Pufferfish

The Big One?

2009-12-31T13:48:24-05:00

If only Althouse was right:

Rush Limbaugh has said on his show many times that once the government runs health care, there is a threat that life-or-death decisions will be made based on politics, and people will worry that if they criticize the government or espouse the wrong opinions decisions will go against them.

Then again, maybe Rush is eying the estate tax loophole in 2010...

Then And Now

2009-12-30T10:28:26-05:00

The Bush years:

Even beyond the immediate political manipulation there was always a drive to push the country back into a 'high-fear' climate, with a presidential statements, always with some new leaked intel to dramatize the threat, even what you might call the iconography of terror -- color coded threat levels and the like.

But that isn't totally right:

Eight years ago, "a terrorist bomber's attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of September 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called 'shoe bomber,' Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate."

Obviously the Bush administration used terror threats as a political weapon. It's a convenient extension of the conservative worldview which sees aggressive grandstanding and heightened anxiety as a genuine strength. Issuing a threat warning was also a form of foreplay for Dick Cheney. The common thread between the Shoe Bomber and the Underpants Bomber is that both administrations avoided a terrorist attack on their watch through sheer luck. Our best defense was operator error. Because that's clear, neither administration could make a claim to competence or control. So the attacks were spun as non-events. That's the expected reaction by the Obama folks, who downplay everything related to terrorism ("Keep Calm And Carry On" might as well be the mantra, as Marshall notes). For the Bush administration, the Shoe Bomber was a terrorism threat that couldn't be used for political gain. But this one is on Obama's watch. Thus the silence then and the furor now, with the upshot being the GOP will always play the fear card—except when it can't.

Shoot Now, Aim Later

2009-12-29T13:33:47-05:00

After a mini-blogging Sabbatical that coincided with the news that some swarthy yocal blew his balls off on a flight into Detroit (and who hasn't contemplated that when faced with landing on holiday in America's Beirut?) along with word that the Florida Gators coach was getting the vapors from Timmy Tebow's looming induction onto a CFL roster not near you, I came home to find Christmas cheer isn't doing anything to deter the right from indulging in unhealthy levels of stupidity. (Side note: a few days of not reading blogs is a detox we should all indulge in.) In fact, a dash of failed terrorism—cut with scenes of Obama playing golf instead of minding his place and caddying—mixed with a bit too much quality family time, seems to have turned up the unhinged obnoxiousness dial. We're at Orange on the wingnut threat level. This doesn't bode well for 2010:

You have to wonder if there’s a point at which these bloggers and Fox News will feel ashamed of themselves for spreading such deliberate falsehoods. They just fall in line like mindless parrots and repeat this stuff without even bothering to check if it’s true.

You actually don't have to wonder. Shame is for the weak. But at least this epic take-down of David Brooks' lame attempt to portray Obama as a Christian Soldier lifted my spirits:

Brooks is a perfect example of the kind of spineless Beltway geek we always see beating the war drum at times like these. It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off. That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics. Brooks’s columns have always been the easiest way to take the pulse of that particular dynamic, and it sure seems now that bureaucratic momentum for intervention and more intervention is re-inflating the chests of these Beltway generals.

There's really only one trick left if Obama wants to placate Republicans: gratuitous dick swinging.

Crazy Train

2009-12-22T19:54:10-05:00

It once was conventional wisdom that Alan Greenspan was the smartest man alive:

And this brings us to Alan Greenspan, whom I've known for over 50 years and who I regarded as one of the best young business economists. Townsend-Greenspan was his company. But the trouble is that he had been an Ayn Rander. You can take the boy out of the cult but you can't take the cult out of the boy. He actually had instruction, probably pinned on the wall: "Nothing from this office should go forth which discredits the capitalist system. Greed is good."

Not that we're showing any inclination of learning from our mistakes. (I'm finding it difficult to write this post while saluting Time Magazine with a double middle finger salute.) Here's Greenspan's disciple in May, 2007:

"Importantly, we see no serious broad spillover to banks or thrift institutions from the problems in the subprime market," Bernanke said. "The troubled lenders, for the most part, have not been institutions with federally insured deposits."
He was wrong. Five of the 10 largest subprime lenders during the previous year were banks regulated by the Fed. Even as Bernanke spoke, the spillover from subprime lending was driving the banking industry into a historic crisis that some firms would not survive. And the upheaval would shove the economy into recession.

And he was wrong again:

The Fed let Citigroup make vast investments without setting aside enough money to cover its eventual losses. The company would need more than $45 billion in federal aid.
The Fed watched as National City made billions of dollars in subprime loans that were never repaid. Regulators would arrange its sale to a rival, PNC.

And the Fed approved Wachovia's purchase of a California mortgage lender shortly before California mortgage lenders led the nation into recession. Wachovia, on the verge of collapse, was bought by Wells Fargo with government help.

And again while serving on the Fed's Board of Governors:

The dangers of securitization were underscored the very next month by the collapse of energy giant Enron, which had abused the same accounting rules to conceal losses from investors. But in 2003, the board that writes accounting rules backed away from planned reforms after banks protested that Enron was an exception. The Fed sided with the industry, telling the board that securitization was safe and important to the economy, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

And how about one more time:

In January 2005, National City's chief economist had delivered a prescient warning to the Fed's board of governors: An increasingly overvalued housing market posed a threat to the broader economy, not to mention his own bank and others deeply involved in writing mortgages.
The message wasn't well received. One board member expressed particular skepticism -- Ben Bernanke.

"Where do you think it will be the worst?" Bernanke asked, according to people who attended the meeting, one in a series of sessions the Fed holds with economists.

"I would have to say California," said the economist, Richard Dekaser.

"They have been saying that about California since I bought my first house in 1979," Bernanke replied.

Woops. Apparently "they" were right. Routinely. Not that Bernanke's resume is going to keep the senate from rubber-stamping his bid for a second term as Fed chairman. He did the only thing that matters: left bankers alone and bailed them out when they fucked up. If only we could all be coddled for our incompetence.

Peasants Of The Land Unite

2009-12-22T12:05:40-05:00

Tis the season:

The World Series champions were hit with a luxury tax of nearly $25.69 million Monday, according to information received by clubs and obtained by The Associated Press.

Bang-up job by Selig to admit there's a problem but do nothing in the way of solving it:

The Yankees' regular payroll -- using 2009 salaries and prorated shares of signing bonuses -- finished at $220 million. That was a drop of $2.5 million from 2008 but more than $77.8 million higher than any other team -- a gap larger than the payrolls of the bottom 11 clubs.

Next stop for Bud: The U.S. senate, where propping up the elite is a noble profession. Or maybe he can serve a term as some sort of college football czar and counsel big school presidents on how to entrench their bowl money monopoly at the expense of mid-majors.

Once Again

2009-12-21T15:04:47-05:00

This time with feeling:

Surprisingly, the Senator who did the most to emphasize the absurdity of the situation was Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader. He recalled the votes on Social Security and Medicare, both of which passed with substantial Republican support. Social Security and Medicare, of course, were government-run programs paid for by straight tax increases. They were far more offensive to conservatives than the current legislation, which funds a mostly-private sector health-care expansion by trimming the budget of Medicare, America's largest single-payer health-care system.
Even as the bills Democrats pursue have become more moderate, the roll calls have become more partisan.

More impressive was the sight of John McCain saying Ted Kennedy wouldn't "appreciate" the bill passing cloture on a party-line vote (which Republicans made sure happened). I'd wager there's a few things Kennedy wouldn't appreciate and one of them was Republicans trying to take full advantage of the timing of his death to derail health care. None of his colleagues across the aisle mentioned respecting his interests or his constituents from Massachusetts. He was, momentarily, just one less vote to worry about.

Before Obama was even sworn-in Republicans had dusted off the '94 playbook and called on former Clinton reform-killing stars like Bill Kristol and Betsy McCaughey to lead their campaign of misinformation, fantastic lies and promises of death that poisoned the well and led people to angrily oppose broader, cheaper access to health care. Doesn't get much weirder than that. More telling was the GOP's decision over the last 15 years to ignore an industry with exploding costs in dire need of reform. Our health care system is what it is today because Republicans blocked reform when out of power and did nothing while in power. McCain can feel free to throw a tantrum. But he's got no answer for his own record of inaction.

The Politics Of Obstructionism

2009-12-20T10:41:33-05:00

Judging by Mitch McConnell's spin, you'd never guess Republicans were using every parliamentary trick in the book to slow down health care reform:

"If they were proud of this bill they wouldn't be doing it this way. They wouldn't be jamming it through in the middle of the night on the last weekend before Christmas."

Yes, where has the golden age of backroom deals and late night arm twisting provided by Tom Delay gone? Not that I blame Republicans. Their tactics have helped fracture the Democratic Party and sent Obama's approval rating into a tailspin. And that's what matters when raw power is more important to a party than governing. But that also means playing politics with the troops and basic decency toward other senators are a necessary collateral damage when throwing up filibuster after filibuster:

After years of criticizing Democrats for not supporting the troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding.” “Rarely has the Senate seen such a sad statement,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last night. “Rarely have I seen such brazen irresponsibility. And rarely have our nation's citizens received such little regard from their leaders." At 1:06 am, in fact, 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd (D) arrived to cast his vote, O’Donnell reports. The ailing Byrd was brought inside the chamber in a wheelchair, and his colleagues reacted by applauding. During that applause, Byrd raised his hand with a thumbs-up to signal an "aye" vote as he was heard saying, "Shame, shame."

The Mod Squad

2009-12-19T15:16:34-05:00

Barack Obama took a break from punching hippies in the face over health care to knock some international heads together in Copenhagen:

The deal eventually came together after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.
The intrusion led to new talks that cemented central terms of the deal, American officials said.

Xanadu Or Bust

2009-12-18T21:30:55-05:00

If only Obama had channeled the rage of deadender progressives in his public comments, then Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would beg for mercy and demand a much stronger public option. Did I get that right? If Obama wasn't weak and ineffective (or if he had the stones of St. Hillary of Clinton) then he could bend the will of a couple senators who would just assume that health care reform drifted away into the ether so they could concentrate on less controversial legislation. Is that what the far left is selling? Never mind senate rules and the unfortunate fact that having the exact number of votes you need means every Senator in the Democratic caucus is a walking filibuster. I guess this is what happens when you're a once-in-an-every-other generation candidate. People figure Obama can turn water into wine and Lieberman into a decent human being.

I need to smoke more drugs just to keep up with the hallucinations coming from the left. Talk about getting the vapors:

Joe Lieberman's reckless decision to blow up last week's compromise has had exactly the impact many of us predicted. Much of the left has flipped into vicious, angry opposition to the bill. Is that because the Medicare buy-in, a good but limited policy, has disappeared from the bill? Ostensibly. But not really. If you don't believe the bill has cost controls, Medicare buy-in was not an answer to your concerns. If you believe the mandate is bad policy, letting the small slice of exchange-users between 55 and 64 choose public insurance did not answer your fears.
Lieberman has tossed the process into chaos. But the short-term satisfactions won't overwhelm the long-term judgments. Lieberman is "point person" because he has appointed himself the 60th senator. Every other member of the Democratic caucus could have done the same, but most all have judged the underlying bill more important than their disagreements with it. Lieberman did the opposite, and there's little evidence that he actually had disagreements with the bill so much as dislike for some of its supporters.

Of the many things I find incredible about this freak out, it's the flimsy rationale that losing a weak-ass public option will turn us all into slaves to insurance corporatism. Unreal.

Blue Dogs

2009-12-18T09:48:53-05:00

Some things I will never understand:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) muscled a $154 billion jobs bill through the House on Wednesday evening just before Congress departed for a holiday recess. With the vote in serious doubt until seconds before it was gaveled to a close, Pelosi worked the floor furiously, imploring her caucus to stick with her and move the measure through.
The bill passed 217-212, but when the time on the clock expired, it was losing 208-212. A few minutes later, when it hit 214-213 and then 215-213, someone shouted "gavel it!" from the Democratic side. A bill doesn't need the full 218 to pass -- only a simple majority of those voting. The presiding officer took the suggestion and closed the vote.

Not a single Republican approved of the bill.

The slim margin is strong evidence that deficit hawks have momentum in the ideological battle between one camp that demands more spending on job creation and another, dominated by the GOP and Blue Dog Democrats, calling for immediate reductions in the deficit. Even the fact that the money was being redirected from Wall Street couldn't sway 38 Democrats, who voted with the Republicans.

It's rather amazing to watch Democrats reflexively cower when a Republican operative merely whispers "fiscally irresponsible" as if those words ensure electoral disaster. People vote on the economy. And not even that. They vote on the job they have, whether they like it, and whether they think the country is going "in the right direction." Whatever the hell that ephemeral notion of group-think positivity means. What people don't do is consider the deficit's impact on borrowing and the consequential deflationary aspects in relation to international economic trends. At least, they haven't to this point, which helps explain how we've arrived at a $11 trillion national debt. Yet this continues to escape Democrats who allow themselves to be hamstrung by a governing philosophy that Republicans themselves don't bother adhering to when controlling the purse strings.

In recent decades the GOP has routinely demonstrated its inability to manage the federal budget. The atrocities are well documented. That's doubly true for the George W Bush administration, when the GOP found a way to take a thriving economy, plus a federal surplus and nearly turn it into Great Depression 2.0 (check out that chart, which also shows spurring a bit of economic growth, perhaps through a Jobs Bill, would do quite a bit to help rein in the deficit). Point of fact: Nobody sucks at fiscal responsibility more than the Republican Party. But that doesn't prevent mealymouthed Blue Dogs from trying to shield themselves from not only a false charge, but an empty one:

O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.
O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Cheney wasn't talking about economic policy and channeling his inner Nouriel Roubini. Deficits. Don't. Matter? Of course they do, at least with regard to long-tern economic strength. What Cheney was talking about is the politics of deficit spending and the fact that voters don't punish politicians for going into the red. What they punish voters for is a bad jobs report. And that's exactly what Blue Dogs tried to ensure by voting against the House's Jobs Bill. There are times, like this, when deficit spending is urgently necessary. And it's moments like this when I figure it isn't worth saving Blue Dogs from themselves.

Give 'Em A Little Chin Music

2009-12-17T12:32:10-05:00

Ten years ago Democrats decided they were sick of watching Wall St.'s campaign contributions flow directly into GOP coffers. It was time to get in on the action. One of the legislative results was John McCain voting for and Bill Clinton signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law separating commercial and investment banking. That move helped make last year's economic implosion possible. Well now McCain—the same Maverick who had arch-deregulator Phil Gramm riding shotgun on the Straightalk Express and served as a useful tool for big business—is all about the do over. Yesterday, the Arizona senator partnered up with Sen. Maria Cantwell to introduce a bill aimed at bringing Glass-Steagall back from the dead. It's not every day you get a politician backing legislation to erase a law he worked to put on the books. Credit where it's due.

While McCain is again reinventing himself (this time in a good way), Joe Lieberman has a better chance of being caught by TMZ cameras doing body shots off of Jane Hamsher at Hawk & Dove than this bill has of being signed into law. Despite Republicans and Democrats telling anyone who will listen that they're opposed to "too big to fail" they haven't demonstrated any willingness to actually do something about it. But sometimes picking a fight you know you're going to lose can be a political winner, as Kevin Drum points out. And with the liberal netroots throwing an epic tantrum over the latest turn in the health care debate, Obama could stand to engender a little good will:

Why not pick a signature issue or two and really hammer away? Make a few fire-breathing speeches about how you agree with Alistair Darling about taxing banks that hand out huge bonuses and will be sending legislation to Congress to make that happen. It'll probably fail, but at least it moves the conversation forward and gets the public engaged. The fact that you fought the good fight won't really hurt you (the nation's bankers obviously don't think much of you already), and far from sinking the whole reform effort, it might actually help keep the rest of the bill(s) from getting watered down even more. A couple million postcards has that effect sometimes.

McCain is providing Obama an opening to sprinkle a little bit of that hopey, changey feeling around that has been missing. Not that he'll bite.

Question Of The Moment

2009-12-16T20:48:07-05:00

Can the Democrats govern?

There are those who say that Democrats shouldn't favor any system that continues to include private insurers. Good luck with that. I've been covering these issues for 40 years and I've come to this conclusion: anything that actually helps people is good, whether or not it fits into an ideological pattern. Covering 30 million more people is good. Preventing private insurers the ability to deny coverage to countless others is also good. Those who stand against these essential principles because of an ideological conceit--whether it be Joe Lieberman's opposition to a public option, Ben Nelson's opposition to abortion funding or Democracy for America's opposition to an individual mandate--are proving a point that conservatives have long made: that Democrats are too feckless to govern.

One could almost say that it's time to set aside these childish things. Speaking of, maybe it's time for that someone to speak up, talk loudly, and start swinging a big damn stick.

When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

2009-12-16T14:46:53-05:00

Times are tough in Real America. Especially when highfalutin grifters, what with all their Saks Fifth flash and snowbilly common sense, roll through town and step all over the help:

Sarah Palin not only annoyed leaders of the Utah Republican Party when she didn't have time for them during her book signing stop in Salt Lake City last week. She also took off from her hotel after arranging for a last-minute hair appointment without paying the hairdresser and leaving her to cover her own valet parking.
But Rhonda Halliday of Images Hair Studio and Day Spa wants to give Palin the benefit of the doubt. She thinks the lack of payment was unintended, and someone on Palin's staff just dropped the ball.

Halliday was called by a friend at 8 a.m. last Wednesday and was told Palin needed her hair done that morning. Halliday had planned to take her 3-year-old to the dentist for her first filling that morning, but arranged for her husband to get off work for that chore.

She was told to meet the group at the Monaco Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City and to just leave her car with valet parking.

After being ushered to a room on the 15th floor and given some instructions (don't talk to Palin unless she talks first) she did Palin's hair while the former Alaska governor chatted with her family.

Then, the Palin party left to get to the book signing at Costco on time.

That's right. The great white hope of the GOP can be found in a semi-metropolis that's probably not all that close to you, hawking her ghost-written wears next to a five gallon jug of mayo. What's that Hitchens? Feel like talkin'?

Don’t be too hard on her. She didn’t write that piece and she probably hasn’t read it. I doubt she could either read or write it. Everything she does is for effect, and is always deniable. She could switch back in a minute. At the moment she thinks her tea party crowd wants to hear this kind of thing so she’ll say that. She’s been out to say, ‘well, I don’t know but I think the President ought to produce his birth certificate. I’m not saying it isn’t a good question. Then later, cause she’s got to go to the Gridiron dinner in Washington, and learn how to use a knife and fork and be taught by Fred Malek. She takes it back. She’s a disgraceful opportunist and a real moral coward.

Kill Bill

2009-12-16T09:06:44-05:00

If I didn't know better, I'd assume Howard Dean's cartoonish rhetoric is a fairly transparent attempt to provide cover for moderate Democrats just before the big compromise and subsequent vote. Unengaged headline readers will simply figure the bill must not be too liberal if the dude who lost it in a corn field is now having a similar meltdown. Dean's rally cry doesn't come close to connecting with reality. And he no doubt knows that the fate of flamed-out major legislation is to be banished for a generation. Just ask Bill Clinton. With that, put me down for what Cesca said:

A family of four earning $38,500 will qualify for subsidies that will reduce insurance premiums from around $9,880 annually to around $2,000. A family of four earing $60,000 will see their annual premium reduced from $9,880 to around $5,240 via subsidies in the Senate bill. This is very important. Do we endeavor to yank these subsidies away by killing the bill, or do we pass the subsidies and work to improve the bill?

Also too, Yglesias has a nifty chart.

-- Update --

Just because this is a "win" for insurance companies doesn't mean a lot of other people aren't winners:

[If] I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal. And that may be the exact deal we're getting. The profit motive is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

Nope, this isn't the best way to use tax dollars to make sure everyone has health insurance. But it's the best we can do with this Congress. A plague on both of our Houses...

Never Send A Dove To A War Zone

2009-12-15T20:35:04-05:00

They'll just want more war. This piece by Sarah Davidson lends the impression that arguing for withdrawal is easier from the comfort of your Ikea char. A group of eight women and one man organized by Code Pink, Women for Peace, took a trip to Afghanistan. What they saw changed hearts and minds:

After eight days, our presumptions were turned upside down, splitting us into camps with conflicting opinions. Some still wanted an exit strategy, but one woman who’s spent 40 years in non-violent peace work reversed her lifelong stand, believing the military should stay and more troops might be helpful. “It shocks me to admit this,” she said.[...]
She tells us about a Pashtun woman in the south who was referred to her by the U.S. Special Forces. The woman fell sick and tried to walk to the hospital but had to be chaperoned by a male relative, so she took her 8-year-old son. She was wearing the Afghan burqa -- a light blue garment that covers the woman completely except for a mesh grid over the eyes. “She stumbled and when she put out her arms to break her fall, she accidentally touched a man. Her son ran home and told his father that she’d had `relations with a strange man.’”

The UN director has to stop to compose herself. “Her husband called his neighbors to hold his wife down while he chopped off the tips of all her fingers. Then he told his son to punch her in the eyes. When we found her, she was unable to see.” The director shakes her head. “If your neighbors witness something like that, they’ll think twice about going to a hospital.”

We’re subdued as we ride away from the UN office. We’re hearing numerous stories like this, which makes us probe and question our assumptions. Ann Wright, 63, a former army colonel and State Department officer who has kind blue eyes and speaks with a Southern lilt, says, “I have changed a little bit. Before this trip I was leaning toward: let’s get the hell out! Accept the inevitable! Now I feel we have a responsibility -- to be part of a security strategy and help provide education and jobs. That’s a far better way to deal with terrorism.”

I still don't know what to think about Afghanistan. But I'm resolute in my dismissal of the argument that helping women in Kabul means we have to help kids in Rwanda. Making humanitarian work a reason to intervene is different than having it loom over us as a reason to stay. Once you go in, the rules change. We're in. And that means leaving is on our conscience.

Original Intent

2009-12-15T13:33:49-05:00

I mean, really:

The founding fathers said nothing about the filibuster or about Senate super-majorities. [...]
Elections matter, and if the Republicans manage to elect a president and 54 or 57 senators, they'd have won the right to enact their agenda. Whether I agreed with it is irrelevant. As I've written many times, the problem may be healthcare in the immediate instance, but the larger problem is that the system has broken down.

The problem isn't Lieberman insomuch as it's the rules that Lieberman's been able to take advantage of. The 60 vote threshold means not only are we giving a wildly disproportionate amount of governing power to state's with an inordinate number of Lion's Den truck stops, but the indifference to reasonable representative democracy has created an opening for starlets like Joey Lieberman to step up and get their picture in the paper.

For all those exulting Lieberfreude and hoping to expel the little trollop from the caucus, well, it's never as easy as it seems. Is it?

The administration has been open about his role in the climate bill as Lieberman, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are huddling five times a week on the legislation that will ultimately hit the Senate floor.
A Congressional source described Lieberman as "incredibly engaged" on the issue, and said his position is even arguably "progressive."

That doesn't mean we're not going to be served up another Lieberman special when cap and trade hits the senate floor. But the sad upshot to all this is that Lieberman remains a necessary egomaniac, unreliant on DCCC dollars to get re-elected. Here's the silver-lining:

Disappointed progressives may be wondering whether their efforts were a waste. They most decidedly were not. The campaign for the public option pushed the entire debate to the left -- and, to use a military metaphor, it diverted enemy fire away from the rest of the bill. If Lieberman and his allies didn't have the public option to attack, they would have tried to gut the subsidies, the exchanges, or some other key element. They would have hacked away at the bill, until it left more people uninsured and more people under-insured. The public option is the reason that didn't happen.

I'm amazed that giving money to poor people didn't draw more fire. Along with insurance reform, that's the win.

-- Update --

Looks like there's some on the left trying hard to be relevant:

The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements.
In the former camp are bloggers like Markos Moulitsas, former House candidate Darcy Burner, and the Firedoglake crew. They mostly deride the bill as a giveaway to the insurance companies that does nothing for consumers. A quick rundown of their opinions right here.

I'll stick with the wonks.

Corporate Bimbo

2009-12-14T19:30:50-05:00

If there's one thing that annoys me more than the endless chattering over Joe Lieberman playing the role of cock-teasing ingenue, it's the prospect of Tiger Woods a) saying he found redemption in Jesus or b) admitting he's a sex addict with a weakness for banging random women he met at the International House of Pancakes. Either response would be a total cop out that no doubt is being poll-tested by his handlers at IMG in the run-up to Tiger's future faux-sincere self-abasement tour. Here's Sam Tanenhaus on our obsession with Tiger and his harem:

More than ever before the celebrity, in particular the sports celebrity, is trapped in a transactional relationship with his fans, who regard him less as a person than as a commodity — an enormously skilled competitor on the field, but off it just another pitchman selling himself on television and in back lit displays in airport terminals.

Oh please. The boilerplate about a right to privacy is hollow nonsense used conveniently in the interest of self-defense. Celebrities have no problem reaping the financial windfall that comes from being in the public eye while, in Tiger's case, also playing by the Nike-written rules. As Leonard Shapiro says, the simple fact is that "after consistently deciding to avoid taking a stand on so many issues of the day, Woods has finally found a cause worth fighting for: his own right to privacy."

My issue with all of this is that we spend too much time judging people for what they do and not enough time judging them for what they don't do. Put another way, Tiger's a selfish asshole. This is a guy who has netted $1 billion dollars at the age of 33, has meticulously crafted a fake public personality, treated his competitors like crap and leveraged his star status into getaways with porn stars. Sure, this US Weekly-driven frenzy is pathetic, but it also reveals that Tiger's the embodiment of everything contemptible in the callow corporitization of our society. Despite all of his iconic sway, Tiger has done nothing for the greater good—unless you consider banging two chicks at the same time a benevolent gesture. (And judging by what we know of Tiger, I'm reasonably sure he does.) He is what he is: a shallow cad with designs on being nothing more than a great golfer. I guess that's his prerogative. But it's also one he can be judged on, especially when set against the awesome hyperbole put forward by his dad, Earl.

In 1996, Earl told Sports Illustrated that his son would someday be more important than Gandhi or Buddha, calling him “the Chosen One. He’ll have the power to impact nations.” Earl added: “The world will be a better place to live in by virtue of his existence… I know that I was personally selected by God himself to nurture this young man and bring him to the point where he can make his contribution to humanity. This is my treasure. Please accept it and use it wisely.”

Fuck me in the ear.

The sad irony is that Tiger's unwillingness to speak out on AIDS relief or global warming in an effort to protect his Nike-Gatorade-AT&T-Gillette-Accenture-Tag Heuer-corporate-sponsoring image was outweighed by his willingness to risk it all to have sex with chicks while taking Ambien. What a tool.

On The Droopster

2009-12-14T17:20:01-05:00

Not sure what to say about Lieberman that hasn't already been said. But this from Jon Chait is different:

I think one answer here is that Lieberman isn't actually all that smart. He speaks, and seems to think, exclusively in terms of generalities and broad statements of principle. But there's little evidence that he's a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform. At one point during the 2000 recount, the Gore campaign explained to Lieberman why lowering standards for military ballots would be totally unfair and illegal, and Lieberman proceeded to go on television and subvert the campaign's position. Gore loyalists interpreted this as a sellout, but perhaps the more plausible explanation was that Lieberman -- who, after all, badly wanted to be vice-President -- just didn't understand the details of the Gore position well enough to defend it. The guy was taken apart by Dick Cheney in the 2000 veep debate.
I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers. Trust me, it's not true. If Senator Smith from Idaho was angering Democrats by spewing uninformed platitudes, most liberals would deride him as an idiot. With Lieberman, we all suspect it's part of a plan.

Unprincipled and stupid works for me.

And as far as the cathartic move of booting Lieberman from the caucus goes I can't say I'm completely opposed, though it will never happen. My hesitance would be that in doing so we'd risk losing his vote on cap and trade. But then whose to say we already have it?

To The Crooks, The Spoils

2009-12-14T11:34:29-05:00

Matt Taibbi's take down of Rubinites in control Obama's economic agenda is getting tough criticism from the usual suspects, which serves as a great lesson on how to mount a political counter attack: first, attempt to discredit the journalist and his article, then shift blame. But from my reading of Taibbi's article and the fairly weak critiques from administration apologists it looks like they've failed to discredit a fairly obvious charge: That Obama is beholden to the people who bear direct responsibility for the financial crisis.

While defending his piece, Taibbi makes a couple crucial points that illustrate just how top-down the economic thinking is in this country:

We could have paid off every subprime mortgage in America for about $1.4 trillion and instead shelled out at least ten times that to Wall Street, primarily to pay off derivative bets made by bankers on those assets.
Most of the bailouts came in the form of very cheap money lent out to the same banks that caused the crisis, who then took that money and lent it out at market rates, pocketing the difference. That’s where all these billions in bonuses for the major banks are coming from this year. It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free.

Sure, Bush is responsible for the bailouts and Tarp program, but the Obama team has done little to deviate from that course, with the choreographed anger over bonuses being little more than political theater.

The upshot of all of this is that the co-optation of regulatory reform by Wall Street is a crucial story that deserves more attention. And Taibbi--because he's a great writer who can break down a complicated story into an accessible article--delivers big time. My only issue stemming from Taibbi's article (besides calling Obama's actions a "sellout" when really he's not deviating from the norm) is with liberal bloggers intent on shifting blame onto the left's favorite bogeymen: Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman (please don't read this to mean those two aren't completely insufferable tools). Sure, those two centrist yahoos have enjoyed garnering plenty of Sunday morning talk show attention for rear-ending the White House's agenda. But this scarecrow building doesn't work with regulatory reform. Taibbi is talking about Obama's economic team. That team has been in office for 10 months and hasn't done a damn thing to address the most glaring problem this country faced when it took office. And the inaction isn't to assuage the moderate tendencies of Ben Nelson.

-- Update --

For more bomb throwing check out the work of Dylan Ratigan.

The 30/30 Club

2009-12-12T19:26:12-05:00

It's actually a bit different than baseball's 40/40 club and not nearly as selective. The Security Crank noticed an odd method of scoring coming from the Pentagon. News reports have a habit of reporting the Taliban is uniquely prone to being killed by the U.S. and NATO troops in groups of thirty:

But the much more important point remains: how could we possibly have any idea how the war is going, here or anywhere else, when the bad guys seem only to die in groups of 30? The sheer ubiquity of that number in fatality and casualty counts is astounding, to the point where I don’t even pay attention to a story anymore when they use that magic number 30. It is an indicator either of ignorance or deliberate spin… but no matter the case, whenever you see the number 30 used in reference to the Taliban, you should probably close the tab and move onto something else, because you just won’t get a good sense of what happened there.

And in a twist that's too incredible to be mere coincidence, this isn't the first time the number 30 has been used by actuaries at the Pentagon:

In a grisly calculus known as the “collateral damage estimate,” U.S. military commanders and lawyers often work together in advance of a military strike, using very specific, Pentagon-imposed protocols to determine whether the good that will come of it outweighs the cost.
We don’t know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon’s former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, “the magic number was 30.” That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.

My best guess—and admittedly this is only a guess—is that the Pentagon is efforting to make the official numbers look better. When Taliban fighters get killed they round up so at worst you're hitting a one to one threshold when comparing terrorist and civilian deaths. Bureaucratic number crunching is hell. (HT: The Poor Man)

It's The Science, Stupid

2009-12-11T13:06:54-05:00

Couldn't have typed this better myself:

I can't say that I really have any sophisticated understanding of the science of climate change. I don't think that most people I know who are pro-cap and trade do either. For me, the fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me.

Put baldly like that, perhaps it suggests a certain incuriousness. But I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all.
I would not be terribly shocked if the predictions we're getting today about the climate turned out to be dramatically off. (Of course, it could be dramatically worse as well as dramatically better.) For political reasons, because there's so much nonsense in the air, you're not supposed to say that I guess. But there's inevitable uncertainty about how such a complex system as the global climate functions. But in our own lives, in the real world, we live in a science based world.

Well, not exactly. There's lots of people who refuse to admit we live in a science based world and presumably figure airplanes achieve flight and missiles find their target by happenstance or the answering of whispered prayers. It's all about who you put your faith in. Which gets us to the CHRISTmas tree and some fool mixing up the death of Jesus with the birth of Santa. Or whatever:

Victory!

2009-12-11T09:49:46-05:00

I am the king! Bring me your finest meats and cheeses for a clubhouse feast!

Also:

"We will unleash hell here in December because we have to. We won't go in a shell. We'll go into attack mode, because that's what's required." - Mike Tomlin.

Suck it.

Nobel Stuff

2009-12-10T19:41:55-05:00

While managing to piss everyone off with his Afghanistan move, Obama made everyone happy with his Nobel speech. Weird. Here's what peeps are saying:

Clive Crook:

He did not glide around the awkwardness of the occasion. He acknowledged it and dealt with it. He was straightforward and unembarrassed about his lack of achievements--no taint of false modesty in the way he expressed it. The award was a "call to action". A little more to my surprise, he confronted head on the oddity of the peace prize going to a leader who had just announced a major escalation of a war. Still more to my surprise, he dwelt on this at some length, putting his decision in the context of "just war" theory. He defended his approach more forthrightly than he had at West Point. A good part of the speech was a lecture on why wars still have to be fought. Not an obvious theme when you're accepting the Nobel peace prize.

Green footballs:

Yes, that’s right — he acknowledged that there is true evil in the world, and made a strong case for the United States as a defender of freedom. Not exactly the words of an America-hating commie traitor, are they?

Kevin Drum:

Given that he was, after all, accepting a peace prize, it was a surprisingly robust defense of war and America's military role in the world. Surprisingly Bushian, really, with one obvious caveat: among the many wars he mentioned as necessary and justified, there was one that was deliberately conspicuous by its absence: Iraq. So neocons have that to gripe about if they're in a griping mood.

James Fallows:

Those trademark elements include: The embrace of contradictions (in this case, a defense of war as a means to peace); the long view; the emphasis on institution-building; the concern about the distortion of religious and ethnic loyalties; and above all a consciousness that was once called Niebuhrian and at this rate will someday be "Obamian," which emphasizes the importance of steady steps forward in an inevitably flawed world.

Gawker:

Because George W. Bush so brazenly co-opted the utopian rhetoric of liberal internationalists, no current politician can speak of the courage and heroism of those who protest oppressive regimes without unintentionally evoking that jackass in all his smirky vainglory.

Joe Klein:

How does a rookie President, having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize, go about earning it? Well, he can start by giving the sort of Nobel lecture that Barack Obama just did, an intellectually rigorous and morally lucid speech that balanced the rationale for going to war against the need to build a more peaceful and equitable world.

Sarah Palin:

I liked what he said. I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.

Freedom!

2009-12-10T14:47:07-05:00

Jane Hamsher goes all William Wallace:

It’s time that people took off the rose colored glasses and faced the fact that Obama’s “leadership” on health care was empty and passive. He went for the corporate-friendly “win” that enriches the insurance and drug companies, just as he has enriched the banks and failed to hold them to account. Those who look first to others as scapegoats for his actions have apparently not come to grips with the fact that as President of the United States, he’s a very powerful man who is not using that power to advance the progressive agenda they attribute to him.

Best part of the "passive" complaint is that Hamsher states a few graphs earlier that Obama has been "intimately involved in the process of crafting the health care bill." So, uh, apparently he's passively orchestrating the whole thing.

Anyway, I find it odd that someone positioned as a steely-eyed realist is continually let down by candidates once they get into office. I get that Hamsher has her shtick: a) get Democrats elected and b) get better Democrats elected. But we're getting close to poisoning the well here. From the outset this entire process has been an elaborate dance to figure out how to pay for reform without significantly cutting into the profits of private industries. Yet people who know this continually act betrayed every time a Blue Dog member of Congress leg humps an industry talking point. I guess its what you have to do to rile up the troops. But count me out. I'm fine with a reform package that covers everyone while laying the groundwork for expanding cheaper insurance in the future. (Lowering the Medicare age is an obvious Trojan Horse on that front, which is why it's probably not happening.)

Like it or not, politics is the art of the possible. And Obama is on the cusp of accomplishing what was previous not possible. Liberals screaming reform should be done in one fell swoop and that anything short of Obama and Emanuel throwing on war paint and charging up Capitol Hill on a suicide run need to dial it down. We elect presidents, not kings.

Boiling It Down

2009-12-10T09:48:44-05:00

Al Gore, on why climate deniers get so much attention:

If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn't take place, I'm sure we'd have a robust debate about it right now.

Also, too:

This morning, Gore appeared on MSNBC, where Andrea Mitchell read from Sarah Palin’s Facebook page to ask the former vice president questions about climate change.

Mitchell is using the same medium high school boys use when bragging about fictitious sexual conquests that allegedly happened at a party the cops totally crashed to ask the country's leading figure on climate change about categorically false assertions. A while back Krugman joked that the way our media covers political debates they'd give equal play to a dispute over the shape of the earth without ever pointing out that the world is, in fact, a big fat sphere. Never mind pointing out that anyone advocating the earth is flat is a functional moron. Mitchell isn't doing anything to undercut Krugman's argument.