Ouch.

PODCAST: The Egypt crisis and American exceptionalism

The crisis in Egypt presents a troubling dilemma for the US, setting our immediate practical interests squarely at odds with our founding principles.  Mubarak - and Suleiman - represent stability at the cost of liberty, while the protest movement represents liberty at the potential cost of a staus quo that has favored our economic and national security interests for decades.  What is the right call?

Click here to listen to the podcast.

(cartoon by Mr. Fish at Harper's)

Rhetoric and the Tuscon killings

The critical issue is not the question of whether our polarized and often violent political rhetoric causes violent incidents; it is, rather, the fact that this rhetoric makes it almost impossible for us to respond to them as we should - as a community, as a polity bound together by a common set of principles and values that are far more important to us, both individually and collectively, than the principles and values that divide us into parties and factions.

If incendiary political rhetoric - or, for that matter, violent movies and video games - are causes of actual violence, then they are extremely inefficient.  As shocking and horrible as mass shootings are, they are actually rare in our country of more than 300 million people - the great majority of us are exposed to violent words and images everyday, and yet will never be personally involved in a violent incident.

The problem - and the great sadness - is that our politically polarized climate deprives us of a way to come together in the wake of tragedies such as the shootings in Tuscon.  In a healthy culture, the shock of catastrophe can be consoled by the collective experience of mourning - the community is in fact strengthened by such experiences (horrible as they are), since it calls upon the eternal and universal values that bind the society together.  E pluribus unum.

One of the hallmarks of leadership is the ability to find the perspective and the language to transcend the usual divisions of everyday politics, to calm the anger or fear or confusion of the moment, and to recall the people to their sense of shared values and common purpose.  Here is one of our history's great examples - from a moment and an era which seem, strangely, both much darker and much brighter than our own:

Bullet Tax

This is my gun-control thought for the day: a 5 cent tax on every bullet.  If we can't control guns, maybe we can control bullets - and raise a little revenue to boot.

US gun owners purchased an estimated 12 billion rounds of ammunition in 2009.  At 5 cents per bullet, that's 600 million dollars of revenue - if every state were to levy such a tax, which is, of course, unlikely.

via Sullivan

Should the media abandon the pretense of impartiality?

NPR's David Folkenflik explores the question.

My two cents: yes!

The Enemies of Truth

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

- Nietzsche, Aphorism 483 from 'Human, All Too Human'

Adam Smith: actually not fuch a fan of felfifhneff

Hey, Republicans - listen up:

And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.

- Adam Smith, from 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' (1759) Part I, Chapter V

(via the estimable Scott Horton's No Comment blog)

America: where tawny is blue and pale, pale yellow is deep, deep red

"Human Development Index" map from The Human Development Project

This eye opening interactive map measures levels of education, health, and income throughout the United States.  It also includes demographic information and details about political representation for each state.

The fifteen most developed states (including the District of Columbia) are all deeply 'Blue' states, with the exception of Virginia (#12), which is marginally more blue than red.

Some interesting findings, in no particular order

Gerbils in Israel are more cautious than those in Jordan. People tend to believe that God believes what they believe. California has too many Chihuahuas.

more here

source: Harper's magazine (where else?)

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

Such is H.L. Mencken's math.

"The liberation of the human mind has best been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud.  One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms."

Dick Cheney, visionary

This one never fails to blow me away.

Words are cheap - unless they happen to be euphemisms.

Once again, I find myself in agreement with Larison, who encourages us to make the critical distinction between "defense" spending and "military" spending.

The constituencies that strongly support reductions in military spending are progressives, libertarians and deficit hawks, which also happen to be three constituencies with the least influence in their respective parties when it comes to national security policies. Obama’s military budgets are huge because there are no significant political obstacles to making them that way and there are no political incentives to make them smaller. A first, small step in changing the way we talk about military spending involves referring to military spending as just that. If military spending is ever going to be reduced, most Americans will need to acknowledge that the vast majority of military spending has a tenuous or non-existent relationship to the defense of the United States. At the very least, critics of that spending should avoid casually referring to it as defense spending, when that is not the purpose of most of these expenditures.

(h/t Sullivan)

This goes back to 1949 when the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense.  I'm not sure what the reasons behind this change were at the time, but one consequence, intended or not, is that it makes it easier to justify military spending.

It's hard to argue with spending on defense - after all, isn't it only prudent to do everything possible to keep our country safe from foreign menaces?

War spending is a different matter.

How many billions does this euphemism cost us annually?  Our annual "Defense" budget now exceeds $700 billion, and accounts for 54% of all military expenditures globally.  That's worth repeating: the US accounts for more than half of all military expenditures on planet Earth each year.

The combined military budgets of every single nation on Earth amount to less than what we spend on "defense".

Through the looking glass, darkly (again)

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how certain conservatives had a point of view so bizarre and out of accord with reality that it was baffling to me. Of course, I had no idea at the time that the right-wing chatter, which I compared to the Mad Hatter's tea party, would soon coalesce into a bone fide movement that actually calls itself the Tea Party. In the words of someone in a silly movie (I believe it was William Shatner in 'Airplane 2'): "I guess Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."

And so, the inanity abides. And crazy has come to feel, more or less, normal.

On Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday (October 15th) somebody said something wrong and dumb and it flew by more or less unnoticed. This was hardly unprecedented or surprising, but it grabbed me by the throat anyway, because it so vividly demonstrates the degree to which right-wing politics and political opinion in this country are so alienated from reality these days.

One of Maher's guests was the conservative commentator and St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch. Her major example of why Obama is a horribly fiscally irresponsible president was that the federal budget deficit tripled from 2008 to 2009. She adduced this as conclusive evidence of his profligacy - this was her rhetorical trump card.

For charity's sake, I will assume that this person simply doesn't know what she's talking about, rather than that she is deliberately lying on national television. But in either case, she's wrong and her criticism is misplaced, to say the least.

The budget deficit did indeed triple from 2008 to 2009, but the 2009 budget is Bush's, not Obama's - a new president inherits his predecessor's last budget. It was George W. Bush who increased the deficit from $460 billion in 2008 to $1,410 billion in 2009, not Barack Obama. This is simply an inarguable fact.

The biggest reasons for this increase were reduced tax revenues owing to the financial crisis and the TARP (signed into law by president Bush in October 2008).

Another major reason the 2009 deficit was so enormous compared to previous years? Obama decided to make the government's accounting practices more accurate and more transparent, thus including in the announced budget expenditures that had been there all along, but which the Bush administration had concealed from public view - such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the full cost of Medicare reimbursements. In other words, Obama decided to act according to the principle that in a democratic republic, the government should be open and accountable to the people.

Of course, Karl Rove could have told him that he'd get no credit for this - people just aren't interested in the arcana of the budget process. And they don't know when the fiscal year begins and ends. And context doesn't matter. And the facts don't matter. And reality doesn't matter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably fooling themselves, while the savvy pols and pundits get away with fooling everybody else.

But what troubles me is not the cynicism of Rove and his ilk, who know exactly what they're doing, but the apparently sincere delusion of people like Ms. Loesch, who seem to have no idea that some of their most cherished views are based on entirely - entirely! - false premises and drastic misreadings of the facts.

The villainy of Rove is fathomable - it is deliberate, rational, strategic. There is method in the mendacity. Like that of Professor Moriarty or Hannibal Lecter, it's not so terrifying because, despite the wickedness and evil intents, it at least makes some kind of sense.

But what is behind the Tea Party? What do the Tea Partiers think they're doing? Many of them are apparently sincere, but they make no sense - no sense at all. That's what really scares me.

Just in case you hadn't noticed...

"Pot smoking radicals are using the internet to turn America into a socialist sex utopia."

So, be on your guard. Keep calm and carry on.

(h/t Sullivan)

Well, duh.

PPP releases a new poll that confirms the rather obvious fact that Republicans are failing - and failing drastically - to appeal to moderate voters.

Still, it's nice to see it confirmed.

The GOP's approach to spending cuts

Slate's James Ledbetter puts it nicely (and accurately):

They are whacking weeds at the edge of a large field where they let sacred cows get fatter.

The only sane approach to climate change.

Pascal wrote that it only makes sense to live as though God exists, since you have nothing to lose by doing so, even if God turns out not exist; whereas to live without faith carries immense risks if God actually does exist - i.e. eternal damnation.

Be that as it may, a similar (identical, in fact) logic applies to climate change.

To develop renewable and sustainable energy sources carries no downside, yet increases energy independence, is good for the environment, enhances national security and economic stability, and will ultimately save people money. It also opens up a new set of industries in which American ingenuity and diligence can lead the world (whereas now we are letting China dominate these industries unchallenged).

All these benefits accrue even if there turns out to be no man-made impact on global climate.

And if climate change is real, then we gain the enormous additional benefit of slowing it down, possibly reversing it, and certainly ceasing to aggravate it.

On the other hand, failing to modify behavior and develop renewable and sustainable energies aggravates the problem, provides no alternatives to switch to before it becomes too late, and may actually cause - CAUSE, mind you - a global catastrophe.

This should be a no brainer. Making the wrong wager on climate change may not risk eternal damnation, but it is certainly the act of a damned fool.

(via Sullivan)

Bombing Iran - Goliath vs. David, not the other way around

I'm with Larison:

As it was in the year before the invasion of Iraq, we continue to treat the significantly weaker state as the irrational aggressor that must be stopped. Meanwhile, we calmly ponder how the U.S. or Israel will launch aerial sneak attacks...

Preventive war is nothing other than wanton aggression, and the governments that wage such wars are committing grave crimes. What is worse is that, in the case of Iran, it would be aggression that does not even achieve its intended goal. If Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons now, an aggressive war against Iran would give hard-liners the justification they need to start pursuing them. If Iran is actually pursuing them, an attack merely delays the inevitable while making rapprochement in the future virtually impossible.

The inability to see any point of view but one's own is deeply unfortunate in personal life, but potentially catastrophic in geo-politics.

Disproportional representation

My research for a project I'm working on has led me to this remarkable statistic:

The 37 million citizens of California are currently represented by 2 Democratic senators.

The combined 36 million citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia are currently represented by 22 Republican senators.

"A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside."

- Edwards Deming

On Certitude

Certitude is usually a sign of ignorance.

Failure to Communicate

"What we've got here is failure to communicate." - Captain, in Cool Hand Luke


Both to its credit and to its detriment, the Obama administration does not seem to recognize that in today's America the appearance of competence, engagement, decisiveness, etc. is more important than the actuality.

Take the current BP oil spill as an example (the months-long management of the health care reform debate is another).

The President could have done little more than he actually has done. As he stated in his press conference last week, the White House has been engaged from "day one" and has been directing not only government's actions but BP's as well. The president seemed somewhat exasperated that he needed to make this point as part of a damage-control effort. Exasperation is understandable - he has enough on his plate without having to be excessively concerned with appearances.

The problem is that appearances are all that anybody outside the White House sees. Appearances are all we have to go on. In the absence of information, the media and the public naturally infer inaction, which they will interpret as obliviousness, lack of concern, indecisiveness or secrecy.

People crave a sense of urgency. Note the phrase carefully: "sense of urgency." Not actual urgency. A sense of urgency.

It might be argued - it should be argued - that the president of the United States of America has better things to do than worry about play-acting. What matters, after all, is results. The problem, though, is that results aren't always visible, and even when they are, they often need to be emphasized.

On the other hand, the inverse is also true - appearances tend to be taken at face value until a great deal of contrary evidence emerges. The widely incompetent and unengaged George W. Bush administration enjoyed a strong reputation for engagement and competence for years, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, until the catastrophe of Katrina broke the illusion decisively. That unearned reputation had a lot to do with Bush's reelection.

In the case of this oil spill, as in numerous cases since he took office, the White House has failed to demonstrate engagement even as it was fully engaged. The result has been a series of distracting and unnecessary communication crises of varying severity which have had the cumulative effect of eroding some of the public's confidence in President Obama's leadership.

Ultimately, a full engagement with "message" is far from a mere concern with appearances - it is critical to creating a long-term environment in which the president can be left relatively free to focus on actual governance without the ever-increasing need to engage in damage-control exercises.

If the White House is serious about governing competently - which it surely is - then it should be much more serious about communicating competently. A failure to do so could lead to an irreversible deterioration of the public's faith in the president and, by November 2012, to a singularly unhappy - and decisive - result.

Please to explain?

As I write these words, thousands of barrels of oil are spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from a well dug and operated by a major global private enterprise, BP.  Right wing commentators are taking President Obama to task for his alleged lack of intervention - or, as they put it failure to "take charge of the situation."

Leaving aside the question of what he could actually do, given that the government has neither the specialized equipment nor the specialized knowledge to do more than BP itself can do, one wonders what these self-described "small-government conservatives" really believe about the limits of government intervention, the evils of regulation and the freedom of the marketplace.

Dick Cheney wants you to keep talking about waterboarding

That sounds counter-intuitive, I know. But think about it.

When considering the crimes committed by the Bush administration, waterboarding is actually the LEAST of it - they did far worse on more occasions.

A technique that 'induces the sensation of drowning', terrifying as it may in fact be, does not actually sound that terrible. What's more, it can be easily characterized as 'pouring water over somebody's face', without actually distorting or misrepresenting the facts.

As long as the 'torture debate' focuses on waterboarding, the Bush-Cheneyites win, because the real horrors they committed in our names go unremarked.

They WANT the discussion to focus on waterboarding.

Anyone who seriously wishes to hold them accountable for their actions should work to reframe this 'debate' (and how absurd and horrifying is it that we've come to a pass where there can actually be a debate about such things) to focus on human dignity - not just that of the prisoners, but that of the perpetrators who are literally ordered to defile themselves by committing inhuman acts against prisoners who, however lethal their intentions may have been, are defenseless.

Thiessen et al. can justify waterboarding in terms that are unlikely to seem outrageous to most people. But they can't as easily defend treatment of detainees that is 'cruel, inhuman or degrading'.

"Absolute and apocalyptic"

Nothing you didn't already know, but this recent study (by Democracy Corps) of Conservative attitudes towards Obama makes for a fascinating read - firmly in the tradition of Southern Gothic.

A selection:

"Ideologically, these voters possess a deeply engrained conservatism. In our favorability exercise, they give the National Rifle Association a 74.3 mean rating on a 100-point scale, and pro-life, anti abortion groups a mean score of 61.8. They have extremely low feelings toward gay marriage, rating it even lower than they rate the state of the economy, and almost all – 90 percent – oppose health care reform out of hand.

These views are more than matched by their views of President Obama: only 12 percent approve of his performance, 75 percent do not like him and 91 percent say the country is off on the wrong track. That is not out of line with how liberal Democrats viewed George W. Bush at a comparable time. But liberal Democrats are outnumbered by moderate Democrats (36 to 61 percent of all Democrats) and their reactions lacked the absolute and apocalyptic character of judgments about Obama."

I hope he's wrong

"When the fool supports the knave the good man may fold his hands. The fool in league with the knave against himself is a combination none may withstand."

- Sam Beckett (Murphy)