Al

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:35:30 GMT

Look: A "debate" is fine, but only if there's something to debate. Should we privatize Social Security? Let's debate. Should we debate about how to fix Iraq? We could, but only if there were some plausible solutions to argue about. Unfortunately, there aren't. We don't have enough troops in Iraq to keep order and the troops we do have aren't trained properly anyway. Nobody appears to have any serious desire to change that. Politically, the sectarian split in Iraq is embedded deeply in their history and culture and is mostly beyond our ability to affect, especially after three years of mismanagement. Globally, we have virtually no influence left with either local power brokers like Iran or with our European allies.

Various luminaries in the liberal foreign policy community have been proposing Iraq policies right and left for over three years now. Initially, that perhaps we should have kept our focus on Afghanistan and stayed out of Iraq altogether. Then, once we were there, liberal thinkers suggested more troops, dialogue with Iran, a multilateral council to accelerate regional investment in Iraq's progress, a variety of counterinsurgency strategies, a variety of partition plans, more serious engagement in Israeli-Palestinian talks (Tony Blair practically begged for this), and on and on. Every single one of these suggestions was ignored.

Would they have made any difference? Who knows. But to blame Democrats now for not being aggressive enough in trying to trisect this angle is like blaming Gerald Ford for losing Vietnam. George Bush fought this war precisely the way he wanted, with precisely the troops he wanted, and with every single penny he asked for. He has kept Don Rumsfeld in charge despite abundant evidence that he doesn't know how to win a war like this. He has mocked liberals and the media at every turn when they suggested we might need a different approach. The result has been a disaster with no evident solution left.

It's one thing to ask for "debate," but it's quite another to ask for a pony that doesn't exist anymore and to blame Democrats when they're unable to produce yet another one after three years of trying. That makes no sense.

haven't done anything for a long while

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:21:53 GMT

I thought I'd mention this NY Times article. Pretty depressing stuff, though not surprising to anyone who's been paying attention.

I note something unusual about the article, though -- the byline isn't from the NY Times but from Der Spiegel.

Worth printing, in other words, in the Times... but no American reporter wrote it.

I wonder just why that is.

Meet the After-Next President of the United States...

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 17:14:37 GMT

Read a summary of what he's done.

Listen to him and see if you don't agree the man could sell ice to penguins.

Edwards-Obama in 2012!

Stoked now.

Reaping the whirlwind

Tue, 11 May 2004 17:40:38 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4078660,00.html

Primal scream

Fri, 07 May 2004 21:47:47 GMT

I recently wrote something that could be characterized as a primal scream as a comment on another's journal. Without defending its placement (the journal in question is generally intended for more reserved and nuanced commentary) I note the company in which I find myself...

Read the whole thing; no quote does it justice.

"Stop with the hindsight", says one writer. "Be patient," says another.

Oh, no, let’s not stop with the hindsight. Not when so many remain so profoundly, dangerously, incomprehensibly unable to acknowledge that the hindsight shows many people of good faith and reasonable mien predicting what has come to pass in Iraq. Let’s not be patient: after all, the people counseling patience now showed a remarkable lack of it before the war...

...I find it impossible to understand how [another blogger] can give George Bush the credit for being right on "big principles" like the principled need to defend liberty, while conceding that Bush appears unable to understand the complicated constraints of real life... Just about everyone besides Robert Mugabe, Kim Il-Jong, ANSWER and Doctor Doom believes in the principled defense of liberty. George Bush gets no credit for being right in this respect, and deserves to be soundly rejected for being so, so wrong where it really counts, in the muck and mire of real life. That’s the only principled defense that counts: the one whose principles can be meaningfully reconciled with human truths. A policy that insists on living in a squatter’s tent in Plato’s Cave is a non-policy.

... To fight insurgents, one must sabotage liberty, become not just occupiers but oppressors. To promote liberty, one must be vulnerable to insurgents, and even risk losing the struggle outright to them. You can have the rule of law -- but if you do, you can’t have prisoners kept forever as "enemy combatants" or handed over to military intelligence for reasons of expediency. The law must bind the king as well as the commoner or it is worth nothing, teaches no lessons about how a liberal society works. Yes, the enemies of liberty will use that freedom against you. That’s where the real costs of it come in. That’s where you have to sacrifice lives and burn dollars and be vulnerable to attack. That’s where you take your risks... To be risk-averse about liberty is to lose the war, as we are losing it. Not just the war in Iraq, but the broader war on terror. You can achieve liberalism only with liberalism.

Fair enough.

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:55:03 GMT

Bryant doesn't like the comment I had. Like most things posted on most journals, it was a first draft, and posting as written was probably ill-advised.

Bryant posts on a number of topics of interest to me, and I continue to be fond of him as a person -- but I suspect I'll be happier if I simply don't read his journal, because I'm not all that certain I won't make other comments he won't like.

One quibble. I don't particularly like being accused of plagiarism for my own words. He may not like my words -- that's his prerogative -- but they're my own.

I admit my comments lack nuance. I don't think there's much room for nuance in situations where our representatives, acting in our name, force citizens of conquered nations to rape each other. If I wandered from the topic sufficiently that he didn't see the relevance of what I wrote... well.

I suppose there's a real frustration in me at the willingness of so many to embrace such evil so unthinkingly. At the shrewdness of the evil that disdains debate or discussion and pursues its goals while placating listeners with lies and evasion. I'm not sure it's possible to talk our way out of this, not when those whom we should be discussing matters refuse to consider our words.

So sometimes I do think nuance is overrated, if all we're doing is talking to ourselves. I was asked an excellent question: what do I write this for? It's not as though anyone listens... and I may lose the few friends this journal has, which I suppose makes it even more pointless.

But the thing is, I don't think anyone listens to Bryant, either... save those who are already reasonable. But if enough people were reasonable, we wouldn't be in this hell.

Ted Kennedy ROCKS

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 04:13:13 GMT

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=4755439

"Sadly, this administration has failed to live up to basic standards of open and candid debate... they repeatedly invent 'facts' to support their preconceived agenda -- facts which administration officials knew or should have known were not true.

"As a result, this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon.

"Iraq. Jobs. Medicare. Schools. Issue after issue. Mislead. Deceive. Make up the needed facts. Smear the character of any critic. It is undermining our national security, undermining our economy, undermining our health care ... undermining our very democracy. We need change. November can't come soon enough."

Wow.

Sat, 27 Mar 2004 18:36:11 GMT

This must a hellish nightmare for the White House.

Fortunately, they continue to behave so badly that I can truly enjoy this.

Economics

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:34:46 GMT

Keynes by Billmon.

It's all good. I was amused in particular by this:

If anything, the mainstream consensus has solidifed in recent years, as the neo-Monetarists and the quasi-Keynesians have largely settled their ancient dispute over the teological properties of money, while the more extreme theories of the rational expectations school have been revealed as, well, too extreme to be plausible. The supply siders, meanwhile, have become the economic counterpart of the creationists -- politically well-connected cranks.

Comparisons

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 18:18:30 GMT

Reagan's fiscal irresponsibility
Nixon's ethics
Hoover's economy
Harding's corruption
McKinley's corporatism
Hayes' illegitimacy

all rolled into one...

About Madrid

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 17:45:12 GMT

I haven't seen anyone make this point yet.

Let's assume it was al-Qaeda.

Consider the timing of the bombings. No, not two and a half years after 9/11, or 911 (actually 912) days after it, or whatever.

It was five days before elections in Spain.

What have we just been told? They're going to disrupt our elections.

If massive terrorist attacks happen in the US on 10/27, what effect will it have on 11/2?

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 01:22:28 GMT

"Liars." He said "the most crooked... lying group I've ever seen".

Virulent politics...

Okay, I want this man as my president now. He called the liars liars. He did he did he did. Go John!

And they haven't bothered to deny it, they've said he shouldn't be using language like that and that they're offended.

I wonder how many congressional and white house republicans don't consider the things they say to be lies?

What I want to hear Scott McClellan asked tomorrow is this: "John Kerry called you all a bunch of liars yesterday. Some people in the administration said this wasn't appropriate language for a presidential candidate to use. I presume it would have been more appropriate to call all of you major-league assholes instead?"

Best comment apropos to this one is a South Park quote found on the Eschaton comment thread:

Why do you call me a pig fucker?

First of all, because you fuck pigs.

His fast-response team is thus far awesome. Bush comes out with his pick for some new 'czar of manufacturing jobs', the CEO of some company. Literally minutes later, the Kerry team breaks the news that said czar's company just recently laid off a hundred manufacturing workers to open a new plant in India.

Give him some money. He will need it.

Like Mighty Joe Young

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 09:32:19 GMT

So we're going to go look for him now.

Ian McKellen asked Bill Maher if he thought bin Laden might be found before the election. Maher's response was to pantomime carrying a pole on his shoulder. "I think they're going to carry him into the Republican Convention trussed up like Mighty Joe Young."

Maher commented that a lot of Americans want to see bin Laden executed on national TV. McKellen objected: "Excuse me, but don't you have to catch him first? And don't you have to put him on trial first? And don't you have to find him guilty first?" Maher, with mock exasperation, responded: "Ian, this is America."

Sir Ian also gave some good smackdown to the Hate Amendment backers -- those claiming that we must protect the sanctity of marriage "which has endured for thousands of years" -- with this quote from the famous rebel Thomas Jefferson:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

McKellen's voice was shaking with emotion as he recited this (which could, one imagines, be because Sir Ian's a magnificent actor, but somehow I think his delivery came from the heart on this topic.)

Of course, mentioning Jefferson caused Maher to respond with "He banged his slave, you know," which illustrated Jefferson's point eloquently.

WTF?

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 07:44:24 GMT

David Brooks in the NYT:

Edwards talks about poverty in economic terms. He vows to bring jobs back to poor areas and restrict trade to protect industries. He suggests that if we could take money from the rich and special interests, there'd be more for the underprivileged.

This kind of talk is descended from Marxist theory, which holds that we live in the thrall of economic conditions. What the poor primarily need is more money, the theory goes.

Um. "What the poor primarily need is more money."

It's Marxist to say this?

"...[Edwards] talks about poverty in economic terms."

What the heck does Brooks think poverty is? An aesthetic problem?

My high school history teacher once said of the 1950s-era loyalty oaths that teachers had to sign: "The intent was to keep teenagers from hearing a single word about communism. The theory behind this, evidently, was that communism was so superior a system to capitalism that hearing a single person advocate it would supersede every other influence in a person's life and turn him into a raving Marxist forever."

So it's Marxist to think that poor people are poor because they don't have enough money. I suppose it's also Marxist to think that a room is dark because it doesn't have enough light.

Why does David Brooks hate America?

Wow! Grownups!

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 20:34:30 GMT

Republican grownups! Actual living, breathing, Republican grownups! In the House and Senate!

"We're looking at $500 billion deficits, and people are saying that's totally not acceptable. We have to get it down." -- Sen Don Nickles (R-Okla.), chair of Senate Budget Committee

"I have no interest now in eliminating the estate tax."
"We would be foolish to extend all the tax cuts now." - Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), vice chair of the House Budget Committee

"Everything is on the table, ranging from changes in how we do business around here to the tax cuts themselves, particularly as it regards higher-income Americans."
"[Failure to project out 10 years is) a classic example of our failure to make tough decisions." - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

"I think it's getting through to people. There seems to be an uncomfortability about where all this is heading." - Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

Okay, so Conrad's not an R -- still, read the article. Bush and the house/senate leaders are facing a revolt from their own party. In an election year. Somebody is not getting Herr Karl's memos.

Krugman's Army, part CCXVIII

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 20:14:34 GMT

Everybody, but everybody, is quoting Krugman today. So I will too.

You see, although the rest of the government is running huge deficits — and never did run much of a surplus — the Social Security system is currently taking in much more money than it spends. Thanks to those surpluses, the program is fully financed at least through 2042. The cost of securing the program's future for many decades after that would be modest — a small fraction of the revenue that will be lost if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

And the reason Social Security is in fairly good shape is that during the 1980's the Greenspan commission persuaded Congress to increase the payroll tax, which supports the program.

The payroll tax is regressive: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income families than it does on the rich. In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, families near the middle of the income distribution pay almost twice as much in payroll taxes as in income taxes. Yet people were willing to accept a regressive tax increase to sustain Social Security.

Now the joke's on them. Mr. Greenspan pushed through an increase in taxes on working Americans, generating a Social Security surplus. Then he used that surplus to argue for tax cuts that deliver very little relief to most people, but are worth a lot to those making more than $300,000 a year. And now that those tax cuts have contributed to a soaring deficit, he wants to cut Social Security benefits.

The point, of course, is that if anyone had tried to sell this package honestly — "Let's raise taxes and cut benefits for working families so we can give big tax cuts to the rich!" — voters would have been outraged. So the class warriors of the right engaged in bait-and-switch.

Double standards

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 03:16:39 GMT

So we all know perfectly well that the way teen and younger girls dress and the diseased way they consider their body image is heavily influenced by the media. No one thinks it's politically incorrect to say this.

So why is it politically incorrect to say this? I know very very well what happens to young kids exposed to various kinds of media. I have kids. I expose them to various kinds of media. Based on this, I don't expose them to other kinds.

I don't think my daughter will die of anorexia if I show her magazines with perfect-bodied models in them. I don't think my sons will shoot up their high school if they play Grand Theft Auto. But I think my daughter will be likely to have a worse body image if she's bombarded with images of perfect bodies, and I think my sons will be likely to be more violent and aggressive if they play violent video games. And I submit it is utterly irrational to believe otherwise.

Sorites, philosophers, and a question

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 22:20:48 GMT

Matt Yglesias mentions the so-called "Sorites paradox". I'm a bit grumpy, because I hate the idea that I'm missing something.

Read the article, and the comment thread -- especially the person Darryl, who understands statistics and disposes neatly of any pretensions of 'paradox' that might be inherent in the rather banal mystery of what it means to be "bald".

But a lot of people seem stuck in what I can only describe as a Platonic notion that there is some attribute of 'baldness' that you either have or you don't -- in other words, they really don't understand the whole topic of semantics. The Sorites paradox seems to be trivially disposed of. What am I missing?

And rather than just grump about it, I'll ask a question to those who have taken more philosophy classes than I have. What is an example of a good philosophical "paradox" that does not, at its root, depend on semantic confusion (as the Sorites paradox seems to)?

Edwards tomorrow

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 18:55:07 GMT

I'm casting my vote for John Edwards tomorrow. I think the best comment about John and John is that they're a fission of Clinton: Edwards has his wonderful speaking style and ability to connect, Kerry has his wonkitude and ability to list four bullet points on any topic.

Kerry might well make the better president. Edwards, however, would win the election (or at least win it much easier). Kerry's going to get the nomination, but I'm voting for Edwards because -- with four more years of seasoning, especially -- we are sure as heck going to need him in 2008 (unless Bush and Rove are as inept for the next nine months as they've been the last three).

But I will say this: Kerry blows Dukakis out of the water as a campaigner -- he shoots back. He gave a marvelous defense of his anti-death-penalty stance -- "of course I'd want to see the killer of a member of my family dead; I would want to wring his neck with my bare hands -- but..." and I do respect him. I just wish he had some Elvis. (And my god, no, that's not an appropriate question to ask him about -- what's he going to say, 'no'?)

Edwards shows that you can be tough without having to be negative (though if anyone were actually attacking him, it might be different). I respect him a lot for keeping the level of debate elevated -- and again, he gets my vote tomorrow, but with a slightly higher level of hope that the guy who beats him might have a chance in November.

You have two cows...

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 18:03:21 GMT

Brad DeLong asked for "more 'two cows' jokes" -- no one seemed to have done the obvious, so I did it... then I polished it a bit more after the comment. Herewith, the unofficial Bushonomics Edition of the Two Cows Parable:

You have a prizewinning bull. It is expected to sire hundreds of calves. The government takes it and butchers it, declaring that everybody deserves a cut of prime rib. Then the government feeds huge filet mignon cuts to campaign donors, and serves everyone else a great steaming pile of bullshit.

Bush in 2004!

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:34:50 GMT

Food for thought.

If by 2008 the country is in the throes of the economic collapse that Bush's policies are almost sure to cause, what happens to the party that's in power 2005-2008? In particular, what if Democrats will have held the presidency for 12 of the last 16 years at that point?

How does one correct for gross mismanagement without being blamed for the long-term problems that show up after the mismanager has been thrown out? This is a PR problem of unprecedented magnitude that Kerry will have to deal with. It's delicate -- normally one speaks well of the vanquished opponent -- but how exactly do you sell the country on the harsh medicine it will take to fix problems when the previous opponent wasn't just a fairly competent (if perhaps personally odious) administrator of a different orthodoxy (as, say, Reagan/Bush and Nixon/Ford and Eisenhower all were) but instead really was a corrupt, bread-and-circuses, Nero-like traitor? How do you say, out loud, "the last president fucked us up so bad that we are all in it deep -- even if you're only starting to feel it -- and we have to pull together and make sacrifices now, or we'll all be screwing the pooch for the next twenty years"?

The counterargument to "Let Bush Stew In It In 2004" is, unfortunately, K Street, media agglomeration, and Diebold (update: and the Supreme Court): the country is being run so hard into the ground that it's in real danger of turning into a kleptocracy, where elections are an ignored and corrupted formality. By 2008 it may no longer be possible to get them out -- not through anything so melodramatic as cancelled elections or violent thuggery, but through deafening distortion of reality through propaganda, combined with quiet manipulation of election results.

We are in big trouble. The clouds are comparatively only on the horizon, but the barometer hasn't read this low in a hundred years.

Spontaneous wordsmithing

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:52:45 GMT

At lunch today, there was a discussion about science funding, government spending, etc... the same group had previously had a bunch of discussions on civil rights, intellectual property, contract law... you know, the usual stuff.

Friend: "Hm, I thought you were more a libertarian."
Me: "On social and civil rights, yah. But I'm a parent. My kids need schools."
Friend: "ah, so you like some government programs, but people should be able to poison themselves and sleep with whoever they want."
Me: "Yep. I'm a liberal. I believe government should be too big to fit in your bedroom."

Immortalizing from an Atrios thread

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:15:09 GMT

A thread on better Bush/Cheney '04 slogans. They're a hoot.

"Don't Change Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse"
"Do you fear us now?? Good!!"
"Bush-Cheney: It'll Hurt Less If You Stop Struggling"
"Four More Wars"
"Bush And Dick: The Way God Intended"
"Bush/Cheney '04: 'Cause You Think You're Rich"
"Re-elect Bush/Cheney, And Save Diebold The Trouble"
"Bush/Cheney 1984"
"Today Iraq, Tomorrow The World"
"More for the rich, less for the poor / Vote Bush-Cheney '04"
"Bush/Cheney '04: Because there's still so much left to steal"
"One people, one nation, one leader: Bush-Cheney '04"
"Bush Cheney '04: Thanks for not paying attention"
"Destroying the future for generations to come"
"Bush/Cheney '04: The Final Solution to Peace and Prosperity"
"Re-elect Bush/Cheney: It Takes Two Terms To Fuck Things Up But Good"
"Bush/Cheney'04: Because FREEDOM can't suppress itself!"
"Bush-Cheney '04: Fear More Years!"
"Don't Switch Corpses Mid-Funeral
Bush/Cheney - Change Through Stasis
Sticks-In-The-Mud Sweep Clean
Bush/Cheney - The Alternative Could Be Even Worse
Why Fix A Clock That's Right Twice A Day?
Bush/Cheney - L'Etat, C'Est Nous
We'll Get It Right Eventually
Bush/Cheney - Because Even Paranoids Have Enemies
What, Us Worry?
Bush/Cheney - We've Only Just Begun To Fight
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Bush/Cheney - Because We're The Only Friends We've Got"

The same thread for some reason has potential alternate names for The Passion:

"Jesus Chainsaw Massacre"
"Crouching Jesus, Hidden Agenda"
"Too Much Of A God Thing"

I may be wrong

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 03:36:49 GMT

Granted, all such things are terribly anecdotal. But here's a letter from Andrew Sullivan's mailbag (if you don't know who Andy is, be happy):

We've witnessed a shift in Republican politics. The Republican establishment used to pay lip service to religious conservative interests while openly courting independent voters with moderate policies because it knew it could get the religious conservative vote regardless (who were they going to vote for, Clinton!?). But now, it seems Bush is paying lip service to independent interests while openly promoting religious conservative policy. Who are we going to vote for, Kerry?

Well, yes."

Here's hoping. I still think this issue isn't a winner, and could be a loser, and we have far too many other issues that are winners -- but this is the fight, so now we have to win.

How we got civil rights

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:18:55 GMT

Warning: offensive language in a 1960s quote. More on gay marriage.

If you're a gay activist, consider how you'd feel if a large union -- let us say the AFL-CIO -- held a strike right now for an issue they cared about deeply and honestly, but which made for huge news coverage and caused the majority of Americans to respond with "ick, this is why I don't like unions." You may well be ultimately sympathetic to the plight of blue-collar workers -- but if by pursuing their issue, in the way they're doing, they hurt the cause of all Democrats, and hurt the candidate's chances in November, you'd be pissed.

A story has been told to me of Lyndon Johnson that at some point before civil rights legislation -- I do not know whether it was the late 1950s when he was a senator, or early 60s when he was veep -- a Black congresswoman was forcefully chiding him that he would not put his political power behind a civil rights bill: a bill that, because of the makeup of Congress at the time, was certain to go down to defeat regardless of what LBJ did.

Johnson listened to her patiently. Then he put his arm around the woman in his effusive, borderline-harrassment Texan style and said "Honey, we are goin' to pass that legislation. We are goin' to get you your civil rights. We have just got to get some of them nigra-hatin' assholes out of the congress first."

Those who do not understand when they are overreaching may have pure hearts but they lose fights. There are still simply too many faggot-hating assholes out there. We are not changing their minds, we are spoiling them for a fight. At this point they still have the votes and the political power, and we are fighting them on their turf. Fight the fight in places where we can win. Losing big sets the cause back years, and sets back everything else progressives stand for, perhaps by decades.