The tea-party movement takes its name from the mob of angry people in Boston who, in 1773, committed a zany criminal stunt as a protest against taxes and the distant, out-of-touch government that imposed them. Two years later, the revolution was under way and—voilà!—democracy was born out of a wild moment of populist insurrection.

Except not, because in 1787 several dozen coolheaded members of the American Establishment had to meet and debate and horse-trade for four months to do the real work of creating an apparatus to make self-government practicable—that is, to write the Constitution. And what those thoughtful, educated, well-off, well-regarded gentlemen did was invent a democracy sufficiently undemocratic to function and endure. They wanted a government run by an American elite like themselves, as James Madison wrote, “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” They wanted to make sure the mass of ordinary citizens, too easily “stimulated by some irregular passion … or misled by the artful misrepresentations” and thus prone to hysteria—like, say, the rabble who’d run amok in Boston Harbor—be kept in check. That’s why they created a Senate and a Supreme Court and didn’t allow voters to elect senators or presidents directly. By the people and for the people, definitely; of the people, not so much.

Andersen preceds to build a compelling, contemporary case for a little more detached (grown up) governing and a little less populist zeal.

And in the other prominent New-York-monikered magazine, James Surowiecki — who not that long ago documented the potential for smart populism — seems, in this case, to agree with Andersen, albeit in tones less dismissive of the aforementioned populist zeal.

The temptation, then, is simply to abandon ambitious plans in an attempt to annoy no one. But a better approach would be to recognize that voters’ anger is less ideological than pragmatic: at heart, it’s the product of the weak economy and the poor job market. (The movement that today’s populism most closely resembles is Ross Perot’s, which arose, similarly, during a downturn.) And while that means that there’s no way to make voters happy without improving the economy, it also means that, if you start creating jobs, people will start to feel better. Obviously, small initiatives that nod to people’s concerns (like the deficit commission) can help. But what matters most is getting the economy moving again—even if doing so means handing out tax credits to businesses or magnifying voters’ frustration with government spending. It may bring some short-term political pain, but the only way out is through.

“The only way out is through.” It’s a difficult concept to appreciate if you’re prone to temper tantrums, but indicative of the pragmatism calmer minds should readily embrace.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today sent a letter to Anthem Blue Cross and called on the company to publicly justify its decision to raise premiums for its California customers by as much as 39 percent. In her letter, Sebelius notes that the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross, WellPoint Incorporated earned $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009.“As we continue the health insurance reform debate in Washington, this announcement reminds us that too many Americans can be left with unaffordable insurance each time the rates or rules change in the private market,” Sebelius added. “It’s clear that we need health insurance reform that will give American families the secure, affordable coverage they need.”

You can read the entire letter here.

If he hadn’t been absorbed in the game, watching Bill Moyers Journal would have given him a more productive idea than meeting with members of Congress who have been bargaining and bastardizing reform into a monstrosity that few Americans understand and the majority disapproves.

Moyers interviewed Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Maryland pediatrician, who gave up her practice to advocate a single-payer system, Medicare for All, of which the President as a candidate called himself a “proponent” and which polls at the time showed approval by most Americans.

For her pains, Dr. Flowers, representing thousands of physicians, has been patronized, ignored and arrested three times for trying to get a letter into the President’s hands, reminding him where he started in the debate that has devastated his Administration by disgusting millions, Right and Left, with the political system.

“I was so surprised,” Barack Obama said two years ago about Congressional deliberations, “when the voices of those who support a national single-payer plan/Medicare for All were excluded in place of the voices of the very health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which profit off the current health care situation.”

The President’s surprise has certainly subsided by now and, before he subjects Americans to another dog-and-pony show with those who wrecked his attempts at reform, he would do well to precede it with a televised conversation with Dr. Flowers, who is no politician but has earned a stake in the debate beyond her career as a physician.

It may not move Congress much, but such an encounter would remind Americans of where he started in all this and how distorted debate over the issue has become.

Invite her to the White House and tell security to skip the handcuffs.

MORE.

The reason I find the subject depressing (which, not coincidentally, is also the reason I get beaten up by my hard core conservative cronies on this) is that there are aspects of it which are glaringly obvious, but have become so politically poisonous among doctrinaire conservatives and party gadfly types that we’re just not supposed to talk about them. Hartmann’s piece is far from perfect, but it does provide a much needed refresher course on some economic fundamentals taken straight from one of the nation’s earliest authorities on economics.

A stick on the ground has no commercial value, but if you add labor to it by carving it into an axe handle — a thing of commercial value — you have “created wealth.” Similarly, metals in the ground have no commercial value, but when you add labor to them by extracting, refining, and forming them into products, you “create wealth.” Even turning seeds and dirt and cows into hamburgers is a form of manufacturing and creates wealth.

This is the “Wealth of Nations” that titled Adam Smith’s famous 1776 book.

On the other hand, when a trader at Goldman Sachs makes a “profit” trading stocks, bonds, or currencies, no wealth whatsoever is created. In fact, to the extent that that trader takes millions in commissions, pay, and bonuses, he’s actually depleting the wealth of the nation (particularly to the extent that he moves his money offshore to save or invest, as many do).

This definition is at the heart of the argument over what actually constitutes the fabric and soul of a potentially thriving American economy, or a fading, failing one. It addresses the question of how much of a burden is placed on the economic engine by people who, as my friend Ron Beasley has often put it, create profits by “rubbing two pieces of paper together.”

Unfortunately, Hartmann goes a bridge too far when working out his definitions of “income” vs. “wealth” as such analysts are frequently wont to do, but his argument is worth including here as a starting point.

“Wealth” is different from “income.” Wealth is value, which endures at least for some time. Income is simply compensation for work. If you wash my car for $10 and I mow your lawn for $10, we have a GDP of $20 and it looks like we both have income and economic activity. But no wealth has been created, just income.

On the other hand, if I build your car, I’m creating something of value. And if you turn my lawn into a small farm that produces food we can all eat, you’re creating something of value. Not only do we have an “economy” with a “GDP,” we also have created wealth.

Hartmann’s unfortunate example takes a good starting point and shoves it off a cliff. In reality, all “work” performed as honest labor toward a productive end contributes to the overall “wealth.” If you pay me to wash your car, I’m contributing to its maintenance, extending the useful life of the product and bolstering its potential resale price, thereby increasing the actual “value” of the car over its lifetime, albeit in a small way. Similarly, if you mow my lawn, you contribute to holding up the property value over time, increasing the value of the home. Going back to his example of sticks and ax handles, this is similar to saying that only the person running the wood lathe to carve the handles is creating “wealth.” But what of the guy who mops the floors or the woman who changes the light bulbs in the factory and keeps power flowing to the lathe? They also contribute to the creation of wealth – in the form of ax handles – albeit indirectly.

The author would have done better to stick with examples of people who extract profit from the system by purchasing currency and waiting for its worth to fluctuate, sellers of junk bonds or, in one of the most common and extreme examples, cases where the government extracts tax money from the citizens and fritters it away without providing much real value to the taxpayer in return.

But that part is something of a distraction from the larger point, which Hartmann addresses here:

The main effect of the globalism fad of the past 30 yearrs — lowering the protective barriers to trade that countries for centuries have used to make sure their own local economies are self-sufficient — has been to ship manufacturing (the creation of wealth) from developed nations to developing nations. Transnational corporations love this, because in countries with lower labor costs and few environmental and safety regulations, it’s more profitable to manufacture products. They then sell those products in the “mature” countries — the places that used to manufacture — and people burn through the wealth they’d accumulated in the earlier manufacturing days (home equity, principally, along with savings and lines of credit) to buy these foreign-manufactured goods.

At first, it looks like a good deal to consumers in developed nations. Goods are cheaper! But over a decade or two or three, as the creation of real wealth is reduced and the residue of the old wealth is spent, the developed nations become progressively poorer and poorer. At the same time, the “developing” nations become wealthier — because those are the places that are producing real wealth.

Contrary to standard liberal dogma, the failing of our fiscally conservative, free market friends is not some sinister plot to prop up industries and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. The problem is that our model is still based on a Happy Days mentality, treating corporate entities as if they still behaved the same way they did in earlier, happier times. We – and I include myself here – call for cuts in the corporate tax rate as the true path to economic recovery and job growth. And in theory this is the one true path. The federal government lacks the ability to actually “create” jobs in any long term, meaningful way which actually helps build and sustain the economy. The best they can do is create an environment where it is easier for private industry to grow and create those real jobs. Easing the tax burden on employers is a big part of that power.

Unfortunately, when constructing a strategy to put such proposals into place, the government must be aware that the corporate environment has changed radically over the last five decades and our policies need to reflect this if government action is to be effective. (My conservative friends should brace themselves now, because you’re not going to like this next part at all.)

In the Happy Days, business models incorporating concepts such as international telecommuting were impossible. And nobody gave much thought to building factories or doing work in other countries which would help “foreigners” rather than our own citizens. It simply wasn’t part of the American Dream. When the government took actions such as cuts in the corporate tax rate it hit the economy like a hot steroid injection. When new employees were hired, they were Americans. When a new factory went up, it was built in Boise, not Bangladesh. Further, competition was still vigorous. Companies worked to make a good profit, but they had to keep reinvesting in the business, resulting in further expansion, employment and general prosperity. The federal government could act boldly when it chose to do so and see direct results.

Globalization has not eliminated these effects entirely, but it has diluted them to dangerous levels. Competition has decreased and maximizing the bottom line on shareholder reports, dividends and executive bonuses is the order of the day. Workers are an expensive inconvenience to be reduced where possible and the cheap labor and raw materials which Hartmann references are too great of a temptation for virtually every business. Every extra dollar funneled into the economic engine by the government produces a drastically reduced return here at home in terms of jobs and prosperity.

So what is there to be done? Lest conservatives think I’ve taken leave of my senses, let me reassure you that direct government intervention and regulation is not the solution. That’s simply not in keeping with the founding principles of the nation and leads us off on a different path to destruction. But the government can and should rethink their system of merit based rewards and incentives in their dealings with corporate America.

First, the government remains a huge consumer of privately produced goods and services. And they have every right to determine who they will or will not do business with. America First and Buy American should be the order of the day, with full preference given to companies who produce and hire here at home wherever possible. Also, the aforementioned tax relief will have far more of the desired impact if it is properly targeted. We should offer a more lenient tax rate to stimulate job growth, but offer it only to those companies who can demonstrate that they are repatriating offshore jobs and using domestically produced goods. For those companies who choose to continue the new age globalization practices, let them. The free market will still prevail. But offer them no cut in tax rates nor any other benefits. If they want to make their money overseas, let them see if they can find their customer base there as well.

Before we even get started on the response to this, let me anticipate it for you. “Protectionist!” my conservative cronies will cry. The “Smoot Hawley!” accusations will fly freely as if the speaker’s hair were on fire. Protectionism? You are correct. That’s become something of a dirty word in conservative circles, in case you didn’t know, but we have something here which is badly in need of protection. Smoot Hawley? Please… spare me the Happy Days bleating. The failed policies of that era were badly implemented, but they were also fighting a very different enemy. Back then we were trying to stop other countries from flooding us with cheap products, materials and labor. The enemy today is of our own making and is found within our own borders. We are fighting to keep jobs here and to promote the use of our own resources, not defeat some perceived bogeyman from across the sea.

Some of these same critics will also declare that such policies will simply drive up prices for consumers. And yes, they are correct. You would have to pay more than one dollar for your roll of tube socks at Wall-mart. Hartmann provides the correct answer to this complaint as well.

“But won’t that make Wal-Mart’s stuff more expensive?” whine the flat-earthers.

Yes, it will. But most Americans (and Greeks and Spaniards) would gladly pay 10 percent more for the goods in their stores if their paychecks were 20 percent higher. And manufacturing paychecks have always been higher, because manufacturing is where “true wealth” is generated (thus the basis for most union movements, which further guarantee healthy worker income and benefits).

The transnational corporations benefiting from globalization are also, in most cases, the transnational corporations that own our media, so even the word globalization is rarely heard in reports on economic crises around the world.

But globalization is the villain here, and one that needs to be taken in hand and brought under control quickly if we don’t want to see virtually the nations of the world end up subservient to corporate control, a new form of an ancient economic system known as feudalism.

The author’s conclusion is a bit too dramatic for my tastes and festooned with hyperbole, but the underlying premise rings true. Circling back to the first paragraph, though, I am forced to finish this screed on a mostly dismal note. The path is there for us to take, but we’re highly unlikely to pursue it. And the obstacles are not found in just one party or the other in Washington. Both have been complicit in this downward slide and the well financed interests who hold the leashes of the collection of lap dogs in Congress will not hear of any such reform. If you don’t believe that, ask yourselves why there is no tort reform in the current health care bill or why Washington isn’t even trying to eliminate the anti-trust exemptions for the industry which prevent competition across state lines? It doesn’t take a genius to divine the answer. The people who fuel the system with cash don’t want it to happen, so it doesn’t. And they don’t want us to reform the interface between government and business to promote real job growth and economic strength at home through America First policies, either.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Considering the public pillorying that occurs every time a politician dares to suggest cuts, I find that percentage to be absolutely astonishing.

Are we really this schizophrenic?

One of the nice things about being shut in is the chance to read, and I’ve finally started on Dreams From My Father. In a word, it’s superb. It would be a great book if Barack Obama were still just a lawyer in Chicago.

Of course, it’s really not unusual for a Republican to praise the book. Three years ago, at the beginning of campaign season, the Weekly Standard gave the book a glowing review (while dismissing The Audacity of Hope as a trite and disappointing follow-on, from an author who can clearly write much more candidly and compellingly).

Right now, I’m 250 pages into Dreams, with another 150 to go. One comment that really sticks out in my mind is actually from the preface to the 2004 edition, written after Obama won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Illinois. He recalls that his mother passed away shortly after the first edition of the book was published in 1995.

I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book–less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. (Page xii)

It really is striking how Obama’s mother remains present but undeciphered, while Obama searches desperately to understand the father he never knew. Even Obama’s Indonesian step-father, with whom he lived with briefly as a child, comes across much more vividly than his mother.

As Obama explains, understanding his father was so important because he believed that through his father he could understand what it means to be a black man. Even when his father isn’t the subject, the book focuses intently on Obama’s struggle to understand — and become comfortable with — being black in America.

Very few words in the book are spent on figuring out what it means to be white in a racially-conscious America. Nor does Obama explore his mother’s extraordinary decision to marry a black man in the 1960s. Perhaps this is because Obama never seemed to struggle in white surroundings. He thrived in his first years at one of Hawaii’s elite prep schools. He barely mentions his time as a student at Columbia. In his brief career as a financial analyst, he was well-liked and rapidly promoted.

Why was Obama so determined to think of himself as black rather than both white and black? In a telling passage, he describes his dismissive attitude (at the time) toward a friend from college who described herself as multiracial:

They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people…

Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don’t have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America’s happy, faceless marketplace; and we’re never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we’re bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives — although that’s what we tell ourselves — but because we’re wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. (Pages. 99-100)

Obama wrote his memoir before launching his career as a politician. Did he expect that, someday, his natural bond with white voters would be as important, or more important, this his bond with black ones? It’s hard to say. But it certainly seems his mother played a crucial role in helping him become truly multiracial.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

Seriously, why doesn’t the federal government help DC get ready for the snow if each day lost is so expensive? Matt writes,

It seems like it would make a great deal of sense for the federal government to pay for some investments—do something to make [the] Metro [subway system] more robust to snowstorms, for example. The way the system works now even two days after an enormous snowfall all of the above-ground stations are closed and even the below-ground stations in the core are running on massive delays.

I wonder if the problem is that the costs of a shutdown are spread across too many agencies. Matt doesn’t provide a link, so I’m not sure where his $100 million estimate comes from. But I’d be curious to know how much of that is actually a cash loss, versus how much is simply the cost of paying salaries for workers who have to stay at home. If the latter, it would explain why the government doesn’t do much. After a snow day, people catch up on their work. Sure, there’s some inefficiency, but no one really feels the loss.

If the feds actually transferred tens of millions of dollars a year to the DC government to handle the snow, that would involve an actual loss of funds that could be allocated for something else. In contrast, the money for salaries is already committed and can’t be spent on anything else.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

According to this sobering editorial from the NRC Handelsblad of The Netherlands, recent tension between China and the United States is the opening tremor of a tectonic shift in the relative influence of the world’s two top two powers – and that shift strongly favors Beijing.

The NRC Handelsblad editorial says in part:

According to conservative estimates, it will be less than fifteen years before China surpasses the United States as a superpower. It was just 2003 when this was predicted to occur in about 2040.

This rate of acceleration has important political implications. Since the early eighties, the so-called Washington Consensus (deregulation, liberalization, and privatization) dominated the world. Because of the credit crisis, a “Beijing Consensus” has become popular. The key words are: state capitalism, centralized market regulation and authoritarian central government. That is a fundamentally different world and humanity about which, for the moment, America has precious little to say.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Iran says it has begun enriching uranium to a higher level, defying international efforts to curb its nuclear activity.

Iranian state television quoted officials who said the process started Tuesday at Iran’s Natanz facility in the presence of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.

Iran told the IAEA Monday of its plans to enrich uranium to 20 percent in order to fuel a medical nuclear reactor.

Western powers are concerned that if Iran is able to enrich uranium to 20 percent, it could eventually produce weapons-grade uranium through the same process.

Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

The U.S. now wants a UN sanctions resolution on Iran within weeks:

The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution within weeks, not months, laying the ground for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to leaders in Turkey, Italy and France about the “urgent need” to move forward on sanctions as soon as possible, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.

Asked how quickly sanctions could be in place, Morrell said Gates, who visited Paris this week, believed it could happen “in weeks, not months”.

In an interview with Fox News, a transcript of which was released on Tuesday, Gates said: “It is always a negotiating process and we’re just at the beginning of it.”

“I think it’s going to take some period of time; I would say weeks, not months, to see if we can’t get another U.N. Security Council resolution,” he added.

Asked what would happen if China or any other country opposed a resolution, Gates said: “All I can say is we have been successful in getting several security council resolutions so I’m optimistic we’ll be successful again.”

And Iran has its own response to unease among the U.S. and other nations:

The director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said Tuesday that the Islamic Republic would not need to enrich uranium to a higher level if the West were to provides the fuel it needs for the Tehran research reactor.

Iran started making higher-grade nuclear fuel on Tuesday, state television reported, a defiant move that may increase pressure for new international sanctions on the major oil producer.

“Whenever they provide the fuel, we will halt production of 20 percent,” Ali Akbar Salehi, who also serves as Iran’s vice president, told state TV.

A spokesman of the atomich agency, Ali Shirzadian, said Tuesday morning that “preparatory work” for enriching uranium to 20 percent had started at 9:30 A.M. local time and that production would formally get under way at about 1 P.M.

Today we started to make 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel … in the presence of IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors,” an unnamed official told Iran’s Arabic-language state television, al-Alam.

Reacting to the announcement, the United States said on Tuesday it wanted the United Nations Security Council to move quickly to enforce sanctions on Iran, demanding approval of a resolution “within weeks, not months.”

One sticking point for any resolution: China.

And it’s not surprising: China has now become Iran’s biggest trading partner.

Russia is not happy about Iran’s action, the Novosti News Agency reports:

Iran’s announcement that it is starting production of 20%-enriched uranium creates doubts about the peaceful nature of the country’s nuclear program Russia’s security chief Nikolai Patrushev said on Tuesday.

“Iran declares that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and is developing peaceful nuclear technologies. But its actions, including the recent announcement that it started to further enrich uranium to 20%, raise concerns among other states, and these doubts are reasonable,” the secretary of Russia’s Security Council said.

In an editorial, the New York Daily News says Congress needs to approve some legislation now pending that would give actual teeth to U.S. official proclamations about consequences for Iran:

Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have the diplomatic corps working overtime in hope of winning a United Nations Security Council agreement to put the screws to Iran. Good luck with that. China hardly seems to be in the mood.

The world has seen this bad movie before. Tehran is making a mosh pit of international diplomacy and mauling better-intentioned participants with impunity. It’s way past time the United States stopped worrying about the rules of the game and mauled back with everything America can muster.

Gasoline would be a handy chokepoint. Despite sitting on huge reserves of crude, Iran lacks refining capacity. Thus, it imports disproportionate quantities of fuel for its transportation needs.

The legislation pending in Congress would, in effect, bar companies from shipping gasoline to Iran or helping to expand the country’s oil-refining capability.

There would also be a broad bar on direct imports from and exports to Iran, exempting food and medicine. And the administration would be required to freeze the assets of Iranians who are active in weapons proliferation or terrorism.

The Security Council should long ago have approved this kind of action. Except it didn’t. Even as Iran was exposed for running secret atomic facilities. Even as Iran has moved inexorably closer to fulfilling its nuclear ambitions. It’s up to Congress to force the issue – now.

Meanwhile, Iran’s leadership has not exactly moved heath and earth to defuse concerns about its intentions. For instance, a top leader said Israel’s days are numbered.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday the destruction of Iran’s arch-foe Israel was “imminent,” and called for continued resistance against the Jewish state, state media reported.

“I am very optimistic about the future of Palestine and believe Israel is on the steep path of decline and deterioration,” Khamenei told Ramadan Abdullah, the secretary general of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

“God willing, its destruction will be imminent,” the Islamic republic’s all-powerful leader said. “Continued resistance and hope for victory should be taken into consideration.”

Iran does not recognise Israel, and is a staunch backer of Palestinian Islamist militants.

Tensions have soared between Iran and Israel over the past five years since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.

Still, according to Samuel Segev, writing in the Winnipeg Free Press, Iran’s latest action is being put into perspective in Israel:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement that his country will begin enriching its stockpile of low-grade uranium to 20 per cent grade is not being taken very seriously in Israel.

Israeli scientists and scholars see the announcement as part of the gamesmanship that Ahmadinejad is playing with President Barack Obama and with other western leaders. They say this is not the first time that Ahmadinejad is making such a threat. It’s part of the bargaining in the Persian Bazaar at which Ahamdinejad has been such a good player.

“For Iran to produce 20 per cent enriched uranium would require a more advanced technology that Iran doesn’t possess,” said a former Israeli Mossad operative, who follows Iran’s nuclear development. “It would take Iran many more years to reach this capability.”

Indeed, a careful reading of Ahmadinejad’s instructions shows that Iran left the door open for more negotiations. “Iran would halt the enrichment process, if it receives the necessary fuel for its for its medical research facility from other sources,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organization.

Israeli officials revealed privately that in secret briefings in the last few months, CIA director Leon Panetta and Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, told their Israeli counterparts that Iran is encountering many technical difficulties at its nuclear plants. Iran is definitely behind its own schedules and timetable, they said. Hence, the U.S. would not deviate from its intention to enforce more economic sanctions against the Iranian regime.

Ahmadinejad’s announcement on Sunday should also be taken against the background of this week’s celebrations to commemorate Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi’s downfall 31 years ago.

In the last few weeks, Iran was announcing almost every week the “successful launching” of various types of missiles, the “test-flying” of Iranian-made planes and other achievements of its military industry. Ahmadinejad is keen to show off the achievements of his regime in the fields of science and technology.

Since the shah was forced into exile and the Peacock Throne was taken over by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic organizes festivities all over the country that culminate on Feb. 11, when the shah left the country. This year, however, is different. Since the controversial parliamentary elections seven months ago, Iran is still on the boil and a place to watch.

There’s a lot more so read it in its entirety.

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

On Monday, Meghan McCain fired back.

“People were saying that this is the new movement in the Republican Party,” McCain said during an appearance on ‘The View.’ “I did not want to go [to last week's convention]. I have (a) very much different, ideological differences with them.”

And she described Tancredo’s comments as “innate racism.”

“And I think it’s why young people are turned off by this movement. And I’m sorry [but] revolutions start with young people. Not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word ‘vote’ in English. It’s ridiculous.”

Meghan McCain also decried the divisiveness and partisanship in American politics and the growing populist rage that has powered the Tea Party movement.

“Maya Angelou says we have more in common than we do apart,” she said. “We need to use this message in politics more.”

Meghan McCain added, “This rhetoric will continue to turn off young voters and anybody that says different is smoking something. Period.”

Avatar has turned out to be a politically explosive film. By and large, most writers see the film as a challenge to militarism/corporatism/fascism and a rejection of colonialism that extols the values of indigenous people. Chinese viewers see in the film a challenge to corporate interests that pay off corrupt officials to raze the homes of people unable to defend themselves.

Like an earlier article from Germany’s Die Zeit: Avatar: A Shameful Example of Western Cultural Imperialism, this article from France’s Le Monde, is counter-intuitive, but has some logic behind it. The writer assumes that in making this film, James Cameron, for the sake of profit, wanted to lessen the guilt and encourage the patriotism of Americans, embarrassed over Vietnam and injured by September 11.

For Le Monde, Professor Pierre Desjardins writes in part:

Naively, many took James Cameron’s film Avatar to be anti-war and even pacifist and environmentalist. However, it’s nothing of the sort! Quite to the contrary, this film is meant to eulogize violence and war. It is true that, in reversing the roles and caricaturing the U.S. Army, this film is just shuffling the cards and has confused more than a few. But beneath its idyllic outdoor settings, the film conceals a view that is remarkably caustic: that of justifying war for us peaceful Westerners!

First of all, let’s recall the scene of that enormous tree falling with a crash in the midst of a distraught population. How can one not see the analogy with the collapse of the towers of the World Trade Center? … This hero, a simple American soldier crippled by war and reborn into a new body, will return to war, but this time for a worthy cause!

Every war, even those that seem the most insane, always occurs for the “right reasons” because they’re for defense (there’s a reason we speak of the “Ministry of Defense”). Let’s recall that even for Hitler, the war was just: it was about enlarging German territory to ensure the survival of his people [lebensraum or living space]. We don’t go to war to fight, whatever any warmonger says, but to defend ourselves!

We should also note how the numerous battle scenes in the jungle remind us of what the Vietnam War did to the Americans. There, despite the use of napalm, the mighty Americans were trampled upon and humiliated. This film surreptitiously suggests that, henceforth, one must know how to respond intelligently to this type of humiliation. Not by insolently crushing everything in our path or by stupidly using poison gas, but by precise targeting of the enemy in concert with the other threatened nations. And there we find the perfect justification for the war in Afghanistan, do we not?

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

But the Tea Party movement only represents one half of that “awakening” – from the Right. And while much of the Tea Party base is little more than the desperate cry of militant Christianists out of power – a big reason these folks remained silent under Bush was that they really did like their born again President regardless of the massive spending – there certainly is a Paulite libertarian core out there animating many Independent conservatives (against both parties). The “Awakening” is an incipient coalition of Christianists, Paulite libertarians, Independents genuinely worried about debt, and a GOP establishment looking to ride any horse back to power.

But lest we forget, the nation just witnessed a similar awakening from the Left that propelled the Democrats to power in 2006 and 2008. It, too, was a widely divergent base of anti-warriors, economic populists, multicultural and secular youth, and a Democratic Party establishment thirsty for any avenue back to power. Once in power the only interest that seems to have won out is the Democratic Party establishment. So much of the energetic core of Obama’s movement has become disillusioned – just as the Tea Partiers no doubt would be if they helped the GOP gain power again. Markos Moulitsas’s widely read “Crashing the Gate” outlined the real enemy of progressive reform – corrupt Democratic insiders. Howard Dean served as the movement hero for the grassroots progressive base against Old Guard until he proved unelectable himself. A far more palatable and inspiring figure in Barack Obama took the networking prowess of Dean and married his own pragmatic demeanor to the reality of Democratic governance. The result has been…a mess so far, with several lower key accomplishments nonetheless.

Every election promises a new non-partisan insurgency of sorts – from Perot to Nader to Buchanan to Henry Wallace to George Wallace to John Anderson to the Tea Partiers. And none ever win elections. What makes this moment unique is the near simultaneous awakening of anger from BOTH sides of the political spectrum at the same time. It would be one thing if the Democrats had already passed health care reform – with, say, a robust public option – and a comprehensive energy bill, and even card check…and an enthusiastic base stood against worried Independents and outraged Republicans. But the Democrats haven’t even done enough to get their own base to watch their backs. As a result, the Democratic base demands the party jettison corrupt centrists like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln (Lieberman is already gone) and pass major legislation with majority rule in the Senate (aka reconciliation).

All of which begs the question: is there any room in this political climate for centrism anymore? Sure, Scott Brown will likely prove a centrist, as will any other Northern Republican who wins this year. But unless these folks form genuine bipartisan coalitions that gain broad appeal – a prospect that appeared for a moment between Ron Wyden and Lamar Alexander on health care – the energy will rush to the extremes. And the GOP will likely ensure that Brown does not provide the bipartisan cover Democrats yearn – just as they did with Snowe and Collins. Alas, our only “centrists” in power are cowards and kleptocrats.

Awakenings provide energy and idealism. But they rarely provide a real blueprint for governance. The backdrop for all of this is a Great Recession that encourages a “throw the bums out” mentality.

And so maybe the Tea Partiers on the Right and the Gate Crashers on the Left do not comprise “Awakenings” at all. Perhaps they are little more than paroxysms of the alienated out of power. Their agendas are unenforceable and, quite often, unpopular. The corrupt deals of a Ben Nelson may highlight the ossified nature of the establishment. And our Poland-like Senate may produce the absurdity of a 41-59 “majority”. But the reality is that large-scale change is likely to occur incrementally. Like the Women’s Suffrage movement, which won in Western legislatures and gradually made its way eastward, the final XIX Amendment merely confirmed would had become a nationwide tidal wave. Sometimes confrontation is necessary to force a region – usually the South on civil rights – to change against the will of a majority of its voters. But those moments, like Reconstruction, are the exception. We change very slowly in this country.

So here is what I say on health care: pass the bill as is in the House. And then begin a bipartisan discussion with Republicans in the Senate over how to fix it. With the law on the books the only question will be how to improve it. Talk of “starting over” was never more than a smokescreen for dropping health care reform altogether. And it will become a dead letter once Obama signs it (repealing it will never have enough votes). Have that bipartisan discussion with House and Senate Republicans and start from the new reality defined by this health bill.

If that’s not possible, pass some of the obvious fixes – like eliminating the Cornhusker Kickback – by reconciliation. But don’t use reconciliation to push the public option or anything else as controversial at this time.

When the law takes effect people will find things they want to strengthen, provisions they want altered, and others they want eliminated. At that point – like fixing the “donut hole” in the prescription drug bill – there should be reasonable bipartisan support for a fix.

Whatever happens, do NOT let the extremists on either side dominate. The FireDogLake Left and the Tea Party Right waver between doctrinaire idealism and nihilism. Both must be marginalized for the sake of the country. And for the Democrats, pass the damn bill and let the voters decide in November when all the process talk is done and we have a chance to see how the bill works in action. Failure to pass the bill at this point would be a victory for the extremists.

Writing at Blogging Innovation, Carpenter says it’s Apple’s skill with design-driven innovation that will make the iPad a success. And what is the significant design-driven innovation in the iPad? It’s touch, of course:

In technology terms, it’s just an alternative form of interface. Touch, mouse, tab, whatever. But touch is a vital human sense, and a core part of experience. It’s how we interact with others, how we shop, experience textures and so much more.

Carpenter says the “iPad is tapping into an emerging dynamic of a more interactive, tactile experience with technology and digital information.” The interface is falling away from our awareness as our interaction with technology is subtly altered towards a melding with it. It’s beginning to be experienced more as an extension of us, and less of an explicit interface:

The Wii and iPhone, and before the iPod click wheel, have created a popular introduction to gesture based interfaces, demonstrating responsive feedback behaviours, applying “natural” physical effects like flipping and inertia, similar to the ones we are accustomed to in the real world, to improve usability expectations of an interface.

As new “cultures of use” emerge we are creating opportunities to form a language of gestures, similar to the conventions of “right-clicking” and standardised keyboard shortcuts.

Note the term “culture of use”. Not industry trends. Because the dominant form of interaction for computers and video games is still mouse and buttons. And consumers aren’t asking for touch.

But there is an underlying change in thinking about how people interact with technology and information.

While Googl’s Nexus One doesn’t have multi-touch gestures (patent problems?) it does have some interesting 3D effects. Tip the phone and sophisticated sensors dip the photos in the same way. You can imagine one day we’ll tip the phone from side to side to slide photos forward and back.

The forthcoming Google OS, Chrome — demoed last November and greeted with a disappointment not unlike the iPad’s reception — could easily morph into Google’s, or any of Apple’s PC competitors’, version of the iPad.

The revolution is not in the device; it’s in that shifting computing paradigm. Apple’s taken the lead, but they won’t have it free and clear for as long as they did with the iPhone.

What truly is stunning is how in recent years partisans will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to try and excuse things that people on their side do that they berated others on the other side for doing. You could say “mind-boggling” but now this is the norm. Outrage and ridicule is only directed at those who you seek to politically defeat, but you look the other way or play defense attorney if your own side does it. As noted in another post, both sides are off base on this “issue.” Both Obama and Palin can speak without using teleprompters or hand notes. It’s a kind of easy crutch, kind of like Linus with his security blanket, it guarentees order to the speech or discussion — but no one wants to pass up a change to blow something way out of proportion if it can denigrate someone of the other party.

Probably the low point for me was a call about 1:30, 2 in the morning after this had happened, and The CBS Morning Show wanted an interview with our reporter who witnessed this firsthand. And I said, I’ll call her in the morning, she’s in no state to talk with anybody at this point, but I’ll let her decide whether she wants to talk to you. And I don’t want to really get down on the network in this case, ‘cause it may have just been an intern calling, but whoever it was just said, well, you have to understand that America wants to reach out to your reporter who went through this.

I said, well, you’re going to have to wait ‘til the morning ‘til I have a chance to talk to her and see if she wants to do this. And they said, well, you don’t understand, we go on the air in about three hours. We have to start arranging this now. And I said, well, that’s not my problem. And then it was sort of like they were upping the ante and saying, well, Katie Couric wants to reach out to your reporter. And I just said, look, I know you’re trying to do your job. I’ve sort of been there myself.

Finally, this comes out: If I don’t get this interview, my boss is going to kill me. I thought to myself, well, if your boss kills you, The Webster-Kirkwood Times will reach out to you.

In my twenty-plus years in television, I was only a party to something like this twice. I well remember sitting in meetings, pumped and telling each other how vital what we were doing was. My career focus was more advocacy than journalism, but those couple instances expedited my departure from the field.

Corrigan was a guest for his piece in the Winter 2009 issue of Nieman Reports which is all about the aftermath of tragedy and violence. “Journalists are joined by trauma researchers and survivors themselves in telling their stories in their own voices. We invite you to listen in.”

Corrigan shares some lessons learned that all media outlets could benefit from:

I’d argue that some longlasting personality changes have taken place—with or without drugs—on the news-editorial side of our weekly operation since February 7, 2008. At the Webster-Kirkwood Times, we are kinder and gentler with each other. In our news and editorial department, there is less excitement over “big stories” breaking or at criticism from readers directed our way. Perhaps we are shell-shocked. Perhaps we presume we have been through the biggest and ugliest story of our journalism careers.

I felt just a twinge of regret for bashing Jon Stewart over not bringing a bloviating Brian Williams down a peg in last week’s interview. But I have some real reason to have serious doubts that the guys and gals at Williams’ level have even the slightest real sense of what the people they “cover” are about. I hope I live to see the day that the television news formats — cable, the evening news, local TV, morning shows — that now dominate are either radically reformed or long dead and gone.

The photo above, by Diana Linsley of the Webster-Kirkwood Times, accompanies Corrigan’s story.

Although most of the mainstream on both the left and the right have been properly respectful regarding the death of Congressman Murtha (D-PA)  that has not been the case for everyone. No sooner had the story broken that some of the fringes on the right began posting comments that ranged from thinly muted celebration to openly disgusting attacks on the man.

These comments, which I find completely wrong, have prompted responses on the hard left sites which not only condemn the comments but try to paint them as typical of everyone on the right. Obviously this is not true but what is even more hypocritical is the fact that these same sites have had equally improper responses to the death of conservative figures like Robert Novak. So it’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

A side note here, I won’t be posting links to any of these comments, either from the left or the right, because I don’t think them worthy of reading. But in both cases they are easy enough to find (a sad fact).

So to the degree that anyone from these sites manages to read my commentary let me make it clear. If someone dies and you don’t like them, then shut up about it. You don’t have to wail or cry about it but you don’t need to trash the dead.

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri

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Marc Thiessen, who loves torture, is sad that people think he loves torture:

“The handling of detainee issues is going to be a huge, huge issue in the period ahead,” said Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush.

“For six years,” Mr. Thiessen added, “the left has had a field day with this, running around saying we tortured people and comparing us to the Spanish Inquisition.” Now, he said, the politics have turned. “It’s a huge vulnerability for Obama and the Democrats, and Republicans are starting to gather their courage and talking about this.”

I’m fairly certain that I’ve only compared Bush administration interrogation techniques to the Spanish Inquisition while seated. But at the end of the day, the reason the Bush administration’s preferred torture methods get compared to the Spanish Inquisition is that they used techniques cribbed from the Spanish Inquisition[.]