John McCain seems set to "go there" on Ayers, goaded into it by Obama's plainly saying that McCain had until now been too chicken to say it to Obama's face.

It's quite possible Obama has a range of rebuttals ready. It's not as if he doesn't have plenty of examples of Mccain's dodgy friendships to choose from. He's also probably hoping McCain loses that famous temper, messily, on live TV in front of millions - the obvious followup being ads of McCain snarling and the simple question "would you trust this man with America's nukes?"

But McCain also has another problem with "going there" - sheer hypocrisy from his campaign. As Bill Scher points out, Rick Davis penned a Boston Globe op-ed back in 2004 in which he urged Bush and Kerry to pressure their supporters not to engage in smear campaigns. He wrote as campaign manager for McCain's failed primary bid, which crashed after a Bush camp smear about McCain having fathered "an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge."

It's not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate's political weakness.

...Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.

Back then, Davis described such smear campaigns, designed to keep voters from considering candidates stances on the issues, the "blackest of the dark arts". Don't you just love the smell of sheer hypocrisy in the morning? McCain's connection to his lobbyist chums are certainly far closer than Obama's to Ayers.

We got a preview of how tonight might play during the primary debates:

Deadheads For Obama

By Cernig

By Cernig

We're all DFH's now.

But some of us always were.

The surviving members of Grateful Dead performed together Monday night at Penn State University in support of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, reports the Associated Press.

Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart jammed together for the first time since their reunion tour in 2004.

... "I believe him enough to be able to get up in front of my constituency, these people out there," Hart said, pointing out the door to his dressing room, "and tell them 'I believe.' That's really important. The Grateful Dead does not take this lightly. We've never really done something quite like this."

Maybe some music will chill out the nutroot whiners.

Sinking Ships And Collapsing Tents

By Cernig

Ross Douhat absolutely nails the central issue of the current Cold Civil War (to borrow a term from Mark Steyn) in the GOP:

an American conservative movement that consists entirely of those pundits with the rock-hard testicular fortitude required to never take sides against the family seems like a pretty small tent at this point.

That pretty much says it all. Pass the popcorn.

Initial Thoughts on the Canadian Election

By BJ

All over but the recriminations now, and as expected, the Conservatives come out with a slightly expanded minority government, which will be spun as a great victory, but given expectations going in, has to be disappointing.  In truth, this is about as close to a lose-lose-lose election as I’ve ever experienced.  While some of the numbers changed, the overall situation changed very little.  This spells considerable trouble for the leadership of the opposition Liberals and quite likely the Conservatives as well.

For the Liberals, they lost considerable support and seats.  Their last major stronghold in Ontario is broken, and the party seems to be surviving mostly on brand loyalty at this point.  It still remains fractured from the vicious infighting that accompanied the Chretien/Martin leadership battle of a few years ago and the party has never united behind Stephane Dion as it needed to if it wanted to truly compete.  It’s a safe bet the long knives will be out for Dion in the very near future, which will again leave them unable to mount a terribly serious or united opposition for some time.

For the Conservatives, they blew what was likely their best chance to secure a majority.  Harper broke his own election law to call an early election after handing out billions of goodies to boost his party’s poll numbers into what should have been comfortable majority territory, promised tens of billions more in election promises, only to bleed support during the short campaign and wind up with yet another minority, albeit a slightly stronger one.  Worse, Harper now gets to preside over the coming economic downturn, which won’t do his party’s support any favours, and without the majority he needs to cement any legacy.  All that, plus the investigations into electoral spending fraud from the previous election and numerous other scandals that he managed to pre-empt with his election call will start coming out of the woodwork in the near future.  Barring some kind of miracle, this is likely the Conservatives high-water mark for the foreseeable future, and its debatable if Harper will stick around once he sees the party’s fortunes diminishing.

The third, and probably biggest, loser is the Canadian public.  Massive amounts of money, time, and energy wasted to leave us not very far from where we started.  I’m betting there’s going to be lots of unhappy folks waking up this morning.

If there are any winners, the NDP can claim success for doing better than last time, and the Bloc held onto their support.  The Greens?  Well, they remain hapless and seatless despite improving their voter share.

Perhaps the best rundown of the futility of the election comes from Matthew Yglesias.

You’ll see that the three left of center parties (Liberals, NDP, and Greens) got between them 53 percent of the vote. Yet combined they have just 111 seats whereas the Conservatives got 145 seats with 37 percent of the vote. The Greens got 0 seats with 6.5 percent of the popular vote, while since the Bloc Québécois’ supporters are geographically concentrated they get 50 seats with just 8.5 percent of the vote. Basically, the distribution of political power has only a vague relationship to the underlying state of public opinion. If the 25 percent of the population that’s currently voting NDP or Green became more conservative and decided to vote Liberal, then political power would shift left.

Granted the Liberals are not really left-of-centre, (the Bloc is, btw), but they are certainly left of the Conservatives, who have moved considerably to the right in recent years.  Otherwise, that pretty much sums things up.

In any case, this is now the third minority government in a row, and it is probably a safe bet we’ll be back doing this all over again in the not-near-distant-enough future.

A case for regulation

By Ron Beasley

Yes there are still a few real conservatives who are sane.  For an example I'm going to take you on a field trip to The American Conservative magazine where Eamonn Fingleton makes a case for government regulation of Wall Street.  Now I suggest in the strongest terms that you go read the entire commentary but I'll give you a few teasers.

The amazing aptitude of Wall Street insiders to feather their own nests at the taxpayers’ expense should be a crucial concern as legislators try to craft a stable and productive future for the American financial system. A key question is how Wall Street’s greed can be reined in. In truth, there is no substitute for regulation.

This isn’t a view that will find immediate favor with conservative readers. But it is being espoused by no less a plutocrat than Michael Bloomberg, the former Wall Street insider who has recently morphed into a budget-cutting mayor of New York. More significantly, it has been vociferously championed by Paul Craig Roberts, the chief architect of President Ronald Reagan’s economic program.

Now those of you who used to read Middle Earth Journal know that Paul Craig Roberts was one of the first to warn us about the Bush administration and was usually even more shrill than the lefty blogs. But more from Fingleton:

More generally, the evidence of American history strongly suggests that judicious financial regulation can be a powerful force for good. It is surely not an accident that beginning in the latter half of the 1930s, the United States enjoyed a respite of nearly 50 years in which there was not a single serious banking crisis and no serious stock-market setbacks except those triggered by the oil shocks of the 1970s. This period coincided exactly with America’s era of tightest financial regulation. It is notable, moreover, that for most of the period the United States enjoyed a unique combination of fast growth at home and unquestioned economic leadership abroad. With the exception of a few radically libertarian economists, no one questioned the basic case for regulation. During the Eisenhower years it was taken for granted by Republicans and Democrats alike that though regulatory restraints could be a nuisance at times, the positives overall greatly outweighed the negatives. The same went for the Reagan administration, which, as Paul Craig Roberts recently pointed out, “most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.” Roberts went on to name the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations as the instigators of the radical deregulation being widely blamed for the current crisis. (An earlier piece of deregulation was passed during Jimmy Carter’s term.)

If I didn't know better I would think that Thom Hartmann was now writing for The American Conservative as the bold section above is a point Hartmann has been making on his radio show for some time. 

So why is regulation necessary?  Fingleton nails it:

A key problem is the notoriously asymmetrical nature of financial knowledge. Put another way, your broker knows more than you do. If he wants to do well for you, that is fine. But few securities salespersons become rich that way, and they have often preferred to prey on their customers’ ignorance. Usually this is done subtly, at least where Wall Street’s more reputable firms are concerned, and in recent years the tool of choice has been the invention of ever more esoteric “new products” that just happen to be ever more difficult to price accurately.

Yes, the so called conservatives who oppose all regulation are not conservatives at all but just pro greed.  That's what the conservative movement has become  under George W. Bush and there are still a few conservative who don't like it much.

From Little ACORNs

By Cernig

(Crossposted from Crooks and Liars)

Accusations of voter fraud by the pro-Obama progressive group ACORN. It's the subject all the rightwing bloggers are going nuts over and now they've been joined in their prosecutory zeal by the Wall Street Journal. But looking closely at the outrage, it becomes obvious very quickly that if there is a problem at all then, "the more accurate accusation may be voter-registration fraud -- for which there appears to be plenty of checks in place to guarantee it doesn't turn into some actual voter fraud."

The McCain-Palin campaign is being careful in its wording, limiting its direct accusations while hinting at far more. A current fundraising email under Sarah Palin's signature says:

The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states. ACORN's political action committee has endorsed Barack Obama and Senator Obama himself has said, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." The Obama Campaign even paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate for "get out the vote activity." And now we find out that ACORN is suspected of voter registration fraud.

... We've always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this November, but we didn't know how far their allies would go. The Obama-supported, far-left group, ACORN, has been accused of voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states.

The media, in the main, are only too happy to pile on - as this compilation of reports by a rightwing YouTuber illustrates:

It's a mystery, though, how voter registration fraud might turn into actual voter fraud, despite Palin's dark hintings. Brad Friedman, writing in the Guardian, makes the point well and says the whole ACORN kerfuffle is a massive GOP hoax:

Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and (new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names. That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.

What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won't be voting this November. You needn't worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead you.

Matt Yglesias adds:

... if you go out and register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people and also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.

In short, there's no actual voter fraud going on here, despite the fevered fervor of the loyal Right and implied but unstated accusations from the McCain-Palin camp.

There does seem to be a problem, though, with a percentage of voter registrations being turned in to ACORN by paid workers trying to game their system, one that the group is well aware of and has encouraged prosecutions of workers on. But it also appears to be a systemic problem. The group has had workers found guilty in the past of exactly the same kind of fraud attempts, going back to the 2004 election cycle and beyond. ACORN appears to get no benefit from these fraud attempts, but then again it doesn't exactly lose either. Donors are going to keep giving ACORN money in any case and so there's no real incentive to amend practises.

It's exactly the same problem found in Western aid agencies in the Third World, where corruption, graft or just plain bad practises continue to be a problem year after year because no-one in a decision-making capacity with the agency feels any pain. We've seen the same problem recently in the financial sector with big-earning executives pocketbooks untouched by their own mismanagement. The solution, as always, is one only the group itself can implement - tighten hiring practises and rearrange the group's internal rules so that paid execs lose money when their workers try to pull a fast one. That'll give them an incentive to winnow out the fraudsters aggressively and at an early stage.

But if that's all the fire there is behind the smoke and mirrors show, why are the Republicans making so much of it? (And why haven't they aggressively sought their own voter registration drives if ACORN is so partisanly biased? The GOP still gladly accepts any Republican registrations ACORN turns in - you betcha!)

Well, one of the factors is that ACORN is just the kind of group Republicans love to target. The WSJ article linked above makes that plain in its third paragraph.

Acorn uses various affiliated groups to agitate for "a living wage," for "affordable housing," for "tax justice" and union and environmental goals, as well as against school choice and welfare reform.

Obviously in league with Satanic Forces, then.

It's a useful scapegoat for Republican culpability in the current financial meltdown too. ACORN has been called a "major contributor" to the crisis because of its advocacy for loans for minorities on easier terms. But while it's true that a bad loan is a bad loan no matter what color your skin is, and that the Reagan "ownership society" was always a scam to put your money into the financial sector's pockets that too many liberals fell into, the subprime crisis was mostly caused by lending houses working far beyond the guidelines even ACORN was happy with and ACORN tried to reign in such predatory lending. Nor did the group have anything to do with the creation of the"toxic debt" problem - leveraging securities at 30 or even 40 to one over their already dubious face value - which turned a big problem into a $500 trillion plus worldwide disaster. That was entirely down to conseravtive-pushed removal of legislation governing such transactions.

Then there's the smoke screen the ACORN narrative, properly hyped up, provides for accounts of Republican voting irregularities. As blogger "Hotflash" at Show Me Progress writes:

the biggest part of must be to distract the media from the voter disenfranchisement that the GOP is busy quietly instigating. The New York Times reports:

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows. The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters. .......

In three states - Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan - the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period.

If and when that voter disenfranchisement ever gets traction in the MSM, we can expect lots of he said/she said. "You sliced our voters off the rolls!"/"You turned in fake registration cards!" Republicans hope that press stenographers will shrug and imply that both sides have been guilty.

And finally, ACORN provides a convenient excuse for diehard Republicans who cannot understand why the country can't stand them and is moving en masse away from their failed ideology, while at the same time providing an excuse for legal challenges to vote results. Scott Limeaux notes that if this were not the case, there'd be an easy solution.

...if for some reason it was critically important for virtually every single name collected in mass voter registration drives to be accurate, there's an obvious solution in effect in many other liberal democracies: have professionals trained by the government be responsible for ensuring that citizens are registered. Of course, we're not going to here about that remedy from people frothing at the mouth about ACORN because the point isn't to make registration a perfect process, but rather to use inevitable errors as a pretext to suppress legitimate voters. Since the Supreme Court has declared that you can do this even if there's literally no evidence that anyone in the state has fraudulently voted based on an erroneous registration, this is going to get worse before it gets better.

From little ACORNS, a multitude of excuses and narratives can grow.

Obama over McCain by 14 points

By BJ

A pretty sweet number from the CBS/NYTimes poll just released.

The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.

Of course, Nate Silver has to go and rain on my parade.

Presently, our best estimate is that Obama has about an 8-point national lead. However, CBS polls have leaned about 3 points more Democratic than the average this year. In other words, our baseline expectation is that a CBS poll should be showing about an 11-point for Obama right now.

You wind up to the Obama side of the +/- 3 point margin of error, and that's how you get to 14 points.

Ah well, it's still a nice number, and even with Nate's generous interpretation, hardly good news for McCain.

What a great time for a vote

By BJ

Election Day in the Great White North, (literally white in my case).  Given recent polls, it is probably safe to say that the Conservative Party will return to power with another minority government.  It says something about how screwed up an electoral system we have when somewhere between 65-70% of the population will be voting for parties and policies far to the left of the Conservatives and yet they'll be the party given the mandate to govern.  You just can't help but love the first-past-the-post system when there are four or five major parties.

Should be a fun night.

McCain transition chief aided Saddam Hussein lobbying effort

by Jay McDonough

Following up on Cernig's post below:

It's no big secret John McCain has filled his campaign with lobbyists, and some have engaged in peddling influence for some pretty nefarious foreign entities.  But the individual John McCain chose to head his transition team may take the prize.

William Timmons, along with two other lobbyists, worked on behalf of former Iraq president, Saddam Hussein, to ease international sanctions levied against the Saddam regime. 

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.

A U.N commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker conducted an exhaustive investigation of the oil-for-food program, in which various individuals were found to have paid illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. The findings of the Volcker Commission detail the roles of Vincent, Park and Timmons in trying to ease the sanctions.

...when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that sanctions against Saddam's regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. "Continuing through 1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi oil business," the report stated.

At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations' oil-for-food program.  (Link)

John McCain has hired William Timmons to work on his campaign staff.  John McCain has hired a number of lobbyists with questionable work histories.  John McCain casts a blind eye towards lobbyists who have been employed by some vile characters. 

Kind of puts the whole William Ayers thing in a different perspective, doesn't it?

 

Cleese On "The Funniest Palin"

By Cernig

"She's like a good looking parrot". (h/t Sully)

(Recently, Ron gave us a little bit of Cleese's poetry on the subject of politically-inclined dead parrots too.)

Yet More Lobbyist Trouble For McCain

By Cernig

Murray Waas reports that McCain's transition chief used to work closely with lobbyists who were jailed for aiding Saddam Hussain's attempts to get around international sanctions, and that Mccain's handpicked man, another lobbyist by the name of William Timmons, would have benefitted to the tune of millions had one of their deals worked out. (Hat-tip, Nicole Belle.)

I wrote on Saturday that McCain's lobbyists had played him for a patsy at the very least - or maybe it's that Mccain is a total hypocrite when he trumps up his "maverick" label as being somehow opposed to lobbyist influence over lawmakers. But either way, his own stable of lobbyists and their misadventures, into which Mccain has often been dragged, raise huge questions about his judgement and character.

Grim Prospects In Afghanistan

By Cernig

Over at The New Atlanticist, the magazine of The Atlantic Council of the United States edited by moderate conservative blogger James Joyner, there's a clear eyed appraisal of the Afghanistan occupation by Donald M. Snow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama. I encourage everyone to read the whole thing, which is remarkable in its honesty, especiallly for appearing in America's premier support think-tank for NATO, but here's the really significant bit for me:

The Pentagon has asked for a thorough review at both the conceptual and operational levels. The conceptual part begins with a review of America’s objectives in Afghanistan. It is mind-boggling to think that any country would fight a war for seven years without knowing the objective (what it seeks to accomplish), but unfortunately such a question is not inappropriate.

What is the policitcal objective in Afghanistan? Almost everyone would agree that getting rid of Al Qaeda tops the list, as noted in the last post, but what after that? A democratic, stable Afghanistan? A surgical removal of Al Qaeda from Pashtun territories on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that leads to democratic stability in Pakistan as well? How important are each of these possible objectives to the United States? No one seems to know, or be publicly willing to discuss or defend.

The Pentagon apparently also wants to know which of these goals are achievable, particularly through the application of military force. When the question is asked this way, the prospects become especially grim.

...

How did we get into this terrible mess? The short answer is through inadequate thinking and inattention. Obama is right about taking the eye off the ball in 2001 when we might have destroyed Al Qaeda, but after that failed, we quit thinking about what to do next. Instead, we kept doing the same things that have been failing in the hopes of different outcomes. We still are, and that is not a compliment to our sagacity.

U.S. policy suffers from two major shortcomings in Afghanistan. First, we really do not know what we want to accomplish (what are the objectives?). Beyond eradicating Al Qaeda, do we really care what happens there? Your answer can lead to very different conclusions and courses of action. Second, what CAN we accomplish? The lessons of history do not encourage military adventurism in Afghanistan by outsiders. Ask the British or the Russians, or scores of others before them. The retiring British commander in Afghanistan suggested we could be there another ten years. For what?

[Emphasis mine - C]

The textbook way to military defeat in detail, even when you have overwhelming military superiority at your command, is to fritter away that superiority chasing ever-fluctuating political chimeras rather than militarily-attainable objectives. Yet after the invasions succeeded (because they were clear-cut missions winnable by a well trained and well equipped military), that's what happened. This really is the central point of criticism of Bush policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is likewise the central point in McCain's continuance of those policies. Yet seven years after the fact, we're no closer to giving the troops a mission that troops can accomplish and there's little prospect that they will be given such a mission even if they stayed ten years. Better to bring them home instead of frittering their lives and national treasure away on chimeras that cannot be won by military might.

Believing What They Want To Be True

By Cernig

Ilan Goldenberg on the Bush administration's tendency to make assumptions:

Karen DeYoung has a great article in the Washington Post about the never ending security agreement negotiations.  This particular assessment sets off all kinds of alarm bells. 

U.S. officials, uncertain of where Maliki really stands, tell themselves that ultimately he cannot afford for U.S. operations to shut down.

Basic rule about Iraq.  Whenever American officials start "telling themselves" things, instead of simply looking at the situation as it actually is, you know they're in trouble.  Officials in the Bush administration told themselves we'd be greeted as liberators.  Told themselves there was a direct connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq and that there were WMDs.  Told themselves that there was no insurgency and it was just some dead-enders.  Told themselves all kinds of things that were not confirmed by intelligence or realities on the ground.

In the last year and half things have changed with a less ideological more pragmatic crew running the show.  Both the Awakenings movement / Sons of Iraq and the Sadr ceasefire were the result of a willingness to pragmatically agreeing to work with, or at the very least tolerate, former enemies.

But from the start, the negotiations over a security arrangement have been based on assumptions that may or may not be true.  If they turn out to be wrong then the U.S. may find itself on January 1, 2009 with approximately 130,000-140,000 troops sitting in Iraq without legal protections - a potentially disastrous and untenable situation. 

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Then consider John Mccain, who seems to be dead set on staying in Iraq no matter what the Iraqis think - assuming "If we had to, we could just force it down the Iraqis throats". How disasterously wrong he could be is left as an exercise for your imagination.

McCain in PA

By Fester:

Josh Marshall is asking a good question right now --- what is the status of McCain's campaign in Blue States?

Given the convergence between the polls and the calendar, the next logical move is for John McCain to start pulling out of blue states that John Kerry won in 2004 and make his stand exclusively on trying to hold the states President Bush won in 2004.

We've already seen McCain pull out of Michigan to save resources/time on a long shot state that he wanted but if he did not win, there were other viable minimum winning coalitions.  Seeing McCain pull out of Pennsylvania would be a true indicator of a collapsing map.  And right now I am not seeing that happening in Western Pennsylvania.

Last night during the Monday Night football game, I saw half a dozen McCain-RNC combined ads, and then flipping through cable channels during the Daily Show ad breaks, I saw a couple of more ads. On Saturday,  I  drove past the McCain Monroeville (east Pittsburgh linear strip suburb) headquarters, and the lights were on, cars were in the parking lot, and glancing at the windows, there were people in the building.  I have no idea what they were doing, but people were there. 

I don't think McCain can afford to pull out of PA as the motivation problem that has afflicted the GOP and that Palin was a temporary adreneline boost is back.  Door knockers are not knocking, and phone bankers are not calling.  Pulling out of PA will depress GOP volunteers nationally as it inidicates that McCain is playing for the Bush 2000 map at best.  He won't win the state, or even come particularly close, but the resources spent in PA may be effectively written off as national party support expenditures, which is about all he can do right now besides hope for an Obama implosion. 

Reduce the Idiots

By Fester:

One would think that if one won a tight election against a creep who was implicated with hitting on teenagers that one would not immediately find a mistress and pay her off. 

One would think that, but evidently that is not the case with Rep. Mahoney (D-Fl).  Here is the relevant chunks of the ABC story:

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor Mark Foley resigned in disgrace, paid his alleged mistress -- a former staffer -- $121,000 in a settlement, according to ABC News, citing Mahoney staffers...

The affair between Mahoney and Allen began, according to the current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising "a world that is safer, more moral."...

Friends of Allen told ABC News that Allen sought to break off the affair when she learned Mahoney was allegedly involved in other extra-marital relationships at the same time....

Okay, I support sexual privacy between consenting adults, but I am strongly opposed to idiots in power.  Last week, I argued that one of the dividing lines of the progressive activist class in 2009 and beyond will be the different approaches to Democratic douchebaggery --- this is a clear case of it. 

I agree with John Cole, national Democrats should cut him loose and make it clear that being an idiot and a douchebag is expensive behavior. 

The Stink Of Loserdom

By Ron Beasley

OK, I'm an optimist at this point and convinced the Barack Obama will be the next president.  Why you might ask.  Even the conservative Real Clear Politics has Obama with 304 electoral votes.  But that's not the real reason.  BJ had the excellent circular firing squad montage from JED below.  But there is more from Kieth Oberman:

And we have this from the latest ABC/Washington Post Poll:

* Obama's favorable rating are rising (!) while McCain's are faltering. Nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) view Obama favorably in the latest poll while 33 percent view him unfavorably. In a September Post poll, Obama's fav/unfav was at 58/36. Compare that to McCain's favorable ratings, which slipped from 59 percent in September to 52 percent now, and his unfavorable ratings, which rose from 36 percent last month to 45 percent now.

* Obama has substantial edges over McCain when voters are asked which candidate is better equipped to handle the issues of the day. That includes a 16-point edge on the economy and a 29-point margin on health care -- the two issues nearly six in ten voters cite as most critical in the fall election. McCain's lone advantage over Obama comes on the issue of terrorism. Forty-nine percent of Americans believe the Arizona senator is better equipped to handle that issue while 43 percent name Obama.

* Nearly seven in ten voters believe Obama is "mainly" addressing the issues while just 26 percent say he is attacking his opponent. McCain, on the other hand, is seen as "mainly" attacking his rival by six in ten voters while just 35 percent said he is focused on issues.

* Fifty-five percent of the voters believe Obama is a "safe" choice for president while 45 percent said he would be a "risky" choice. On McCain, the sample split right down the middle; 50 percent said he was a "safe" and 50 percent said he would be a "risky" pick for the White House.

That last one is the big one - more voters think Obama is the "safe" choice.  McCain's entire campaign revolved around making Obama dangerous.

I don't think this election is about Obama, it's about John McCain.  His age has become an issue not because of anything Obama has said but because McCain looks, sounds and acts old. That only makes his choice of Sarah Palin even more damaging.

The "Stink Of Loserdom" could have a down ticket impact - if demoralized Republicans don't vote even more Senators and Representatives are more likely to be Democrats. 

Are McCain and Palin to blame for the ugly mobs?

by Jay McDonough

Not really.  They aren't helping things with inflammatory speeches, but according to an interesting article at Slate today, the extremism being expressed at the McCain and Palin rallies is a very natural social phenomena.  Not a healthy one.  But a natural one.

After scores of studies over the last 50 years, social scientists have come to the same conclusion: Like-minded people in a group grow more extreme in the way they are like-minded.  In other words, homogeneity creates extremism.

Two main reasons have emerged from all the testing. The first is large homogeneous groups are constantly supplied supporting arguments to the dominant position.  Studies have shown as group members are exposed to continual supporting arguments, they become more fervent in their beliefs.

The second reason is about self image.  Studies indicate that, after constantly checking one's beliefs against the groups, there becomes a perceived advantage to taking a slightly more extreme view; that person is seen as more sincere, more of a true believer, more righteous.

"One way to make sure you aren't mistaken for one of those 'other people' is to be slightly ahead of the pack in terms of your Republican-ness," (social psychologist Robert) Baron said. "It's hard to be a moderate Republican or a moderate Democrat, in other words, because you're afraid that other people will call you whatever.

"An extreme communicator on one's side of an issue tends to be perceived as more sincere and competent than a moderate," social psychologist David Myers wrote.

It's not just groups on the right that polarize, nor are Republicans the only people to gather in like-minded groups. For the past 30 years, Americans have been sorting themselves into politically like-minded neighborhoods, churches, and clubs. Matching like with like has been often been entirely intentional. Ministers have been taught to attract new members according to the "homogenous unit principle" of church growth. (One book in the church growth literature is titled Our Kind of People.) Subdivisions have designed for certain cultural types—a Christian school in one section, a Montessori school in another.

The antidote to group polarization is mixed company.

I'm really very worried about what happens to this country on November 5th.

Schadenfreude Alert

By BJ

I really couldn't help but laugh when I read this.

McCain campaign attacks Bill Kristol: 'He's bought into the Obama campaign's party line.'

As John Cole said a little while back, the circular firing squad is going to be fun to watch, and to some extent it already is.

Dow Closes Up Record 946 Points

By Cernig

Wow, amazing how everyone loves creeping socialism when it's their own asses on the line. Today's meteoric rise easily eclipsed the dot-com era record of 499.19 for a one day gain.

Wall Street stormed back from last week's devastating losses Monday, sending the Dow Jones industrials soaring a nearly inconceivable 936 points after major governments' plans to support the global banking system reassured distraught investors. All the major indexes rose more than 11 percent.

There were cheers and applause on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell, and trading was so active that prices were still being computed several minutes after the closing bell, longer than it would take on a quieter day.

No-one thinks the world economy is out of the woods yet, but Gordon Brown's return to his democratic socialist roots, and his ability to convince other world leaders to exert some control over calamitously free markets, seems to have given the fat cats a huge sense of relief. That's even though governments are going to end up owning a big chunk of their stocks - nationalization as it's always been villified by the free capitalist crowd.

For "small-s" socialists, this is a "told you so" moment. But we know we'll be back to the same old debates as soon as the capitalists are sure their own livelihoods and riches aren't on the line any longer. Thus goes the class war - everyday folk have never gotten anything from the elite that we haven't fought for or that they haven't been forced by circumstances to reluctantly concede. And they'd take it all back if they could.

A Hitch In Time

By Cernig

Christopher Hitchens is just the latest in a line of right-of-center types to reject the McCain-Palin formula for American conservativism, but, oh boy, does he do it in no-holds-barred style. Writing in an essay simply titled "Vote For Obama", he says that "McCain lacks the character and temperament to be President and Palin is simply a disgrace".

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

...

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

That's some grade-A Hitchens snark - the kind his rightwing fellow travellers have delighted in seeing him dispense on leftwing victims over the past few years. Any time now, you'll be reading them and their protestations that they never really liked the "drink-soaked former-Trotskyite popinjay"  after all, that he was always to leftie other than his support for the Iraq war.

They'll be denying the ever watched Easy Rider too. Denis Hopper just left the collapsing Republican big tent too.

And the meltdown continues. Who'll be next? I wouldn't bet against it being John McCain unless I was offered very good odds...

Update: They're falling out over at NRO's Corner too. Matt Y has the details. This really does feel to me like the beginnings of the schism between wingnuts and "wing-sanes", a messy and protracted divorce that will end up with one side getting custody of "the base" (be it ever so base) and the other, maybe, getting to keep the name.

A More Disciplined America

By BJ

There is a lot to like in Fareed Zakaria's latest column for Newsweek. He is, cautiously, optimistic that the current trial by fire the financial industry is forcing on the world and the US particularly will result in some important lessons learned.

Amid all the difficulties and hardship that we are about to undergo, I see one silver lining. This crisis has—dramatically, vengefully—forced the United States to confront the bad habits it has developed over the past few decades. If we can kick those habits, today's pain will translate into gains in the long run.

. . .

At some point, the magical accounting had to stop. At some point, consumers had to stop using their homes as banks and spending money that they didn't have. At some point, the government had to confront its indebtedness. The United States—and other overleveraged societies—have now gotten the wake-up call from hell. If we can respond and change our behavior markedly, this might actually be a blessing in disguise. (Though, as Winston Churchill said when he lost the election of 1945, "at the moment it appears rather effectively disguised.")

And one of Fareed's main suggestions for helping the US to help tide people over during the crisis will be familiar to anyone who read Cernig's post yesterday.

In the short term, all the solutions to the current crisis require that governments take on more debts and larger obligations. This is inevitable and necessary. But that doesn't mean we should, as some noted economists advocate, stimulate the economy with more tax cuts. That would be only one more way to keep the party going artificially—like asking a drunk to go to AA next year, but in the meantime to have even more whisky. A far better stimulus would be to announce and expedite major infrastructure and energy projects, which are investments, not consumption, and therefore have a much different effect on the country's fiscal fortunes. (They are not listed separately in the federal budget, but that's just bad accounting.)

This is actually of double benefit, as North America's infrastructure is a decaying mess that has been chronically underfunded for decades as governments hoped to avoid causing themselves pain at the polls for the cost of upkeep. As the linked Popular Mechanics article puts it:

Americans need to face the sobering reality that the country’s infrastructure is in trouble. Most of it was built in the 20th century, during the greatest age of construction the world has seen. The continent was wired for electricity and phone service, and colossal projects, including the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the interstate highway system, were completed—along with thousands of smaller bridges, water tunnels and more. We are living off an inheritance of steel-and-concrete wonders, grander than anything built by Rome, constructed by everyday giants bearing trowels, welding torches and rivet guns.

Basically, investing in infrastructure projects would be both good for getting people working and therefore spending again, plus a necessity given the appalling shape much of America's inheritance from previous generations hard work is in.

And Zakaria still has one other important nugget of wisdom.

A new discipline would benefit America in a more general sense, too. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has operated in the world with no constraints or checks on its power. This has not been good for its foreign policy. It has made Washington arrogant, lazy and careless. Its decision making has resembled General Motors' business strategy in the 1970s and 1980s, a process driven largely by a vast array of internal factors but little sense of urgency or awareness of outside pressures. We didn't have to make strategic choices; we could have it all. We could make blunders, anger the world, rupture alliances, waste resources, wage war incompetently—it didn't matter. We had more than enough room for error—lots of error.

But it's a different world out there. If Iraq cast a shadow on U.S. political and military credibility, this financial crisis has eroded America's economic and financial power. In the short run, there has been a flight to safety—toward dollars and T-bills—but in the long run, countries are likely to seek greater independence from an unstable superpower. The United States will now have to work to attract capital to its shores, and manage its fiscal house better. We will have to persuade countries to join in our foreign endeavors. We will have to make strategic choices. We cannot deploy missile interceptors along Russia's borders, draw Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and still expect Russian cooperation on Iran's nuclear program. We cannot noisily denounce Chinese and Arab foreign investments in America one day and then hope that they will keep buying $4 billion worth of T-bills another day. We cannot keep preaching to the world about democracy and capitalism while our own house is so wildly out of order.

A disciplined foreign policy? With checks on America's power? That will be bitter medicine for those who prefer to believe the glory days will never end and America's hegemony will remain forever unassailable. Given the reins, they would likely continue the disastrous policies that led to this turn of events and thus ensure the inevitable fall would be even further down. Fortunately it appears that there will be an adult in charge for at least the next four years, though I don't envy him the mess that he will inherit.

Obama Success: Working Harder, Smarter, Than McCain

By Cernig

Barack Obama has been doing some door-to-door canvassing in Ohio suburbs, in an astute bit of political theater which will help dispel the silly notion he's more elitist than John "Eight Houses. Especially when McCain and "Hockey Mom" Palin didn't think of it first.

And, notes Ari Melber, Obama's doorstep talking points seem to be all economy all the time.

Obama's camapign has been tight and organised, as this little bit of old-style campaigning points up, while his opposite number's camp has been disorganised, often sending confused messages. Now the McCain campaign are, apparently, going to hit the reset button and start again afresh.

“The national media has written us off.,” McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. “Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

Allies are calling this “hitting the ‘reset’ button” on the campaign, with McCain reemerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.

That'll be the national media that includes Bill Kristol at the NY Times, Drudge and Halperin at Time then? All of those and more are ready, willing and able to boost McCain's relaunch in the national spotlight. (Although Kristol has ruffled some feathers at the McCain camp by calling them all incompetents.)

But with the McCain team enmired in base sliming when he originally said he wouldn't go there and Obama out-performing (and more crucially out-working) his opponent at the most basic techniques of campaigning, it's difficult for me to see how a new roll-out at this late stage could possibly be a game changer. It smacks more of desperation in GOP-Land.

Zebari Finally Nails Obama Iraq Timetable Smear

By Cernig

Despite huge amounts of electronic ink being spilled by rightwingers (including the Washington Times) hopeful that serial fabulist Amir Taheri would turn out to have told the truth for once - he hasn't.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did not urge Iraqi officials to delay a decision on a security agreement with the United States, Iraq's foreign minister told CNN on Sunday. 

The statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari refutes a recent published report and a statement by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points. 

Obama "never, ever discouraged us not to sign the agreement," Zebari said. "I think this was misrepresented, and I have clarified this case in a number of interviews back in the United States recently."

Thanks to Marc Lynch for noticing, because for sure the many on the right hoping for a deus ex machina which will prevent the "L" word from being used in November weren't going to publicly admit their boosting of a non-story.

McCain calls for a "do-over"

By BJ

Do you ever get the feeling sometimes that the Republican Party has been taken over by the editors of The Onion? The Obama campaign has, over the last several weeks, done a fairly good job of painting McCain as being erratic and less-than-dependable in a crisis. In this, McCain himself has been Obama's most significant ally.

McCain's responses, (and the plural is the point), to the economic crisis have been all over the map, and the campaign continued to flail about over the weekend. And now, with only three weeks to go until election day, and tanking in the polls, McCain is apparently going to call for a mulligan.

Bill Kristol, (always wrong, never responsible), leads the charge for McCain to revamp his campaign from the "stupid" attacks Kristol himself called for. To save you the pain of reading through Kristol's column, Tbogg was kind enough to summarize the whole thing:

Since John McCain's campaign to date is totally FUBAR he should just scrap it and start over to demonstrate his sound judgment and steady-handed leadership

And just what is this new "happy warrior" stump speech tack that McCain is about to take?

“The national media has written us off.,” McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. “Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq.

Well, at least he's decided to stop the negativity, eh? I guess he'll leave that to the TV ads.

But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

Thanks for the encouragement General Custer. Seriously, you're out making this speech in Virginia and North Carolina, and you sent our VP candidate to West Virginia recently. West Virginia! I don't think Obama is even trying to win that state.

The latest poll from the Washington Post and ABC has Obama up by ten points, improving his favourabilty scores while McCain's are suffering. In short, McCain's odds are looking increasingly long. Near as I can tell, the only real chances for McCain to turn this around are to hope for some externalities like a national security disaster or a great deal of covert racism.

If this is where McCain wanted the race to be, I'm frankly terrified to consider where things would have to be to cause him concern.

Ah well, maybe he has a plan to suspend his campaign again and refuse to participate in the vote on November 4th while there's such a serious economic crisis going on, and that if Obama doesn't follow suit, it will be proof that he's more interested in winning the election than solving America's problems.

Congratulations to Dr. Krugman

By Fester:

Paul Krugman won his Nobel Prize in Economics this morning.  His work on trade and currency drove the prize. His trade work is a basic reconciliation of theory and reality.  Neoclassical trade theory predicts that capital rich countries with expensive labor would trade with capital poor countries with cheap labor.  And that capital rich countries would not have a whole lot of trade with other capital rich countries.  Whoops, how do you explain the massive levels of trade between very similar economies sending each other near substitutes such?  That was the work that won the Nobel.

And speaking as a purely partisan blogger, I'm waiting with great schradenfreude for the right wing cognitive dissonance implosion from the Krugman stalkers... I'm cruel, I know.

Update by BJ

The implosion didn't take long.  Glenn Reybolds starts off with FIRST AL GORE, NOW THIS, but I think my favourite has to be this from Jules Crittenden:

I’m afraid I have zip to offer on that, except to say if the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences likes it and it isn’t about DNA, it must either support terrorism, hate America or be completely absurd. Extra credit for Bush-bashing

VDH: McCain's vicious campaign a myth

By BJ

You can't help but love the VD man. He's such an easy target, and his latest assault on reason is no exception, as he expresses complete befuddlement over why many moderates are being turned off by McCain's negative campaigning and the disturbing tone his campaign rallies have had over the last week or two. The funny part is that his main defense seems to be that Republicans have been far more racist and ugly in the recent past.

A couple of thoughts: the George Bush, Sr. / Willie Horton campaign was far tougher; so were the Bush 2000/2004 efforts. If anything, McCain’s campaign is subdued in comparison to what we’ve seen on both sides in past years.

After all, talking about how someone would rather lose a war than lose an election, or how they don't see America as we do, or how they pal around with terrorists, have speakers who repeatedly make use of Obama's middle name, and whose volunteers send out letters claiming he's an Arab/Muslim terrorist really shouldn't reflect on McCain and the Republicans, should it? I mean, it isn't like like they're going out there linking their opponent to Osama bin Laden, is it? Oh, right.

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary."

But hey! Like Hanson says, it's just a few random nutcases out there, (that the Secret Service has to look into), and it's nothing like the mean and horrible things Obama's supporters are spreading about McCain!

Second, for about 3 months all we’ve heard are references to McCain’s age, with adjectives and phrases like confused, can’t remember any more, disturbed, lost his bearings, etc.

I mean, honestly! Can you imagine the gall of people going around implying McCain may be getting on in years! Clearly the Obama camp can't make any protests. The fact that McCain, Palin, and their supporters are out there claiming Obama hates America, hates the troops, and may in fact be linked to al Qaeda is just self-defense to these outrageous smears about McCain being not-young! I mean, anyone who can't see the equivalence of that just isn't looking hard enough.

And truly, what would be the response if some bigoted white minister like Hagee, or Robertson, or this guy were to pledge their support to McCain?

At a McCain event, as the crowd waited for McCain himself to arrive, Pastor Arnold Conrad of the Grace Evangelical Free Church of Davenport, Iowa, gave an invocation that included the following: "I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."

Really! Can you imagine the outrage? I'm sure we'd see nothing else on the major networks and blogs for weeks!

I suppose we can only hope, as VDH does, that in years to come, those who have been decrying the clearly not-nasty McCain's campaign tactics will come to see the light of how ruthless and unfair a campaigner Obama has been. Alas, it is probably too late now to keep the n****r out of office.

I mean, . . . uh, . . . uh, . . .

Aw, screw it!

Build Our Way Out Of Depression, Dems Say

By Cernig

Democratic lawmakers are planning a massive infrastructure package as an economic stimulus after the November elections.

"Not only is Wall Street frozen, but Main Street is in real trouble. A stimulus aimed at Main Street makes sense," New York Sen. Charles Schumer told CNN.

He said the plan should "get into the guts of the economy" by boosting spending on infrastructure such as roads, sewer and water projects.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton, told CNN that an infrastructure plan that could quickly pump money into the economy was the most important action that U.S. authorities could take to help deal with the current economic crisis.

"I would put in place an infrastructure piece... bridges, water systems roads, highways, but not new projects that are going to take a long time to set up," Rubin said. "There are a lot of existing projects where states and cities are having a hard time finding a lot of financing where you could funnel that money right into existing activities where you would be able to act very very quickly."

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told ABC he'll be spearheading the House version of the package.

Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently set on "staying the course" on tax cuts, which have failed to prevent the economy getting into such dire straits in the first place.

Rep. Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who serves as House minority leader, said he would support a stimulus plan if it did not include massive public works spending and budget bailouts for states that overspent on health care and other social programs.

Not that Republican recalcitrance may have a lot of say in the matter.

Barring a dramatic change in the political landscape over the next three weeks, Democrats appear headed toward a decisive victory on Election Day that would give them broad power over the federal government.

The victory would send Barack Obama to the White House and give him larger Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — and perhaps a filibuster-proof margin there.

It's all deficit spending now, of course, but as I've said before, which is better - to sit at home because you've only got $5 and a $1,000 dollar debt, throw that $5 at the debt, or to spend that $5 on getting to work and earning a paycheck? Simple "kitchen table" economics?

Bird Flu Vaccine, Rightwing Paranoia

By Cernig

How stupidly, small-mindedly paranoid is this?

... deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."

The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations — Iran, Cuba and Sudan — also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.

Even Bob Gates thinks it's "the nuttiest thing", when Indonesia does the same thing in reverse.

And the scientific community is not impressed.

They make "no scientific sense," said Peter Palese, chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He said the bird flu vaccine, for example, can be used to contain outbreaks in poultry before they mutate to a form spread more easily between people.

"The more vaccines out there, the better," he said. "It's a matter of protecting ourselves, really, so the bird flu virus doesn't take hold in these countries and spread."

The flu vaccine is a dead virus - you can't breed and mutate it and the scientific consensus is that the chances of using it to make a bioweapon are nil. But with a six month red-tape delay in sending vaccine to other nations, the chance that a mutation "in the wild" which isn't contained by having vaccine available and triggers a worldwide pandemic of a human-contagious strain of bird flu goes up astronomically.

Kumanan Wilson, whose research at the University of Toronto focuses on policymaking in areas of health protection, said it would be ironic if the bird flu virus morphed into a more dangerous form in one of those countries.

"That would pose a much graver threat to the public than the theoretical risk that the vaccine could be used for biological warfare," he said.

Can someone in D.C. with a brain please do something about getting this dangerous idiocy overturned? They might start with officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who didn't know a damn thing about this dumbass policy until the AP asked them about it and who "privately expressed alarm".

Economic Crisis Or Climate One, Must We Choose?

By Cernig

We're already in a situation that no matter what gets done, the economic meltdown is going to drag a lot of people worldwide under. We're in the same situation with global warming - in that case quite literally. Now Republicans and their energy lobbyist friends are saying we're going to have to choose which one sinks most.

As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.

"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and nonprofit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

What they have the axe out for is "Cap and Trade", a policy plan whereby companies either reduce emissions or pay to pollute. The energy industry, of course, hates it - and now wants permits to pollute to be free. Their vest-pocket representatives on the Hill already have such a bill in the works and it's sponsored by two Dems - Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va and of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. Even that's not good enough for House Republicans. Oklahoman wingnut Inhofe says "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," while Texan Joe Barton says even the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff."

Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill — and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits — as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.

"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

The energy lobby is apparently quite willing to cynically sacrifice lives to its members own pocketbooks, just as the financial sector is. Both are also willing to sacrifice national security on the altars of their own greed too. It's not too long since a Republicans were trying to sink the production of an NIE on the national security implications of gobal warming - even after a Pentagon report in 2003 (PDF) and a government-funded thinktank of retired military leaders in 2007 both called climate change a pressing threat to national security. More recently, even once-was-neocon Francis Fukuyama admits that the financial meltdown will have massive negative implications for America's place in the world and governments worldwide are publicly worrying about its effects on geopolitical stability.

Of course, we've seen this kind of corporate selfishness before - from the military/industrial complex Ike warned about so accurately. It's become obvious that the problem is any too cozy corporate/government symbiosis. Such relationships are bad for We The People, end of story.

Joe Biden brings it on

By Libby

Joe Biden calls out the McCain campaign's catty tactics of smearing Obama and Biden behind their backs:

"Sarah Palin had great fun saying Joe Biden thinks paying taxes is patriotic. Well, let me tell you what Joe Biden thinks," the Delaware senator said at an outdoor rally. "Joe Biden thinks that anybody who takes millions of dollars offshore to avoid paying their fair share is unpatriotic."

"That is not patriotic and it will stop, it will stop in an Obama-Biden administration! Enough! I've had it up to here! Don't lecture me on patriotism," shouted Biden, getting drowned out by the applause of his supporters. "I'm dead tired of being taken advantage of. I'm getting tired of it."

In full fire mode, Joe goes on to mock McCain and Palin's lack of courage in making the same false accusations to their faces:

"In my neighborhood you want to say something about me, look me in the eye and tell me," said Biden. "Say it to me straight up. Say it to me head on. That's the code, that's the ethics! Say it to me! Ladies and gentlemen, I'm tired of losing, I'm tired of taking this stuff, I've had enough."

I got tired of it about eight years ago but even if it's late in coming, I'm glad to see Democrats finally ready to fight back. I hope Obama and Biden are also ready to clear out some of the dead wood on our side of the fence too. Reid and Pelosi would be a good place to start. We need new leadership all around.

Russia Launches ICBM Tests

by anderson

We haven't seen much of that chilling Cold War acronym, ICBM, in awhile. Ah, the good ol' days:

Russia test-fired three long-range missiles on Sunday and pronounced its nuclear deterrent strong in a show of force that experts said had not been seen since the days of the Cold War.

Two of the missiles were fired from nuclear submarines in the Asian and European extremes of the sprawling country while a third was watched by President Dmitry Medvedev on land in northwest Russia, news agencies reported.

It was the second Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test in as many days and the latest in a series of high-profile military exercises of conventional land, sea and air forces as well as strategic nuclear units.

"This shows that our deterrent is in order," Medvedev was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying after Sunday's missile launches.

"We will of course be introducing new types of forces and means into the military," he added, without elaborating.

Independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the exercises reflected Russia's determination to prepare for major military conflict.

"This was a dry run for a war with the United States," Felgenhauer said of the missile launches, part of major military manoeuvres billed "Stability 2008" involving all military branches.

"These are the biggest strategic war games in more than 20 years. They are on a parallel with those held in the first half of the 1980s. Nothing of the sort has been seen either in Russia or the United States since then," he said.

More …

Slim Pickins awaits!

Picture Of The Week

By Ron Beasley

A Picture and some Henry David Thoreau:

I rejoice that there are owls.  Let them  do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men.  It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.
They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.

All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp. where a single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath;  but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.

Looking Out For Number One

By Ron Beasley

This is amusing and telling:

McCain tussles with Palin over whipping up a mob mentality

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign…

So what does it all mean?  That's easy - they both know they are going to lose.  As a result they have different goals.  The 72 year old McCain is looking at how history will see him - his legacy.   The governor from Alaska is looking for a career as a red meat baiter on FOX - look out Hanity and O'Riley, the "cuda" has her eye on your job. 

G7 Agrees Creeping Socialism For World Banking

By Cernig

The American Right are going to be apoplectic when they figure this out. Not just creeping socialism but creeping socialism mandated by a New World Order super-national group. The black helicopter crowd will be up in arms!

The Guardian : G7 agrees global rescue plan

The G7 agreed to take "all necessary steps" including adopting Britain's plans to part-nationalise banks in order to kick- start lending in frozen credit markets after Wall Street suffered the worst week in its history. With shares, oil and sterling all plunging at the end of a dramatic week, the G7 pledged to take decisive action and use all tools available to prevent more big western banks going bust.

The G7 issued a five-point plan in a short communique after meeting in Washington yesterday. It pledged to "ensure that our banks and other financial intermediaries, as needed, can raise capital from public as well as private sources in sufficient amounts to re-establish confidence and permit them to continue lending to households and businesses".

Facing the most severe stockmarket crash since 1929, Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, said last night the US would use some of the $700bn, earmarked by Congress to buy up Wall Street's "toxic waste", to buy stakes in US banks.

He said the government programme to purchase stock in private US financial firms will be open to a broad array of institutions, including banks, in an effort to help them raise money.

Paulson said the G7 finance ministers "finalised an aggressive action plan to address the turmoil in the global financial markets", and that they were focused on the need to stabilise the financial markets. He said it had never been more important to find "collective solutions".

That's "collective", but it's going to be read as tantamount to "collectivist".

The Guardian: G7 ministers forced to think the unthinkable

Faced with what they accepted was the threat of financial meltdown, policymakers had to think the unthinkable. Ideas floated in Washington yesterday were not remotely in prospect even a month ago. But the sense of urgency had increased since the collapse of Lehman, last month propelled the crisis into a dangerous phase.

There are now few takers for the old purist approach of allowing banks to fail, with the "creative destruction" giving a leaner and cleaner system. Advocates of this "Austrian school" may still exist in universities, but not in any of the G7 finance ministries.

Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, had appeared to dabble with this sink-or-swim philosophy when he allowed Lehman to go bust, but the subsequent market mayhem has pushed him in completely the opposite direction.

Last night it was nationalisation rather than a free-market solution that looked more likely, even after the G7 unveiled its five-point blueprint to end a month of financial chaos. It is accepted that if the current plan to calm the markets through state-backed recapitalisation of banks fails, then there will be no alternative but for governments to take them over - lock, stock and barrel.

Do you mind if, in amongst all the justified worrying about where the bottom is and where the economic crash will take the world geopolitical situation, I find it funny as f**k that rampant crony-capitalism has become the impetus for forcing Democratic Socialist economic policies on the world - and on George Bush's watch too?

Daily Telegraph: G7 meeting: The five-point rescue plan

1. Take decisive action using all available tools to support struggling financial institutions and prevent their failure.

2. Take all necessary steps to unfreeze credit and money markets.

3. Ensure that banks can raise capital from public as well as private sources, in sufficient amounts to re-establish confidence and permit them to continue lending to households and businesses.

4. Ensure that savers' deposit insurance and guarantee programs are robust so savers have confidence in the safety of their deposits.

5. Take action, where appropriate, to restart the mortgage securitisation markets.

All of this sounds like a good idea to me - but then I am a democratic solcialist. I believe firmly that money is there for people, not vice versa, and that the markets should be as free as empirical experimentation determines it's safe to allow them to be - and where it's not safe, the should be regulated and oversight should be in place. The G7 has come to the same conclusion and "Laissez Faire" has gone the way of the dodo.

Daily Telegraph: Global banking system to be part-nationalised

The agreement produced last night by finance ministers in Washington is thought to represent a last-ditch attempt for governments to prevent the financial crisis from worsening yet further next week. Some experts fear that unless it succeeds in boosting confidence the financial system may collapse entirely, threatening a worse economic slump than was experienced in the 1930s.

The G7 statement, which was among the most eagerly awaited in recent history, said: "[We agree] today that the current situation calls for urgent and exceptional action."

Mr Paulson described the G7 statement as "an aggressive action plan to address the turmoil in global financial markets and the stresses on our financial institutions."

Once the U.S. Right figures out that Reaganomics is dead, Dubya's legacy is toast. With the financial meltdown on top of the collapse of American prestige abroad following Bush's misdaventures in militaristic foreign policy, the very nadir of American conservative thinking is here, brought about by eigth years of extremist American conservative thinking.

And once the Obama campaign reminds voters that John McCain supported Bush's foreign policy and economic policies to the extent of voting with them 95% of the time, McCain is toast too. Followed by parozysms of self-examination and ideological fissuring within the Republican Party such as will make the post-Kerry crisis of Democratic faith seem a mere moment of introspection.

It's true what they say - every cloud has a silver lining.

(A massive hat tip for all those links to our tireless researcher, Kat)

Update: Extra funny. An article at the rightwing rag Investor's Business Daily, which has already been Insta-linked, says that the markets are crashing in fear of the coming first socialist President.

It's a ridiculous notion on the face of it - the markets rose when both Blair and Brown became UK Prime Minister, even though both belong to an ostensibly democratic socialist party and other socialist world leaders have been just as warmly welcomed by the business community in the past.

But the real rich hilarity is that it's the Bush administration who are now bringing about socialist economic policy in the U.S. as the consequence of following the kind of disasterous course IBD has been advocating all these years.

The Wisdom of Mobs

By BJ

It is nice to see that after his media base was getting scared of the kinds of crowds he was attracting, John McCain decided to try and dampen down the formation of the lynch mobs. I'm going to hold off being too impressed for a few days at least, given McCain's made these kinds of moves towards decency before, only to turn right around and continue his previous actions.

It doesn't help that if you watch the videos, it almost looks like McCain is forcing himself to say these things through gritted teeth. It doesn't help that McCain's campaign is out there defending the people who have been shouting out the most incendiary remarks. And it really doesn't help that McCain's running mate, who has been at the forefront of these smear attacks all along, is out there continuing to fan the very flames McCain is supposedly trying to damp down. As Khalid Hosseini puts it:

The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to "be respectful." Back in February, the Arizona senator apologized for the "disparaging remarks" from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about "Barack Hussein Obama" before a McCain rally. "We will have a respectful debate," McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.

What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words. They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.

Now, I expect that McCain will offer a few more of these grit-teethed calls for respect so that his media base will be able to forgive and forget all of his actions this election cycle and go back to the buddy-buddy BBQ days, but the real person to watch at this point is Governor Palin.

This is McCain's last grasp for the ring, and he'll start fading away when the run is over. Palin, on the other hand, has tasted the national spotlight and soaked up the adoration of the far-right base, and is no doubt looking to 2012 as an opportunity. She's the one out there telling her supporters, (and they are her supporters), that McCain should "take the gloves off", and as such, she'll be in excellent position on November 5th to claim that the reason McCain lost was because the campaign wasn't nasty enough.

Fester noted earlier the article by Paul Krugman speculating that the bile that will be heaped upon Obama after the election will make even the insanity of the Clinton years look tame in comparison. I'm far less sanguine about fester's conclusion that such tactics won't be effective this time out. Given the clear trajectory we're all on into some serious economic hardships over the next few years, the framing of it all being the fault of an illegitimate usurper who befriends terrorists and waves the white flag of surrender to America's enemies will likely find some powerful resonance. Scape-goating our problems always does, which is why we're entering such dangerous times, and it wouldn't surprise me to see Palin carrying the banner for all that insanity as she is now.

The GOP base loves her for it, and are already lining up to defend Palin from the consequences of her abusing power in Alaska, just as she'll be able to count on blaming McCain's "too honorable" campaign as the reason they lost. Get used to her. It's a safe bet you're looking at the future of the Republican Party.

AP Hackery on Obama; So Where are these beans?

By Anderson

One really had to wonder what is going on at the Associated Press, which these days seems to have some sort of hate on for Obama.

Case in point: Today, an AP story is headlined thusly,

Obama fundraiser, convicted of fraud, spills beans

The story then proceeds to demonstrate ... absolutely nothing about spilling beans, on Obama or anyone else. I find no spilt beans here. The story presents pure speculation about whether and what Rezko might or might not say to USA Fitzgerald. This silly nonsense cannot be considered "news" in its least imaginable form.

Maybe AP hacks just think that sensational headlines will grab some hits.

McCain's Sad Shuck and Jive

by anderson

When do you know your campaign for president has flown seriously off the rails?

When you spend time during campaign rallies defending your opponent against your own supporters.

Guessing the Pardon List

By Fester:

The Cunning Realist is raising a good question that we should be focusing on immediately after the election --- who is on the Bush pardon list?

Related, there's going to have to be a raft of high-profile prosecutions of both private and public sector officials, for everything from disclosure issues to the uncanny buying of stock index futures at politically expedient times, especially in 2004 and 2006 (I believe the equity market's manifest backstop was an important part of the larger financial bubble). Watch the pardon list that Bush will sign with a pen he borrows from the movers. There might be some unexpected high-level names on it.

The big questions will be the following: 

• Is there a mutual Nixonian pardon of Bush and Cheney for all acts that may or may not have committed from Jan. 20, 2001 to Jan. 20 2009?
• How many Senate approved political appointees will get get out of torture for free cards?
• How quickly will Scooter Libby receive his pardon?
• Will there be blanket 'truth and reconciliation' pardons for Enron execs?
• How many will be given?

Telling the joke without the punch line

By Fester:

Paul Krugman is one of many bloggers who is looking at the numerous double digit polling leads and fretting about the future of political discourse in this country:

Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain’s chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage....

We’ve seen this before. One thing that has been sort of written out of the mainstream history of politics is the sheer insanity of the attacks on the Clintons — they were drug smugglers, they murdered Vince Foster (and lots of other people), they were in league with foreign powers....

it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate

What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years.

Digby is raising this point by tracking talk radio:

I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but what we are really seeing is the beginning of a right wing story line about the next president of the United States --- he is a drug user, a foreigner, a terrorist and a traitor. And the importance of that is that it gives permission to the right wing machine to do anything and everything to destroy him. He will not really be president, you see. He will be illegitimate --  a usurper.

But times are different and the audiences that are receptive to this crap are significantly different than they were in 1992.  The most visible difference is that it is highly likely that the Democrats will control Congress with a non-Boll Weevil marginal coalition.  The nations' watermelon supply will be safe from Congressional 'forensic investigations.'  It means lazy reporters can not go to the Hill, see a ridiculous hearing, 'he said, she said' the article on deadline and grab a pair of bourbons on the rocks. 

More importantly, the right wing is indescent  right now instead of on the upswing.  Moderates, independents and the marginally politically attached individuals are aligning themselves with Democrats and non-conservative viewpoints on high salience issues and assumptions.  The ideological realignment which started with Southern white Democrats voting for Nixon in 1972, Reagan Democrats aligning with Reagan in 1984 and switching to vote for Republicans at the Congressional level in 1994, has played out.  The Republican Party is an ideologically coherent party and its Congressional wing can not consistently win and hold seats that are mildly Democratic favored. 

These attacks will keep the American Spectator, the National Review and plenty of other wingnut welfare publications busy, but there is little cross-over appeal, and far fewer sites of unopposed direct injection into the political-media discourse for this poo to be flung. 

They'll be telling a joke where no one else gets the punchline.  And after a few Dennis Miller routines, the audience loses its train wreck fascination and stops paying attention. 

North Korea to be removed from terror list

by Jay McDonough

Hoping to salvage one of a very few success stories for the Bush Administration, the President is set to remove North Korea from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations.  Just a couple weeks ago, the U.S. arms negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, was dispatched to North Korea to salvage a deal gone bad - the North Koreans had announced their plans to reinitiate their nuclear weapons program after what seemed a successful negotiation to end it several months earlier.  According to the terms of the agreement, the U.S. would remove North Korea from the terrorist list and provide aid to the impoverished nation In exchange for abandoning the nuclear programs.

According to author Mike Chinoy, the deal fell apart when hardline Bush Administration officials began to balk at the terms of the original U.S. agreement with North Korea.  As the U.S. began moving the goalposts, the North Koreans bolted and begin to rebuild their nuclear reactor.

The decision by the Bush Administration to remove North Korea from the terrorist list, even on an interim basis, is a concession by the president:

By acting now, Bush hopes to salvage an agreement that could give him a foreign policy achievement in the waning days of his tenure. Critics, however, say that North Korea is unlikely to abandon its nuclear weapons and that U.S. action on the terrorism list would only reward the North's nuclear brinkmanship.

Japan, which wants to know the fate of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and early '80s, has been cool to U.S. plans to remove Pyongyang from the terrorist list. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by phone with her Japanese counterpart Friday, as well as with the Chinese and South Korean foreign ministers, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

One of the department officials said that, to satisfy Japan's concerns, Bush would "provisionally" remove North Korea from the list, subject to the North's signing a new agreement on nuclear verification.

Hope this works.  Both sides have reason to be wary.  North Korea has a terrible record of reneging on international agreements and the hardliners within the Bush Administration have a predilection for screwing up the works if they've not gotten their way.

National Security And The Financial Crisis

By Cernig

(Or, how the Bush administration sold the nation to the Saudis and Chinese.)

An op-ed by James M. Ludes and Bernard I. Finel at the American Security Project makes the point that, no matter how we might ignore it, the current financial meltdown leaves foreign nations with a massive amount of leverage over the U.S. (h/t MyDD)

All told, this crisis may cost the United States more than $1.5 trillion - a staggering, if necessary, sum. And with the federal budget already in deficit, every single penny of this will be financed by adding to the national debt.

Yet too little attention has been paid to who is financing that debt and what it means for the national security of our country.

... The debt we owe to countries that do not share our interests or whose interests may run at odds with our own has grown ... In 2001, we owed oil-exporting nations $48.5 billion - we now owe them $173.9 billion. In 2001, China held $61.5 billion in U.S. debt; it now holds $518.7. In 2001, Russia held less than $10 billion; it now holds $74.1 billion.

The new debt we are assuming in this crisis needs to be understood as a potential strategic vulnerability. Clearly, those governments buying our debt are investing in America, but they are also gaining leverage that we might wish they did not have.

The concrete example the authors use is the way in which Eisenhower called in America's financial markers with Britain and France to get them to back off during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

The United States had a stake in Britain's economic stability. But Eisenhower concluded that in this crisis, America had an even larger stake in forcing the British to back down. The Chinese, or others, may make a similar calculation about the United States in the future.

... Debt-financed tax cuts and overly zealous deregulation have proven to be a failed social experiment with potentially dire national security consequences. We have long recognized that cuts to defense spending can sometimes hurt national security; so too must we acknowledge, once and for all, that tax cuts and runaway spending can do the same.

It's a theme that Francis Fukuyama also visited recently. Someone has to pay actual money for the $700 bn bailout, the Pentagon's bailout-a-year budget and all the deficit spending the Bush administration has sunk into its misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. isn't - as my colleague Fester puts it, the US is, as Fester puts it the U.S. is "broke and overpromised" - the Bush administration has been borrowing the money from China, the Saudis and so on. And the chances of their never, ever being strings attached to those billions in credit are absolutely nil.

It's another fine mess the Stan and Ollie of the Republican Party have gotten America into in the last eight years, and perhaps the biggest one of all.

Some thoughts and Quotes

By Ron Beasley

I've been absent the last couple of days.  It's true that the real world has been intruding - a major house remodel, a good time to do it if you have the money. But that's not the real reason, I just haven't had much to say.  I gave up my own blog because I didn't like being under pressure to produce when I really didn't have anything to add to the conversation. That said I have a little bit of my voice back.

I'm not sure how excited I am about it but I'm convinced that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.  It does excite me however that John McCain will not be the next president of the US.  Even FOX News knows that McCain is toast -  the current non stop coverage of ACORN on FOX is just to give the knuckle draggers an explanation as to why the black guy won.  The defections from McCain on the right have been increasing from the intellectual right the latest being Christopher Buckley:

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

Others like Daniel Larison may not like Obama but they like McCain even less:

There is basically no positive case for Obama, because I don’t think a conservative can actually make one, except to say that he might do slightly less damage than another Republican.

Buckley’s remarks on McCain are interesting in what they tell us about the pervasive nature of the McCain myth: McCain used to be authentic, you see, but now he is not (not true–he has always been the same person!); he showed tremendous bravery in backing the “surge” (not true–it was enormously popular among GOP regulars and primary voters!); McCain has changed (see the first point).  This is the sort of whinging justification Obama supporters on the right often have to make to save face, which further reinforces the old McCain myth: if only McCain had remained true to himself, I would have supported him, but now he has sacrificed his integrity!  What few seem willing to accept is that McCain has always been like this, and his past admirers have blinded themselves to his flaws because they found him useful or were swayed by his biography, and until very recently most have had no problem with McCain’s flaws.  Indeed, they seem incapable of admitting that McCain has any flaws of his own, but are insistent that whatever is wrong with him is the function of the pressures of the campaign.

They have been wrong about him for a very long time and don’t want to admit that, so they make the less insulting choice of endorsing his opponent.  It is much more generous to McCain to pretend that the presidential campaign has somehow forced him to become someone he isn’t.  It is a compliment to say that one is endorsing Obama only because McCain has betrayed his true self.  None of this is true, and it reflects a remarkable deference to McCain even at this late stage of the game that so many people are saying it.  Of course, this myth also helps to excuse their support for McCain for so many years.

As a McCain supporter on 2000 Larison's comments make me feel really stupid as it should.

And now for the quote of the day which is from Steve Soto   

Down 678 yesterday, and perhaps down another 400-500 points today, and yet the only case McCain/Palin can make for themselves is to run attack ads on Ayers and have Palin tell us she's cleared herself with a self-investigation on Troopergate.

The country is on the verge of moving on without the GOP.

Oh, So Sarah WAS To Blame After All?

By Cernig

A day after the McCain-Palin campaign released their own version of the Troopergate report - pre-emptively exonerating Sarah and putting all the blame on Todd instead...

...the real thing gets released and says:

A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.

The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated.

Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

I am so surprised.

(Full report here )

Colin Powell Defends Ted Stevens' Honor

By Cernig

You'd think, after being caught carrying water at the UN for the biggest lie since Hitler claimed Poland attacked first, that Colin Powell would be "once bitten, twice shy".

Apparently not.

Powell's been appearing as a character witness for Ted Stevens at his trail - and described Steven's today in glowing terms:

when defense attorney Brendan Sullivan asked Powell to describe Stevens' reputation for honesty and integrity, Powell's answer was simple: "In a word, sterling."

"There was never any suggestion that he would do anything that was improper," said Powell, who told jurors he knows Stevens "extremely well" after having worked with him on military appropriations issues for decades.

I know Colin Powell's name has been bandied about as a possible Republican face for an Obama cabinet. Forget it. The guy is obviously either too gullible or far too dishonest to ever be allowed high office again.

Stimulus structure and buying off the median voter

By Fester:

Matthew Yglesias links to a Sebastian Mallaby column that attempts to discuss economics and falls flat on its face:

The fastest and fairest way to help ordinary people is via a budget stimulus package. Part of the extra spending should be distributed to state governments, which are having trouble maintaining Medicaid and other programs as recession eats into their tax revenue. Part of the extra spending could go to infrastructure projects, though this tends to be a slow way of getting cash into the economy. But much of the stimulus should be in checks made out directly to citizens.

Last January, Moody's provided an excellent technical report on what types of policy changes could increase short term economic activity. They produced this report to inform the debate on the first stimulus package that eventually included increased unemployment benefits and the  refundable one year elimination of the 10% tax bracket. 

The reason why tax cuts are not that effective is that they are not targeted to people who need to spend money NOW.  Food stamps are highly effective because the marginal dollar of increased food stamp money will be spent on new purchases immediately.  A good stimulus package that is seeking to be a bridge to better times as well as relief, should be focused on people who are severely cash and credit constrained.

So the first two proposals that Mallaby makes are reasonable effective proposals.  Large bloc grants to states and infrastructure spending to take advantage of bargain basement prices are economically justifiable.  However he wants the majority of his pony plan to go towards rebate checks similar to the ones that went out this summer.  And we know those checks are not effective.

Those checks were the centerpiece of the first stimulus package because it was one of the few things that Democrats, House Republicans and George W. Bush could agree upon.  Cutting taxes is always a good thing for Republicans, while the Democrats wanted to get something done.  They abandoned more effective measures such as increased Medicaid reimbursement policies and expanded food stamp coverage to get something done. 

The broadly targeted and inefficient rebate checks were in the package because everyone thought they were getting a good deal.  Everyone likes to see a $600 or $1,200 dollar check show up.  It popped up consumer demand for a few brief months as it was treated by many as windfall cash and not a change in long term liquidity or credit constraints.  It was not particularly effective as the August numbers started to show.  There was a brief burp of activity and then no sustaining substance kick started. 

Another rebate check that is not targeted towards individuals and families facing severe cash flow constraints will be similarly inefficient.  However it be a quick way of making the median voter feel a bit better despite the high costs   

True colors

By Libby

I have to admit, this geeky stuff goes right over my head. I don't have a clue about what Waxy is doing here and with my old computer already running at a near glacier speed, I'm not going to download the algorithum to figure it out but maybe some of the techies around here can explain this to me in simple terms. I'm particularly interested because three of the blogs I post to, Newshoggers, my own blog The Impolitic and The Reaction are all on the list.

While most political blogs are extremely partisan, their biases aren't immediately obvious to outsiders like me. I wanted to see, at a glance, how conservative or liberal the blogs were without clicking through to every article.

The colors don't necessarily represent each blogger's personal views or biases. It's a reflection of their linking activity. The algorithm looks at the stories that blogger's linked to before, relative to all other bloggers, and groups them accordingly. People that link to things that only conservatives find interesting will be classified as bright red, even if they are personally moderate or liberal, and vice-versa. The algorithm can't read minds, so don't be offended if you feel misrepresented. It's only looking at the data.

The only part I understand is that the colors show your partisan leanings in terms of linkage, not content. I don't get the scoring at all. Maybe a braver soul than me can run the program and tell me what our colors are?

Freefall Friday

By Cernig

It's Freefall Friday, the day Bush announced he knew how to fix the financial meltdown and in response...financial markets dove even lower. In the nine minutes Dubya spoke, the DOW dropped another 107 points. In all, the Dow has dropped 21 percent in just 10 trading days.

And in advance of this weekend's G7 meeting, UK officials are warning that trying to ensure that more comes out of the meeting than just words. They say a co-ordinated action plan is essential if the world is to stave off total economic collapse.

Describing a world in which wholesale money markets were now refusing to lend to banks, even overnight, the UK authorities warned that the world was on the edge of a collapse of the financial system.

They insisted that a bold and clear commitment to action to should replace general principles for individual country actions.

Obama, out on the stump, has agreed with the UK government.

"In this global economy, financial markets have no boundaries. So the current crisis demands a global response," said Obama, ahead in opinion polls with 25 days to go until the November 4 election.

With weekend talks scheduled by world finance ministers in Washington, Obama said those officials "must take coordinated steps to restore confidence" but he stopped short of suggesting what those steps might include.

So what's John McCain - the guy who has touted his 30 years experience, his superior judgement and his opponent's "not understanding" the issues - up to while the world's economy slags down?

Sending out dog-whistle messages to his bigotted base, the coup-loving extreme Right - who have been salivating over just such a prospect for years.

Yeah, that'll help, John - NOT!

If anyone needed final evidence that John McCain's character and judgement are fatally flawed, that winning is more important to him than the nation, that he's blinded by extreme partisan ideology, then the events of this week have confirmed it.

Obama: "I'll see your association, and raise you some culpability"

by Jay McDonough

As the McCain campaign continues to question Barack Obama's "judgment" over his association with Bill Ayers (it's apparently all they have left at this point),  the question remains: does the Obama campaign (not so) secretly hope John McCain raises the issue in the next debate?

From Matt Yglesias:

I think all indications are that they really do think they have a dynamite response by the name of Charles Keating. Whatever you think of Obama’s association with Ayers, McCain was clearly much closer to Keating than Obama ever was to Ayers. And, again, though the Keating 5 scandal is “ancient history” in news cycle terms, it happened much more recently than any Weather Underground bombings. And though the S&L crisis of the 1980s is of only tangential relevance to the present-day banking crisis, it’s still much more relevant than anything Ayers did. And last, McCain was accused of actual Keating-related wrongdoing, whereas nobody has tried to allege that Obama was actually involved in any of Ayers’ bad acts.

This little tidbit from yesterday's news might give Senator McCain pause:

The Washington Times reports that in 1986, John McCain wrote a note on House stationery to Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association who went to prison in the late 1980s. In the letter, McCain apologized for listing Keating as part of his Senate campaign finance committee. Keating wrote in response: “You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I’m yours till death do us part“:

For some background, when Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings finally declared bankruptcy, some 21,000 investors, most elderly, lost their entire life savings.   When Keating was subpoenaed to appear before the House Banking Committee in 1989, he refused to testify and invoked his fifth amendment rights.

Keating, like Bill Ayers, is unrepentent (despite being convicted and serving time in federal prison).  Keating claims he did no wrong, that federal regulators were responsiblie for the savings and loan scandal.

Given the current economic crisis; given the McCain campaigns inability to gain any traction because of the economy's collapse; given the similiarities between the savings and loans failures and today's economic issues; given, not just a casual relationship, but a binding "til death do us part" relationship between Keating and McCain; and given McCain's admitted (perhaps inadvertant) involvement in abetting Charles Keating's criminal activities (no one, despite much investigation, has ever charged Obama with anything more than a casual working relationship with Ayers), one can understand why John McCain would be reluctant to bring up Bill Ayers at the next debate.

Bugs and Daffy

By BJ

The contrast between the two major candidates for president is growing increasingly obvious, and I can't help but go back to a comparison from much earlier this year that used the iconic cartoon characters to make the point:

Bugs and Daffy represent polar opposites in how to deal with the world. Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He's onto the cons of his adversaries. . . . Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor. When he is pushed too far and must respond, he borrows a quip from Groucho Marx: "Of course, you realize this means war." And then, whether his foe is hapless hunter Elmer Fudd, varmint-shooting Yosemite Sam, or a raging bull, Bugs always prevails.

Daffy Duck, by contrast, is ever at war with a hostile world. He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury. His response to bad news is a sibilant sneer ("Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!"). Daffy is constantly frustrated, sometimes by outside forces, sometimes by his own overwrought response to them. In one classic duel with Bugs, the two try to persuade Elmer Fudd to shoot the other—until Daffy, tricked by Bugs' wordplay, screams, "Shoot me now!"

You honestly couldn't get a much better description of the two candidates if you tried, right down to the recent Obama-Biden calling out McCain and all but questioning his manhood to see if they can get him riled up enough to shoot himself in the foot again. You suspect it's the equivalent of Bugs enticing the bull to charge with the red cape that just happens to have an anvil parked behind it.

McCain's temper is legendary, and his actions of the past few months; the Palin choice, the campaign suspension, the incoherent and ever-changing response to the credit crisis, have "Daffy" written all over them.

Meanwhile, "Bugs" Obama leans back, smiles, and carries on about his business of winning the election.

I love the smell of Panic in the morning

By BJ

I guess all of those bailout plans haven't exactly restored confidence in the marketplace for a lot of people. The Dow crashed below 9,000 yesterday, and this morning brings news of other markets following suit.

Stock markets across Europe have fallen steeply after dramatic share price falls in Asia.

The FTSE 100 share index was down 8% at 3,964 points. It opened 9.8% lower at 3887 points, below the 4,000-point level for the first time in five years.

There were similar falls across Europe - Paris was down 8.4% while Germany was down 9.1%

Investors fear a global slowdown, despite interest rate cuts and huge cash injections by central banks.

In other major developments:

* Tokyo's shares plunged 24% during the week, double their weekly fall during the 1987 market crash
* Oil prices plummeted to a one-year low in European trading, with the price of US crude oil falling below $83 a barrel.
* The three-month rate at which banks lend dollars to each other - known as Libor - has risen to 4.8%
* Finance ministers from the G7 are to meet in Washington later and President Bush is to make an address to the American people.
* Moscow and Jakarta stock markets remain suspended because of excessive volatility
* Trading in the Vienna market was suspended until Friday afternoon.

At this point a global slowdown is pretty much a guarantee, though it should be interesting to see what the whiz kids come up with over the weekend to try and stem the tide. In the meantime, I would continue the preparations.

Things I wish I had written

By BJ

The time has come to ask: What might happen to our country if we elect a black Muslim terrorist president?

The Life of Hannity

by anderson

John Cleese writes a poem, an ode if you will, for Sean "Hairball" Hannity:

Ode to Sean Hannity

by John Cleese

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

NSA: National Salacious Agency

by anderson

When news first broke that the Bush administration had secretly ordered the secret NSA to secretly spy on American communications, the outcry was full of sound, fury, and little else. After having admitted that the Bush administration had violated federal statutory law (FISA) by conducting broad swath surveillance of foreign communications originating in the United States, Congress sweated and fumed -- oh, how their oversight authority had been thwarted! Indeed, it had, to say nothing of skirting the secret FISA court and its ostensible judicial review. Smoke swirled out of ears. One FISA judge even quit in protest. Eventually, of course, all and more was not only forgiven but given a retroactive get-out-of-jail-free card by the Democratic-led Congress, after meeting resistance in the GOP-led 109th Congress.

All the while the controversy flared, Bush and surrogates continued to insist that they were only listening in on al Qaeda. Ha! How can any American be against that? CIA Director Hayden reassured the country that the NSA program "focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda…".

Indeed, so odd had been the transformation of erstwhile conservatives, once dreadfully concerned about the Clinton administration's end-run around the Constitution with the Echelon program, that the black helicopter crowd was now expressing full-throttled support for secret NSA spying and, presumably, black helicopters as well. Justification of the NSA program even came from those formerly critical of Echelon, citing that program as evidence that NSA surveillance was fine because, well, Clinton did it! Differently and legally (wasn't it just like Clinton to be clever like that!), but he did it. Odd, indeed.

The former black helicopter crowd, now rooting for intrusive government surveillance, was assuaged by the fact that, this time, it was George Bush in charge: Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! A man's manly man was running the surveillance show, everything would be just fine, al Qaeda would be thwarted daily. So long as the admirably circumspect George Bush was at the helm of the secret operations, everything would be run with utmost precision, all of it directed toward the hated foe.

Others knew better. And given the Bush administration's then known regimes of secret prisons, secret torture programs, secret and extraordinary rendition schemes, it appeared obvious to most that entirely innocent people and ordinary conversations would wind up on the NSA sound track -- or laugh track as it would turn out.

Who, then, can be surprised to learn that, yes, the NSA has been listening in on American citizens calling their families. But, as with all things Bush, it is worse than that simple description. It turns out the NSA has actually been listening on calls home made by US soldiers, saving the spicy tracks wherein soldiers engaged in "phone sex" with their home-bound spouses, and passing along recommendations to colleagues to check out the hot talk. Tax payer dollars hard at work.

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

In an attempt to brush off the obviously egregious behaviour, a US intelligence official said that "all employees of the US government" should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and "information assurance."Such "information assurance" apparently extends to pillow talk.

The NSA also spied on terrorist cells thought to be located within Médecins Sans Frontières and suspect terrorists at the International Red Cross. With a known and lusty disdain for humanitarian organizations, the Bush administration no doubt feels that evil lurks within those bastions of liberal do-gooding.

George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley, long a critic of the once illegal NSA program, says that, "[t]his story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law." Which means only one thing in our current era: the fault lies with a few "bad apples." Otherwise, everything would have worked great.

The First Dude's To Blame!

By Cernig

On the other side of the Atlantic, tomorrows news stories are already out by early evening in the U.S. And Friday's papers are talking about a release of documents about Troopergate that purportedly show Sarah Palin herself wasn't involved in continual pressure on Alaska's public safety commissioner Walter Monegan to fire Palin's former brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten. But her husband, First Dude Todd Palin, hounded police chiefs to get Wooten fired, according to the documents.

Rupert Murdoch's flagship tabloid, The Sun, with over 6 million readers daily, has the story, and so too (in more unflattering detail) does ITN News:

A report on the case, which made international headlines after Mrs Palin's surprise selection as the Republican vice presidential nominee, will be released on Friday.

It could reveal the extent of the Alaska governor's husband's involvement in her administration.

Affidavits filed with investigators suggest Mrs Palin was not involved while her husband Todd repeatedly met with her aides about family affairs.

Mr Pailn said: "I have heard criticism that I am too involved in my wife's administration. My wife and I are very close. We are each other's best friend. I have helped her in her career the best I can, and she has helped me."

He told the governor's top aides emotional stories about Mr Wooten threatening and emotionally abusing his family.

He said he talked to anyone who would listen. He gave them photos and documents, which they forwarded to others in the administration, and he questioned how Mr Wooten kept his job.

But Mr Palin said he never pressured anyone, including his wife, and said that after repeatedly talking about the matter with her, she finally told him to "drop it".

"Anyone who knows Sarah knows she is the governor and she calls the shots," he wrote.

"I make no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to publicise the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge."

Even Mrs Palin's special assistant, Ivy Frye, said she was distraught when she was told about the situation.

The question now, of course, is whether these affadavits were deliberately designed to take the heat off Sarah, and whether Todd was designated to 'take one for the team." What do you think?

Update: Would it help to make your mind up if you knew that these documents were part of a report issued pre-emptively by the Palin camp to try to head off the official report and clear herself in advance?

I thought it might.

Why can't McCain say it to Obama's face?

by Jay McDonough

It did seem odd.  For days before the presidential debate, Sarah Palin was talking about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.  Over and over (enough to illicit calls to "kill him" and label him a "traitor" at the McCain/Palin rallies).  And yet, the debate came Tuesday evening and not a peep from John McCain.  I wrote the next day:

And what happened to William Ayers? All the tough talk from Sarah Palin and John McCain this week about Obama's character, and not a word about it last night?  One can only assume a couple things; McCain has no confidence in the argument, he feels it only works for a hyper partisan crowd (that can be incited to call out "traitor" and "treason" about Obama) or, finally, McCain was terrified that if he raised the William Ayers issue, Obama would follow suit and bring up McCain's Keating Five scandal.

And the attacks from Palin/McCain began again the next day.  Hmmm, makes you wonder whether Senator McCain was afraid to raise it at the debate.  I wasn't the only one who noticed:

Barack Obama: "Well I am surprised that — you know, we've been seeing some pretty over the top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days — that he wasn't willing to say it to my face."

Tom Vilsack: "If John McCain were so concerned about things like Mr. Ayers, why didn't he just simply turn to Barack Obama and directly confront him?"

Joe Biden: "In my neighborhood, when you've got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him."

Kevin Drum has some theories on what the Obama camp is up to:

I guess the Obama folks figure there are three things that could happen. First, McCain does nothing and ends up looking like a coward. Second, their taunts get under McCain's skin so badly that he goes over the edge and does something really stupid. Third, McCain takes the bait and decides to bring up Ayers at the next debate.

As Drum notes, the first two options play to Obama's advantage.  (Just an observation: the harshest attacks from the McCain campaign are coming from Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain.  I don't know what to make of that.)  One can only presume Obama has an answer ready should McCain bring up Ayers in the next debate, and he's had it ready for a while. 

One more observation: Obama doesn't seem too afraid that the Ayers accusation will come up.  In fact, it sure seems like he's daring John McCain to raise the issue.

Talking Your Way To An Afghan Exit

By Cernig

As both I and my Newshoggers colleague Ron have written already,the latest NIE on Afghanistan reportedly describes the situation there as "grim" and doesn't hold out much hope of anything that could conventionally be described as success.  Over at VetVoice my friend Brandon Friedman, who served in Afghanistan, has some dark musings on the situation:

This is how they beat you: They allow you in.  Then they withdraw.  They wage an insurgency from the shadows on their own terrain, but they never fight you in the open.  They bleed you through a thousand tiny cuts.  They sap your resources.  They bank on the fact that you'll lose your resolve.  They leave you swinging like a blind-folded boxer, exhausted from never connecting with your opponent.  They wait for you to plead for negotiations.  Then, when you do, they decline--not-so-politely.  Then they wait for you to leave.  Finally, fatigued, confused, and apparently directionless, you do.

Of course, it didn't have to be this way in Afghanistan.  When you use overwhelming military force first, before shifting to a sound counterinsurgency strategy with integrated, international reconstruction efforts, you have a shot at success.  In the case of American and NATO efforts in Afghanistan, however, there never was any strategy.  All we got was clumsy blustering from a Bush administration that spoke of never negotiating with the Taliban.  And once the administration grew bored with the fighting there, they moved on to Iraq--a decision that would ultimately sow disaster for Afghanistan.

I don't agree with Brandon that a clean victory, no matter how good the COIN doctrine or the reconstruction efforts of occupation had been, could ever have been delivered in Afghanistan or Iraq. The situations are too messy, there are too many actors with contradictory wants and the moral high ground was never there in a way that it was in post WW2 nation building - especially in the case of Iraq. But be that as it may, it's somewhat of a moot point when discussing what to do next, as we are where we are and cannot go back to change events.

Brandon goes on to compare Bush administration rhetoric from 2001, of ther "we'll never negotiate with terrorists" type, to Bush administration and allied statements recently which talk up negotiating with at least some Taliban and with the tribes which have supported them with manpower, money and arms. He writes:

In 2001, negotiating with the Taliban wasn't an option.  Now, seven years later, it's viewed as "a way to reduce violence."  This is classic.  Unfortunately, we may not have many choices left.  While turning Afghanistan back over to the Taliban is not an option, to defeat them militarily in a proper counterinsurgency operation, we'd essentially have to start over--with forces we don't have, with friends who are no longer around.   

Turning Afghanistan over to local powers, including at least some Taliban, is the only viable option - just as turning Iraq over to a local powers which include at least some of the insurgents who used to blow up and shoot US troops in Iraq (we call them the Awakening, Badr party and Sadrists now) is the only viable option there. As I wrote back in 2004, in one of my very first blog posts, you have to talk to those who are labelled terrorists eventually, or to at least some of them, to defuse an insurgency and bring peace. Every experience of such wars shows that a hard-nosed refusal to negotiate only leads to perpetual war.

That's not to say that such accomodations can't be problemmatic, or that you'll get what you want. Indeed, the settlements that result are often deeply flawed. We've seen that in Iraq with the Awakenings and their mutual distrust with the Shiite led central government, with the Kurds and just about everyone else, between Shiite factions such as ISCI and Sadrists.

The same will be true in Afghanistan. Government corruption there is as rampant as in Iraq, for example -as my colleague Jay explained on Sunday, President Karzai's brother, who has been meeting with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia, is reportedly deeply involved in the opium industry. The local tribes, which John McCain has vocally hoped would form their own Awakening even though General Petraeus has been far more sceptical, have their own agendas (and note the 2001 negotiations, at exactly the time Brandon quotes Bush administration officials taking a far tougher line):

After the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, [ Taliban Interior Minister] Mullah Abdul Razaq was arrested by the Americans. Insiders say he was given conditional immunity when he agreed to play a role in talks between the CIA, Pakistan's ISI intelligence service and the Taliban. The talks were reportedly over a truce and a proposal for the Taliban's participation in the political process in Afghanistan. The Taliban, however, rejected the US offer which aimed to remove Mullah Omar from the Taliban leadership and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. 

After the collapse of the talks in 2003, Mullah Abdul Razaq left for Dubai where the tribes of Chaman and neighbouring Kandahar in southern Afghanistan maintain offices. Within the Afghan tribal system, the pro-Taliban Noorzai and Achakzai tribes dominate trade in the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The tribes' region spans the southwest of Pakistan and the southern areas of Afghanistan. On the Pakistani side of the border, they control the Chaman markets and on the Afghan side, the Spin Boldak markets. Both tribes dominate the business of salvaging and reconditioning cars and the distribution of the 555-brand of cigarettes throughout Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan through the markets of Dubai and Chaman.

... When Mullah Abdul Razaq returned to the Taliban's fold in 2005, he convinced businesses in Chaman to support the Taliban financially in order to spare their businesses from attacks when they transported goods through Afghanistan. Over 3,500 importers and exporters in the Chaman market who transport their goods to the UAE were threatened with a wave of violence. The Chaman businesses had faced the same problem from warlords in the mid-1990s and supported the Taliban to drive them out. After 2005, the stakes were higher as the Noorzai and Ackzai tribes became involved in the construction of expensive hotels in Kandahar and needed protection from the Taliban.

But  a lot depends on which Taliban you negotiate with:

The Taliban are no longer a monolithic force; with whom do you negotiate if you want to talk with the Taliban?" asked Eric Rosenbach, executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School. Rather than high-level, high-profile negotiations, "the Afghan government should pursue talks with individual commanders and warlords" who have renounced violence, he said. "This approach is much more likely to succeed, will further fracture the opposition, and will place the Afghan government in a position of strength for future negotiations."

Charles Heyman, editor of Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, said there is widespread agreement that the original U.S. and British goal of building a liberal, Western-style democracy in Afghanistan in not attainable because the Taliban never were routed or forced to disband. "There is going to be an accommodation with the Taliban whether people like it or not," he said. "Everyone knows this is going to be very, very difficult." He said the West's long-term interest would be served by ensuring that al-Qaida doesn't have a presence in Afghanistan. That would mean making sure any future Afghan leadership, even if it includes Taliban elements, understands that it will come under sustained attack if it allows al-Qaida to set up training camps there.

Ayesha Khan, an associate fellow at the Chatham House research group in London, said it is possible that clerics close to fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar could meet with Afghan government representatives. "This desire to engage the Taliban started last year and has gained momentum," she said. "The British government is involved in strategizing it. They are trying to separate the more moderate Taliban from the more extremist ones."

You might not get what you want, but in both Iraq and Afghanistan right now the U.S. might just get what it needs - a window of opportunity to extract itself less messily from a pair of grinding COIN conflicts-without-end which are soaking up US blood, treasure and prestige at a time when the nation is less able to afford any of those than at any time since WW2. The locals won't entirely get what they want either - and as I've said what the various factions want conflict in any case. But they might just get what they need too - removal of the occupying troops of alien armies which are resented by the vast majorities of their peoples even as the elites in charge like the way their own power is propped up by foreign troops. That ability of self-determination, to make a mess of it or not under your own steam, is what America was originally all about.

DCCC's Optimistic Pitch

By Fester:

Earlier today, I received my first tele-marketeer political fund-raising pitch from any committee or candidate.  It was an aggressive pitch by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the national committee that is responsible for electing and re-electing Democrats to the House of Representatives.   I have two problems with the pitch as it was a bit internally contradictory, but here is the relevant portion of the conversation (all paraphrased):

"Hi is this Mr. Fester"
"That's me"
"This is James Doe from the DCCC and I am so glad to talk to you today.  We have an amazing opportunity to win veto-proof majorities in both chambers of Congress.  We need large majorities for the changes that this country needs.  However we won't get those majorities if we don't have the resources needed for our many good candidates.  Can we count on your financial support"
"Right now, my support is my volunteer time but good luck"
"Are you sure that you can not support the many good candidates..."
"Yes, have a good day..."

Okay, this script is a fairly standard structure --- intro, personalization, set the aspiration, sell the roadblock, provide a solution, and personalize the ask with a follow-up to push for the ask again.

My problem is the aspiration as it is internally contradictory.  Yes there is reporting that large majorities are highly plausible.  However, attendant with those majorities would be a Democrat in the White House, so a veto proof majority is not particularly valuable.  Why sell me on that point of 'veto proof majority,' especially when that majority would imply a gain of over fifty net seats.  That would be an amazing night, but the expectation is too damn high.  A veto proof majority is only a good aspiration when you expect the opposition party to control the veto point. 

Quelle Surprise

By Fester:

Steve Benen's writes a simple, direct and what should be a shockingly non-surprising sentence:

Imagine that. Hand over excessive and largely unchecked surveillance powers to the Bush administration, and gross abuses become commonplace. Who could have guessed?

Hand over excessive and largely unchecked [insert subject area of your choice] powers to the [insert name] administration and gross abuses become commonplace.....

The Bush Administration and the Republican Party are the greatest guilty power in this country for executive abuse of power, but this basic incentive structure of no oversight, fierce and unthinking defense, and limited review is an invitation for abuse of power on any subject.  One of the great challenges for liberals, progressive and general good government types over the next couple of years will be to provide a politically potent case for active oversight so that the incentive structure is for people with power to not be complete douchebags.

We're all terrorists now

By Libby

As I've been saying for at least the last two years, every day we take one step closer to a police state. Here's the latest little encroachment.

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The administration and its apologists will tell you that they only target "likely terrorists" but according the one whistleblower, "likely" is loosely defined.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism." She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and "collected on" as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

According to another whistleblower, who came forward independently of Kinne, at least the eavesdroppers are having a great old time on the job.

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

So much for the right to privacy, but that has already become as quaint as the constitution in the administration's mind. Meanwhile, here at home, the definition of terrorist has been stretched to include innocent activists.

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

In the understatement of the year Sheridan told a Senate committee, ""The names don't belong in there. It's as simple as that." If only the wholesale destruction of our civil rights would be as easy to restore as it was for the Bush administration to destroy, I would be sleeping better at night.

Hush that Fuss

by Eric Martin

Donna Brazile catches fire:

Sadly, despite the remarkable progress, in some ways what's old is new again.  As for the McCain campaign their position seems to be: everybody move to the back of the bus.

Pension structure and cyclical influences

By Fester:

This is just a random thought as I have seen my co-workers fret about their 403(b)s.  I am wondering if pension planning and retirement savings account structure will over amplify swings in the labor market.  Right now the labor market from the job-seeker's perspective is rough.  There are more qualified individuals than there are jobs so the numbers game grind is getting worse. We are seeing that with longer durations of unemployment and higher levels of long term unemployment.  And for those with jobs, the large pool of unemployed or underemployed workers means there is absolutely no pressure to increase our wages. 

Defined benefit pensions encourage workers to leave the workforce during bad times.  Defined benefit pensions are the classic pension where a worker retires in return for X dollars per month for the rest of their lives.  Most defined benefit pension plans will offer an early retirement option where a worker can retire earlier than normal retirement age and collect a smaller monthly pension for a longer period of time.  During normal times the NPV of those two pension amounts should be roughly similar. 

The incentive to leave the workforce increases during bad times because a worker who is in the window to collect some pension may decide that they are no worse off, all things considered, by leaving their job and receiving a guaranteed income plus more time for either leisure or to find a different job.  This incentive clearest for older workers who are currently unemployed or massively underemployed where the search and waiting costs of finding a new job are high.  This incentive removes someone from looking for a job, marginally making it easier for everyone else to find a job.  The retired individual is still in reserve available for a boom time job, but the guaranteed income is attractive.

Now defined contribution plans such as a 401(K) will have an entity make an initial payment and then wish you luck.   Assuming the same worker profile I discussed in the previous two paragraphs, older worker who may or many not wish to remain in the workforce if they have a good situation, the incentives are very different.  A defined contribution plan will roughly track with the overall market,  If the market is up, the retirement value is up.  If the market is tanking, retirement values tank as well.

So in rough times, more marginally attached workers will see their ability to retire or reduce their hours as they draw down their assets diminish.  Their asset base is not there to support this decision.  So they stay in the workforce.  Additionally, current retirees who had not annuatized their defined contribution plans at retirement will see their standard of living reduced due to the markets tanking.  They will seek to re-enter the labor force at the trough, increasing competitive pressure and driving down wages as they seek to replace or supplement their diminished income streams. 

The converse is also true.  During good times, the marginally attached worker with assets in a defined contribution plan is much more likely to retire/reduce their involvement in the labor market than an individual with a defined benefit plan.  This incentive heightens the pro-seeker labor market and pressures wages up. 

401(K) style defined contribution plans are volatile pro-cyclical plans while defined contribution plans are labor market counter-cyclical stabilizers.   

Social Security's magnitude

By Fester:

The Republican Party does not like Social Security.  They never have.  In 2005, they tried to undermine the concept of both the Social and Security part of the program and had their asses handed to them.  The claim has been that Social Security will run a massive deficit that will cripple our economy.  The best estimate is the gap will be roughly 4 trillion dollars over seventy five years as the intermediate cost estimate. 

Chris Briem raises a couple of very good points on the magnitude of 4 trillion dollars over 75 years or the roughly 53 billion dollar a year average gap. 

the best number I see is that for over the next 75 years the social security system was under funded by something just under $4 trillion dollars. A big number for sure, but in the course of a few weeks there has come from nowhere a near unanimous agreement that we should spend how much? $700 billion on the overall financial system bailout, which would be on top of the hundreds of billions that has been spent on AIG, Lehman, Bear Sterns, and an less-discussed, but larger, amount in the hundreds of $ billions that the Fed has been mass injecting into the world financial system. Whatever that adds up to, it has to be a decent chunk of the entire unfunded liability of the Social Security system now and through all of our lifetimes.. even that of many of our children's lifetimes. Given that the $4 trillion number is something that has to be dealt with over the the bulk of the next century, the rate at which funding the system would require must come out to a expenditure rate many many orders of magnitude slower

The Bush tax cuts have a NPV of roughly half of Social Security's long run gap in the intermediate case when the counterfactual was public policy on January 19, 2001.  The Iraq War has a burn rate that is three or four times the NPV gap of Social Security.   

We as a country have money to spend on priorities.  I think Social Seucurity is such a priority.  Other's don't, but if you accept that Iraq war funding is sacronescent or urgent, or if you accept that doing something ineffective, the original Paulson plan, is needed, then Social Security is not in significant trouble as long as there is a political coalition that is consistently willing to make it a priority. 

When in doubt, drink!

By Fester

Thanks Thoreau --- the damn dirty apes will rule us all once this financial crisis runs its course.  First the rum and then the banks!

Polls and Ceilings

By BJ

Since Barack Obama is doing almost obscenely well in the polls these days, (his lead in Gallup's particularly seems just too high to maintain), it is probably worth noting that we shouldn't be expecting it to remain so, and Chris Bowers of Open Left has an excellent post for those of us who get caught up watching the daily tracking polls. Among his specific points:

8.5% is the maximum victory:

Polls aren't static:

Peaks are called that for a reason:

Read the whole thing, it is too good and detailed for me to be able to summarize. However, Nate Silver makes a pertinent point about the current state of the race:

The better a candidate's standing in the polls, the harder it ought to be pick up additional support. In part, this is simply because the more voters that you have in your column, the fewer there are available to convert. But this is still a highly partisan country, we tend to have close elections, and things certainly aren't going to be any easier for a black candidate.

If Obama is ahead by something like 7-8 points ahead nationally, that means that he has persuaded just about all of the persuadables, and he's left looking to covert people like those in Ben Smith's anecdote.

An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I've heard a lot in recent weeks.

"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."

If those sorts of people are the undecideds -- and when Obama is winning Pennsylvania by 12 points or something, that's probably what we're looking at -- then Obama really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Further gains are going to be difficult to come by, which means that his polls are more likely to go down than to continue going up. (Indeed, our model assumes that the race will tighten some).

Basically, even though it is widely acknowledged that Obama won the debate last night, we shouldn't expect to his lead widen even further, and it is more likely that the race will tighten as it did in most of the national trackers today. Meaning we all shouldn't panic when that happens. It will take something far more significant to put McCain in actual striking distance.

On the other hand, it never hurts to have an escape plan prepared.

The E.L.I.T.E. Plan

By BJ

This probably would have been a bit funnier, (or scarier), a few weeks ago when it looked like McCain was a lot closer to winning then he does now, but its still worth a few laughs.

Of course, it would make more sense were it not for the fact that we in the Great White North weren't about to shortly re-elect our own Republi-clone to another term as Prime Minister. On the bright side, it appears that we won't be giving Harper his much sought after majority.

Stéphane Dion's Liberals have crept closer to the Conservatives in public support, while Canadians' increasing fears over an uncertain economy appear to be carving away at Stephen Harper's electoral hopes, a new poll suggests.

The latest Canadian Press/Harris-Decima poll gave Harper's Conservatives 31 per cent support across Canada, just four percentage points clear of the resurgent Liberals, who rose to 27 per cent support.

"It's a very interesting and tightening race," said the CBC's David Taylor, who is covering the various public opinion surveys ahead of the Oct. 14 federal election.

The New Democrats had 20 per cent support, with the Greens at 12 and the Bloc Québécois at eight per cent.

Four of every 10 poll respondents — particularly women, city-dwellers and older, affluent voters — say the roller-coaster markets are causing them to rethink their vote, largely at the expense of the Tories, said Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson.

I must admit to some small satisfaction that the more uncertain the economic climate, the less likely people are to trust their leadership to someone who espouses the same economic ideals as Bush and McCain. Also somewhat ironic that if it weren't for the fact that we Canadians were fortunate enough to spend the majority of the last eight years under the fiscally Small-c conservative, (i.e - responsible), Liberals, we'd be feeling the pain of the current crisis far worse than we are so far, and the Cons wouldn't stand a chance.

In any case, i take some succor in the knowledge that the Republi-clones control of our government will be limited, and hopefully short-lived.

(PS - You can head over to The Beav' for a catchy tune along the lines of the above video)

New Iraq NIE Warns Of New Wave Of Violence

By Cernig

McClatchy reports that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is almost complete and that it " warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year," directly contradicting John McCain's claims in Tuesday's debate that the Surge has been a success and victory has been attained.

That's not a major surprise to anyone who follows events in Iraq without neocon rose-tinted glasses. Deep conflicts between the central government and Kurdish region, Awakening groups and Sadrists have all been put on a knife-edge by expectations for the upcoming provincial elections, which have been gerrymandered to keep the existing incumbents in the Green Zone in power. The Turks are looking down a gunbarrel at the Kurds and the Awakening is looking at losing its source of income - being paid not to be insurgents - while even the Green Zone elites are falling out among themselves over Maliki's newfound Napoleon complex. The chances of Iraq lasting another year without another significant outbreak of violence are small to none.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in the draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's are very restricted circulation documents.

The NIE findings parallel a Defense Department assessment last month that warned that despite "promising developments, security gains in Iraq remain fragile. A number of issues have the potential to upset progress."

Trouble spots include whether the former Sunni insurgents, also known as the Sons of Iraq, find permanent employment; provincial elections scheduled for January; Kirkuk's status; the fate of internally displaced people and returning refugees; and "malign Iranian influence," the unclassified Pentagon report said.

The intelligence agencies' estimate also raises worries about what would happen if Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric, attempts to reassert himself, according to senior intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

General Petraeus, who is the focus of an unholy amount of revered hype by John McCain, says the the situation is "fragile" and "reversible" and says he will never declare victory there. Not that even his Saint's words of caution have stopped Mccain doing so loudly and often, however. But Petraeus, in a talk to the neocon Heritage Foundation today, ruffled feathers by repeatedly seeming to back Obama's foreign policy prescriptions over McCain's.

Unbidden, Petraeus discussed whether his strategy in Iraq — protecting the population while cleaving apart the insurgency through reconciliation efforts to crush the remaining hard-core enemies — could also work in Afghanistan. The question has particular salience as Petraeus takes over U.S. Central Command, which will put him at the helm of all U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, thereby giving him a large role in the Afghanistan war.

“Some of the concepts used in Iraq are transplantable [to Afghanistan] while others perhaps are not,” he said. “Every situation is unique.”

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

In saying that, Petraeus implicitly allied with U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Last week, McKiernan rejected the idea of replicating the blend of counterinsurgency strategy employed in Iraq. “The word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word ’surge,’” McKiernan said, opting against recruiting Pashtun tribal fighters to supplement Afghan security forces against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “There are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan,” he added.

... Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

And, as McClatchy notes, whether the news is good or bad  and no matter what the commanders might have to say about it, Republicans will always find an excuse to stay just a little bit longer.

The findings seem to cast doubts on McCain's frequent assertions that the United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring the deep uncertainties of the situation despite the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was the leading congressional advocate.

But McCain could also use the findings to try to strengthen his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize.

It's always a reason to stay. We've had countless variations on "the surge is working; we should stay until we've done the job," or "even if we can't maintain the surge, we're making progress, so we should stay" or "the Surge hasn't done what we thought it would but we can't leave - there will be a bloodbath when we leave" already. How about this instead? The Surge didn't do what it was supposed to, it never will because the irreconcilable faction fights behind the violence are beyond U.S. control, but it's the Iraqis country and they get to break it if they want to or fix it if they wish - their choice.

Not that we'll get a chance for that debate based upon this NIE, like the Afghanistan NIE which was comparably "grim" it will be buried, with not even the summary conclusions released to the public.

Second Primary challenge for Lieberman?

By Fester:

Lieberman loses Connecticut for Lieberman Primary

That could be the headline in four years if Senator Droopy decides to run for re-election as an 'independent' Democrat that no Democrat wants to be within two hundred yards as he is bear hugged by Republicans.

Via

Political Wire

is this great excerpt:

"Two years later, his party not only has five candidates, it also has a new platform: 'The Connecticut for Lieberman Party rejects the fraud perpetrated on the members of this party and the citizens of Connecticut by Joe Lieberman.'"

Said one member: "I wouldn't be surprised to see a Connecticut for Lieberman candidate running against Joe Lieberman in 2012."

This could come about because Senator Droopy got lazy and forgot to follow CT state law on party operations. A couple of third party activists read the law, and grabbed the party name. And now we'll have a good time of seeing one of the last Northeastern Reagan reaction Democrats leave the Senate long after he entered into the realm of irrelevancy. Now what are the odds that he could lose two primaries in a row?

Just Like Kissinger's Cousin (yeah that's kinda clever)

by Eric Martin

One of the more curious reactions to last night's debate comes courtesty of Andrew McCarthy in a post at The Corner.  McCarthy, in a fit of rage, calls his fellow Cornerites "nuts" for not properly labeling McCain's performance a "disaster."  But McCarthy does not feel that McCain's poor performance was the result of his meandering oratory, his failure to address policy specifics, his irascible demeanor or his disrespectful digs and failed attempts at humor.  Rather, McCarthy's frustration stems from his belief that McCain did not, get this, go full bore on the William Ayers non-story.

Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical Left?...Would you have guessed that he's pals with a guy who brags about bombing the Pentagon? [...]

Memo to McCain Campaign:  Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office.  You helped portray Obama as a clealy qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.

Pretty stark choice.  Rather black and white.  I wonder if that standard is applied evenly to both candidates (more on that in a minute).  First, though, what is this talk of Obama being "pals" with Ayers?  This is the extent of the documented relationship, and it hardly rises the already low bar of "pal."  From Paul Campos:

In fact, Obama doesn't appear to have met Ayers at any time in the past six years. When Obama was running for the Illinois legislature in 1995, Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama at his house, and they later served on the board of a community anti-poverty group.

Also serving on that board were stalwart Republicans.  Would they, then, fall into the category of terrorist sympathizer when pushed through the binary meat grinder wielded by McCarthy?  Let's be clear: Obama's interactions with Ayers are limited and tangential, and even then, the most significant of those limited contacts occured over a decade ago.

It is incontrovertible that Obama has no formal relationship with Ayers.  Ayers is not an official advisor, informal advisor, confidant or, in the parlance of the day, a pal.  Contrast Ayers' non-relation to Obama with that of, say, Henry Kissinger.  As Campos recounts, "Kissinger is honorary co-chair of McCain's New York campaign, and a foreign policy adviser to McCain himself."

Now let's compare some of the terrorist activities of, on the one hand, non-advisor, non-related William Ayers and, on the other hand, official adviser and honorary co-chair Henry Kissinger.  Ayers:

...[A]s a member of the Weather Underground, [Ayers] set off several bombs that did some serious property damage. None of the bombings Ayers was involved with killed anyone, but several years later other members of the group took part in an armed robbery in which two police officers and a guard were killed.

Kissinger:

An abbreviated list of the events that have made it dangerous for Kissinger to travel overseas, because of the possibility he would be arrested as a war criminal, include: covertly sabotaging Vietnam peace talks in 1968 in order to help get Richard Nixon elected; playing a key role in convincing Nixon to launch illegal wars in Laos and Cambodia (the latter action helped create the conditions that led to the Cambodian genocide); helping to plan the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected government, which included numerous assassinations funded by the CIA (again, all this in direct violation of international law); and helping to facilitate the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which may have killed as many as 200,000 civilians.

Kissinger appears to have had every bit as much contempt for the law as Ayers, with the difference being that his brand of contempt led to millions of deaths.

Campos doesn't even mention Kissinger's involvement with Operation Condor.  For those that don't know, here is a description of Operation Condor from one of my previous posts:

Operation Condor [was] an international state-sponsored terror network set up by the Pinochet regime to track and eliminate opponents living abroad with the cooperation of the governments in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and, later, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. US policymakers [including Kissinger] even knew that a Chilean assassination team had been planning to enter the United States to carry out the infamous car bomb assassination on September 21, 1976 of Orlando Letelier, Allende’s foreign minister and later minister of defense, who perished along with Ronni Moffitt, his American assistant. This brazen act of cross-border violence occurred in Washington DC less than fourteen blocks from the White House.

That post (link for those that want to read more about this episode) discussed a book review of Peter Kornbluh's The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability appearing in Foreign Affairs, and the wrath of Henry Kissinger directed at the author in the aftermath of the publication of the review.  Here are some more interesting details:

Kornbluh discovered details pertaining to the CIA's involvement in a kidnapping that resulted in the murder of Chile's chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, in 1970. Schneider's elimination, which came three years before the coup, according to Maxwell's review, "was regarded as essential by the Nixon administration, since Schneider was a strict constitutionalist and therefore an obstacle to U.S. efforts to promote a military intervention before Allende could take office."

...[D]ocuments released in the extensive declassification ordered by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and 2000 [are] reprinted in Kornbluh's book. These documents include: transcripts of top-secret discussions among President Nixon, Kissinger, and other cabinet members on how "to bring Allende down"; minutes of secret meetings chaired by Kissinger to plan covert operations in Chile; new documentation of the notorious case of Charles Horman, an American murdered by the Chilean military and subject of the movie Missing; comprehensive documentation of the Letelier case and the extensive CIA, National Security Council, and State Department reports surrounding it; and U.S. intelligence reporting on Operation Condor.

In addition to the other morally reprehensible acts cited by Campos, and others that remain unmentioned still, Kissenger was complicit in, and oversaw, terrorist activities committed by foreign agents on US soil and abroad.  He also oversaw terrorist acts committed by the CIA on behalf of aspiring, and later existing, South American dictatorships. 

Kissinger has an official role in the McCain campaign. 

So is John McCain a terrorist sympathizer?  McCarthy labels Ayers a terrorist and connects Ayers' comparatively innocuous (though stil despicable) activies to Obama, and then from this concludes that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer.  Using McCarthy's criteria, one could come to no other conclusion: John McCain is a terrorist sympathizer.

Krugman, credibility and doing something

By Fester: I like reading Paul Krugman. He had a fundamental political insight and a megaphone to voice that insight since 1999 --- the Republican Party is fundamentally untrustworthy without any interest in empirical policy evaluation, analysis or comparison. He came to this insight by looking at the Bush tax 'plan' and realizing that the numbers did not even come close to adding up because multiple trillions were being promised to multiple actions. And those numbers were left unchallenged by the cry of 'fuzzy math.' He was willing and able to call bullshit based on that insight that liars lie alot. He got it right on California electricity, he got it right on Iraq, and he got it right on Social Security.

However it looks like Dr. Krugman is getting it wrong on the bail-out because he forgot the centrality of this basic insight. He agrees that the credit market crisis is really, really, really bad. I trust his judgement on that as he is a fiscal crisis expert and other available evidence points in that same direction. And he agrees that something needs to be done. So he supports the Paulson Plan as SOMETHING TO BE DONE despite 'holding his nose' on it. Today he wrote the following on Great Britain's bank nationalization plan:

Unlike the Paulson plan, this [ed:bank nationalization] sounds as if it makes sense. However, given the strong financial linkages among the world’s economies, I wonder how much Britain can do on its own. Let’s see what the plan actually looks like; if it’s good, it can be a model for US emulation, and for the eurozone too if they can get their act together.

So despite his belief that the Paulson plan does not make sense, that there were available attractive, or at least less ugly alternatives and his insight that the GOP is not a serious negoatiting partner or governing partner, he supported the bail-out plan that is fundamentally the Paulson plan with some marginal tweaking. His support of the plan pushed quite a few liberals from the actively opposed to the passively indifferent or active supporters.

His credibility in getting quite a few of the big picture things right over the past eight years acted as a signifier for the rationally ignorant or underinformed that the bail-out is not a horrendous idea and should be passed. I think he was operating with his economist hat on and not his political hat and that this will be a significant hit to his future credibility as a signifier for the progressive opinion leaders on complex economic issues.

Counterpunching Works

By BJ

It will take a little while to see if they really mean it, but it appears that the McCain campaign has decided to back off the Ayers/Wright/Rezko attacks:

It's hard to know for sure what the thinking is behind all of this. It's possible that the McCain campaign talked up these attacks just to reintroduce the concept to voters and reporters, and never had any real intention to pursue this tack. Given Sarah Palin's recent rhetoric, though, this seems unlikely. This really was going to be a major offensive.

So why pull back? Probably because it was a spectacularly bad idea to shift the campaign's focus away from the economy in the midst of a financial meltdown and deep voter/consumer anxiety.

Greg Sargent added that the shift "suggests that the McCain campaign's internal polling on how the Ayers stuff is playing is just brutal, likely among independents. It also suggests that Obama's counter-attack -- lambasting McCain's campaign for wanting to change the subject from the economy to personal attacks -- has been effective."

Personally, I think the Republicans haven't had to deal with a Democrat who is willing and able to counter their attacks so effectively. As I said earlier:

I've always thought Obama was at his best as a counterpuncher, and one of the main goals of the counterpunch is to make your opponent think about running into a sharp counter whenever they unload their own punches, resulting in their becoming more hesitant to unleash attacks. If your opponent is undisciplined, such counters can also provoke them into doing something rash. We'll see over the next few days if McCain is feeling the sting and how he deals with it.

It looks like they're definitely feeling the sting.

"My Friends"

By Cernig

I'm broadly in agreement with Fester and BJ on last night's debate. Obama came out ahead on points, mainly from the economy discussion, while both candidates settled on essentially hawkish foreign policy positions in which the main difference is that Obama would talk first before bombing.

The big economy policy point to take away from last night is that neither candidate thinks you can handle the truth. Both are still touting tax cuts to kick-start the economy and still planning other policy programs costing umty-billions for which the piggybank is already empty. That does not compute. Economic advisers from both candidate's teams have been far more honest - taxes are going to have to rise and the only real question is about the details of how.

The big foreign policy points are that both candidates think that military spending is sacrosanct, and neither would wait for any UN mandate or international consensus before taking aggressive action even if the U.S. wasn't directly threatened.

It was the neocon versus the neolib, and the neolib came out ahead on points. McCain's lackluster performance as a speaker didn't help his policy case either, even with conservatives.

But I purely do wish I'd set up a drinking game around the number of times the phrase "my friends" was uttered.

Is it just me or does that phrase, "my friends", in constant repitition convey the message that John McCain doesn't consider any of us his "friends" - at least on an equal footing? We were treated to a constant litany of that patronising phrase, always attached to claims that McCain had been there, done that, got the T-shirt on every major policy question of the last thousand years and along the way had "out-judgemented" not just Obama and Bush but even Ronald Reagan. He came across as convinced of his own infallibility and superiority to everyone he'd ever met or outlived - and never once stopped to ask himself how, if he's been such a successful reformer and voice of reason for 30 years, the country is in such a mess. He came across as, I think, elitist.

For me, that message was reinforced after the debate, as CNN's cameras kept rolling. McCain was reluctant to shake Obama's hand, to say the least. His wife Cindy didn't shake a single audience members hand. Not one. And the two of them were out of that auditorium as fast as they could manage it after observing some basic niceties.

By contrast Michelle and Barack Obama were there a good ten minutes later, still both shaking hands, posing for pictures and sitting down for discussions with audience members. They showed "the common touch". Sure, it's good political theatre - but to me it looked like the McCains think they're too good to play nice for the voters too.

Another Debate, Another Obama Victory

By BJ

First, I feel sorry for anyone who actually tunes into these things hoping for a substantive discussion of the issues. By now it should be obvious that the debates mostly gloss the issues over. You’d get as much information by watching the debate on mute. It would be nice if the debates actually did provide some actual substance, but the truth of the matter is that neither candidate wants to admit that we’re headed into the shitter and there’s nothing they can really do about it.

And let’s be honest. The reason they are unwilling to do so is because the voters will punish them for it. We may know that the outlook is bleak, but we still want our leaders to provide reassurance that they can correct the problem, even if we suspect they’re lying.

Frankly, I’m of the opinion that if you truly are basing your vote on the candidate’s stance on the issues, you’ve long since decided. What’s left now is people’s comfort level with the candidates, which is a big part of the reason the McCain campaign is into character assaults now.

So for Obama, appearing more “Presidential”, more professional, less angry, cool under fire, and so forth, is a direct rebuke to the character attacks. It is also of some note that McCain can’t manage to bring up said attacks in the debate format. In this as in many things, John Cole says it best:

Finally, I guess what it boils down to is that, McCain, for all his tough guy talk, is just a tired old wimp. Given ninety minutes to go after Obama like he and his partner and his surrogates have the past few days, and he said nothing. Given all that time to question Obama’s patriotism, to question his background, to suggest he does not support the troops, and McCain refused to do it. Why didn’t he look him in the eyes and call him Sen. Hussein like his surrogates are doing? Or is that just supposed to be in the background, to make Obama look suspect, to accuse him of being in league with terrorists- but like every punk and every bully he can’t own up to it himself.

On the other hand, Obama, every time he landed a punch, it was something he has done above board, in public. There is no scummy underbelly launching into questions of character- all his punches were fair, legitimate, and issue based. All his punches were on things he had mentioned before, publicly, things he is man enough to put in his commercials and repeat right in John McCain’s face.

What a sad, pathetic, small man John McCain has turned into right before our very eyes.

As another commentator noted before the debate, McCain is caught in a catch-22. He desperately needs a game-changer, but if he comes out with the nasty attacks that his die-hard haters supporters want him to launch, he looks like the nasty, erratic old man that the Obama camp has been portraying him as, and if he doesn’t do so, he’s the sad, pathetic, small man Cole describes above.

So while Obama hasn't won yet, McCain has less and less time to turn things around, and this debate certainly didn't help him do that. As such, I think McCain’s position is best summed up by this line:

John McCain may not be toast, but he’s certainly approaching English muffin territory.

3 Down, 1 to go

By Fester:

I should get smart and just go to bed at a reasonably hour on the next debate night as very little is actually being discussed.  To me, it seems like Obama was playing an eight minute offense, run right tackle, throw a short button hook, run left tackle, and kill the clock.  He was successful at that.  I watched the debate on CNN so I saw the insta-dials track on some things that I was reacting in opposition to group consensus, so that is yet more confirmation that I should not judge the debates objectively for the target audience of persuadable voters.  I'm not one of them.

The biggest thing I saw on the dial groups was that Obama had a much higher baseline of support than McCain.  This was seen whenever the two transitioned. 

Now onto policy --- nothing too new besides McCain trying to out FDR a Democrat with his Home Owners Loan Corportation proposal.  The problem with either attempt to stabilize the housing market where it is today is that it is still historically overpriced.  It might make sense to stabilize the market at where the fundamentals of income, post-tax income, employment, and rent prices would suggest as that would provide a functional market again with protection against a down-side overshoot.  I was unimpressed by Obama on foreign policy as his policy is talk first but get ready for more wars.  Neither candidate was willing to talk constraints or limitiations. 

Overall, I would score it a narrow Obama win, but nothing much was said or done differently last night than had been done in the first debate. 

Iceland Teetering Too

By Cernig

I posted yesterday that nuke-armed Pakistan is only a month away from bankruptcy. Now tiny Iceland looks like it might get there first.

Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector that set out with Viking confidence to conquer swaths of the British economy — from fashion retailers to top soccer teams.

The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world's highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes — their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times.

... A full-blown collapse of Iceland's financial system would send shock waves across Europe, given the heavy investment by Icelandic banks and companies across the continent.

Iceland right now is apparently in a state of shock and gives a snapshot of what a depression with the Great in it will look like everywhere - "cafes were half-empty, real estate agents sat idle, and retailers reported few sales" says the AP.

And, just as Pakistan has begged the West for $100 billion to stave off economic collapse, Iceland has had to go cap-in-hand to a bigger power too. Only they've chosen the Russians - asking for a 5.4 billion loan to shore up the nation's finances.

That must be giving NATO planners conniptions. Loans like that, in the present climate, aren't going to come without strings and Iceland is the keystone in NATO's maritime defenses in the North West Atlantic, designed to keep Russian warships and subs containable in their home waters should the need arise.

The Icelanders say there were no military strings attached to the deal but they're also making it clear they've found a new friend when their friends in the West refused to help. And where financial friendships form other ties usually follow.

"We have not received the kind of support that we were requesting from our friends," said Geir Haarde, prime minister. "So in a situation like that one has to look for new friends."

In spite of the new friendship, Mr Haarde said it did not extend to military cooperation, refuting the suggestion that Russia might be given access to an airbase vacated by the US air force in 2006. "We are a founder member of Nato," noted an official, "categorically denying" any such deal.

...Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib investment bank, said, "Lending money to Iceland is a very strong and clear statement from Russia that it is solvent and it has spare cash."

"This is going to make a big difference to the Icelandic economy and it's a very clear statement. It builds up political goodwill which could be helpful when it gets into difficult negotiations over territorial rights in the Arctic," said Mr Weafer.

Why the Ayers attack won't work

by Jay McDonough

Given the energy the McCain/Palin camp is putting into linking Barack Obama and William Ayers, they clearly view it as their last hope to make up support they've lost as a result of a couple crappy debate performances and an economy that is teetering on the edge.

I just don't see it working.  Oh sure, there will be some folks that it re-energizes, but for most people that are wondering if their 401K will survive and what it would be like to have to live in their car, the McCain campaign's new Obama/Ayers strategy must seem like an indulgence they can't afford.  There are way too many other things to be terrified about right now, thank you very much.

I haven't seen a recent poll of top ten issues for voters lately.  But only a fool would believe the economy isn't sitting at #1, and dwarfing everything else by a wide, wide margin.  Education?  Sure, but now way down the list. Health care?  Yeah, but at a third or fourth of the economy's numbers. Climate change.  OK, but probably slipped to something like #6 or 7 on the list.  William Ayers?  You're kidding, right?

And it's not as if the Clinton's didn't work the Ayers connection through the primaries.  Both Hillary and Bill Clinton and countless campaign surrogates beat that dead horse repeatedly to minor effect.  The McCain campaigns choice to put all their eggs in the Ayers basket is the ultimate Hail Mary, the last gasp, "we're about to cry uncle" ploy. Linking Obama and Ayers will get that segment of voters who have a visceral hate for Barack Obama spinning like tops and they'll just relish their hatred.  But for the remaining 98% of the electorate, they will A) vote for McCain because they believe his policies best match their own philosophies  B) vote for Obama because they intended to vote for him anyway C) understand that Ayers is unrepentent scum, but that doesn't automatically mean Obama is scum and D) think the McCain/Palin camp is only demonstrating how woefully out of touch and unfit they are to become president and vice president of the United States.

Look, I think Barack Obama should have walked away from anything having to do with William Ayers.  And, to that extent, it's an example of poor judgment on Obama's part.  I'm disappointed he did it.   But given the choice between Barack Obama and John McCain - well, there is no choice as far as I'm concerned.

No more than that couple percent of voters believe Obama shares Ayers radical beliefs.  The rest recognize it as a stupid move on Obama's part and as something all of us have to do at times in our life; cooperate with some real  assholes in order to get something good done. 

We are, we are, youth of the nation

By Fester:
I'm at the top end of the youth vote which looks to be the most heavily Democratic age cohort in the country for this election cycle and most likely future election cycles.  My generation follows the most heavily Republican age cohort so that raises the question of why the massive difference in political beliefs in a fairly short time frame. 

Matthew Yglesias looks at this report which concludes that the demographics is destiny argument is incorrect as young white voters show the greatest ideological change compared to all other age cohorts and sub-group comparisons:

Young whites, again, hold markedly more progressive views than older whites on the issue of federal spending on child care, while black Millennials’ views are slightly less progressive than their elders’, and Hispanic Millennials’ views are essentially the same as older Hispanics.32 In 2004, 77.8 percent of 18- to 29-year-old blacks thought that federal spending for child care should be increased, compared to 85.5 percent of blacks aged 30 and older. In the same year, 71.4 percent of young Hispanics and 71.6 percent of older Hispanics felt that this funding should be increased. For whites, however, the picture was different in 2004, with 68.1 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds thinking federal spending for child care should be increased compared to just 50.1 percent of whites aged 30 and older.
Yet again, on the topic of spending for the poor, white Millennials have noticeably more progressive views than older whites, while the views of both black and Hispanic Millennials are relatively in line with those of their elders.

Public Pension landmine

By Fester:

Local tax revenues look to start cliff diving soon as consumer spending is contracting.  Borrowing is down, which implies slower business spending which implies lower future consumption and profits to tax as well.  Municipalities and other local government units will be seeing their revenues decrease while their social service expenditures increase.  This is the standard cyclical fiscal crunch story.

However there are two added steps to this story which could make it even scarier.  First, debt costs could explode as the credit market is freezing up.  Massachusetts and California are having issues with their tax anticipation note issues.  Interest rates are increasing for any available credit, and there is much less available credit than normal right now. 

Secondly, public pension obligations costs are set to explode.  The big driver is the roughly 30% year to date decline for index accounts that are tied to the Dow, or the NASDAQ.  Asset values are decreasing. CNN reports that pensions funds and defined contribution plans have lost roughly $2 trillion dollars over the past fifteen months.  And that was before another round of whackage this afternoon. 

We are also reaching the demographic wave of Baby Boomers who are beginning to hit retirement age.  People will want to retire sooner rather than later, and even if some delay retirement for a few years, the expected draw downs will not give municipal or any other defined benefit pension funds time to recover. 

These problems are more likely to occur in municipal pensions as private sector and union pensions are under much tougher regulation.  It is harder for a non-municipal pension to have the magnitude of shortfalls found in the city of Pittsburgh pension obligations (from Chris Briem in August 2008)

News is that the total city pension fund is now at $330 million, down a remarkable $55 million over just 6 months earlier in the year. At that rate the fund is going down $110 million/year which sounds awful and will not last long. Because of the timing of city and state payments, the current annualized burn rate comes to be more like minus $55mil/year. At that rate we are now exactly 6 years from a zero fund balance in the fund. Hopefully the market does not sustain its downward trend and the city will certainly be forced to increase contributions...

Some may recall my most recent pension manifesto. The punch line was that pension liability in itself for the city of Pittsburgh has for the first time reached over a $Billion. I am told that the city disputes this a bit and that the total pension liability is only $899 million which is what you see reported.

So muncipal budgets that are stretched by decreased tax revenue, increased social service and relief demands will also be whacked by higher pension obligations and higher debt service costs.  Cramming down municipal workers is the classic solution that the airline, steel, auto and many other industries have used, but municipal workers are much better organized and have a more concentrated target to exercise political power for and against officials who will go after their pensions.  This will be a political-economic stalemate for many government units. 

Afghanistan government in peace talks with Taliban

by Jay McDonough

The other day I posted an update on the war in Afghanistan, now being characterized as "grim" by an unreleased National Intelligence Estimate.  Included in the post were comments by NATO commander, Gen. David McKiernan, suggesting a longer term solution may lie with some reconcilliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

General David McKiernan said reconciliation efforts should be led by the Afghan Government, but the military would support it. Asked if dealing with the man who harboured al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was beyond the pale, he said: "I think that's a political decision."

"Ultimately, the solution in Afghanistan is going to be a political solution not a military solution," he said. "We're not going to run out of bad guys there."

New information suggests those moves are already occurring.  A recent NY Times article outlined Afghanistan President Karzai's call for the Saudis to become involved in peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.   Yesterday, there were reports that contact has occurred.

A former Taliban ambassador said Monday that the hard-line militants sat with Afghan officials and Saudi King Abdullah over an important religious meal in Saudi Arabia late last month as the insurgency raged back home.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, denied that the get-together could be construed as peace talks. But President Hamid Karzai has long called for negotiations with the Taliban, and the meeting could spur future initiatives.

It's also being reported today that former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif is offering to broker talks, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia, between the Taliban and the Karzai government. 

Presumably, any peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, in order to be sanctioned by the U.S., must include a Taliban rebuke of al Qaeda.  CNN reported yesterday that too might be imminent..

According to the source, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar -- high on the U.S. military's most-wanted list -- was not present, but his representatives were keen to stress the reclusive cleric is no longer allied to al Qaeda.

Details of the Taliban leader's split with al Qaeda have never been made public before, but the new claims confirm what another source with an intimate knowledge of the militia and Mullah Omar has told CNN in the past.

The conflict in Afghanistan appears to be changing form rapidly and may indicate some new pragmatism on the U.S. government's part.

You Can't Handle the Truth!

By Cernig

The truth is that taxes will have to rise and American foreign policy adventures abroad will have to be severely curtailled. But, so far at least, neither the current administration nor the two Presidential candidates feel you're able to handle being told that. (Or, to be precise, they don't think you'd vote for them if they told you the truth.) That might change in tonight's debate but somehow I doubt it.

In the latest Newsweek magazine the apostate neocon theorist Francis Fukayama writes in an essay dramatically entitled "The fall Of America Inc.":

Ideas are one of our most important exports, and two fundamentally American ideas have dominated global thinking since the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was elected president. The first was a certain vision of capitalism—one that argued low taxes, light regulation and a pared-back government would be the engine for economic growth. Reaganism reversed a century-long trend toward ever-larger government. Deregulation became the order of the day not just in the United States but around the world.

The second big idea was America as a promoter of liberal democracy around the world, which was seen as the best path to a more prosperous and open international order. America's power and influence rested not just on our tanks and dollars, but on the fact that most people found the American form of self-government attractive and wanted to reshape their societies along the same lines—what political scientist Joseph Nye has labeled our "soft power."

It's hard to fathom just how badly these signature features of the American brand have been discredited.

Fukayama points to the twin failures of American hard power to bring rose-colored liberation to the Middle East and to the American ideal of the de-regulated, rapaciously free market to bring showers of sweet-smelling dollars to all as the reasons for that discrediting.

Between 2002 and 2007, while the world was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, it was easy to ignore those European socialists and Latin American populists who denounced the U.S. economic model as "cowboy capitalism." But now the engine of that growth, the American economy, has gone off the rails and threatens to drag the rest of the world down with it. Worse, the culprit is the American model itself: under the mantra of less government, Washington failed to adequately regulate the financial sector and allowed it to do tremendous harm to the rest of the society.

Democracy was tarnished even earlier. Once Saddam was proved not to have WMD, the Bush administration sought to justify the Iraq War by linking it to a broader "freedom agenda"; suddenly the promotion of democracy was a chief weapon in the war against terrorism. To many people around the world, America's rhetoric about democracy sounds a lot like an excuse for furthering U.S. hegemony.

...The problem now is that by using democracy to justify the Iraq War, the Bush administration suggested to many that "democracy" was a code word for military intervention and regime change. (The chaos that ensued in Iraq didn't exactly help democracy's image either.) The Middle East in particular is a minefield for any U.S. administration, since America supports nondemocratic allies like the Saudis, and refuses to work with groups like Hamas and Hizbullah that came to power through elections. We don't have much credibility when we champion a "freedom agenda."

The American model has also been seriously tarnished by the Bush administration's use of torture. After 9/11 Americans proved distressingly ready to give up constitutional protections for the sake of security. Guantánamo Bay and the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib have since replaced the Statue of Liberty as symbols of America in the eyes of many non-Americans.

No matter who wins the presidency a month from now, the shift into a new cycle of American and world politics will have begun.

Fukuyama, the professor of International Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, goes on to look at ways to rescue the mess that's been made, a mess that signals for him an end to the "Reagan Era" of deregulation and foreign interventionism. The remedies include rebuilding the public sectors ability to create jobs (while watching for overcompensation), regulation of finance in full knowledge of how this industry differs from real industries that make real products, and a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine as well as it's attendant hypocrisies about civil rights, torture, democracy and aggressive despots. In other words, although he doesn't say so, a vote against John McCain.

Even so, it's going to take decades for the U.S. to recover and it will never be quite the same again. Fukuyama agrees that the forseeable world is a multipolar one - the neocon dream of American perpetual hegemony is as dead as the dinosaurs.

My colleague Fester said much the same thing in a recent post - far shorter and more succinct than Fukuyama's essay but then again he's never been a neocon Godfather and so doesn't have to carefully construct a "get out of Hell free" card as he writes.

We are entering a world where we are not the center of it any more. There are other actors with agency and leading roles in that world. This adjustment will be easier if we as a society and, more importantly, if the political leadership recognizes that times have changed and the fantasy that has dominated our discourse that we can act with only minimal constraints (internal or external) has ended so that the core debate is on the means instead of ends of policies.

We’re not ready for that conversation despite it rapidly approaching us as the numbers won’t add up without significant foreign financing with strings attached to it. And this will be the core foreign policy problem that neither campaign is willing or able to address.  The American freedom to maneuver, to create coalitions through various forms of power, incentives, threats, and appeals, has been and will continue to be curtailed.  We will not see the US Navy laid up at its docks like the Soviet Red Banner Fleet was in 1991, but our ability to support current trends in foreign policy will be sharply curtailed by our economic crisis.

The US is, as Fester puts it "broke and overpromised". Someone has to pay for the $700 billion bailout, the deficit spending on Iraq and Afghanistan that eats up a similiar amount and the untold billions still to come in navigating a financial crisis in which no-one yet can see the bottom. Some will come from foreign financing "with strings" and that will curtail America's foreign policy options. The rest will come from taxes and spending cuts - and the current levels of both are nowhere near enough to keep America Inc. out of the red. Taxes will rise and spending will drop. There's no other way except bankruptcy.

Here's how your taxes got spent last year:

The simple truth is that the Pentagon's budget is equivalent to a Paulson a year, and as much as the whole of the rest of the world spends on defense. Surely it's about time someone asked if America couldn't get by on a defense budget, say, equivalent to its three largest rivals. Those are France, the UK and Japan - what you expected China, Iran and Russia?

Cutting the defense budget to even this high level - where the US outspends its main rivals by three to one - would bring it down to around $300 billion a year. That's $400 billion a year you and your grandchildren don't have to find to claw America Inc. back into the black.

But as both Fukuyama and Fester agree, the US will have to get used to a draw, instead of the win it has awarded itself until now, in the war of ideas. Both spreading democracy at gunpoint and financial laissez fair have proven as untenable as fully controlled communist-style economies and the spread of communism at gunpoint. Along the way they've tarnished America and with it the best idea America had to offer - free opportunity within a framework of social co-operation and negotiation. Somewhere in the middle appears to lie a stable path and that path doesn't include a US that bestrides the world like a colossus. You might not like that, or you might. It makes no difference whether or not you can handle the truth.

(More on the same theme from Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings and from Martin at Boztopia.)

John McCain's Purity Of Essence (Updated)

By Cernig

During the last presidential debate, John McCain repeated his remark that he had looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and seen, not his soul, but three letters - K.G.B. He didn't say what he'd seen in President Medvedev's eyes, if anything.

It was a remarkably tone deaf thing to say for a prospective world leader about the Prime Minister of a nation he would need the goodwill of on containment of loose nuclear materials or on supply lines to Afghanistan and would likley want the co-operation of on energy policy and on responses to Iran, the financial crisis and a host of other issues. But it was of a piece with McCain's harsh rhetoric on Russia - saying he wanted to kick it out of the G8 and sideline it in international forums even before its conflict with Georgia, started when his chum Saakashvili bombed his own regional capital in South Ossetia, brought out talk of a resurgent Imperialism and US-armed "porcupine" states in Eastern Europe.

Now, though, we're beginning to see why McCain hates Russia so - even above the antipathy his neocon Wormtongue advisers have for anyone even remotely able to challenge their dreams of perpetual American hegemony.

McCain hates Russia because he's virulently anti-communist to the point where he cannot let go of the idea that Russia and the old USSR are identical and willingly associates with the worst kind of right-wing "purity of bodily fluids" nutcases, who have funded death camps and illegal deals in a decades long conflict of "you are what you hate". Step forward the U.S. Council for World Freedom.

...during the 1980s, Sen. John McCain served on the board of a far-right conservative organization that had supplied arms and funds to paramilitary organizations in Latin America.

Democratic strategist Paul Begala lit the fire when, during an appearance on Meet the Press, he warned that this relatively obscure detail from McCain's past could draw him into a guilt-by-association game he was bound to regret.

"John McCain sat on the board of...the U.S. Council for World Freedom," said Begala, "The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League - the parent organization - which ADL said 'has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.'"

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was a key player in the Iran-Contra affair too, the public cover for Ollie North's activities. It's parent organistation, the World Anti-Communist League,began as the Asian People's AntiCommunist League formed by followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church. One was a war criminal, another a plain criminal.

The head of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, has a long history of involvement in "anti-communist: covert operations.

Singlaub was an officer in the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) during World War II. He served on the China desk of the CIA in 1948 and 1949 and became deputy chief of the CIA in Seoul during the Korean War. (30) He served for two years in Vietnam during the 1960s. There he was commander of the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force (MACVSOG), the outfit that ran Operation Phoenix, infamous for its assassinations and counterterror tactics, and responsible for the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. Singlaub denies participation in Operation Phoenix. (11) As chief of staff of the United Nations Command in South Korea in 1978, he publicly condemned the decision of President Jimmy Carter to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Korea. He was then forced to retire. (11) Singlaub served as honorary chairman of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign in Colorado. (30) In 1984, Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle appointed Singlaub to head a committee studying U.S. responses to the insurgency in El Salvador. (28) When questioned on the CBS Television show "60 Minutes" about his connections with contra funding Singlaub was asked by Mike Wallace,"Let me put a thesis to you, General Singlaub. Private citizen Jack Singlaub has become Ronald Reagan's secret weapon to sidestep a Congress that will not permit him to act in the areas where he believes that our security interests are at stake. True?" Singlaub's response: "True."(52)

McCain, whose name was once on the group's letterhead, says he resigned from the U.S. Council for World Freedom in 1984. Singlaub says he knows nothing about any resignation. If McCain in fact did quit the group, he was even so still turning up for meetings according to an AP-syndicated article from 1985 found by Juan Cole back in February.

"Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Tex., presented the 'Freedom Fighter of the Year' award to Afghan resistance leader Wali Khan on behalf of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on Oct. 3. … The U.S. Council for World Freedom, a Phoenix-based conservative political organization headed by Gen. John Singlaub, has lobbied hard for an increase in aid to the struggle against the Soviet controlled regime in Kabul. … Other congressmen who joined Loeffler included Rep. Eldon Rudd and Rep. John McCain, both Arizona Republicans." [States News Service, 10/15/85]

But whether or not he did resign, the fact that John McCain was ever a fellow traveller with anti-semites, Nazis and organisers of death squads - and his apparent inability to realise that Russia isn't the USSR - should worry the hell out of voters. How on earth is he supposed to be a frontman for U.S. diplomacy while carrying that baggage...and what might be the fallout of letting him try?

Update: Woah - from Matt Yglesias' comments and very interesting if true (h/t Kat) :

John Singlaub, whose headquarters for the U.S. Council for World Freedom and the World Anti-Communist League was in Scottsdale, Arizona, next door to Charles Keating’s company, American Continental.

As in, right next door? Curiouser and curiouser.

Update 2: Even the UK's rightwing Telegraph can't resist piling on (h/t Kat, again).

Shortly before Mr McCain takes to the stage in Nashville for the second of three presidential debates with Senator Barack Obama, Democratic activists took their revenge for his decision at the weekend to let his supporters turn the Republican campaign “nuclear” with repeated negative attacks on his rival including calling Mr Obama a liar.

Democratic bloggers and party loyalists publicised a series of skeletons from Mr McCain’s early political career.

They include his friendship with Gordon Liddy, the former White House operative who spent four and a half years in jail for planning the break-in at the Watergate building [and planning murders of reporters and liberal activists - C]. Appearing on Mr Liddy’s popular radio show last year, Mr McCain said his host showed “adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great” and said he was “proud” of Mr Liddy and his family.

The senator most recently appeared on the show in May

And, just in case you didn't believe me about the Rev. Moons close association with and funding for the U.S. Council for World Freedom and the World Anti-Communist League, he boasts about it on his own website - along with how he uses the Washinton Times and UPI Wire Service to push those group's agendas.

So maybe we've now got an explanation as to exactly why Charlie Black and John McCain are so friendly. Remember Black?

...none other than uber-lobbyist Charlie Black -- not just McCain's "chief political adviser" but a right-hand man for the Bush clan as well -- played a role in making that coronation happen.

According to Gorenfeld, Black admitted to helping invite people to attend the coronation. And he's listed as a sponsor in the coronation's printed program.

You recall what happened at that event: A number of congressional figures, including at least one Democrat, Danny Davis of Illinois, participated in a ceremony in which Moon was crowned "King of America" and his place as the new Messiah rather officiously confirmed. The ceremony declared "the era of the Eternal Peace Kingdom, one global family under God." Immediately afterward, Moon confirmed to the participants that he was consulting with great leaders of the past in the spirit world: "The five great saints [Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammad, and Shankara] and many other leaders of the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murder on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons."

Black wasn't the only politico there, although McCain wasn't listed as an attendee. But I've got to ask, under the circumstances. Is McCain a secret Moonie or just a fellow fascist traveller?

The real John McCain

By Ron Beasley

With his new campaign strategy of avoiding the issues John McCain runs the risk of not only alienating independents but thoughtful Republicans as well.  James Fallows:

In these circumstances, and with a presidential election four weeks away, is it conceivable that candidates will waste time arguing whether one of them has been in the same room with a guy who had been a violent extremist at a time before most of today's U.S. citizens were even born? (William Ayres was a Weatherman in the late 1960s. Today's median-aged American was born around 1972.) Of course, it's not only conceivable: it's the Republican plan for this final push -- "turning the page" on economic concerns and getting to these "character" and "association" questions about Barack Obama.

Grow up. If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era -- fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style.  A great country acts great when it matters.  This is a time when it matters -- for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters.

Sorry Jim, now you see the real John McCain.

Hot Money and State Instability

By Fester:

The global credit markets are creaking to halt even while the price of oil exports have decreased to under $90/barrel on the spot market.  The industrial world's economies are slowing down and a big wave of unemployment and underemployment is in the pipeline.  This spells trouble for weaker nation states in the developing world, especially Mexico.

The Mexican state is currently fighting multiple narco-smuggling insurgencies that are seeking to hollow out the Mexican state and render it ineffective and incapable of crimping their business activities.  The Mexican state relies on significant revenues from a declining oil export sector, low and medium value add manufacturing that is targeted at the US market, and significant remittance flow from immigrants (legal and illegal) who are working in the United States but sending money back to Mexico.

These three flows are at risk for significant short term decline.  Manufacturing exports and immigrant remittances are highly correlated with the US economy.  The US economy is slowing.  Oil prices are falling so both price charged and quantity of oil exported are decreasing right now.  The Mexican state will see a significant contraction in its capacity and would have seen that in normal times.  However these are not normal times, so temporary measures and palliatives may not be available. 

The Republicans' 2010 Fantasy

By Fester: 

2006 was supposed to be a tough Democratic year in the Senate for a very basic reason --- they were defending more seats than Republicans. Even a 'good year' was supposed to run into a wall of practicality -- not enough truly vulnerable GOP seats to take-over for a slim majority.

Enter Macaca, a Republican fixation on trying to win expensive races in New Jersey, a couple of corruption charges/scandals, a bathroom stall, and the evils of man on dog sex, and Democrats won a stunning six seats on a structurally imbalanced field. Oh yeah --- the Republican brand and policies were in the tank due to a lackluster economy, a drowned city, attempts to throw to the market Social Security (glad we won that fight!), and a strategically pointless war in Iraq.  Democrats won on  their own strengths (finally pushing a broad front fight with decent candidates) and on Republican macro and micro-weaknesses.

 

Evidently the GOP is projecting the same situation will occur for them in 2010 but in reverse as the Politico lists their hopes for the next Senate cycle:

“2010 looks pretty good for us to pick up three or four or five seats pretty easily,” the McCain official said.

 

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

By BJ

Not satisfied with Silly Season, it appears the last month of the campaign is going to be Nasty Season. While it is unfortunate to see that the campaign for President has come to this, I’m also forced to agree that Obama is handling the McCain campaign’s easily foreseeable assault in the right way.

McCain, by his campaign’s own admission, is desperately trying to “turn the page” on the campaign focus from the economy to Obama’s character and to raise as many questions about that character and his past associations as they can.

Now, it doesn’t matter that they’re so bankrupt for ideas that they’re recycling already debunked attacks, or that most of what they’ll fire Obama’s way are groundless or made up, and it doesn’t matter how well the Obama campaign responds and further debunks the attacks. All people would see from the media is:

(Strong) McCain on the attack. (Weak) Obama on the defensive.

McCain's goal was to take the initiative in the campaign and force Obama into a defensive crouch responding to his attacks. Instead, the Obama camp is launching what appears to be a long-planned counter-attack.

The message is plain. If you want to attack us on our past associations, we’ll attack right back with your past actions, and our attacks are going to be all the more powerful because they are about you and your actions and not just what somebody you knew did back when you were a child. All the better that Obama's attack also ties in well with the economic mess the McCain camp is so desperate to get off the front page.

Now instead of merely sharpening their attacks on Obama, McCain and Palin are going to have to defend against Obama’s counterattacks, and we already know how little McCain likes to deal with more than one issue at a time. As an added bonus, this can’t be doing McCain’s already angry and annoyed temperament any good.

And now the media narrative is at worst a tale of dueling assaults rather than a one-sided beat-down.

I've always thought Obama was at his best as a counterpuncher, and one of the main goals of the counterpunch is to make your opponent think about running into a sharp counter whenever they unload their own punches, resulting in their becoming more hesitant to unleash attacks. If your opponent is undisciplined, such counters can also provoke them into doing something rash. We'll see over the next few days if McCain is feeling the sting and how he deals with it.

Is It Over?

By Ron Beasley

Over at The Moderate Voice my friend Jazz asks Is Election 2008 Over?  Jazz doesn't think so:

But it is also worth remembering that John McCain was up in the polls only a couple of weeks ago. American politics can and does turn on a dime and few are prescient enough to predict when and where those coins will fall. There is still nearly a month to go, and in political time that may as well be a century. Swings states tend to swing, and, like any good pendulum, what goes one way should not surprise any of us if it turns around and heads back in the other direction. While the Obama inaugural celebrations are being planned, I would remind his supporters about the rule regarding counting chickens before beaks are visible. Congratulations to you if you prevail, but you’ll excuse me if I don’t order my inaugural ball tickets just yet.

Now to give Jazz a break some new polls have come out showing Obama up in Virginia by 10% or more and the McCain campaign wrote off Florida when it announced it would cut medicare.  Most of the daily tracking polls show Obama with 50 percent or more and an eight to ten point lead.  For the first time Pollester.com shows Obama over the magic 270 EVs needed to win and Steve Lombardo points out that the issue is the economy and there's not going to be any improvement in the next four weeks.

We believe that when the history of this election is written, September 15th will be seen as the day Obama won (or perhaps the day McCain lost the election). The previous Friday morning it was announced that Lehman was filing for bankruptcy. As the markets prepared to open it looked like we were headed for a downturn. In an apparent effort to bring some stability to the markets, at approximately 9:00 in the morning - during a stump speech in Jacksonville - McCain said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." That marked the beginning of the end for his campaign. By 2:00 p.m., at his next stop in Orlando, he was backtracking, saying, "The economic crisis is not the fault of the American people. Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest-working, the best-skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world, that's the American worker. My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals, the American worker and their innovation, their entrepreneurship, the small business, those are the fundamentals of America and I think they're strong." The stock market dropped 505 points that day.

And about the character assassination:

The window for challenging Obama's character may have closed. Media reports indicate that Team McCain is going to take the gloves off (they have begun by launching attacks on Obama's connection with Bill Ayers). However, it is our sense that this should have been done in August and September, and that at this point it will likely fall on deaf ears. We are not saying that this is not a solid campaign tactic, but in light of the serious (and potentially catastrophic) issues facing the country it seems off-key at best. At worst it seems desperate. Voter opinions of Obama started to shift and harden (in his favor) after that first debate. He became substantially more acceptable. Since that time, the economic situation has made Obama a more acceptable alternative. Character attacks are part of politics and often work, but not when the country is at war and mired in an economic recession.

If it's not over already it could be after the debate tomorrow night.  McCain needs an exceptional night and he needs for Obama to have a really bad one.  Neither of those are likely.  Unless the debate is a real game changer in McCain's favor expect the Republican Party to cut the McCain campaign lose and spend what money the party has trying to save some Senators.

The problem with power is governing

By Fester:

I'm building off of what BJ wrote this afternoon concerning McCain's plan to cut Medicaid/Medicare:

You almost have to wonder if McCain is just giving up at this point.  As Josh Marshal notes, this announcement isn't going to help McCain make up lost ground in Florida.

John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.

This is the campaign equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

It is a double barrel shotgun to the foot.  Just on the back of my envelope right now, Republicans currently control the White House, and controlled the House for 12 of the past 14 years, and the Senate for 11 of the past 14 years.  They've been in power and responsible for a while. 

The cuts being proposed are roughly $130 billion dollars per year, probably smaller in the first years, and magically large in the out years.  At the New Republic, the savings are supposed to come from 'waste, fraud, abuse' and cash flow/billing changes.  No services would be reduced according to the McCain campaign. 

So the McCain campaign is basically saying that currently Medicare is wasting 20% of its annual budget on waste/fraud or dumb business practices. 

This is an own goal for the GOP -- the program is inefficient because we're inefficient and don't give a flying spaghetti monster damn about doing anything different. 

Constraints and foreign policy

By Fester:

We're broke, and we are overpromised. 

Fabius Maximus is attempting to start a discussion on defense/security policy in a world where the United States actually faces a significant budget constraint.

The most exceptional aspect of American political behavior is the belief that we need not count the costs of national greatness.... In most of these money is no object in the pursuit of security (or other goals, often quite chimerical). That is an exceptional way of thinking.... That era will close soon, and the United States will return to earth. Like everyone else, we will have to consider what foreign adventures we can afford before starting them — weighing their costs and benefits — and stop wars whose costs spiral out of control.

Neither party is particularly prepared for that conversation. The Republicans have never seen an unconditional defense appropriation that they won't pass. Democrats are only willing to tinker around the margins of defense policy for fear of being seen as weak. Remember our national 'leadership' in the Fall of 2002, or the fights for more MRAPS and body armor.

There were very few questions about the core premise of the invasion and occupation of Iraq at the leadership level, and besides Obama's legitimate judgment argument, there is little core disagreement about the vitality of all other countries bending to our will. The same has been seen in the debate on Iran, Pakistan (the difference is whether we are overt or covert) and who is the better ‘friend’ of Israel when that is such an interestingly massive and understated complex situation papered over with a few platitudes.

We are entering a world where we are not the center of it any more. There are other actors with agency and leading roles in that world. This adjustment will be easier if we as a society and, more importantly, if the political leadership recognizes that times have changed and the fantasy that has dominated our discourse that we can act with only minimal constraints (internal or external) has ended so that the core debate is on the means instead of ends of policies.

We’re not ready for that conversation despite it rapidly approaching us as the numbers won’t add up without significant foreign financing with strings attached to it. And this will be the core foreign policy problem that neither campaign is willing or able to address.  The American freedom to maneuver, to create coalitions through various forms of power, incentives, threats, and appeals, has been and will continue to be curtailed.  We will not see the US Navy laid up at its docks like the Soviet Red Banner Fleet was in 1991, but our ability to support current trends in foreign policy will be sharply curtailed by our economic crisis.

Pakistan Faces Bankruptcy, Wants $100bn Handout

By Cernig

The UK's Daily Telegraph reports that Pakistan may be the first nation to go bankrupt as a result of the continuing global financial meltdown.

Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food.

Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers.

The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy.

Given the country's standing as a frontline state in the US-led "war on terrorism", the economic crisis has profound consequences. Pakistan already faces worsening security as the army clashes with militants in the lawless Tribal Areas on the north-west frontier with Afghanistan.

... Mr Zardari told the Wall Street Journal that Pakistan needed a bail out worth $100 billion from the international community.

"If I can't pay my own oil bill, how am I going to increase my police?" he asked. "The oil companies are asking me to pay $135 [per barrel] of oil and at the same time they want me to keep the world peaceful and Pakistan peaceful."

The ratings agency Standard and Poor's has given Pakistan's sovereign debt a grade of CCC +, which stands only a few notches above the default level.

The economic crisis might yet end Pakistan's newly elected government, which is facing a crisis of confidence already as it battles 25% inflation, a drowning currency and a President with a reputation as "Mr 10%" for past corruption. It's also unclear that even a $100 billion bailout would be enough to stave off Pakistan's money woes, since the security situation is itself feeding the economic crisis there - investors don't want to know about a nation so obviously on the verge of failure.

Nor is it certain that even the US and Western allies will care to throw such a large sum of money into Pakistan. Sure, they could probably secure protestations of working harder to enact economic reforms after the mismanagement of the Musharraf years and to more strongly pursue the War on Terror, but what would those promises be worth? The question "whose side is Pakistan on?" is being asked in NATO circles nowadays, and more are coming to the conclusion that the Pakistani feudal elite are content to play the West for all it is worth while caring precious little for their own people's fate. Then again, Pakistan has nukes and the prospect of a truly failed state there is a terrible one to contemplate.

As usual with that nation, the situation is a Gordian Knot created by decades (dating back at least to Reagan and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan) of local and Western leaders ignoring very real problems. It's a knot with no easy, or short-term, solution. It will take decades of strategic containment, careful stick and carrots, law enforcement outwith Pakistan to catch the terrorists it gives safe haven to and some simple truth-telling to roll all that back. There are no fixes with a timeline of less than decades.

And, as John Robb at Global Guerrillas writes, don't expect Pakistan to be the last nation to find itself on the financial brink.

The global financial system is much LARGER, FASTER, and COMPLEX than the nation-states that are trying to bail them out. As a result, nation-state intervention won't return things to the status quo. What it will do, however, is tightly couple western nation-states to the now inevitable failure in the financial system (this is akin to lashing a dingy to the Titanic to prevent it from sinking). The rampant proliferation of bankrupt and hollow states is now likely inevitable.

If you've a good idea on where to go from here, you're doing one better than national leaders across the globe.

Russia Begins Pullback From Georgia Buffer Zone

By Cernig

On time, the Russian military has begun dismantling its presence in a buffer zone between Georgia proper and the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It's a bit of a blow to the neo-narrative.

Moscow faces a Friday deadline for pulling back its troops under the terms of a deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union. Hundreds of EU observers began monitoring Russia's compliance last week.

A pullback would likely mean at least a mild reduction of tensions between Russia and the West following their worst confrontation since the Soviet collapse. But substantial points of dispute remain.

Russia was dismantling positions Sunday inside what it calls security zones, extending roughly four miles inside uncontested Georgian territory.

But Moscow vows to keep thousands of its troops stationed in two separatist Georgian regions that it recognizes as independent countries — South Ossetia and Abkhazia — which appears to stretch the terms of the cease-fire and which the Georgian government denounces.

Really, did anyone seriously expect Russia to do anything else, or Georgia to do less than denounce its continued presence in those regions? Western rhetoric on this entirely subjective "stretching" of the ceasefire is simple posturing too. If the situation was reversed, the US or any Western power would of course stay to protect people who look to it for safety against their own titular national government...who launched a surprise bombing attack on their own regional capital.

But at least the Europeans got off their asses and brokered the current ceasefire deal, while the Bush administration was still heckling from the bleachers and John McCain was running his neocon mouth about a new Russian Empire being born in Georgia. Meh, not so much. No Russian expansion, but certainly a multi-polar world where no-one can be bothered waiting to see if, by some miracle, an American Republican administration will do other than throw a rhetorical warhammer in diplomacy's works. It's what they always do, and it has become ignorably old.

McCain to cut Medicare and Medicaid

By BJ

You almost have to wonder if McCain is just giving up at this point. As Josh Marshal notes, this announcement isn't going to help McCain make up lost ground in Florida.

John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.

The Republican presidential nominee has said little about the proposed cuts, but they are needed to keep his health-care plan "budget neutral," as he has promised. The McCain campaign hasn't given a specific figure for the cuts, but didn't dispute the analysts' estimate.

In the months since Sen. McCain introduced his health plan, statements made by his campaign have implied that the new tax credits he is proposing to help Americans buy health insurance would be paid for with other tax increases.

But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.

Of course, you should expect that McCain would look to gut any semblance of government-run healthcare programs in the US, but Americans aren't quite as afraid of getting the kind of government-sponsored, guaranteed health care that John McCain has enjoyed his entire life. This is the campaign equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

New President, New Foreign Policy

By Cernig

Investigative journalist Gareth Porter, a smart guy and a friend of mine, gave an interview to "The Real News" on Sunday on the topic of foreign policy directions under a McCain or Obama presidency. Gareth's opinion is that, contra McKinney and Nader, there is a qualitative difference between McCain, a died-in-the-wool neoconservative, and Obama's more pragmatic approach to American superpowerdom - but that even Obama wouldn't make a clear break with the past 50 years of American power projection, instead repurposing it away from the Bush Years with less violently militaristic expressions. So that although both would to a continuation of one or other of the Bush terms, just as Bush followed the last 50 years, McCain would hyper-extend the first term's Cheney-esque bellicosity while Obama would emphasise and amplify the pragmatic policies of the likes of SecDef Bob Gates.

One of the major points Gareth makes in his interview is that, from everything McCain has said about Iraq during his campaign, it isn't impossible to believe McCain would keep the occupation of Iraq going even over the wishes of the Iraqi people and government, perhaps even arranging a coup to unseat Prime Minister Maliki. I think it would certainly be interesting to see how he would respond if asked about this outright by the establishment press.

Obama however, while he'd be likely to hurry withdrawal even beyond the Maliki-approved timetable if he thought it could be done, is just as inextricably committed to staying in Afghanistan and to using military force as the main effort there as McCain is - perhaps even more so when you consider what he has said about the Pakistan border area. McCain, as a paid up neocon, would doubtless be saying "faster please" on war with Iran, which Obama seems to realize would be a disaster.

Obama/McCain. How ugly will it get?

by Jay McDonough

 

The last gasp McCain offensive began over the weekend.  Unable to shift the focus from the economy (and good luck with that now - the Dow is below 10,000 as I write this), the McCain campaign made it clear it will work until election day portraying Barack Obama has dangerous, not like "us" and not to be trusted.  Sarah Palin began the offensive this weekend with her accusations Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists".  Bill Kristol, influential conservative columnist, is on record as recommending throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama.  An "anything goes" campaign.

It looks like the Obama camp is gearing up to go tit for tat with the McCain campaign, releasing a teaser ad highlighting John McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal.

    

A longer version of the ad will reportedly be released later today.  Ben Smith at Politico argues the Keating Five story will have more impact on the McCain campaign than the Ayers/Rezko/Wright and Obama associations.

A couple of quick thoughts on Keating and Ayers. First, Obama's campaign has been notably disciplined in not talking about Keating, so this rollout will perhaps have a bit more pop in the media than the Ayers story, which McCain started talking about a while ago, and which was raked over pretty thoroughly in the primary.

Second, Keating is a story both more and less damaging for McCain than the Ayers story for Obama.

More damaging because the story of McCain and Keating is not guilt by association; it's guilt by guilt. McCain's problem isn't that he knew Keating in activities unconnected to his wrongdoing; it's that Keating, in the course of his wrondoing, gave McCain money and tried, with a bit of success, to use him to influence regulators. It's also part of the case Obama's making that McCain has opposed necessarily financial regulations.

It was wishful thinking on McCain's part that the campaign could shift the emphasis from the economy, and watching the market this morning leaves no doubt that just isn't going to happen.  The attempts to portray Obama guilty by association seem superfluous and more evidence John McCain is out of touch with everday American's lives.  The Keating Five attack, however, directly ties John McCain to the current economic meltdown; a long held disdain for regulation, an elitist disregard for the rules of the game, and a long membership in the "good ole boys" club.

15,000 Years Of Rock Art

By Cernig

This is just way cool.

Arnhem Land, jutting into the Arafura Sea at the top of Australia, has always been a special place for Aboriginal people. Just how special has been reinforced by the discovery of an extraordinary collection of rock art recording life in the area for the past 15,000 years, up until 50 years ago.

Alongside ancient paintings of thylacines, a mammal long extinct on the mainland, are images documenting modern-day inventions – a car, a bicycle wheel, a biplane and a rifle – as well as portraits of a missionary and a sea captain. Scientists documenting the rock art, spread across at least 100 sites in the remote Wellington Range, say it ranks among the world's finest.

It also appears to rewrite Australian history, undermining the widely held assumption that the continent was isolated and largely unvisited until the First Fleet arrived in 1788. The paintings suggest that, on the contrary, the people of northern Australia have been interacting with seafaring visitors from Asia and Europe for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.

Fifteen thousand years of continuous historical recording in graphics rather than words. It's got the "recorded history" of the West beat hollow. And another bit of the narrative of world history, based around a Judeo-Christian exceptionalism and really only interested in calling the direct antecedents of that tradition "early civilization", bites the dust.

Climate News

By BJ

A couple of important stories from the last couple of weeks regarding the deteriorating state of our climate. The first notes that carbon dioxide output is at record levels.

The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.

The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That's an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, they put the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

The quote at the very bottom is the most telling.

If this trend continues for the century, "you'd have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic," said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider.

Given our track record so far, I'd bet on the catastrophic, and part of the reason for that is contained in the second story. Because while carbon dioxide is the gas we've been trained to look at when discussing Climate Change, it is far from the only greenhouse gas, and one of the bigger menaces resulting from a warming Arctic is now clearly raising its head.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

. . .

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

. . .

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

But remember, to actually do anything to mitigate or adapt to these kinds of changes might be harmful to our economy, (what's left of it).

We are so screwed.

Afghanistan Updates

By Fester:

2 quick excerpts before I have to head to work:

From CNN, some hopeful news on Afghanistan:

Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with the Afghan government to end the country's bloody conflict -- and are severing their ties with al Qaeda, sources close to the historic discussions have told CNN...

According to the source, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar -- high on the U.S. military's most-wanted list -- was not present, but his representatives were keen to stress the reclusive cleric is no longer allied to al Qaeda.

Details of the Taliban leader's split with al Qaeda have never been made public before, but the new claims confirm what another source with an intimate knowledge of the militia and Mullah Omar has told CNN in the past.

So there is a possibility that Al-Quaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan is losing its allies like AQI did --- for being disrespectful douchebags.  It seems that AQ is capable of providing resources, money, technical expertise and organization but it has not and can not transition itself to be able to integrate and adapt to its local cultural mileau.  In business terms, it is a radicalism incubator and not an expansion/accelerator agent. 

And now some bad news from the London Times:

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, whose troops have suffered severe casualties after six months of tough fighting, will hand over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines this month.

He told The Times that in his opinion, a military victory over the Taleban was “neither feasible nor supportable”.

“What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government,” he said...

Brigadier Carleton-Smith admitted that it had been “a turbulent summer” but he said that the Taleban were “riven with deep fissures and fractures”.

He added: “However, the Taleban, tactically, is reasonably resilient, certainly quite dangerous and seems relatively impervious to losses. Its potency is as a force for influence.”

He indicated that the only way forward was to find a political solution that would include the Taleban. The Government of President Karzai has launched a reconciliation programme, although the hard core of Taleban commanders is thought to be implacably opposed to any compromise. Efforts are being focused on the so-called “tier-two” and “tier-three” Taleban, who are perceived to be less ideologically intransigent.

Buying out the less hardcore and respecting Pashtun nationalism/tribalism and core vital interests would probably be the way forward there.  Here, the lessons from the Anbar Awakening could be used --- respect the exisisting leadership, meet their needs and turn them against the hardcore could work.  The problem is the same, it destroys any central state legitimacy, but as a tactical/operational move, it is not a bad one. 

 

Poison Pill - Continued

By BJ

To build a bit on Ron's post below, one of the reasons the executives say they are having second thoughts about the bailout is because they believe the market is bottoming out. Right now, I'd lay the odds of the market having hit bottom already as next to non-existant. As this story in the LA Times notes, the bad news is probably only beginning.

Even if the financial bailout plan begins to work, the nation will be lucky if all it experiences is a bad slowdown. The alternative, economists say, is something much worse -- a contraction that might go on for years.

The latest sign of trouble came Friday when the government reported that American employers sliced September payrolls by 159,000 jobs, the ninth straight month of losses and one that puts the country on track to shed a million jobs this year.

But jobs are only part of the trouble; almost every major player in the economy -- which had been growing until recently, if only slowly -- is now beating a hasty retreat:

* Consumers, who account for more than two-thirds of the nation's total economic activity and who boosted their spending earlier in the year thanks in part to more than $100 billion in government stimulus checks, have reversed course and begun cutting expenditures. Real consumption, after adjustment for inflation, slipped two-tenths of a point in June, a half-point in July and flat-lined in August, the latest month for which numbers are available, according to the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

* Manufacturers, many of whom had managed to profit because the weak U.S. dollar helped boost exports, have seen their business begin to dry up in recent months. New factory orders unexpectedly dropped 4% in August, the Commerce Department said Friday, the biggest decline in two years. Capital goods orders, a key indicator of companies' future investment plans, slipped 2.4%, the biggest drop in more than a year and a half.

* Governments, especially state governments, have begun making steep cuts. In all, 29 of the 50 states had already cut spending, raised taxes or tapped emergency funds to balance their budgets for the fiscal year that began July 1, said Nicholas Johnson, an analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. But 15 of those states, including Arizona and New York, are back in the red; stalling economic growth has caused their already shrunken tax revenues to contract further.

The combination of consumers hunkering down, manufacturers losing orders and states making cuts has economists slashing their growth forecasts for the coming months and years.

This is all part of the cycle that makes really bad recessions so hard to pull out of. More people out of work, means fewer people buying things, means fewer products being produced, means fewer jobs, means even less money to reinvigorate the economy. So whatever reluctance the fat cats are having to seeing their executive compensation cut, they had best consider the consequences of trying to wait it out. Or, as John Cole says:

If they are wrong, and bring about financial armageddon due to sheer greed, well, at least we know who to blame.

I find myself wondering if I should stock up on the torches and pitchforks.

When politicians panic

By Libby

Avedon reminds me I meant to get to this earlier. TChris at Talk Left noticed a disturbing addition to the "improved" Wall St. rescue. This is what happens when the Congress rushes through legislation and trades off amendments for votes.

The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, "I'm not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it'll save you $1,000. Want to take it?") That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.

What a waste of resources. As TChris goes on to point out:

We don't need IRS sting operations. There is no shortage of tax evasion schemes for agents to pursue without trying to sting taxpayers into committing new crimes. Increasing the audits of the wealthy taxpayers who are most likely to abuse the system would be a more reasonable approach to tax crime enforcement.

Exactly and that has certainly been a low priority under the Bush administration. They're much more interested in chasing down some bottom of the ladder taxpayers who wrongfully accept the Earned Income credit.

But this can't all be blamed solely on Bush or even Republicans. This rush to pass bad bills under political panic is same dynamic that gave us the Patriotic Act and a multitude of other bad legislation. Democrats are just as guilty for failing to exercise their leadership after 06 and their responsibilites as the oppositional minority before that. Small wonder 59% of the electorate would like to throw all the bums out and just start over.

Poison Pill

By Ron Beasley

When Paulson first presented his bail out plan he said that any limits on executive compensation were off the table because banking executives would be too greedy to participate.  Well Paulson and the administration had to accept executive compensation limits but it looks like Paulson may have been right.

Now Wall Street may shun $700bn bail-out 

Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government's $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come.

'There is a growing feeling that banks ... might instead decide to tough it out,' said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager.

For the past two weeks all eyes in the market have been focused on US Congress and its attempts to pass Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bail-out package - a bill to allow the US government to buy up to $700bn of toxic mortgage-related assets from American banks, which would in theory free the credit markets and set the gears of global commerce spinning once more.

Last Monday, after the bill was thrown out by the House of Representatives, more than $1 trillion was wiped off the value of US stocks as the market was gripped by panic. The bill was passed on Friday afternoon, however, after the inclusion of $149bn of tax breaks and strict rules for participating banks.

But Wall Street analysts, believe the addition of so many terms to the bill might deter potential participants.

One of the least attractive elements is a section designed to curb executive pay at banks that participate in the bail-out package. These include limiting stock-related pay and banning 'golden parachutes' for executives.

'I think this hodge-podge of regulations and rules will be enough to put many [chief executives] off participating,' Caldwell said.

Sources close to Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch indicated the banks might choose not to participate in the bail-out as there is a growing view on Wall Street that the market may be bottoming out.

Of course another reason might be that they really don't want to open up their books.  They are saying that the reason is they think things have bottomed out anyway.  It's a good thing those elements were included or they would have been happy to take our money anyway.  Now I guess we will see if they are right.

H/T John Cole

Karzai Flushing Legitimacy Down the Heroin Drain

by anderson

Nathaniel Fick and Vikram Singh offer a clear-headed, though resolutely grim assessment of the worsening situation in Afghanistan: the country is on the verge of being lost -- as far as western interests are concerned. The population has almost no faith in their government, and antipathy to the NATO/US occupation is on the rise, both for the occupation's support of a plainly corrupt Karzai government and an abysmal record of imprudent air strikes and resultant civilian deaths. But it is government corruption that they assess is the greatest extant threat for its effect in bolstering support for the Taliban.

Every aspect of sound counterinsurgency strategy revolves around bolstering the government’s legitimacy. When ordinary people lose their faith in their government, then they also lose faith in the foreigners who prop it up. The day that happens across Afghanistan is the day we lose the war.

They offer a three part solution, the most important being routing US-backed government rife with corruption.

First, the Afghan government must confront corruption in its own ranks. Tribal elders in Ghazni told us that they are “slapped on one cheek by the Taliban, and on the other cheek by the government.” They talked of extortion by the police, dysfunctional courts and rampant bribery in government offices. The average Afghan spends one-fifth of his income on bribes. It’s no surprise so many actively or passively support the Taliban.

To fight corruption, President Hamid Karzai should immediately do three things: fire those seen as the most corrupt cabinet ministers, provincial governors and district governors; arrest and prosecute the most notorious warlords from the civil war in the 1990s, who committed unspeakable atrocities but are living openly in Kabul or the provinces; and break the relationship between the government and the country’s largest industry, the poppy trade.

Note that last one.

The firing of corrupt ministers and provincial governors speaks quietly and in general terms, which makes it sound infinitely easier than it would likely be in practice. Because any such program is going to have to immediately address one inconvenient reality for Hamid Karzai: he is his own source of Afghan discontent, as he is suspected of (at least) protecting his own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, governor of the Kandahar Provincial Council, who is under high suspicion of being involved in the Afghan heroin trade.

In at least two episodes, confiscated shipments of narcotics have been linked to Ahmed Karzai and American officials are displeased that there is such a close connection to US-backed president.

The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability….

Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, …

“We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there,” one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. “We don’t have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment,” a White House official said. “That allows Karzai to say, ‘where’s your proof?’ ”

If this is indeed Karzai's position toward his ill-begotten sibling, it appears that Karzai will hold his tribe close and risk the future of his government for the sake of his brother's heroin trade. It seems someone ought to impress upon Karzai that his days in Kabul are numbered if he hold this course. Because either the Americans will take him out or the Afghans will. The Americans may hesitate at this, but rest assured, Afghans will not.

IAEA Meeting Sidles Up To Israeli Nuke Arsenal

By Cernig

The annual general conference of the International Atomic Energy Authority has come closer than ever to directly naming and criticising Israel as a nuclear weapon state outwith the NPT.

As in past years at the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference, Iran, Israel's most outspoken foe, spearheaded the verbal attack on Israel, which is widely considered to have nuclear arms but has a "no tell" policy on the issue.

Chief Iranian delegate Ali Ashgar Soltanieh said Israel's nuclear capabilities represent a "serious and continued threat to the security of neighboring and other states."

And he took the U.S. and other Western backers of Israel to task for their "shameful silence" on what he said was the menace posed by Israel's atomic arsenal.

The meeting of 145 nations voted for a resolution urging all nations to open their nuclear activities to outside inspections and work toward the establishment of a Mideast nuclear weapons free zone.

With Israel the only country in the region considered to have atomic arms, passage of the resolution constituted indirect criticism of the Jewish state.

The resolution called on all nations in the Middle East "not to develop, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons," and urged nuclear weapons states to "refrain from any action" hindering the establishment of a Mideast zone free of nuclear weapons.

The United States and the European Union managed to block an effort by Muslim nations and their supporters to submit a resolution more directly critical of Israel and its "nuclear capabilities."

Although last year's meeting followed a similar pattern, the votes for and against the two motions reflected shifting dynamics on the issues.

On Saturday, delegations had so far voted 82-0 for establishing the Mideast nuclear weapons free zone, with Israel, Syria and the U.S. among those abstaining. Last year it was 53 in favor, the U.S. and Israel against, and 47 abstentions.

29 nations in one year decided it's time Israel came clean about its nukes. That's quite a momentum for next year. And, neo-hawks of various flavors, please note Iran's public vote for a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East. You keep telling us that we should listen to what they say - so how come that only applies when they're saying stuff that can be used to stoke the war hype and fearmongering?

Turks Accuse Iraqi Kurds Of Sheltering Terrorists

By Cernig

A Turkish general has diectly accused Barzani's Kurdish regional government of offering shelter to Kurdish terror group, the PKK, even while the Kurdish authorities have decried PKK attacks.

Gen. Hasan Igsiz, deputy chief of the military, said the Kurdish leadership in northern Iraq was allowing the rebels to use roads and hospitals in the region and ignoring their presence.

"We don't receive any kind of support from the local administration in the northern part of Iraq," Igsiz said. "Our expectation from them is to accept that the terrorist organization is a terrorist organization and eliminate the support provided to it."

Iraq's central government pledged to cooperate with Turkey against the rebels after Friday's attack, which the guerrillas fired mortars and anti-aircraft artillery from Iraqi soil against Turkish targets.

"The Kurdistan regional government denounces the recent PKK attack on Turkish soldiers," it said in a statement dated Saturday. "We condemn this attack and we express our condolences and sorrow to the families of the victims."

The PKK and the Kurdish regional government have one priority goal in common - an independent Kurdish State, at least in all but name if it comes as part of a highly-federalized soft partition of Iraq. There's long been suspicion that the Kurds have been looking the other way on the PKK while publicly saying the right things - but actual aid and shelter would be a very different matter. The US might have to bow to Turkish pressure and ask the Iraqi central government to do something more than just talk - which could flare up the bubbling confrontation over the area around Kirkuk into a shooting civil war.

Or the Turks just might go over the border in force again,this time against the peshmerga as well as the PKK - which would drag in the Iraqi central government on one side or another. (I'm no longer certain Napoleon al-Maliki would back the Kurds, he might see it as an opportunity to rid himself of a block to his own strongman status.) Either way, the US gets to play piggy in the middle between three allies and ends up pissing off, in an extreme and probably deadly way, at least one of them.

Rice: No "special sphere of infuence" for Russia

By Cernig

Condi Rice, visiting America's "with us" autocrat ally in Kazakhstan, has said that the US has no intention of allowing Russia a "near foreign".

"This is not a zero-sum game," she told reporters flying with her to the Kazakh capital. U.S. gains need not mean Russian losses, she said.

"First of all, Kazakhstan is an independent country. It can have friendships with whomever it wishes," she said. "That's perfectly acceptable in the 21st century, so we don't see and don't accept any notion of a special sphere of influence" for Russia in this region.

Kazakhstan is a bit of an odd one - the dictatorship in all but name (it has elections but no-one opposed to President Nazarbayev ever gets elected) does indeed have a successful multi-lateral foreign policy on trade and military co-operation. It has a military alliance with Russia and therefore is ineligible for NATO, but in February signed a deal with the US to procure equipment and training to bring it up to NATO standard and conducts regular joint exercises with the US. But one has to question whether, without the US presence in Afghanistan and Kazakh permission for supply flights there, America would be interested. Military aide has always seemed a sweetener for the supply flights.

So while it may be a good nation from which to make a speech about there being no special spheres of infuence anymore, is that actually the truth?

Certainly, America's sphere of infuence now matches it's national security interests - global, and wherever the US decided those interests lie. Even if that means reneging on previous promises to not base US troops in or allow into NATO nations that were once Soviet dominions and that Russia considers its "near foreign". Even if it means invading other nations without a UN mandate or threatening to attack others. It's unclear, though, that anyone else gets to do the same thing - especially not Russia. Recent controversy and outrage over Russian deals with Venezuela and the resurrection of the South American fleet suggest that America still has a "near foreign" of its own. Worries about Russia expanding its basing agreements and military patrol flights again - both things the US does far more of - didn't bring knowing nods of acceptance for Russia's aknowledgement that anyone can have global national interests in the 21st Century, they brought rhetoric about a new Russian aggression and Imperial ambition.

At the end of the day, though, realpolitik says Condi is correct. No-one has the power to consistently safeguard and hoard a sphere of infuence - and not even America has the power to prevent any other nation having a global reach nowadays, after Bush's adventurism and a financial crisis have gutted America's superpowers like a Kryptonite enema. Other nations have no intention of allowing the US to keep a tight grip on its "near foreign" any longer either.

Rice's statement is better seen as a recognition of truth rather than a high-minded statement of policy, although I doubt Rice sees it that way. Welcome to the multi-polar world.

The Economist article Sarah Palin probably won't read

by Jay McDonough

I can count the number of things Sarah Palin and I agree on with one hand.  And I would have a bunch of fingers left over.  But  we are both fans of The Economist.  I suspect, though, Ms. Palin may pass over The Economist's recent polling of professional economists views on the McCain and Obama economic plans.  The consensus among the experts polled, in some cases an overwhelming consensus, is Barack Obama has the better plan, a better understanding of the issues, and the more likely to develop a more effective team of advisors.

The detailed responses are bad news for Mr McCain (the full data are available here). Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject. “I take McCain’s word on this one,” comments James Harrigan at the University of Virginia, a reference to Mr McCain’s infamous confession that he does not know as much about economics as he should. In fairness, Mr McCain’s lower grade may in part reflect greater candour about his weaknesses. Mr Obama’s more tightly managed image leaves fewer opportunities for such unvarnished introspection.

A candidate’s economic expertise may matter rather less if he surrounds himself with clever advisers. Unfortunately for Mr McCain, 81% of all respondents reckon Mr Obama is more likely to do that; among unaffiliated respondents, 71% say so. That is despite praise across party lines for the excellent Doug Holtz-Eakin, Mr McCain’s most prominent economic adviser and a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. “Although I have tended to vote Republican,” one reply says, “the Democrats have a deep pool of talented, moderate economists.”

Where the candidates’ positions are more clearly articulated, Mr Obama scores better on nearly every issue: promoting fiscal discipline, energy policy, reducing the number of people without health insurance, controlling health-care costs, reforming financial regulation and boosting long-run economic growth. Twice as many economists think Mr McCain’s plan would be bad or very bad for long-run growth as Mr Obama’s. Given how much focus Mr McCain has put on his plan’s benefits for growth, this last is quite a repudiation.

I have plenty of issues with the Obama economic plan.  I don't believe setting the $250K/year threshold for increased taxation would be sufficient to pay for the programs he proposes.  I disagree with the notion of windfall profits taxes.  While I agree, in principle, with low corporate tax rates, Obama has been not as specific as I would like on the issue.  But there is LOTS I think is spot on about his plan; an emphasis on the middle class, health care reform, and leveraging new energy technologies and infrastructure work as a way to stimulate the economy.

On the other hand, the McCain economic plan is nothing more than catch phrases and wishful thinking.  The Senator offers no plan on how to deal with our current problems, only offering a plan for when times are rosy (and they've not even been close to rosy since the mid to late 1990's).   The McCain plan is nothing more than an elaborate shell game; tell voters about the tax credit for health insurance (making sure not to mention taxing health benefits that will, likely, drive employers to drop health insurance as a part of compensation), vowing to cut pork and earmarks and suggesting that will solve all our economic problems (and not telling voters that it's actually small potatoes), and the expressed reverence for low taxes (when it's really low taxes for the wealthy that's important to Senator McCain).

And perhaps the most telling: John McCain's absolute aversion to telling voters how the economic meltdown will effect his economic platform.  At least Barack Obama has tip toed up to the need to reconsider some aspects of his plan.  That John McCain cannot acknowledge the economic meltdown will force him to modify his economic plan makes him dishonest and not trustworthy.

McCain campaign unmuzzles Palin

By Libby

Palin reminds me of nothing so much as those fine "Christian ladies" I used to encounter back in the days I taught Sunday School. They were well dressed, perfectly coiffed and pillars of the church, mainly because they donated lots of money. Usually they had a stained glass window or at least a pew named after them with a little brass plaque. They were sugary sweet to everyone to their face, but would make oblique insults about parishioners they didn't like behind their backs, subtly mocking their clothes or their social status. They took their greatest delight in making themselves feel bigger by tearing others down. That's Palin in a nutshell, with her desperate attempts to resurrect the long dead meme of Obama's nonexistent 'terrorist pals' with its thinly veiled racist subtext.

And proving once again that the rabid right thrive on cognitive dissonance, Palin apparently garnered great applause by quoting a Starbucks coffee cup. Leaving aside that she couldn't even get a single sentence quote right, for eight years now I've been hearing the right whine about "limousine liberals" who drink Starbucks coffee. So how come it's suddenly acceptable and how does that fit the "hockey mom" image? I thought they only drink Dunkin Donuts coffee.

I also wonder how she would have played that line if Hillary was Obama's VP? Personally, one of the things I find most offensive about McCain's little snarling pit bull is her selfish co-opting of all the work Hillary did in cracking the ceiling that gave her this opportunity she doesn't at all deserve.

It's the Senate Stupid

By Ron Beasley

The Republican Party has had some good fund raising numbers the last few weeks but one has to wonder how much of that money they will be willing to throw at the sinking campaign of John and Sarah.

GOP dread: Dems could hit 60 Senate seats

The possibility that Democrats will build a muscular, 60-seat Senate majority is looking increasing plausible, with new polls showing a powerful surge for the party’s candidates in Minnesota, Kentucky and other states.

A poll out Friday shows Sen. Norm Coleman could now easily lose his Minnesota seat to comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken. A Colorado race that initially looked like a nail-biter has now broken decisively for the Democrats. A top official in the McCain camp told us Sen. Elizabeth Dole is virtually certain to lose in conservative North Carolina.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has seen his race tighten dangerously close over the past week — and Democrats are considering moving more money into the state very soon. And there is even talk that Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss is beatable in conservative Georgia after backing the economic bailout package opposed by many voters.

“Before the economic crisis, we had a number of races moving our way,” said Matthew Miller, communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But now we’re seeing Republican numbers plummet.” GOP officials largely agree.

Senate races don’t grab national attention like the White House battle does. But if these trends hold, the Senate outcome could be almost as important to Washington governance as the presidential winner will be. It takes 60 votes to pass anything through the slow-moving Senate. So the closer the Democrats get to the number, the more power they will have next year to put their stamp on the country.

One of those Senate races is right here in my State of Oregon where incumbent Gordon Smith is in the fight of his life and falling behind.  As I noted here Smith is running as fast and as far as he can from George Bush and the Republican Party.  The major daily in Oregon, The Oregonian, leans right and has always been a Smith supporter.  In a piece today even the Oregonian was only luke warm.

Smith's record and accomplishments will confront a complicated terrain of mixed signals, victories large but mainly small, ambiguous acts and outright contradictions.

Smith voted to invade Iraq, but three years later the famously reserved senator called the war "criminal" in a speech memorable both for its content and his rare display of emotion.

He's repeatedly voted in favor of huge spending bills to finance the war. Yet in 2007, Smith co-sponsored an amendment written by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island that would have required bringing most troops out of Iraq within nine months. The measure failed on a 47-47 vote when only two other Republicans joined Smith.

And about that voting record, The Oregonian:

Smith's Democratic opponent, Jeff Merkley, speaker of the Oregon House, has hammered the Republican incumbent for months as a reliable proxy for the Bush administration. In ads and on the stump, Merkley says that Smith votes with Bush more than 90 percent of the time.

Yet an analysis of key votes in 2007 by the Beltway-focused National Journal shows Smith in the middle. On a scale of 100, he earned a composite conservative score of 52.8 and a liberal composite score of 47.2. Those scores make him the 46th most conservative among the Senate's 100 members and the 51st most liberal.

But that only tells part of the story.  More often than not Smith voted against his party and Bush when his vote wouldn't make any difference.  But more important you have to look at how Smith voted when and this modified chart from the Oregonian article tells the story.

Now Oregon is a blue State - George W. Bush never won here.  As you can see Smith is conservative for the four years after an election and makes a left turn a couple of years before an election.  He made a very sharp left after the Republican loses in 2006.  Smith ads are being run by his campaign, the RSCC and the Republican Party.  Although Smith was the chair of McCain's campaign until recently McCain or any other Republican have been mentioned in his ads although Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy have.  Smith had been leading until recently but his opponent, Jeff Merkley, is now leading.  I would expect the Republican Party to send more of it's cash to Gordon Smith instead of John McCain.   

Georgia not so Rosy Anymore

By BJ

Way back in August when the major fighting between Russia and Georgia died down, I had this to say about Georgian president Saakashvili:

How much Saakashvili will pay personally for his blunder is as yet hard to say. The people of Georgia followed the old pattern of "rally 'round the flag" while the bombs were dropping, but once the war starts to recede, so does the rationale for rallying around the guy who started it. At a guess, his remaining in power "democratically" seems rather unlikely.

As I expected, now that the Russian Bear is no longer mauling the Georgian military infrastructure, the internal divisions that the West has done its best to ignore in favour of the narrative of, "Saakashvili the freedom-loving democrat", have started to show signs of opening up again.

An influential group of Georgian opposition leaders has mounted a blistering political campaign against U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing his government of running an autocratic regime that tramples human rights and stifles democracy.

The timing could embarrass the Bush administration, which is pressing NATO members to approve an action plan for Georgia — a key step toward full membership — at the organization's meeting in December.

The claims by many in the opposition, some of which have been affirmed by a top Georgian human-rights official, go to the heart of Washington's rationale for backing Saakashvili as a democratic force in a region where Russia is trying to re-establish dominance.

And proving just how well they've learned from their mentors, the Georgian government is quick to claim that any dissenters in their "democracy" are agents of the enemy, whether knowingly or not.

Picture of the Week

By Ron Beasley

Gothic Pears

Governing with a Realignment Speculation

By Fester:

I as at two good friends' wedding last night and had a great time.  The bride was beautiful, the groom was smiling the entire time, the Quaker style self-joining ceremony was really cool, the food was great, and the bar was open.  During the night I was speaking with a very perceptive friend who noted that the big question for the Obama administration would be its relationship with Congress.  How does it govern? 

We both agreed that an Obama administration would come in much more organized and coherent than the Clinton Administration did in 1992.  And it would also have the advantage of coming in with a political tide instead of fighting against it.  Congress will not be looking to cover itself against an Obama White House.

Right now it looks like the generic ballot, the generic Congressional Ballot, and the Obama-McCain topline numbers are converging.  This will lead to an interesting question of Congressional relationships as there will be quite a few Democratic Congress-critters who will be coming from districts that Obama won but are still considered 'Lean GOP' on neutral environments.

This is because the PVI is a calculation of relative success, not absolute electoral success.  It is a measure of whether or not a district does better or worse than the Presidential level.  To use a very crude example, let's say Obama wins the national two party vote share 54-46.  In the 11teenth Congressional District, Obama won the district 51:49.  This district would be considered an R+3 district, which means it is a swing/lean GOP seat. 

So in that case, does a Democratic Rep vote with the Blue Dogs who tend to come from very Republican leaning seats, or does that Rep vote and negotiate like the median Democrat? 

This will be important in this scenario as it is likely that the number of Democrats who come from lean GOP PVI districts will increase due to a change in the PVI calculation as well as new wins in GOP seats.  The PVI metric and the political system in general will not reflect inflection points and changes in trend well.  It is a lagging indicator and if it is followed, the Democrats will lose  a massive opportunity cost. 

Key PMOI Figures To Get US Citizenship?

By Cernig

Iran's Press TV reports that 16 senior members of the PMOI, also known as the Mujahedeen eKalq Organisation (the MKO or MeK), are to be granted US citizenship for services rendered in Iraq and Iran.

An Iraqi deputy told Fars news agency that the MKO members who were given US citizenship were directly engaged in acts of terror against Iranians and the Iraqi people.

According to the lawmaker, the terrorists, who had earlier exited Camp Ashraf, were reportedly transferred to a former Iraqi air force base near the capital, Baghdad.

The US had earlier relocated selected members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization after Iraqi authorities took control of their camp in Diyala province in August. The act was aimed at preventing MKO members from falling into the hands of the Iraqi government.

The deputy said, however, that the US had denied support for a certain number of MKO members in the Camp after accessing their records.

He added that documents, including tapes of MKO espionage acts against the Iranian government, have been delivered from the camp to US military forces in Iraq.

His remarks come as Ali al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi security official, told Fars that there were documents available on the group's cooperation with al-Qaeda and Baath regime in their acts of violence.

He added the US was studying the records of certain MKO members willing to join American troops to select those useful to American forces in their anti-Iran goals.

The MKO are on the State Department's list of proscribed terror groups, but that hasn't stopped the Buh administration from using MKO members as interpreters and interrogators in Iraq, as a source of highly dubious intelligence on Iran and, it is rumored, as proxies for attacks inside Iran itself. Being so virulently anti-Iranian, they're high on the neocons' list of favored terrorists but not so liked by Iraq's current government, which is led by Shiites highly sympathetic to Iran such as the Dawa, ISCI and Badr parties. Indeed, the Badr Brigades were originally set up by Iran to be direct competition to the MKO, who were helping Saddam at the time.

Press TV isn't an unbiased source on this, but still - if 16 members of a proscribed terror group are indeed being given US citizenship, you'd think the Bush administration would have some explaining to do. I wonder if any mainstream Western reporters will follow up the Iranian reports?

Sarah Palin uncensored

by Jay McDonough

A lot of folks accused ABC News of unfairly editing the comments and video footage of Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson.  As far as they were concerned, it was an obvious attempt by ABC to portray Governor Palin in a bad light; uninformed and ill prepared for the vice presidency.

Ms. Palin was interviewed by Carl Cameron of FOX News yesterday.  For sure, no editing there, right?  This was the opportunity for Governor Palin to speak her mind and not fear some elite media types would edit the footage with bias.

Here's the Governor's response to Cameron's question about the media's objectivity and fairness:

"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."

Got that?  That's the uncensored Sarah Palin.  One can imagine her appreciating some editing.

I admit I have no clue why Sarah Palin has any support at all.  My guess is that one's level of enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is directly proportional to one's disgust with the government.  There's sure plenty to be disgusted about, but some (me included - begrudgingly) still have a measure of respect for the government and those that serve.  The support for Sarah Palin is like a big FU to the government.  A complete and overwhelming cynicism.

Hewitt The Hack

By Cernig

Hugh Hewitt, banging the war drum and fearmongering like a crazy conservative, has a pearl of praise today for John McCain, Savior of America from the Obama Anti-Christ.

But as Jazz Shaw points out in a simply delicious post, not too long ago the same Hewitt was calling McCain "an old warrior way past his prime", that a vote for McCain was "a vote for a shattered base"  and that Mccain "could no more win in the fall than Dole could in ‘96."

Which leaves Hewitt either suffering from severe split-personality syndrome or an unprincipled hack. You decide.

Us And Indian Perceptions Of Nuke Deal Differ

By Cernig

Praful Bidwai at IPS has a great piece on the very real differences between US ideas of what is contained in the India 123 deal and Indian notions that is worth reading:

Indian leaders are equally concerned at the subtle differences between the just-enacted US legislation and the 123 agreement, and the interpretations placed on some US commitments by senior officials, including assurances of uninterrupted fuel supplies and restrictions on the transfer of uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing technologies.

Just before the Congress debate, President Bush stated that some of the commitments in the 123 agreement are "political" in nature and not legally binding.

Last week, as the Senate began its debate, Rice wrote a letter to the Senate majority leader to assure him that a nuclear test by India would result in "the most serious consequences,’’ including an automatic cut-off of U.S. cooperation and sanctions.

This is in sharp contrast with the Indian stand that nothing in the 123 agreement prevents India from conducting a nuclear test, and that India can take "corrective measures", such as walking out of IAEA safeguards in case supplies are interrupted in response to an Indian test.

On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to India, David C. Mulford, told the media in New Delhi that "not every single commitment" in the 123 agreement is binding on the U.S., and in any case, the U.S. government cannot compel American companies to sell technology or equipment to India.

Indian officials are particularly concerned at some key issues such as interpretation of the "meaning and legal effect" of the 123 agreement on the basis of all communications from the Bush administration to Congress prior to Sep. 20.

These include a recently revealed letter to Howard Berman, chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which Bush made the distinction between politically and legally binding commitments, and also tried to assuage other non-proliferation sentiments among U.S. lawmakers.

... In a statement signing the new Act into law, Bush can waive some of these conditions and make the new law more palatable to India.

The Bush administration lied to someone, because the deal that Congress thinks it voted on isn't the same as the deal India thinks it's getting. My bet is that the administration will side with the interpretation that makes its corporate donators the most money, which isn't the same as the one that looks after America's long-term national security interests or the one that safeguards the concept of non-proliferation.

Defensive Decriminalization begins

By Fester:

The Mexican government is looking at decriminalizing personal possession of most hard drugs in order to concentrate their resources and more importantly, their legitimacy on the relatively innocuous usage. 

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, locked in a high-stakes battle with drug cartels, wants to legalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine and marijuana, a plan that will likely irk Washington. Calderon, a conservative in power for nearly two years, sent a proposal to Congress that would also scrap penalties on carrying small amounts of heroin, methamphetamine and opium for personal use...

Calderon's bill would mean people carrying up to 2 grams (0.07 ounces) of marijuana or opium, half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin or 40 milligrams of methamphetamine would not face criminal charges.

A few months ago I wrote that prohibition is a luxury that we may not be able to afford:

We also know that prohibition has not been successful in eliminating drug use in the United States or other rich nations.  It is a moral/political posture of luxury that may bite us in our ass as it fuels a visible insurgency in Afghanistan, potentially funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and could potentially lead to a massive failed state in Mexico with the attendant mass migration flows that would entail.

Bringing the drug market into the overt and open white market and away from the black market would be a significant blow to these insurgencies.  Legalizing most narcotics and then taxing them at a high rate is a viable option.  It will strengthen weak states where the United States has a strong interest for stability. This will occur by removing a significant funding stream for the guerrillas and transferring it to the state.    Prohibition is a failed luxury that I am not sure we can afford for that much longer.  

Decriminalizing personal consumption means fewer people have to make a choice to support the cartels as a source of protection.  It widens the civil sphere and the non-black market economy.  It does not move personal consumption drugs to the white market, but it moves some of this activity to at least the winked upon and socially tolerated gray market. 

The Ground Game

By BJ

Like Ron, I find myself growing more optimistic at the prospect of getting used to saying "President Obama" over the four years. It is a guarded optimism, as there are still a number of things that could change the race's dynamics.

It is also clear that the McCain campaign has clearly decided that they can't win over any more people to their sinking cause and have now went into 100% smear mode for the rest of the month until election day.

As a result of this and other factors, I would expect the poll numbers to tighten over the next week at least. However, while McCain and the Republicans are masters of the kind of tactics that in the short-term can win elections, Obama has shown the clear edge in strategic vision and planning that set up for a real victory over the long-term.

For any who have been whining about how it is that Obama hasn't pulled away in a year that highly favours the Democratic Party, remember that we're talking about a Black man with an Arabic sounding name in post-9/11 America running against a very popular war hero on top of one of the most effective electoral machines in American political history. The fact that he now has a clear lead is as impressive an accomplishment in politics as I've ever seen in my admittedly short adult life. Obama's ability to take the strategic view is the main reason for that, and one of the most important aspects of that strategic groundwork he's laid is one of the major reasons for my optimism.

Here's Sean Quinn from fivethirtyeight:

Let’s be clear. We've observed no comparison between these ground campaigns. To begin with, there’s a 4-1 ratio of offices in most states. We walk into McCain offices to find them closed, empty, one person, two people, sometimes three people making calls. Many times one person is calling while the other small clutch of volunteers are chatting amongst themselves. In one state, McCain’s state field director sat in one of these offices and, sotto voice, complained to us that only one man was making calls while the others were talking to each other about how much they didn't like Obama, which was true. But the field director made no effort to change this. This was the state field director.

Only for the first time the other day did we see a McCain organizer make a single phone call. So we've now seen that once. The McCain organizers seem to operate as maître Ds. Let me escort you to your phone, sir. Pick any one of this sea of empty chairs. I'll be sitting over here if you need any assistance.

. . .

The McCain offices are also calm, sedate. Little movement. No hustle. In the Obama offices, it's a whirlwind. People move. It's a dynamic bustle. You can feel it in our photos.

Up to this point, we’ve been giving McCain's ground campaign a lot of benefit of the doubt. We can’t stop convincing ourselves that there must – must – be a warehouse full of 1,000 McCain volunteers somewhere in a national, central location just dialing away. This can’t be all they’re doing. Because even in a place like Colorado Springs, McCain’s ground campaign is getting blown away by the Obama efforts. It doesn't mean Obama will win Colorado Springs, but it means Obama's campaign will not look itself in the mirror afterward and ask, "what more could we have done?"

You could take every McCain volunteer we’ve seen doing actual work in the entire trip, over six states, and it would add up to the same as Obama’s single Thornton, CO office. Or his single Durango, CO office. These ground campaigns bear no relationship to each other.

This is probably one of the most under-reported stories of this election cycle and may yet prove to be one of the most significant factors in outcome. I read somewhere that a good ground campaign can make up for up to a five-point deficit in the polls. As Ron pointed out, there already isn't a state Obama needs where he isn't already up by SIX points, and its clear that McCain's ground campaign isn't going to outmaneuver Obama's.

Finally, a note on early voting.

From what I've read, it is estimated that as many as one-third of all voters will be casting their ballots early this year. That casting is going on right now while Obama has a clear lead in many polls, which is tantamount to Obama putting votes in the bank. Every day that McCain continues to trail is a day he has to play even more than catch-up to be competitive on election day.

So all in all, I'd say that optimism is warranted.

Let the mud slinging begin

By Ron Beasley

The Republicans and John McCain can't win on the issues and they know it.  So they will do what they always do - sling mud and hope enough of it sticks.  Looking into the not too distant future they see not only a loss but an electoral college rout so what will they do?

McCain Plans Fiercer Strategy Against Obama

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the past character assassination has worked well for the Republicans but there are reasons to believe it won't this time.

• Much of McCain's historic popularity with independent/swing voters has been his character - he was above that.
• It may simply be too late and people have heard it already.  It didn't work for Hillary.
• Most important, "Swift Boat" campaigns require active participation of the media.  The networks seem less willing to go along this time, perhaps in part because of their treatment by the McCain campaign.  If the media sees the contest is already over they will be less willing to soil themselves.  The network to watch in this regard is Murdoch's FOX News.  We have already seen two of the FOX "All Stars", Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes, concede that Obama is probably going to win.

In the end the mud may stick but not to Obama.  The causality will be John McCain's character and place in history.

Pentagon Iraq Propaganda Also Targets "US Audiences"

By Cernig

The US is back in the business of paying for "good news" propaganda stories about Iraq, according to the Washington Post.

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.

... One official described how part of the program works: "There's a video piece produced by a contractor . . . showing a family being attacked by a group of bad guys, and their daughter being taken off. The message is: You've got to stand up against the enemy." The professionally produced vignette, he said, "is offered for airing on various [television] stations in Iraq. . . . They don't know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything."

"If you asked most Iraqis," he said, "they would say, 'It came from the government, our own government.' "

The Pentagon's solicitation for bids on the contracts noted that media items produced "may or may not be non-attributable to coalition forces."

Middle East expert Marc Lynch writes (emphasis mine):

It's easy to see why eager information warriors think that paying for positive press makes sense in pursuit of tactical advantage in the strategic propaganda war.  It gets the "messaging" out with greater credibility, it "counters" the adversaries efforts, and it might shift some perceptions in the short term.   Even at this level, the strategy is deeply flawed.  When the payments are exposed, as they inevitably are in today's global media environment (for example, with page one stories in the Washington Post), they then discredit not only the specific messages but also every other pro-U.S. message which will quite reasonably then be dismissed as "paid for by the United States." ...  Nothing could be more devastating to the credibility of third party messengers than this kind of program. 

At a deeper level, these efforts fatally compromise the long-term objective of building free, credible and independent media as the foundation of a democratic system.

Not just any Iraqi democratic system either. Lynch also notes a significant wording in the contract specification:

one goal is to "communicate effectively with our strategic audiences (i.e. Iraqi, pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences) to gain widespread acceptance of [U.S. and Iraqi government] core themes and messages."  Presenting American audiences as a key target for manipulation through the covert dissemination of propaganda messages should be seen as scandalous, subversive of democracy, and illegal. 

Well, Marc, it would be if the Bush administration weren't making use of a step-around on the law. It's legal for the Pentagon, CIA and other agencies to disseminate propaganda in foreign countries. The propaganda goes up in foreign countries, then gets imported to the US by the mainstream press or by rightwing pro-occupation internet sites. "It's not the Pentagon's fault if there's overspill from Iraq (or the UK, or Israel, or Australia...) with this stuff - honest!"

It's quite easy to identify administration stenographers in the foreign press who create most of their reports around deliberate propaganda items. In the UK Con Coughlin and Phil Sherwell at the Daily Telegraph and Sarah Baxter at Murdoch's London Times are the most common conduits for stories to be imported back into the US at one deniable stage of removal from their agency source. In Israel, the Jerusalem Post (another Murdoch paper) -  and in particular deputy managing editor Caroline Glick - does admirable service for the Fourth Branch's preferred narratives. Murdoch's Australian outlets are just as bad. Glick, Coughlin and the Time's Uzi Mahnaimi double up on their stenography on behalf of Mossad too. Baxter and Sherwell for MI6.

I've covered this kind of stuff before, as well as other related propaganda pushes. I'm going to take the sinful liberty of quoting myself, rather than repeating myself.

There's no statute against the military or the administration conducting psyops campaigns in Iraq - and if the media then decides to take that information as gospel for reporting in the US then that's their lookout. There's no law against using shills like Phil Sherwell at the Telegraph or Sarah Baxter at the Times to publish "anonymous US sources" saying all kinds of stuff - and if rightwing internet pundits then decide to link that report as gospel truth then that's no fault of the US governments. There's no law - technically - preventing the pentagon from keeping a stable of pet military analysts in the loop on its preferred talking points - and if those analysts then choose not to reveal their insider status when using those talking points, then that's hardly the Pentagon's fault, is it? There's no law against a military flack in Iraq sending an email to a blogger to push a preferrred narrative - the internet is international and the sender is in a foreign country where US psyops are allowed. There's no law against pressuring intelligence analysts into giving your politically-preferred answers then pushing those answers as the consensus findings of the intelligence community. There's no law against publishing to the press "information" gained from offshore torture without revealing the methods used to gain that information. In other words , there are loopholes in the US statute you could drive a tank through - and the Bush administration have, repeatedly.

The current administration, like others before it, have long ago decided where the stand on the debate between freedom of the press from interference in a democracy and pushing their own preferred narratives - and it isn't on the side of democracy. I'm still amazed that serious experts like Marc, who I respect greatly, are surprised by this when it reaches out and slaps them in the face.

Advice From The American Conservative

By Ron Beasley

As I discussed below Sarah Palin is a bit weak on foreign policy.  Well the editors of The American Conservative have some advice for her - specifically who not to listen too.

Now you’re the latest object of their attention, and you’re probably finding the program a bit confusing. They tell you that the U.S. is fighting “World War IV,” a struggle against “Islamofascism.” We can win, they say, as long as we’re prepared to bomb Iran and build up the national-security establishment at home, just like Reagan did.

Trouble is, your tutors also believe we’re still engaged in “World War III,” the Cold War with Russia. So maybe the Gipper didn’t win that one after all. In fact, neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz chided Reagan for appeasing Moscow. And when terrorists struck the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, Reagan, instead of “staying the course,” withdrew our troops. Your Beltway suitors prescribe the opposite of Reagan’s strategy.

And as they would have it, we’re not only waging World Wars III and IV, we’re still fighting World War II. At least, that’s the way it sounds when Robert Kagan opens a Washington Post op-ed by likening Russia’s conflict with Georgia to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. 

But Russia is not Germany, Georgia is no innocent Czechoslovakia, and Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler—no matter what your guru Randy Scheunemann says. (He probably forgot to tell you that he used to lobby for the government of Georgia.)

Here’s a hint: don’t believe everything you read in the papers, especially if the byline is Kristol or Krauthammer. Russia is not an expansionist, ideological empire. It’s a traditional, semi-authoritarian great power intent on preserving its influence in its own backyard and its prestige on the world stage. That’s why Russia intercedes in the domestic disputes of unruly states on its periphery. Putin balks at Poland hosting our antimissile systems for the same reason we would bristle at Cuba or Mexico receiving Chinese antitank missiles.

With more validity, some of the people whispering in your ear tell you that Moscow wants to corner the European markets for oil and natural gas. And what nefarious end does Putin have in mind? Raising prices and reinforcing Moscow’s political clout, not with nuclear blackmail but with good, old-fashioned economic power. We have plenty of that ourselves (or at least we used to). Putin, far from being a totalitarian ideologue, is an economic nationalist, as the leaders of great powers traditionally have been.

Then there’s the Middle East, where only American arms (and lives) can prevent little Israel from being swept into the sea by Muslim hordes. Surely that’s what AIPAC told you that night you left Phyllis cooling her heels. But again, it isn’t true. Israel has nuclear weapons, for one thing, and can outfight her neighbors even without resort to atom bombs. Israel’s problem isn’t external threat so much as internal security and demographics. When the Jewish state was founded, tens of thousands of Palestinians—Christians as well as Muslims—lost their homes. Palestine was no wide-open Alaskan frontier: when the newcomers moved in, Arabs were moved out, often by force. Terrorism didn’t come to the region with Hamas or Hezbollah; decades earlier groups like the Stern Gang and Irgun used violence to clear the way for Israel’s creation. Nor was Palestinian Authority leader Yassar Arafat the first terrorist to lead a state in the Holy Land. Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir had unclean hands as well.

Since Sarah is not going to be Vice President I think she should forward the letter to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.  There is some great advice for them there too.

Palin and Foreign Policy

By Ron Beasley

We all know that Sarah Palin is totally clueless when it comes to foreign policy but there was a comment in last nights debate on Afghanistan that has not attracted any attention.  Well Daniel Larisson noticed and mentioned it in his original post debate comments last night and dedicates an entire post to it tonight.

Incredibly, Palin keeps reiterating her claim that Obama has been “reckless” in saying that airstrikes in Afghanistan have killed civilians, which serves to show that she seems genuinely to have no clue that our use of air power there has resulted in significant civilian casualties and that this has undermined NATO’s mission with the Afghan government.  As her running mate would say, she seems not to understand.  Even more remarkably, no one else seems to be noticing that she is absolutely wrong in her attack.  As I said earlier today, it is completely unacceptable for anyone running for such an office to be this ignorant about a war zone where Americans are fighting.

She is so unqualified that only idiot hacks like David Broder and Hot Air bloggers like Ed Morrissey can continue to defend while even neocon wingnuts like Krauthammer are running for cover.

Bail-out passes and its aftermath

By Fester

I am and have been opposed to the basic structure of the Paulson proposed bail-out because I don't think it will work as it does not look at the basic root causes of the current credit freeze.  Instead it addresses a symptom, horrendously crappy balance sheets instead of the insolvency issues that permeate the global economy.  The last of the cheap land and cheap oil booms created too many promises based on unreasonable premises and backed by wild policies and supported by skewed, perverse short term incentives.  Those promises are failing because there is not enough money or reasonable accessible future income streams to maintain those promises.

This crisis is at its base an insolvency crisis, then a counter-party risk crisis, then a credit crisis and finally a balanec sheet problem.  We are addressing the top layer with crappy incentives. And that plan was put together in panic and haste without viable alternatives such as the Swedish model being advanced.  So I don't think it will work.

Kudos To Laura Rozen

By Cernig

I just wanted to do a quick shout-out to our good friend Laura Rozen of War and Piece and MoJo. Laura did some of the heavy lifting on the Cunningham case which has seen fomer-Senator "Duke" Cunningham, mil-contractor Brent Wilkes and now former assistant CIA number three "Dusty" Foggo stand guilty of corruption and bribery allegations involving hookers.

Laura writes:

Thinking back, I had some rather unpleasant conversations with a CIA spokesman at the time who screamed that I was wrong, that he had marched to Foggo's office and Foggo totally denied what I was saying, and they couldn't find any Wilkes' company that had gotten a CIA contract, etc. And then, after I informed them that one firm, Archer Logistics, was a Wilkes' front company, nominally headed by Wilkes' nephew Joel Combs, the CIA public affairs official stopped yelling. It must have registered as a hit on some database of CIA contractors or something. After that, the conversation returned to polite ordinary civil discourse and the spokesman saying that as a rule the CIA doesn't ordinarily comment on who does or does not get CIA contracts. But the tone was utterly different. And as the evidence accumulated, the CIA was starting to realize that it had a Dusty Foggo problem. (The later 28-count indictment <.pdf> of Foggo revealed just how big a Dusty Foggo problem the CIA had on its hands).

Now, then-CIA director Porter Goss's decision to appoint Foggo to the CIA's number three spot had been a highly controversial and contentious one at the Agency. Foggo was well known in Agency ranks for philandering, gambling, a security issue dating to his Vienna days, and for generally being something of a sleaze. Suffice it to say, that senior Agency veterans left as a direct and indirect result of Goss's controversial decision to appoint Foggo to the Executive Director position, among them the top two operational officers who have since returned. And under Goss's hands off management style, Foggo wasn't just some CIA executive or bureaucrat. He effectively ran the CIA day to day. So you can see that when the CIA realized it had a Dusty Foggo problem, this was actually a rather big problem, and in particular it was a problem for Porter Goss.

...

"Porter Goss knew about Foggo's reputation beforehand," one former senior officer who left under Goss's tenure told me yesterday. "Why was he allowed to appoint this guy, and how did he get away with it? Goss had a criminal running the Agency."

"What the Republicans keep saying is that Porter came in to reform the Agency," he continued. "So Porter comes in and appoints to run the Agency a man everybody knew was sleazy and he paid no attention to the man's past. And he brought with him in addition a bunch of people who knew nothing about the organization and its operations and then he himself was a hands off person who basically did not get involved in managing the organization. It was a disaster from day one."

Another Bush administration heckuvajob and another stitch in the rich tapestry of the Republican culture of corruption.

And, like Scooby Doo villains, they world have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky journalists and bloggers, Laura being very much among the forefront of them. So major kudos to her, she's a great example of why jouranlists shouldn't be just stenographers for the powerful, and why blogging has become such a powerful force in keeping the comatose Fourth Estate alive.

Another "conservatives suck at managing the economy" posts

by Jay McDonough

There's, seemingly, no shortage of evidence to support the argument - modern conservatives, despite all their efforts to convince us otherwise, are lousy stewards of the economy. Here's another piece of evidence - the debt to GDP ratio 1950 to present:

Palin's Achilles Heel

By Cernig

I'm back after more than 24 hours without internet and trying to catch up, but as to the Biden-Palin debate I'm in agreement with my co-bloggers on their assessments and left wondering how even the lowest of lowered expectations can believe Palin showed herself as competent and ready for the second most powerful office in the land.

Anderson's got it exactly right on her incoherent ramblings when she doesn't know what she is talking about. But he missed one absolute gem:

"My Achilles heel is that my executive experience of a huge energy-producing state counting towards much progress towards getting our nation energy independence. That's very important."

She doesn't know what the phrase means, does she?

Behind the theatrical protestations of victory, even conservatives think she barely managed to stand up and breathe at the same time - and that was with her referring to her talking points all the time Biden was responding to questions and even some of the time she herself was speaking.

Look, Palin thinks Katie Couric gave her a hard time! The already-asked question about how this woman - who likes the Dick Cheney level of Veep power - is going to react if Putin or Sarkozy asks her the wrong thing should be the main part of the Palin debate. It'll be one diplomatic incident after another unless they keep her permanently at Cheney's "undisclosed location".

Her incoherence and her inability to handle even softballs without rancor is her Achilles heel, since she was wondering. Pair that with McCain's "Cotton Hill" temper and America would have a major problem. Ask yourself, Joe and Jolene Six-Pack - would you send your most quarrelsome and mean cousins out to talk to your best friends and your neighbours for you?

Palin's "Gift" of Gab

by anderson

Sarah Palin can certainly toss out a lot of words in hurry -- or a "flurry" as Charles Gibson called it. Because of that, it is almost impossible to figure out what on earth she is saying, though there exists a general sense that she is not saying much of anything at all. But one is not quite sure. It is not until one can actually see the words that were said, does the emptiness of the flurry make itself fully known.

Here is a prime example. In speaking about a "surge" for Afghanistan and whether McKiernan spoke for or against a surge in Afghanistan, Palin said this:

Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different.

It's almost a palindrome, with words wrapping themselves around the central "country" object. Amazing. And amazingly empty.

Terror Attack in South Ossetia

By BJ

Another in the long line of indicators that in the world today, wars don't end just because the armies have stopped fighting. The situation in Georgia still hasn't fully played out.

A blast in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia killed seven Russian soldiers, a Russian commander says.

The deaths happened when a car full of explosives blew up near a Russian military base in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, local officials said.

Granted "Terror Attack", may be the wrong term to use. After all, the perpetrators were most certainly Christians and it was Russian soldiers being killed instead of American ones. Maybe this is one those good, "freedom-type" bombs that the forces of democracy use. After all, as we've been told over the last several years, terrorism isn't so much a tactic as it is the philosophy behind the attacks, or something.

Now, it is too early to say who is ultimately responsible for this attack, but you can be certain that the American response to any possible Georgian government role will be far different than the kinds of charges they throw out routinely to nations like Iran whenever a bomb goes off in Iraq or Afghanistan. Perhaps someone can ask them after we've given them membership in NATO? (Granted none too likely these days.) Hypocrisy in action is ever amusing to observe.

TED Spread Spreads, U6 Unemployment hits 11%

by anderson

This is normally fester's realm, but I thought I'd point out the recent TED spread. In a word: grim. In a picture,

The London interbank rate (Libor) is up to "an all time high" of 5.33%, while payroll employment dropped 159,000 jobs and broad measure unemployment (U6) hit 11%. The private sector now sees an average 33.7 hour work week.

The Downward Spiral of Afghanistan

By BJ

It remains to be seen whether or not the war in Afghanistan will displace Iraq as the defining campaign issue for foreign policy. (Any more than one and journalists might have to do some research instead of just repeating the conventional wisdom they help to create.) What isn’t a question is that the fighting on the ground is far worse in Afghanistan than in Iraq, and there is more proof of that out today.

British forces are now being killed in Afghanistan at a faster rate than during the invasion of Iraq.

This year has been the bloodiest year so far in Afghanistan for the Nato and US missions there since the Taleban was removed from government in 2001, with senior defence officials in the UK admitting that the Taleban are proving "more resilient" than expected.

Parts of Afghanistan are on a "spiral downwards", according to the incoming US Commander of Centcom, General David Petraeus, in charge of a wide area including all US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The death toll amongst American soldiers has been higher in Afghanistan than Iraq for months already, which is even more significant when you consider that the number of US troops in Afghanistan is only about a fifth of what they are in Iraq. As noted here a while back, the death rate in Afghanistan has surpassed the rate of the bloodiest fighting in Iraq.

I noted here several months ago that one of the main differences between McCain and Obama on foreign policy was that Obama had a sense of the greater strategic picture while McCain focused inordinately on individual states and tactics. You can see this most blatantly when McCain refuses to acknowledge that to get more troops into Afghanistan, you would have to remove them from Iraq. He’s all about the tactics. The troops to carry those tactics out will apparently just magically appear.

One thing last night’s VP debate did do was make this difference between the Obama and McCain camps views a little more stark. Palin was in talking point territory the entire time, so it makes for easy reference. Iraq? The Surge! Afghanistan? Afghan Surge! The tribal regions in Pakistan? Let’s talk about that Afghan Surge! Your god only knows what she would have come up with had a question came up about Somalia.

The ability to see this in an overall strategic way is important in part for the reason that Bill Lind explores in his latest “On War” installment. The US faces a war on two fronts without the advantage of interior lines to shift forces rapidly from one front to the other. With interior lines, a nation can shift forces back and forth between the two fronts rapidly to deal with outbursts of violence. In America’s case, a shift in forces is a long-term proposition. The forces are needed in Afghanistan, but if the forces are shifted there and violence in Iraq goes back up, the US will be stuck without a reserve to deal with it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a President who understood that going in?

Biden soars, Palin bores

By Libby

I don't have a whole lot to say about the debate. I put up my requisite post debate analysis at Detroit News so all I'd add here is that Biden did great under difficult circumstances. He had to dance a fine line between shredding Palin on her still obvious ignorance and appearing too aggressive in doing so. I think he rose to the occassion admirably and managed to keep the focus on the top of the ticket rather than take the numerous cheap shots Palin offered up as targets.

Palin for her part managed to meet the sub-zero expectations of her perfomance but didn't manage to exceed them, not even by a subatomic particle. Her fan club will praise her as the winner, the rest of America will yawn at hearing the same talking points she's been pimping since the day McCain dragged her on stage. The only point that really resonated was her open admission that she wants the office of VP to accrue even more unlimited power than the wildest of Cheney's wet dreams. Low info voters probably won't pick up on that point, but if this debate changed anything, it will be to energize the Obama supporters to work even harder to prevent the disaster that a McCain administration would bring.

Bottom line, Biden came across as a serious candidate for a serious office at a critical time in our country. Palin came off as a vapid beauty queen with a fake, fixed smile and a badly hidden mean streak, running for Miss America. I don't think it will affect the polls much at all. It may reenergize the base for a while, but to the extent that the debate was any kind of game changer, it's that Palin showed she has nothing new to say and the media may start ignoring her and put the focus back on Obama and McCain, where it belongs. On those terms, it's a win for Obama.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Excuse Me!

By Ron Beasley

If there was ever any doubt David Brooks proved today that he is not only a political hack but an idiot as well.  Rather than cut him to ribbons myself I'll let my favorite new blogger, Daniel Larison do it for me.  As an added benefit he take on Peggy Noonan as well.

She is not a person of thought but of action. ~Peggy Noonan

On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it. From her first “Nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?” she made it abundantly, unstoppably and relentlessly clear that she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington. She ran not only against Washington, but the whole East Coast, just to be safe. ~David Brooks

Noonan and Brooks actually fall over themselves trying to compliment Palin on the modest success of being coherent, but these excerpts are striking in that someone might have written them as withering, sarcastic criticism and instead they are supposed to be a celebration of her virtues.  Noonan complains that Biden showed too much forbearance, but this is exactly what Noonan and Brooks show in their efforts to tip-toe around the obvious that for all her mastery of the non-answer and glittering generalities, to borrow Halcro’s language, she did not do very well.  Incredibly, her fans don’t seem to mind debasing the meaning of excellence if it allows them to call what we saw last night excellent.

On FOX this morning the morning blond bimbo was interviewing someone from Rasmussen.  She went ballistic when he said last night's debate would have little if any impact on the polls or the election.  He correctly stated that the best Palin could hope for last night was to not inflict any additional damage.  Larison also knows this:

There ought to have been some acknowledgement that it didn’t matter, that McCain was already fumbling and crumbling under the weight of his own mistakes, but instead we are treated to newfound, baseless enthusiasm:

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We’ve got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom.   

Well, there’s certainly no accounting for why people become excited about celebrities, but it seems to me that if the base is electrified any more it will begin to suffer permanent damage to its already clogged heart.

Update

Even Charles Krauthammer has thrown in the towel:

Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he's a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own -- fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

Where's Dessert?

Debate Wrap Up II

By Ron Beasley

Well there were no deer in the headlight moments and the format really didn't allow for long periods of incoherence, that said Biden won easily.  Palin once again did little but repeat canned folksy talking points that frequently had little or nothing to do with the question.  She was unable to give even one example of how a McCain administration would be any different than a Bush administration.  The base will love her but there isn't enough of the base left to win an election.

The snap polls would indicate that a majority saw it that way too.

CBS polled 473 uncommitted debate-watchers, and found that 46% say Biden won, 21% say Palin won, and 33% say it was a tie.

While both candidates saw their images improve, 98% saw Biden as "knowledgeable" after the debate, while only 66% saw Palin as knowledgeable, an admittedly high number, given what folks thought of her before tonight.

Meanwhile, CNN's poll of debate-watchers found that far more thought Biden did the best job in the debate (51%) than Palin did (36%).

And here's a really key number from CNN. While a startling 84% said Palin did better than expected, it still wasn't enough for her to clear her basic hurdle tonight: Only 46% said she's qualified to serve as president, up only four points from before the debate. And a clear majority, 53%, say she is not qualified.

I think too much significance was placed on this debate.  McCain's problem is John McCain not Sarah Palin.  He is the one who has been erratic and incoherent the last two weeks.

Update

Conservative Daniel Larison gets it right:

Not a Disaster

How’s that for a compliment?  There’s no question that Palin was outmatched the entire time, and I am fairly sure that viewers will come away thinking that Biden was the winner and was more qualified for the VP role.  Give her credit–she held on through the entire thing, clutching to her prearranged attack points for dear life, and she didn’t say anything that was fantastically horrible.  Her statement on civilian casualties caused by airstrikes in Afghanistan would have been atrocious if I believed that she knew any better, but I feel confident that she does not know anything about the situation in Afghanistan.  McCain’s campaign is already in terminal decline, so it probably didn’t matter that much anyway.  Had she completely failed, it would have made the result more lopsided, but I expect that there will be only a marginal boost for Obama in the next few days.

Debate Wrap-up

By Fester:

I agree with BJ, this was mostly an anti-climatic debate.  Gov. Palin played to her strength of being a nasty talking point repeated with a kindergarten teacher's voice.  She also managed to string words in forms that resembled sentences and the occassional sentence group into paragraphs. Sen. Biden kept his feet firmly on the ground and out of his mouth while his fire was aimed straight at McCain. 

A couple of points to make.  I am pretty damn happy that Biden did not try to dance (too much) around gay rights.  I still want Democrats to be able to say --- look at Massachusetts, look at California, look at Canada --- marriage has not forced the failure of civilization, let people get married and let's stay out of bedrooms.  Palin had to dance a bit on 'personally tolerant, but religious intolerant.' 

The most annoying thing about the entire debate was that any question that vaguely resembled an economy question or foreign policy question was pivoted to energy and oil for Palin.  She would then go into her shucksy down home policy idiot mode for the rest of the cycle.  Just reminds me of the simple Chicken Lawyer from Futurama --- it may be effective, but it is insulting to our intelligence.

Finally, my wife made a very good point concerning Palin's response to the initial question on where blame/responsibility lays for the credit crisis --- the cheap populism is a remarkable removal of agency and individual capacity for a party that believes in individual responsibility when individual efforts produce negative social results.  She was telling people that they were idiots being led around by everyone. 

McCain's lousy record on veteran's issues

by Jay McDonough

 

I've written about this several times before (here and here).  This is one of those cases where a politician will repeat the same thing over and over and over and, before long, folks will just start to believe it.  In this case, it's John McCain's claim he's a big friend to veterans.  Sorry.  Just isn't the case. Here's a video of Rep. Chet Edwards talking about Senator McCain's record.

Pre-Debate Prediction

By BJ

In a word: Anti-climatic.

I honestly don't know how the expectations game is going to work for Palin. On the one hand, her interview segments with Couric have driven expectations of her down so far that clearing them should be as difficult as a high jump over a garter snake. But on the other hand, there have been a spate of stories over the last few days pumping up her abilities as a debater. I would assume the former will outweigh the latter on the expectations game, but as another commentator noted recently, there is still a minimum bar people expect a VP candidate to meet, and it is as yet unknown if Palin can approach that bar with just one half-decent debate performance.

It probably does say something that I can't find anybody expecting her to be more than mildly competent tonight.

However, the real advantage for Palin, (and disadvantage for voters), is that the debate format tonight is basically designed to avoid much in the way of real answers. To summarize the Slate article linked above, the format allows for short sound-bite answers and discourages follow-ups. Palin only really got into trouble with Katie Couric because Couric would repeat questions or ask follow-ups that forced Palin to try and come with an actual answer. For the most part, she'll be able to avoid that problem for the 90 minutes this debate lasts, though there is of course still the possibility she'll make some unforced errors.

It should be noted that the time-limited answers should also help motor-mouth Biden from planting his feet in his mouth overly often as well.

Basically, the format is conductive to producing boredom, and given that up here in Canuckistan our leaders are set to bash each other over the heads tonight as well, I'll probably wind up watching that "debate" instead. (Or more likely, flip back and forth between the two while wondering how much rum I can safely consume and still show up for work in the morning. Unfortunately, I'm sure the answer isn't enough to make either debate tolerable.)

Ultimately, I'm back to where I started, the debate itself will be anti-climatic and change next to nothing, though I'm sure there will be some furious spinning from both sides to claim the contrary.

The times they are a changin'

by Jay McDonough

Another legacy of the Bush presidency: diminished influence for the U.S. in foreign affairs.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that the path to inclusion into NATO for ex Soviet republics, Georgian and Ukraine, will not be initiated this year.

U.S. officials had hoped a NATO ministerial meeting set for December might be the occasion for the alliance to extend a so-called Membership Action Plan, or MAP, to the two former Soviet republics. However, the odds against any quick move toward NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine got a lot longer after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August.

Ms. Merkel, however, told journalists after a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in St. Petersburg, Russia, that the meeting would be only "an initial evaluation on the road to MAP."

Membership in NATO can come as long as a decade after the start of MAP. Ms. Merkel argued earlier this year the move would provoke Russia unnecessarily and that a country such as Georgia that had two open territorial disputes wasn't a suitable NATO member. NATO membership includes a mutual defense clause. (Link)

The Bush Administration has been busy dangling the NATO carrot in front of Georgia and Ukraine for some time now.   Many analysts believe Georgia's recent actions in South Ossetia, prompting the skirmish with Russian forces, was initiated believing NATO forces would intervene on Georgia's behalf. 

Mutual defense is a key component to the NATO agreements.  Given the Russian's uncomfortableness with satellite nations cozying up to the West, NATO membership ought to be thoroughly and carefully considered before initiating the Membership Action Plan for any of the ex Soviet states (with their poorly defined, and disputed, borders).

Try to imagine the U.S. simultaneously fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Georgia.  Thank goodness Chancellor Merkel didn't succumb to U.S. pressure and, instead, put the brakes on NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine

McCain to Surrender Michigan?

By BJ

Sorry Fester, it appears that the McCain camp has decided to pull out of Michigan instead of Pennsylvania.

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.   Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.

I’m somewhat surprised at the timing of this.  I would have expected McCain to hold on for at least another week or so, but as Fester mentioned in his post, McCain’s finances are constrained, and so we see him starting to abandon pick up opportunities, which, excepting some of the truly long-shot cases, are always interpreted as a sign that a campaign is in trouble.

Blowback Brewing from the Horn

By BJ

Granted that we’ve already had the “foreign policy” debate for this presidential race, but I’d really like to hear the candidates views on that other conflict the “War on Terror” inspired, the one in the Horn of Africa whose main belligerents are Ethiopia and Somalia, but also involves Eritrea and Kenya, along with the US, of course.

The latest news involves a rendition-type program between Kenya and Ethiopia with CIA involvement.

In late 2006, the Bush administration backed a full-scale Ethiopian military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis, including some who were suspected of terrorist links, to flee across the Kenya border.

Kenyan authorities arrested at least 150 men, women and children from more than 18 countries -- including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada -- in operations near the Somali border, and held them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. In January and February 2007, the Kenyan government then unlawfully put dozens of these individuals -- with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees themselves -- on flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the Ethiopian military. Ethiopian forces also arrested an unknown number of people in Somalia.

Those rendered were later transported to detention centers in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and other parts of Ethiopia, where they effectively disappeared. Denied access to their embassies, their families and international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the detainees were even denied phone calls home. Several detainees have said that they were housed in solitary cells, some as small as two meters by two meters, with their hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and their feet bound together any time they were in their cells.

An unknown number of them -- likely dozens -- were questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees -- including several pregnant women -- to a villa where U.S. officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links. At night the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their cells.

As horrid as some of the treatment of these men and women was and probably still is, the importance to Americans lies in the involvement, and even more the perception of involvement, of the US in these kinds of activities.

Almost everyone I spoke with assumed -- whether true or not -- that the United States backed the arbitrary arrest and unlawful rendition of men like Ishmael and the still-detained Kenyans. Almost everyone assumed that the Ethiopians operate with America's blessing. Their stories have circulated, fueling anger and resentment. As one man, whose childhood friend became one of the rendition victims, told me, "Now when I go to the mosque, I pray to God to punish the Americans."

To be sure, the United States is not the main culprit when the Kenyans unlawfully render suspects or the Ethiopians torture them. But when U.S. officials interrogate rendition victims who are being held incommunicado, the United States becomes complicit in the abuse. The U.S. is funding the Ethiopian military, supporting its activities in Somalia and training Kenyan security forces in counterterrorism -- so as U.S.-backed military and police forces in the region brutalize their domestic opponents in the name of fighting terrorism, the United States is often blamed.

America’s activities in the Horn have potential blowback written all over them. Among the recommendations to the US government in the report the above story is taken from are the following:

Repudiate the use of rendition without due process as a counterterrorism tactic.

Withhold counterterrorism and security-related funding from the Ethiopian security forces until the Ethiopian government publicly discloses the identities, fates, and whereabouts of all persons rendered by Kenya or Somalia to Ethiopian custody since January 2007.

Withhold counterterrorism and security-related funding from the Kenyan security forces until the Kenyan government publicly discloses the identities and last known whereabouts of all persons rendered to Somalia or Ethiopia since January 2007.

The Bush administration is a lost cause, of course, but it would be nice if the US elected somebody with at least a passing familiarity with international law and the willingness to hold its allies up to some standards of behaviour before their actions cause irreparable harm to America's own interests.

Then again, who pays any attention to Africa?

Leaked Report Ties Pakistani Intelligence To Taliban

By Cernig

A secret, high-level report leaked to the Spanish press explicitly ties the ISI, Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, to the Taliban - the first time a NATO member has made the allegation so specifically. The report's leak comes at an embarassing time for the Pakistani givernment as they are currently engaged in a PR campaign, including interviews with President Zardari and press releases about the new ISI head, to bolster their fading image of being a staunch ally in the "war on terror" and to distance the ISI from allegations it uses terror groups as proxies.

The August 2005 report says Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped the Taliban procure roadside bombs and may even have provided training and intelligence to the Taliban in camps set up on Pakistani soil.

The Pakistani agency, known as the ISI, planned to have the Taliban use the explosives "to assassinate high-ranking officials" in Afghanistan, the report said.

It also warned of possible advanced training camps in Pakistan "where the Taliban receive training, help and intelligence from the ISI and where they are also developing new kinds" of improvised explosive devices. The report said the Taliban had also been receiving help from al-Qaida.

The document, which was obtained by Cadena Ser radio and posted on the station's Web site Wednesday, was marked "confidential" and topped with the Defense Ministry seal and the title of Spain's military intelligence agency.

A Defense Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the report, saying the ministry does not discuss intelligence issues. Cadena Ser did not say how it got the document.

A Pakistani spokesman described the report as "baseless, unfounded and part of a malicious, well-orchestrated propaganda campaign to malign the ISI." He went on to accuse "certain quarters" - probably a code for India - as "attempting to weaken" Pakistan's intelligence agency through such a campaign.

If so, those "certain quarters" have a wide reach. Rumors, leaks and reports pointing to the ISI's aid for terror groups, even their outright direction of such groups, have been rife for years and the Pakistani government itself has admitted on occasion that the ISI and elements thereoff are not fully under anyone else's control, neither the military's nor the government's.

A journalist friend also points to the report's inclusion of "developing new kinds" of improvised explosive devices. The report dates from 2005. Could these be the legendary EFP's which the US military has ascribed to Iran and which it has accused Iran of providing to special groups in Iraq and to the Taliban in Afghanistan? The US narrative on EFPs is ever-evolving, although coming from Pakistan - presumably via Silk Road smuggling routes - is something they've never considered. I have, however, and as long ago as February 2nd 2007, before the infamous Baghdad Briefing which was supposed to prove conclusively that Iran was responsible for those deadly bombs and failed so spectaularly to do so. It will be interesting to see if any more information on this surfaces.

Be that as it may, the report shows that Pakistan has a problem in the ISI, and it would do better to admit it than to continue bowing to military pressure to hide it. In the circumstances, it makes sense to wonder whether the democratically elected civilian government or the military are really in charge of Pakistan's foreign policy, and whether the uncertainty on that question something the West should be at all happy with.

Freeping the Political OODA Loop

By Fester:

Kathleen Parker is a movement conservative.  She is a staunch Republican and is willing to blame Nancy Pelosi's oh so partisan speech for the failure of the GOP double cross attempt on the Bail-out in the House.  She is a core member of the base and part of its media/information elite.  She also looked at Palin and is horrified.  And then she got freeped.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.

Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.....

My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.

My first thought on this was pure schradenfreude -- she got freeped by the dumpster divers, window stalkers, counter-top checkers of the GOP base.  (If you have no idea what I am referring to, lucky you!) But she does raise a good point that gives some more evidence to my belief that the GOP is engaging in a positive feedback loop of party diminishment. 

She is trying to make a fairly reasonable point --- Sarah Palin looks worse the more one sees of her.  Gov. Palin negates McCain's dominant frame, and is becoming a predictably bad punchline as she is also an unintentional gaffe machine. 

The Freep, and the hard core GOP base doesn't want to hear this.  So Ms. Parker gets death threats.  Threats and crude intimidation is such a good way to encourage a healthy WTF and How did we Get Here conversation --- really it is.  The GOP electoral base does not want to observe or orientate themselves to a country that currently is moving away from them at a fast clip. 

So as the moderates and the rational conservatives and the liberterians continue to leave  the GOP and either do their own thing, or become nose holding Democrats, internal GOP party composition changes.  The Freepers and the Christian Right become proportionally more important to the primary process.  They reeive a larger voice, and that voice in its shouting and browbeating drives more loosely affiliated voters out. 

This process will go on for at least a couple of more cycles as the GOP is currently convinced that they need to become more conservative and more day to day tactical in order to win.  As a Democratic partisan, I'm fine with that, but the Democrats need a viable opposition party to keep them honest, so over the intermediate term, this is bad for the country and the political process. 

McSnippy

By Ron Beasley

Cernig pointed out the discussion about McCain's physical health below.  I think of even more concern is his mental health. He has a long history of temper tantrums.  He has flipped flopped on nearly every issue.  His campaign has been erratic and incoherent.  And then of course is his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.  I really have to question his mental health after reading his interview with The Des Moines Register. It reminds me of George W. Bush at his most delusional except worse.  He really comes across as someone who is living in his own universe.

First we have this when he was asked about Sarah Palin:

When it was suggested that Palin's lack of experience worried voters, McCain turned sarcastic.

"Really? I haven't detected that in the polls, I haven't detected that among the base," he said. "If there's a Georgetown cocktail party person who, quote, calls himself a conservative who doesn't like her, good luck. I don't dismiss him. I think the American people have overwhelmingly shown their approval."

Now I know St John doesn't do the Internets but there has been plenty of questions about Palin in the old media - a lot of it from his own party.

And then there is this:

At another point, McCain was asked if he's strayed from his "straight talk" image with advertising that some have labeled deceptive. McCain dryly responded, "It would be valuable if you gave some examples for an assertion of that nature."

He went on to say: "I have always had 100 percent, absolute truth, that's been my life and putting my country first. I'll match that record with anyone and an assertion that I have ever done otherwise, I take strong exception to."

As examples, a questioner at the Register noted a McCain commercial that suggested Obama favored comprehensive sex education for kindergartners and assertions by his campaign that a "lipstick on a pig" comment Obama made was a reference to Palin. News media fact-checking the sex education ad deemed it deceptive and a distortion of Obama's position.

"It certainly is your opinion and I respect your opinion, but it's not the facts," McCain said in the interview. "I respect your opinion. I strongly disagree with your assertion."

And of course he had to use the remember I was a POW defense:

He also sarcastically referred to his five years as a prisoner of war when answering a question about his having government-financed health care throughout his military and congressional career.

"The answer is that most of my life, in serving my country, I have had health care," he said. "I did go for a period of time when the health care wasn't very good."

Now I expect Republicans to lie, that doesn't surprise me, but what scares the hell out of me is that I think McCain actually believes what he is saying.

Update

GOP consultant and McCain senior strategist in 2000, Mike Murphy, questions the competence of the McCain campaign and asks the following question:

What the Hell was McCain even doing there in the first place?

1.) Obama is going to win Iowa.

2.) Editorial board meetings are usually pure trouble to begin with and result only in newspaper endorsements that persuade very few voters beyond the immediate family members of the editorial board.

3.) Within the rarified category of newspaper editorial boards, the Des Moines Register is one of the most liberal in the country. I'm rather surprised that halfway through the McCain interview they failed to switch over to Esperanto, the peace-loving language of all nations.

So, 35 days left and McCain is in Iowa? Why put McCain in the wrong state, at the wrong place? No surprise the result is the wrong message and the wrong tone.

Some good points but I think it's less the venue and more the candidate.  What does that say about McCain if he can only handle interviews where he will get softball questions.  The point about why he was in Iowa was a good one.  McCain really should be spending his time in states where he at least has an outside chance. Could it be that McCain is so delusional he simply can't except the fact there are states he can't win.  The McCain campaign is still spending money here in Oregon.

Update II - Why Sarah Palin can't hurt John McCain, he's just as bad.

The video is even worse than the transcript.

Another US missile strike in Pakistan

by anderson

The US military, and by extension, the Bush administration, continue to enforce their cross-border raid policy against Taliban targets in Pakistan.

A suspected U.S. missile strike on a Taliban commander’s home in Pakistan killed six people, officials said Wednesday, a possible indication that Washington was moving ahead with cross-border raids despite protests from the new government.

The attack was the first since President Asif Ali Zardari warned that its territory cannot “be violated by our friends.”

Missiles fired by a U.S. drone aircraft late Tuesday struck the Taliban commander’s home near Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan...

U.S. officials in Afghanistan or Washington rarely acknowledge the attacks.

Pakistan says the attacks often result in civilian casualties and serve to fan extremism. American officials complain that Pakistan was unwilling or unable to act against the militants.

Ooops!

By BJ

So Agence France-Presse sent out a story on Sarah Palin's interview performance saying she was hesitant, troubled, and clumsy/gaffe-prone, (my French isn't that great). Not a big deal, given we've all had some amusement at Palin's expense over her "answers".

No, the problem is the picture they sent out along with the story was of Tina Fey's performance on SNL. Granted Fey does a damned good impression of Palin, but with Amy Poehler in the shot, you would have thought somebody may have picked up the error?

Can't wait for the reactions.

McCain's Health Suddenly On Front Burner

By Cernig

At an event today, John Mccain suddenly suffered from an extreme facial twitch just before seemingly becoming dazed and confused on stage.

Watch:

Now, I'm no medical expert - but I do come from a family with a predeliction to strokes and micro-strokes and the twitch, combined with mental confusion, looks awfully like symptoms I've seen on elderly members of my family who have suffered them. AmericaBlog has some folks who say they're medical types in comments, and everything from mini-strokes to simple nerve damage caused by previous surgery on a melonoma is being discussed. I'm basically unhappy with diagnosis by video though. it wasn't OK in the Schiavo case and it's not anything more than arnchair quarterbacking now. I repeat, I'm no expert and i give my family experience as an anecdote only, not a diagnosis.

However, John Aravosis is undoubtably correct when he writes:

McCain is 72 years old, was tortured for five years (which couldn't have done wonders to his health), and then had 4 bouts of serious melanoma. His health is an issue, and he has never fully released his medical records in a way that permits anyone to actually peruse them correctly - he only permitted reports to look at each page of his medical records for about 10 seconds before switching to another page. And no one was permitted to copy or take with any of the records. They're now back under lock and key.

And calls for the media to increase pressure for a fuller examination of McCain's health. Full medical disclosure will stop any tendency to armchair quarterbacking.

But if John McCain has serious health problems then obviously it would be better for him to step down and not run for what is probably the most stressful job in the world. In that respect, I wish what's best for him as a human being. It would be better for the country and the world too.

Western PA Heating Up

By Fester:

Western Pennsylvania Congressional races are heating up.  Three incumbents voted against the bail-out while the two very safe Democratic incumbents voted for the bill.  The Post-Gazette indicates that the No votes were votes to protect electoral prospects by Rep. Altmire (D-PA-4), Rep. Murphy (R-PA-18) and Rep. English (R-PA-3).  Altmire should be in good shape against a rematch, and I expect Rep. Murphy to cruise to a relatively easy single digit re-election. 

However, via Swing State Project, is some big news up in Erie:

SurveyUSA for Roll Call (9/26-28, likely voters):

Kathy Dahlkemper (D): 49
Phil English (R-inc): 45
Undecided: 6
(MoE: ±4%)

Oh yeah. No wonder Philly has been producing so much flop sweat in recent weeks -- the only two polls that have been publicly-released from this race (including a Dahlkemper internal) show the incumbent in brutal shape.

Oh my --- this is getting interesting!

The bailout; there's more than one way to skin this cat

by Jay McDonough

One of the things that's concerned me about this process is how insular it's been.  Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson craft a 3 page proposal and head of the Congress to sell it.  Bernanke and Paulson testify how screwed we are before Congressional committees full of Republcans and Democrats who 1) put us into our current predicament and 2) have ideological biases that prevent consensus.  Why no calls to the bullpen for the opinion of some big time economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Edmund Phelps?

Newspapers and the Internet are full of opinions on how best to address the problem.  (I even know of one article that suggested a depression would build our character!). I've read a couple counter proposals that seem quite sensible.

An example: Steven Wallman, ex SEC commissioner, writes the proposal before Congress doesn't address the real issue; homeowners delinquent and foreclosed mortgages are weakening mortgage securities and the banks holding them.

Use the $700 billion on the table and stabilize housing. Make that money (actually only a fraction would be needed) available to homeowners who live in their homes (not speculators). Here's how: Offer any financial institution (or require it, although no financial institution in its right mind would refuse the offer anyway), that owns a mortgage of an owner-occupied home in distress, to provide that homeowner, in lieu of any penalties or foreclosure, a government guarantee of the current or missed payments under the mortgage. If the homeowner agrees to have the government take over the payments, the financial institution would inform the government, the government would make the payments, and the homeowner in exchange would sign a note agreeing to repay the government some years in the future (say, 10), with interest at the same rate currently required under the homeowner's mortgage.

The existing mortgage remains unaffected (so no one has to agree to change existing agreements), but it is no longer in distress. The real economic terms of the mortgage are in essence reformed to allow the homeowner to work his or her way out of distress, or for the value of the home ultimately to recover enough for it to be refinanced or sold with some equity.  Offering this program immediately stops the cycle of foreclosures and value destruction currently underway (which buying mortgage-backed securities does not).

it will force an upwards revaluation of the mortgage-backed securities as they will now have, in essence, a government guarantee for any non-performing part, thereby immediately restoring capital and liquidity to the financial system. In fact, those securities may now even trade above par as any priced-in default risk that existed at issuance will now be eliminated.

No one is bailed out, although the government accepts some risk. The system re-lubricates and the global economy is saved. Little money is actually needed to implement this, and if the economy recovers quickly enough with this proposal in place, home values may stabilize enough for conventional refinancing to work, so the government would actually pay very little. There is a win for everyone in this - if only you can get past the politics.

An executive at a capital management firm in San Francisco offers a correllary:

Right now, nobody knows how large the problem is. To get a better estimate, lenders should be required to foreclose on nonperforming loans. Then the government should step in, after proper appraisals, and buy those foreclosed properties from the banks. That injects capital into the banks, turns bad mortgages into cash, revives prices in many mortgage-backed securities and gives investors sitting on the sidelines some idea of their true worth. Because the government now essentially owns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it can then write reasonable mortgages to get buyers back into homes at realistic rates, or sell them in bulk to institutional investors. That puts a floor under things and restores confidence.

There's plenty of good ideas on how best to solve the credit crisis.  It's a concern that Congress is debating only one.

Wolverines

By Fester:

Nate at 538 notes the recent trend towards Obama and makes a very relevant point about McCain's campaign strategy decision points:

The most critical point may be that the McCain campaign now faces something of a Hobson's choice. In terms of states where they had hoped to play offense, Michigan began to break away from them a week or so ago, and now Pennsylvania -- which had initially reacted well to Sarah Palin -- seems to be doing the same. But if all they're doing is playing defense, that gives Obama so many scratch-off tickets -- Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and perhaps Indiana, Nevada, and Missouri -- that it's essentially inevitable that he'll get lucky in one or more of those states, several of which he already appears to have the lead in.

My gut instinct if I were the McCain campaign is that it might be time to pick one of Pennsylvania and Michigan -- whichever state my internals liked better -- and consolidate my offense there. 

Go to the Wolverines Senator McCain.  Please, get the damn stupid commercials off of my TV. 

Honestly, the expanding map is the best indicator that this is a good Democratic year, and it is illustrative of the advantages of running a campaign with a flexible budget constraint.  Obama is able to keep a large field and media operation running in states where McCain is forced to pull out.  McCain has a much smaller budget of hard, coordinated dollars that he can play with, so a dollar spent in Pennsylvania means that dollar can not be raised or spent in Michigan.

I think we'll see McCain compress his focus list in a week or so to one or two Blue States (including New Hampshire) and then try to hold onto the 2004 Bush map minus New Mexico and Iowa.  That would give him a threadbare majority in the electoral college. 

Cruddy FUD from Gingrich

By Fester:

Via Atrios is an succinct summary of why the credit markets are freezing up:

the reason why interbank lending rates are so high is because banks don't trust each other. The reason they don't trust each other is they don't know how much and which pieces of big shitpile they own.

One of the reasons why they don't know the value of what they own is that underwriting failed absolutely miserably as no document, and no verification loans were freely approved. These loans were then bundled and resold as securities, and those securities are sitting on balance sheets.  Some of these assets sit in Tier I where they are marked to market, so banks have a decent idea of what any loan is worth.  Most of these assets are sitting in Tier II which is mark to model with respect to market prices, and Tier III which is mark to whatever internal model tells you it is.  Tier III is the depths of the shitpile, and is often referred to as mark to fantasy. 

The problem right now is no one has any trust in any number produced by anything based on mark to model or mark to fantasy numbers.  Who really knows what a security based on no doc 2nd mortgages from Las Vegas is really worth.  One model might say 88 cents on the dollar (if so, I want what the model is smoking), another may say 44 cents on the dollar, and the last one might say 3 cents on the dollar.  Who the hell knows.  This is uncertainty that can not be hedged against. 

What is needed right now is more transparency and more sales so similar assets can be reasonably priced.  Reasonably priced means recent market value.  Assets that are priced near market value allow counter-parties to be able to make a reasonable risk assessment on the probability that a potential deal partner will be able to pay back their short term loans.  Interest rates may vary as stronger balance sheets will get better terms, but good banks will be willing to lend to good banks. 

What is not needed is even more opacity.  Moving more assets from Tier I to Tier II, and from Tier II to Tier III to avoid market write-downs will increase distrust.  However the right wing genius Newt Gingrich is proposing this:

there are two steps that could be taken that would send a needed signal to the world financial markets that America has leaders who recognize the gravity of the crisis and are capable of putting aside narrow partisan self-interest for the good of the country....

The second thing our leaders should do immediately is simple and uncontroversial: Suspend the "mark-to-market" accounting rule that is exacerbating this crisis.

Under this artificial rule, the value of assets of banks moves up and down with economic conditions, regardless of their underlying worth. So in a time of economic crisis - such as the current subprime mortgage crisis - the value of bank assets gets caught in a downward spiral, causing investor panic and a drying up of credit.

So Gingrich's plan is to create more systemic uncertainty and distrust.  Brilliant --- push everything off the balance sheet and let the wiz kid models tell us that everything is fine and those Las Vegas 2nd Mortgage No Doc MBS are really, really, really going to pay off at near par value! 

 

Palin, Polar Bears and Big Oil

by anderson

Sarah Palin has been infamously cited as the Governor of Alaska who is suing the Bush administration to remove polar bears from the endangered species list, a listing that could have wide ranging implications for oil and gas exploration in Alaska. The lawsuit was filed when, in May, the US Department of the Interior rejected the Palin administration's argument against the listing. Alaska's lawsuit claims that the polar bear listing will "deter activities such as ... oil and gas exploration and development." Some of that development is the natural gas pipeline trumpeted by Palin, who has claimed the project is the "will of God."

While the god argument is unlikely to make an appearance in court, Palin's argument against the endangered species listing was justified, it turns out, by scientists who were funded by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute.

In official submissions to the US government's consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its severity. One paper was partly funded by the US oil company ExxonMobil.
...
Her own Alaskan review of the science drew on a joint paper by seven authors, four of whom were well-known climate- change contrarians. Her paper argued that it was "certainly premature, if not impossible" to link temperature rise in Alaska with human CO2 emissions.

The paper, entitled Polar Bears of Western Hudson Bay and Climate Change, has been criticised for relying on old research and ignoring evidence that Arctic sea-ice is melting at a quickening pace. Walt Meier, a world authority on sea ice, based at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said: "The paper doesn't measure up scientifically."

One co-author of the paper, Willie Soon, completed the study with funding from ExxonMobil - which has oil operations in Alaska's North Slope - as well as from the American Petroleum Institute. Soon was a former senior scientist with the George C Marshall Institute, which acts as an incubator for climate-change scepticism. The institute has received $715,000 in funding from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Other of these scientists are:

-- Sallie Baliunas (along with Soon): funded by the American Petroleum Institute.
-- David Legates: associated with the Marshall Institute.
-- Syun-Ichi Akasofu: founding director of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank that has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
-- Timothy Ball: Friends of Science, chair of Natural Resources Stewardship Project, both funded in part from energy firms. The two are essentially the same. After the Globe and Mail exposed that Friends of Science was funded by the oil and gas industry, the newly formed organization NRSP was launched, with the same people and "market-based" approach as FoS.

The infamously discredited Marshall Institute, a known hotbed of putative scientific contrarianism, is far more than just an "incubator for climate-change scepticism." That's just their current mission. Marshall is an incubator for almost any industry-funded scepticism. Any industry facing public criticism is welcome, as long as the price is right.

The Marshall Institute was initially established during the Reagan era to counter the then general consensus of American physicists that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or so-called "star wars") was an unworkable boondoggle. Once Reagan's days were over and SDI slipped from public view, the Marshall Institute was next employed by Big Tobacco to dispute the consensus that smoking was directly linked to lung cancer. After that effort ending badly for them, the institute's politely labeled scientists began their contrarian work on climate change, employing the same exact technique used in the days of SDI: despite overwhelming scientific consensus, make the claim that there is no consensus because a handful of industry funded rubes obfuscate the science in effort to create a "controversy."

ExxonMobil says that they stopped funding the Marshall Institute in May. But that doesn't matter. Palin's brain has already been implanted with the seeds of disinformation. Not that that was really needed, because someone like Palin doesn't need to be sold the argument. She's a believer and the backup of Big Oil funding scientists is only needed as a secular argument in a court of law.

Memo Leak Says Mission In Afghanistan Doomed

By Cernig

I'd recently begun to think there was no way back from seven years of Bush administration mismanagement in Afghanistan - but it's still shocking to hear it from the British ambassador in Kabul.

The London Times reports that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles told his French counterparts exactly that at a high-level meeting, however, and that the secret memo of the meeting has now been leaked to the French press (h/t our tireless researcher Kat). Le Canard Enchaîné, a "respected French weekly" reproduced the memo.

“The current situation is bad. The security situation is getting worse. So is corruption and the Government has lost all trust. Our public statements should not delude us over the fact that the insurrection, while incapable of winning a military victory, nevertheless has the capacity to make life increasingly difficult, including in the capital.

“The presence — especially the military presence — of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution. The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis (which, moreover, will probably be dramatic)."

The French diplomat sent the cable to brief President Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, ahead of meetings with Britain and other Nato allies over the Afghan deployment.

...Sir Sherard, 53, was also quoted as saying that while Britain had no alternative to supporting the United States, the Americans should be told to change strategy.

Reinforcing the military presence against the Taleban insurrection would be counter-productive, he said, according to Le Canard. "It would identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and it would multiply the number of targets (for the insurgents)," he was quoted as saying.

The allied governments should start preparing public opinion to accept that the only realistic solution for Afghanistan was to be ruled by "an acceptable dictator".

"In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan," the ambassador was quoted as saying.

The British government are saying the French memo is a "parody" of what was actually said at the meeting, with insiders telling the Times that 'the British position was deliberately “exaggerated” to produce a version that Paris wanted to hear'.

So either the British ambassador to Kabul thinks that the US-led strategy is wrong and the war is as good as lost or he doesn't quite think that - but very obviously the French up to and including President Sarkozy do and are willing to officially "leak" a possibly hyped-up account of the ambassador's words as cover and justification. Which doesn't bode well for NATO solidarity for a new US administration that will have to go cap in hand to European allies for additional troops and political support in Afghanistan (and ever-escalating incursions into Pakistan) even with a partial drawdown in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan is, apparently, too grim to release.

Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan “dire.”

“We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida,” Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would “call it quits.”

“The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don’t have that many,” Jones said.

… Perhaps foreshadowing the NIE assessment on Afghanistan, Adm. Mullen told Congress, “absent a broader international and interagency approach to the problems there, it is my professional opinion that no amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan.”

There’s not enough troops to provide stability for long enough, even if there were there’s not enough reconstruction and reconcilliation and even if there was there’s not enough regional goodwill for American adventurism. Just like Iraq. And just like Iraq the Afghan occupation is an unwinnable one. Neither nation is looking at long-term internal stability or even freedom from crippling internicene violence. Worse, the violence in Afghanistan has polarized the two major players in the region and contains even more of a prospect of igniting a regional bloodbath than the occupation of Iraq.The best that can be done is a “slow bleed” which will hopefully be less destructive to the region and American interests than a fast one. Just like Iraq, though, there’s no evidence that such is possible.

Yet, unfortunately, both mainstream party’s prospective Presidential candidates will continue to decide foreign policy by the touchstone that America has always used and inflict domestic vote-winning tough talk on foreigners yet again.

Palin improving in interviews

By Libby

I watched Palin's latest interview with Couric last night and her diction is improving. Her answers to the questions, not so much.

"Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America."

They've obviously been coaching her, a la Eliza Doolittle, to speak "proper" English, although if you watch the video and see the clip where she's speaking at rally, she's all folksy twang there. As for her answer here, it boggles the mind that she couldn't even come up with the name of her local newspaper in response. I'm betting the first thing that came to her mind was People magazine and she could hardly admit that.

Interestingly, I had a similar question on a Zogby poll I filled out recently and I struggled to narrow it down to a dozen news sources and blogs that I read every single day. If I had to include all that I read regularly, I would probably still be filling in that answer, yet I would hardly qualify them as ALL of the available sources. For the record, I listed NYT, WaPo, LAT, Detroit News, Politico, all major network and cable news internet sites, Washington Monthly, Sideshow, Balloon Juice, Eschaton, and of course Newshoggers, The Reaction and my own blog, which is hardly an exhaustive list of even my daily reads.

I'd be curious to know what our readers would list. Please share in comments if you're so inclined.

Grumpy Old Guy

By BJ

Granted McCin's temper was legendary long before he reached the age where he can collect Social Security, (and as an aside, how do you think the current financial mess would have looked like had the Republicans succeeded in privatizing Social Security in 2005?), but the meme of McCain being an old grump is certainly gaining traction.

First, there was his refusal to make eye contact with Obama throughout their entire debate and other annoyed body language, not to mention his repeated condescending remarks and insulting tone. Now we have him getting "testy" with the Des Moines Register's editorial board. The video footage is online and is worth watching. The text of his answers, particularly the ones where he's confronted about having spent his entire life on taxpayer-funded health insurance, and when he's confronted about the lies his campaign have been spreading convey some of the anger, but its watching the video and his sarcastic tone, and particularly his body language that conveys the impression of suppressed rage McCain must be feeling.

As an example, here's a clip where he answers about the truthiness of his campaign ads, complete with a retreat to his POW status to deflect further follow-ups.

Watch the rest here.

Hole, Bottom, Keep Digging

By Cernig

You know what I like about John McCain? His persistence. Take his Veep pick, for instance. She can see Russia from her house and thus intuit every nuance of foreign policy, reads every newspaper the world has to offer and can even spot what great economists have missed, that the economic meltdown is all about healthcare reform. On every issue, her views are clear and unproblemmatic, a reflection of common sense in the truest meaning of the phrase.

No wonder John McCain turns to her for advice all the time.

Keep doing just that, John. It proves the quality of your judgement and your resolute, nature. You need a Witchfinder to find the witches that are really to blame for all of America's ills. I bet Michelle Obama is one - I hope Sarah's got her witchfinding needle handy. The American people will reward you for it.

Monolines at risk due to slowdown

By Fester:

The monoline bond insurance companies used to have a sweet business model.  They would charge a modest fee to give municipal borrowers a better credit rating and interest rate on bond offerings, and then guarantee the payment of principal and interest.  This arrangement was sweet because municipal debt was often far safer than their background rating implied so the insurers seldom had to pay out.  A decent year could see an operating profit of more than 30% of revenue. 

And then they got greedy and started to insure all sorts of things that were past their expertise.  The MBS meltdown due to massive non-payment of ridiculous loans that were barely underwritten has led to most bond insurance companies to implode.  However the hopeful pillar had been that the basic business of insuring muncipal debt was still sound and a source of reliable positive cash flow.

Well, at least that has been the story for the past year or so.  It may be wrong as municipal bonds may become a bit more risky. 

First we saw, early in September, the city of Vallejo California successfully petition for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  The city's finances have been rough, but there are plenty of municipalities in Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt that wished they had Vallejo's balance sheet and income statement.  Being able to declare bankruptcy greatly increases the probability that Vallejo will default on some portion of its insured debt.  And since there are plenty of other cities and other taxing bodies that are in worse shape than Vallejo, be ready to see other bond issuers consider this option.

Secondly, as I noted last night, sales tax revenue is starting to fall.  Quite a few convention centers, stadiums, hotels, and other large prestige public projects are financed by dedicated sales tax revenues.  There are questions of moral obligations if sales tax revenues fall beneath projections, but the backing of numerous bonds is weakening.

Finally, via Chris Briem, we are seeing a doozy of a default in progress in Alabama:

Jefferson County is planning on defaulting on it's bonds which will then have bond payments made up by bond insurer FGIC and FSA's woes are bringing down it's parent Dexia. I have mentioned the potential impact on some of the big loans in town if FSA follows some of the other big bond insurers of late.

Jefferson County's basic story is they needed a new sewer system, floated bonds to pay for it, and entered into a series of interest rate swaps that kicked them in the ass.  The solution was to either default, engage in a comical workthrough of the bonds, or massively raise taxes and insure that the incumbent party in local politics is not a viable force for the next generation.  They tried the work through, and now it looks like they will default. 

The previously no problem side of the monoline insurance business is starting to have problems.  And due to the cascading failures of the asset backed security guarantees, most of the insurers have minimal capital cushion AND limited access to raise new cash.  They burned that ability by last spring.

GOP Infighting Accelerates

By Fester:

One of the many comment-worthy results of the failure of the bail-out on Monday has been the public implosion of Republican Party unity.  It has been every man for himself while screwing the leadership.  This is a marked departure from the unify and brazen it out approach of most of this Congress.  Instead vulnerable incumbents voted against the leadership, safe-seat back-benchers lobbed verbal bombs at their leaders, a potential 2012 candidate sabotaged the caucus leadership even as President Bush and Senator McCain revealed how limited their power and influence truly is. 

Coming from a Democrat, I am impressed at the quality of this circular firing squad. It has been predictable for quite some time as the political incentives and environment are aligned to fracture the current Bush coalition.

Dday @ Digby's notes how this dynamic will play out and Democrats just need to stay out of the way of chain-saw armed political lunatics at the end of a PCP/meth bender to benefit:

Actually, they might just be jockeying for power and headed toward a purifying self-destruction, without acting solely with the Democrats in mind. I think you're going to see new leadership elections on the Republican side after the elections, as more moderates retire or lose their races, and the conservative wackjobs consolidate their power with a smaller base. Expect more backstabbing and treachery between now and November. This is the picture of a political party in crisis.

During the summer of 2007, I predicted a nasty positive-feedback loop that is similar to what Dday is predicting, as the internal shock-absorbers for the GOP will fail, be primaried or retire. 

Combine these retirements with expected strong challenges in the few remaining Northeast Republican seats, the non-Southern, non-movement conservative caucus in the 2009 Congress looks to be minuscule. The internal dynamics will produce leadership elections of hard liners and bomb throwers for a couple of cycles, marginalizing the party nationally and further increasing the institutional power of resource extraction, social and political reactionaries within their own caucus. The Democrats don't have to do much for this short to intermediate term mechanism to play out; run non-corrupt candidates in the Northeast, resist the urge for meaningless and toothless compromise for compromise's sake (compromise when there is a good idea to grab of course)

The GOP is engaged in a race to find where their natural floor is in the House.  It is extremely likely that they'll lose a significant number of seats in both the House and the Senate this cycle, and the Senate map does not look to improve for them until 2012 when the freshmen Democrats of 2006 face their first re-election fight. 

The GOP survivors will be those who have either demonstrated remarkable political skill, amazing ideological flexibility, or come from districts that are so Republican that they'll vote for an indicted ham sandwich with an (R) next to their name before they'll vote for a Blue Dog Democrat.  The vast majority of the survivors will represent deeply Red districts so they are buffered from national negative political feedback loops.  They get to play to the peanut gallery because the peanut gallery is an overwhelming majority in their district. 

Losses at the net national level will strengthen this feedback loop.  And we are seeing it already.  Rep. Wayne Gilchrist (R-MD) lost in a primary to a Club for Growth extremist.  Rep. Gilchrist is now campaigning for the Democratic challenger.  In Michigan, former GOP Rep. Schwarz is endorsing a Democrat against Rep. Tim Walberg (who beat Rep. Scharwz in a Club for Growth primary challenge) is getting too extreme.  Kansas has become competitive local and Congressional ground because the state GOP has split between the crazy and non-crazy wing.  The non-crazy wing is either allying itself with Democrats or becoming Democrats. 

These patterns will become more common as the positive feedback loop of enhanced stupidity and short-sighted self-interest will dominate the GOP House caucus for at least a couple of cycles before House Republicans decide that they want to try to win again.  And at that point, Brad Delong might get his wish of seeing an effective and post-Enlightenment counter-balance to resurgent Democrats.  But until then, pass the popcorn....

Edited for clarity in language

How we got here

By Ron Beasley

There are conservatives I respect even though we may disagree most of the time.  One of those is Rick Moran.  He has an excellent post, Faith Of Our Fathers, that I suggest you read in full.  Since I know that most of you won't, (yes there are ways I can tell), I'll give you a snip.

In truth, our unity after 9/11 was a mirage, a temporary respite from the culture wars, the political wars, the ideological wars – the war for the soul of America. The natural equilibrium of political combat to the death reasserted itself within a matter of weeks and any sense of togetherness we felt was extinguished in a flood of partisan poison. And you can draw a straight line from the post 9/11 falling out to our current crisis where what ails us as a nation has only been exacerbated by war and crisis.

I blame Bush. And the Democrats. And the liberals. And the conservatives. And I blame us for enabling the catastrophe, where it becomes easy to lose faith, trust, and even hope – hope that there was a way through this morass of hate and distrust so that we could emerge on a far distant shore, free of the infection that has sickened the body politic of America to the point that now, we teeter on the edge of a precipice, looking down into the blackness of an unknowable, unknowing future.

The internet is at fault. So is talk radio. So is the liberal/conservative/lazy media. So is the consolidation of information sources. So am I.

Am I taking the easy out? A typical Moran “a pox on both your houses” screed? Examine your consciences and you tell me where it’s all Bush’s fault or all the Democrats fault. Or where conservatives or liberals are blameless. Or even where one party or another is “more” at fault – as if you can place catastrophe on a scale and weigh it out, carefully loading one side or the other with rancor, bitterness, lies, exaggerations, political gamesmanship, and cynicism thus hoping to determine the “real” culprit of our current predicament.

That kind of stupidity is silly and self defeating. And it only reveals that those who try it are part of the problem, not the solution.

Now that's what David Brooks and David Broder would be writing if either of them had half a brain.  (Yes Rick, you can use me as a reference)

Now I'm sure that Rick and I will not agree on this but the road to our current economic woes started the day Ronald Reagan took office and the government became part of the axis of evil.  That is when the pre Great Depression laissez-faire capitalism once again took control and safe guards and regulations became the enemy.  It culminated in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act that while authored by conservative Republicans and passed by a Republican controlled congress was signed by Bill Clinton.  The result was that by the time George W. Bush took office we were back to where we were in the 1920's and the result was the same. 

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around.  While most of FDR's reforms were undone the Democrats either went along with it or did nothing. 

And I thought I was a Pessimist!

By Fester:

I had to go through some of my archives for another post that I am working on.  While I was doing that, I found this 'pessimistic' scenario post concerning the first wave of the Credit Crunch from August 2007.  I was painting a rather dark picture at that time, and it looks like I was a bit too optimistic.

Stupid me, I was only worried about quantifiable risk premiums increasing and an inflation excluding inflation stagnant income problem.  I was not too worried about uncertainty brick shitting, freezing up the overnight lending markets, and a nasty employment recession.  I may have hinted at it, but I did not think it was highly likely.  And I was a 'pessimist' back then as we just had to wait a few months for prices to rebound and mortgages to cure. 

The old post on the flip:

Growing Optimism

By Ron Beasley

No, I'm not talking about the economy but about the election.  Over at The Left Coaster CA Pol Junkie has a daily scorecard on the Electoral Vote and that's what really counts.  He gives the states EVs to whatever candidate has the lead on that date.  Todays results show Obama receiving 375 EVs to McCain's 163.  That of course is not going to happen but there was some very significant data there never the less.

• Obama doesn't need any state where his lead now is less than six percent.
• Obama doesn't need Virginia, Ohio or Florida

Yes, the election is five weeks away and a lot can happen.  But up to this point all of the mistakes have been made by the McCain campaign and the big issue is the economy where Obama kicks McCain's ass. 

This is not that far from FiveThirtyEight's projection of Obama 330 - McCain 207.

Is violence in Iraq slowly creeping upwards again?

By Cernig

Check my math on this AP lede please.

The number of Iraqi security forces killed in September rose by nearly a third to 159 compared with the same period last year, Associated Press figures showed Tuesday. U.S. troop deaths for the same period fell by nearly 40 percent to 25.

Good, right? Violence is down.

In fairly round terms, 66.6% of 159 means 106 ISF killed last September. If 25 is 60% of last September's total of US troops killed then last year 42 US deaths occured in the same period.

Total last September: (42+106=) 148
Total this year: (25+159=) 184

That's the highest tally in the months since the Surge officially ended in July, but last months total was higher than the month before's.

In September 2007, 1,221 Iraqi civilians lost their lives according to IraqBodyCount.Org. The same website lists 566 Iraqi civilians killed in September of this year, 46% of deaths for the same period in 2007.

The AP is still repeating the meme that "violence in the country has plunged some 80 percent over the past 15 months." That may well be true over the entire period cited, but in the last nine months, 7,242 Iraqi civilians have been killed by bombs and bullets, only 36% of the 20,066 in the same period in 2007 but still a sizeable number and not 20% any longer.

Scale up to make a comparison. Imagine if 200 American civilians a day were dying due to terror attacks and sectarian violence over and above normal crime figures - an average of 80 a week of those from 'friendly fire" incidents from an occupying military. How much "success" would that feel like? How insulted would you feel by politicians claiming "victory" when even their generals say that's not a word they would use?

If the Surge and other contributors to the intitial drop in violence in Iraq are slowly ceasing to have as great an effect, that is something we should know about. It makes a difference to decisions about whether the "fragile" relative calm in Iraq is one we can expect to last or is simply temporary, and that would directly affect how voters felt about policy planning for withdrawal timelines, or the lack of them.

I'm not saying that's definitely what is happening, but there are indications that to me seem like it might be. That's why I'm asking readers to check my figures or weigh in with better information in comments, if they have it. I would like to rely on the administration, the military and the mainstream media for the straight up-to-date poop on such matters, but alas, they aren't providing it that I've seen.

Municipal Spending Slowdown

By Fester:

The Allegheny County Regional Asset District is a special tax district that collects and distributes the add-on 1% to the state general sales tax.  All covered purchases in Allegheny County has a 7% tax compared to the statewide 6% tax.  The additional money is split between the county & municipal budgets as well as 'regional assets' such as parks, theatres, arts groups, libraries, and the Sports and Exhibition Authority.  The RAD Board is acting reasonably responsibly today by reducing its budget for next year as it is projecting a significant decline in sales tax revenue, as reported by the Post-Gazette:

A preliminary $80.3 million budget released yesterday is $3.7 million lower than the record $84 million spending plan adopted this year, in large part because of a cut in capital grants...

Dan Griffin, an allocation committee member, said the state is predicting a 2 percent drop in sales tax revenue. As a result, the district is budgeting $76.6 million in sales tax revenue next year, a $1.6 million, or 2 percent, decrease. For 2009, the district is projecting that overall revenue, sales tax and interest, will drop 2.5 percent.

"I'm crossing my fingers that it's only 2¹/₂ percent," said Rick Pierchalski, another member of the allocation committee.

This is a rational move as it is extremely likely that covered expenditures will decreaes in Pittsburgh as the recession bites deeper into people's wallets and reserves.  However it is a pro-cyclical move in that it reduces spending when aggregate demand is lower.  This, in and of itself, is inconsequential as the RAD expenditures are not even a rounding error in the Pittsburgh Gross MSA Product.  However the same incentive structure and requirements will be in play for thousands of municipalities and taxing districts and aggregating those cut-backs will lead to a further drag on aggregate demand that could lead to a further vicious cycle. 

Why did the North Korean deal go south?

by Jay McDonough:

Last July, news that the U.S and North Korea had reached agreement to dismantle Korea's nuclear weapon capabilities was met with great fanfare. It seemed to be a rare success story for the Bush Administration, a coup for diplomacy in an Administration more known for hard lines, bluster and saber rattling.

The agreement included a requirement the Koreans disable their Yongbyon reactor and, with great fanfare, the giant cooling tower of the reactor was destroyed.  The U.S. was to reciprocate with energy aid and the removal of North Korea from the terrorist watch list. 

But last month, the Koreans began reassembling the reactor to protest delays in being removed from the watch list and the Bush Administration now claims it will, in fact, not remove North Korea from the list until there is a way to quantify the Korean nuclear program.  It was reported today that U.S. nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, is en route to North Korea in an attempt to resurrect the disarmament deal. 

The narrative developed by the Bush Administration and accepted by the media is that it's all the Koreans fault: Everyone knows the Koreans are unreliable and Kim Jong Il is crazy and his purported health problems have created chaos in Korea.  And that's that.

Mike Chinoy, author of "Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis." writes today there's more to the story.  Chinoy states hard line factions within the Bush Administration, unhappy with the original terms of the agreement, have now reneged and sabotaged the deal.

As Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was negotiating the terms of the declaration, the North Koreans balked at coming clean on two issues: the history of their efforts to acquire a uranium enrichment capability and their nuclear dealings with Syria.

Under the circumstances, Hill argued to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush, the immediate security threat to the United States was Pyongyang's plutonium program at Yongbyon. Because there had never been any credible U.S. intelligence that North Korea's uranium program amounted to more than a procurement effort, and because Israel's September 2007 raid on the suspect Syrian nuclear site had left it a pile of rubble, Hill contended that these issues were of less immediate urgency.

Demanding an accounting on uranium and Syria could have jeopardized the chances of completely shutting down Yongbyon, so Hill persuaded Rice and the president to go along with a compromise - a North Korean declaration that would cover only plutonium, with the uranium and Syria issues dealt with in a side letter in which North Korea "acknowledged" U.S. concerns.

Whatever its flaws, Bush and Rice accepted the arrangement, as did the other members of the six-party talks. However, Bush administration hardliners pushed back, arguing that the declaration was not credible and that the United States had to insist that Pyongyang accept a verification protocol before the delisting - unilaterally moving the goalposts.

When Washington announced this decision, Pyongyang was predictably furious.

...and the Koreans threw the switch and turned on Yongbyon again.  There's now 3 months, 22 days, 14 hours and 58 minutes until the next president is inaugurated.  It can't come soon enough.

Talk To The Organ-grinder

By Cernig

President Karzai of Afghanistan has appealed to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in hopes of getting them to broker a peace deal ending the country's six-year conflict with the Taliban. It makes sense. After all, you talk to the organ-grinder, not his monkey.

Karzai, speaking at the presidential palace, said his government is trying to encourage militants to lay down arms. He said he has in the past reached out to fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar to "come back to your home soil and work for the happiness of the people."

The Taliban has largely rebuffed repeated peace overtures from Afghan officials.

Mullah Omar released his own Eid message with a barrage of accusations against Afghan security forces, calling them thieves, smugglers and criminals not worthy of the public's trust. He also called on militants not to harm civilians during their operations.

He did not indicate any willingness to talk to Karzai's government and called again on tens of thousands of American and NATO troops to leave the country.

A former senior Taliban official told The Associated Press last week that the militants do not consider Karzai a strong leader who can uphold and implement any potential deal if America does not agree with it. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified.

U.S. officials have not indicated they are ready for any contacts with high-level Taliban leaders, though U.S. officials do encourage fighters to lay down arms and join the government's reconciliation program.

...Karzai said he would personally protect Taliban and other militant leaders from U.S. and NATO troops if they come back to Afghanistan for talks.

"Don't be afraid of the foreigners. If they try to harm you, I will stand in front of them," Karzai said.

That's a pretty definite statement of Karzai's position. He;d rather end the war for his country's sake than hunt down and kill every last terr'ist. Why does he hate America? Oh yeah...

Maybe ZalKhal will get his turn at being Head Of State after all.

Of course, Pakistan sees too much utility in its proxies to tell them to stand down. The Saudis are saying nothing, as they have for the last six years. And so it goes.

New ISI Chief Appointed

By Cernig

Pakistan's military chief, General Kayani, has made several appointments to consolidate his personal control of the army and, perhaps most importantly, the shadowy ISI intelligence agency. Kayani, who was himself ISI head under Musharraf from 2004 to 2007 before becoming chief of the entire military, has picked Lt Gen Ahmed Shujaa Pasha as the new head of ISI, advancing him from head of military operations. There, he was responsible for overall control of of offensives which troops began last year against pro-Taleban militants in Swat, Waziristan and other areas of north-west Pakistan - but also in overall charge of truce deals, bribes and ceasefires negotiated with those same militants which have caused the US and other allies to question Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror".

Also brought into official question recently has been the ISI's support for the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militant groups such as the Lek and SIMI, which were blamed for the Mumbai bombings last year. There's little doubt that Kayani, as head of ISI at the time, was involved and knowledgeable about such ties.

In July, Mark Mazzetti wrote of Kayani for the NY Times:

Until late last year, when he was elevated to the command of the entire army, the Pakistani spymaster who had been running the I.S.I. was Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. American officials describe this smart and urbane general as at once engaging and inscrutable, an avid golfer with occasionally odd affectations. During meetings, he will often spend several minutes carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. Then, after taking one puff, he stubs it out.

The grumbling at the C.I.A. about dealing with Pakistan’s I.S.I. comes with a certain grudging reverence for the spy service’s Machiavellian qualities. Some former spies even talk about the Pakistani agency with a mix of awe and professional jealousy.

One senior C.I.A. official, recently retired, said that of all the foreign spymasters the C.I.A. had dealt with, General Kayani was the most formidable and may have earned the most respect at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. The soft-spoken general, he said, is a master manipulator.

“We admire those traits,” he said.

And in July this year, respected independent analyst and author Ahmed Rashid told Harper's magazine:

This lack of U.S. interest [in the Taliban, instead of Al Qaeda, after the initial invasion of Afghanistan] coincided with the interests of the Pakistani army: to go after Al Qaeda, but to allow the Taliban to resettle in Pakistan. Quite soon the Taliban was once again patronized by the ISI. The reason was that the Pakistani army was deeply offended by the Bonn agreement, which actually gave all power to the Northern Alliance–who were deemed the enemies of Pakistan and the Taliban because they had been backed in the civil war by India, Russia, and Iran (the regional opponents of the Taliban and Pakistan during the 1990s decade-long civil war in Afghanistan). Later, India asserted itself in Afghanistan by opening an embassy and four consulates in Afghanistan and then announced a large reconstruction program in Pakistan. Pakistan’s military told the West that Indian influence was undermining Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan and also subverting Pakistan by funding and supporting the Baloch insurgency in Balochistan province. Today India’s presumed influence in Afghanistan is the principle gripe of the military. I think the Americans knew quite early what was going on between the military and the Taliban, but were prepared to ignore it as long as Musharraf helped out with Al Qaeda and as long as the United States remained bogged down in Iraq.

That was the principle blindness of the Bush Administration. I describe the ISI’s two-tracked approach in my book: While part of the ISI assisted the Bush Administration, furnishing it with self-serving but at times useful intelligence, the ISI created another, covert section to run its Taliban-support operations. Those who carefully studied the situation were onto this for some time, and I detail it in my book, but the U.S. intelligence agencies have only now issued their study reaching these fairly obvious conclusions—dangerously late in the game.

Although it's only recently that the Bush administration has allowed official leaks of US intelligence misgivings about Pakistan's ISI, it seems possible that they knew a long time ago, and decided to look the other way as long as Pakistan had Musharraf in charge and in turn pretended to be a staunch ally. The bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, though, may have been a step too far.

As it stands now, Kayani has confirmed and strengthened his control of Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus. His military has led the way in strong talk (and action) against American incursions into their territory too. He has also successfully rebuffed three recent attempts to strengthen civilian control of the ISI. There's no reason to suspect that the civilian leadership has suddenly found new strength now to dictate a new ISI head to him. Instead, what I believe has happened is that Kayani has become the power behind the weak civilian government's facade. Knowing that the US and others would not tolerate another Musharraf-style dictator, Kayani has instead opted to use a democratic front to his rule.

Update: The received wisdom, however, is that Pasha will be tough on the militants. The Associated Press quotes Hasan Askari Rizvi, a noted Pakistani poliscience professor and author, as saying "Now you have a team in place that includes the new ISI chief ... who shares Kayani's view of how to deal with the insurgency in the tribal area and that is to adopt a tough line," and Ikram Sehgal, Publisher and Managing Editor of Defence Journal (Pakistan), says that Pasha "will act as a force multiplier for the Pakistan military to fight the Taliban."

The accepted narrative is to be that Pasha will help Kayani sway lower echelons of the military and ISI away from their sympathy for and allegiance to the Taliban. Which only works if Ahmed Rashid others are utterly wrong about the uses the Pakistani military have for the Taliban and other terror proxies.

A Trap Sprung Too Soon

By BJ

Cernig wondered earlier if the bailout was a deal or a trap. Now we know:

The Republican National Committee's new advertisement critical of the the Wall Street "bailout" was produced and sent to television stations in key states before the package failed, officials at two stations said.

"Wall Street Squanders our money. And Washington is forced to bail them out with -- you guessed it -- our money. Can it get any worse?" asks the ad's narrator, as the words "BAILOUT WITH OUR MONEY" cross the screen. (The answer: Obama's plans would make it worse.)

The ad, however, seems to assume that it can safely attack a successful plan. And the reason may be the timing: Though it started airing this morning, the spot was released to stations yesterday morning, ad executives at stations in Michigan and Pennsylvania said.

Kae Buck of WLNS in Lansing said her station received the at at 7:55 a.m. Monday.  Luanne Russell of Pittsburgh's WTAE said her station received it at 10:49 Monday morning.

Basically the Republicans were planning to run against this plan even while they pretended to want to pass it. They are now in the rather interesting position of both blaming the Democrats for not passing the bailout while simultaneously attacked the very same bailout as a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Granted that they've long since proven that they can hold mutually contradictory points in their heads repeatedly over the last few years, but the utter shamelessness of this move should cause any sane supporters to at least blush a little.

Of course, for a trap to work, the mark has to actually accept the bait first. This trap was sprung prematurely, and the Republicans have most certainly injected partisanship into any subsequent proceedings to try and come up with another deal. Adding to the fun is that the RNC ad is now directly contradicting their presidential candidate.

The ad taps into deep resentment of the plan, but it comes at a time when the candidate it supports, John McCain, is urging its package, and asking that it not be referred to as a "bailout," but a "rescue."

Five weeks to the election. How many more times do you think McCain and the Republicans can shoot themselves in the foot?

Russia Says US Stonewalling Nuke Reduction Talks

By Cernig

How dumb is it to court the breakdown of decades of nuclear arms treaties and meaningful warhead reductions between the US and Russia?

Republican dumb.

"Negotiations between us and Washington to make sure that after START I treaty expires in December 2009 we have some meaningful strategic arms control regime, these negotiations are not so far heading anywhere," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, between the United States and Soviet Union came was signed in 1991 and eventually resulted in an estimated reduction of around 80 percent of all nuclear weapons in existence at the time.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual open debate of the U.N. General Assembly, which ends later on Monday, Lavrov said the reason the talks had stalled was that "our American colleagues do not want to keep limits on the delivery vehicles (missile) and on nuclear warheads in storage."

"They only want to keep some limits on the operationally deployed nuclear warheads," he told reporters.

That's the real reason, but the excuse is to prop up McCain's insane chum Saakashvili, a man on borrowed political time anyway. Rather than just come right out and say that they hate treaties of all kinds, the ultra-hawks and neocons still in charge of Bush's main foreign policy direction - and very definitely in charge of McCain's - are using the recent Caucusus conflict to restart the Cold War and unilaterally defeat international agreements (including START and treaties against the weaponization of space)that way.

If the financial meltdown doesn't get us, maybe the nuclear one will.

OIG Report on the US Attorney Firings

By BJ

It wasn't all that long ago that I would have thought that this report being released would have been bad news for the Bush administration and the Republicans running for office this election cycle. Instead, thanks to the attempted bailout and continuing financial mess, this rather egregious example of partisan firings didn't even make for a blip on the news horizon.

Fortunately, the folks at TPM have been doing a bang-up job of going over the report and its repercussions. Just go to the top of this page and scroll down.

For myself, a relatively simple question. Knowing how blatantly the system was abused to fire professionals who didn't toe the Republican party line and replace them with partisan hacks, do you think a McCain administration will hold anyone accountable or reverse a single partisan hiring or firing decision?

Elite Failure on the Bail-out

By Fester:

The basic argument for the bail-out bill has been 'OOOHHH, SCARY... MUST GRANT UNLIMITED POWERS NOW! (maybe with window dressing.)  And yes, the TED spread and other credit market measures have been extremely scary, but this is not just an economics question, it is a political question.  And the failure of the bail-out package to get out of the House is a massive failure and decrease in elite legitimacy. 

There were three Congressional Groups that opposed the bail-out.  The first two were primarily ideological with some political impact as conservative Republicans and liberal and liberalish Democrats voted against the bill.  The third group of Congress-critters who voted against the bail-out were those who are most responsive to public pressure, the incumbents in tough races (via 538).  Congress was getting bombarded with people who opposed the bail-out and getting very little push back from any voter who supported it. 

 

There was never an elite and credible consensus on what needed to be done.  Some of the economic thinkers who are both credible with liberals and who have gotten far more right than wrong both economically and politically over the past eight years have been split.  Hilzoy outlines the opposing camps:

The problem, of course, is that the experts are divided. For instance: Paul Krugman (and again), Brad DeLong (as of Saturday, but the outlines were clear then, and he has not taken it back), Lawrence Summers (ditto), and Mark Thoma think it should be passed, though none of them seems particularly enthusiastic. Nouriel Roubini is against it, and while Dean Baker hasn't expressed an opinion on this particular draft, if his earlier comments are any guide, I imagine he'll oppose it.

Publius at Obsidian Wings notes his incentive structure on why he is a reluctant supporter of the plan, and it is a damning indictment of the elite conversation and power structure in this country:

count me as a reluctant supporter of the once and future bailout plan. I’m not crazy about helping scumbags who play dice with our universe. But I’m not crazy about a financial meltdown either. So scumbags it is.

So the elite argument has been "Trust Us".  That argument failed and failed miserably because the political and financial elite have not earned that trust from the public for a complex, expensive with highly probable upside cost overruns, difficult to understand, mystical program. 

We tried that with Iraq and whoops -- $650 billion dollars, 4,000+ US lives, 500,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi lives, 4 million refugees, and $60 more per barrel of oil later, that has not worked out.  We tried that with deregulation and we saw the California electricity manipulation crisis.  We almost tried it with Social Security privatization.  We tried that with killing Glass-Steagall and gutting the regulatory capacity of the Federal Government and we are now talking about a three quarter of a trillion dollar bail-out. 

Finally, the trust reserves in the political-economic elite has been exhausted.  Just Trust Us does not work becuase there is a proven history of failure.  It was not well explained, it was not transparent, and the concessions to make it better were a farce.  It looked and felt like a handout to the well connected while everyone else gets screwed.  (Ben Bernacke will ensure that everyone else gets screwed with the inflation tax with today's actions)   

And the phones, e-mails and faxes lit up Congress to exert some influence.  The vulnerable members acted according to basic democratic principles and listened to their constituents and voted against the bail-out in their own self interest.  They could not argue with a straight face that the bail-out was a good option with positive outcomes.  The way it is designed it seems designed to fail on its stated metrics.  They could not argue with a straight face to trust the wise old men and women of Washington.  That trust disappeared a long time before the political establishment blessed an impeachment over a blow-job.  The elites of this country currently are operating with minimal legitimacy and entrenched rent collection positions.  And they earned that position.