An impassioned reaction to the failure of the Auto Industry rescue plan

In the wake of the failure of the Auto industry bridge loan, I sure hope the foolhardy Republicans in the Senate who blocked its passage are happy. They have probably ensured that the recession will indeed be longer, deeper, and more permanently destructive to the U.S. economy than any since the Great Depression.

The breathtaking stupidity of their rationale is so egregious that it makes me wonder about their patriotism. They and their ilk love to question the patriotism of people who civilly disagree with a particular foreign policy analysis justifying supposedly preventive wars, but when they act in ways that are directly, materially destructive to a strategically vital sector of the U.S. manufacturing economy, we're all supposed to say, oh, well, it's just a difference of opinion. But the fact is, actions matter, and votes matter.

Even the Bush administration came to understand how vital it is to keep the auto industry in business during a transition to a whole new management approach, product range, and set of long term goals.

Sure, the auto companies have been badly managed. Very badly. And I certainly support forcing them to revamp completely, towards efficient vehicles, away from fossil fuels; including ousting the current management, especially at GM, where they have been incredibly stupid for the past ten years especially.

Having said that, it's utterly beyond me how Senate Republicans can justify $150 billion in taxpayer funds to make high flying speculators whole in the AIG bailout; (people whose actions would be criminal if they had not been foolishly and destructively legalized); but they can't see their way clear to guarantee a tenth that amount for a historic and strategic manufacturing industry. I truly hope that the public comes to see just how destructive this is, and votes every single one of these fools out of office.

Of course, even moreso, I hope that we are able to avoid the worst of the likely destructive effects of this vote. There is, at least, hope that the administration will allow use of the TARP bailout funds to at least ensure that GM and Chrysler don't fold before January, when we can try again.

Chapter 11 is no solution. The effect on the confidence in the companies and the ripple effect on jobs in the region would create a downward spiral that I think it's unlikely either GM or Chrysler would survive at all. Get with it folks, this is an unacceptable outcome, which must be avoided.

Bail out finance but not industry. Disgusting. I fear we're likely to find out just how foolish this was, when its cascading destructiveness ricochets throughout our economy in the coming months and years. Maybe, somehow, this can be avoided. I sure hope so.

Update: The NYT is reporting that the Bush administration may be open to using the TARP bailout money to help bridge the gap for the Auto industry. Credit where credit is due, if this proves true.

Update 2: Hale Stewart in HuffPo agrees with me: "The Republicans want a Depression."

Update 3: It is particularly vexing to encounter the right wing argument, invariably placed first in the agenda, that the primary problem with the auto makers is their supposed failure to "negotiate" better contracts with (i.e., use the leverage of globalization to force huge givebacks from) their union workers and retirees. I reject this argument completely. The problem with the U.S. economy isn't overpaid workers. It's public policies that have intentionally hollowed out our manufacturing sectors, and made our industries uncompetitive.

Countries, like Sweden, that have ensured high wage rates, have not found this causes their industries to become uncompetitive. Quite the contrary. High wage workers produce high value products. This used to be the paradigm in the U.S., until Trickle Down economics became public policy and the heart and soul of our national prosperity began to be hollowed out from the inside, in favor of short term financial speculation. (Also, if the celebrated foreign manufacturers' plants in the U.S. weren't privileged with a legal structure that virtually outlaws unionization, the playing field would be a good deal more level: this is no accident). Read James K. Galbraith's The Predator State for more on just how all this has worked and continues to work, to our detriment as a nation.

Update 4: It starts. Already, news reports say GM is "temporarily" shutting 21 plants, and laying off all those workers. Let that slide into permanence, and we're well on our way to big-D depression. Thank you, Republican Senators, for screwing the entire country.

NASA administrator non-cooperative with transition

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Bush appointed NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with the Obama transition team, and is ordering staff not to criticize his baby, the "Return the the Moon" program. Personally, I think the policies at NASA in recent years have been awful. Obama should just quietly plan on asking for Griffin's resignation effective Day 1 and implementing a whole new management team. He could do a lot worse than asking former Administrator Dan Golding to return at least for a time; Golding at least had some kind of vision for the future beyond just replicating the past, and badly at that.

Fair disclosure: I think Golding's abiding interest in deep space exploration and fundamental science of extrasolar planets in particular was exactly the right approach for NASA right now, not so much expensive and largely unproductive manned missions, for which sufficient money is just not forthcoming.

Relationships and Love: a Buddhist Perspective

I sent this to my farflung correspondents as an e-mail a while back.

All great spiritual teachers have taught that we should love one another, but it seems that few have made really clear exactly what love is. The Buddhist tradition is particularly explicit about this, but I believe what the Buddha taught on this subject is universal in application, regardless of one's particular faith, and that it is based on keen insight into the working of the human heart.

All relationships will flourish when they are based on love; whether acquaintances or collegial relationships, all the way up to spouses and life partners. They will suffer when pervaded by the antagonist of love, which isn't hatred, but attachment.

Love has three phases, or types:

1. Affectionate Love. This is when you perceive the object of your love as beautiful, pleasant, attractive. There is no element of desire here. It is merely seeing the person or being as pleasing. This can be cultivated and brought out, when it doesn't arise spontaneously. All types of love, in fact, can be created in your heart, through practice. All living beings are in fact beautiful, so it's just a matter of seeing.
2. Cherishing Love. Having come to see the object of your love as pleasant or beautiful, you come to feel he or she is important. Their happiness is important. They are precious, and you cherish them. This too can be cultivated.
3. Wishing Love. Having come to see them as precious, you come to wish, with all your heart, that they not suffer, that they have not just happiness, but that they be happy all the time, present and future, that they have all good fortune, wisdom, and blessing. You keep this thought in your heart, until it's there all the time.

Notice that there is nothing in any form of love about I or me. Desire, your needs, your happiness have nothing to do with it. Relationships which are based on 'my needs' are relationships of attachment: you are important because you make me happy. I need you. My life depends on you. You are my world. These are not thoughts of love, but thoughts of attachment, and they destroy love.

If you move away from such thoughts and cultivate minds of the three types or phases of love, your relationships will flourish.

Try it. It's guaranteed (but not always easy). A spiritual practitioner strives eventually to love all living beings, but if you don't love those close to you, you can't do that, so it's the best place to start.

TPM reader: Blago, deadly combination: ignorance and arrogance

Talkingpointsmemo quotes this, from a reader:

Simply put, Blagojevich is that deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance. One or the other is survivable, but the two, combined,
are not. I know from speaking with many of my friends who have worked with him over the years (including on his campaigns) that he is as dumb as a box of rocks. (The campaign folks would never let him talk to the press, unscripted, à la Palin.) He also thought he was God's gift to the planet.

In recent years, his circle of advisers has shrunk to a miniscule three or four who make Bush's "yes men" crew look like a debate society. As a friend in state government told me recently, "Everyday Blagojevich gets up and says 'What can we do today?'" The point being, there is (and has been) no rhyme or reason for his governance. Fundamentally, the guy is an idiot, as the taped conversations prove. He is simply a jackass.

Seems quite credible to me. A key point here is that Blago surrounded himself with a very small number of cronies who were privy to his dumb, arrogant shenanigans. If that's true, he may go down without too much fuss or too many repercussions, especially for the new administration.

Highly Recommended: The Predator State / Jamie Galbraith

I finally got around to reading the last couple of chapters of The Predator State, by Jamie Galbraith, which I had set aside a few weeks ago after returning from a trip to France.

I can't reccommend this book highly enough for the big picture of what's been wrong with the U.S. economy for some time, and where we could go from here. Definitely will not be agreeable to those who believe in the ability of "free markets" to solve all problems, but for those whose concepts range to the kinds of checks and balances necessary to make the economy work equitably and well for all the people, it's a welcome and useful synthesis. It was written before the current crisis, and contains nothing really shocking or radical, but it is a clear and systematic exposition of intelligent liberal thinking on the economy.

A Major Distraction for the Obama Administration

Although there is as yet no indication at all of any involvement on the part of President-elect Obama or anyone in his transition team with the debased shenanigans of Governor Blagojevich ("Blago," as he's becoming known), it is impossible to see these events as anything other than an extremely unwelcome distraction for the Obama transition and the commencement of his presidency. As a senator from Illiniois, there have to be normal contacts between the governor and his staff and Obama and his aides, and inevitably the prosecution and investigators will want to talk to people close to Obama to find out what they know.

The best outcome would be if it were to trun out that Blago was pretty much a loose cannon and rogue element, and the investigation turns up an open and shut case against him and one or two close aides, and that's it. The second best would probably be that for whatever reason the whole thing is delayed and slow to develop, so that whatever interviewing of Obama's aides and contacts takes place will not come until after the "hundred days" or whatever you want to call the critical first few months of the administration. The hope that there will be no serious distraction from what must be the greatest need for focus on issues a new administration has had to face in many decades is, unfortunately, forlorn.

Towards Social Democracy in America: the Republic Window & Door Sit-In

I’m struck by the phenomenon of the Republic Window & Door sit-in in Chicago. Here are the pertinent facts as I understand them.

The company applied for a line of credit with Bank of America, which received a infusion of Federal funds for the purpose of freeing up credit as part of the bailout. The line of credit was in keeping with its past business models, and would have been approved but for the very tight market in credit which the Federal bailout was designed to address. The bank, due to lack of effective oversight in the Federal bailout program, was free to continue its restrictive lending practices, and refused the line of credit, causing the company to shut down.

Despite contractual obligations to union workers for sixty days’ notice and severance in the event of plant closure, the company gave its workers three days’ notice.

The workers are sitting in in the plant, demanding their severance, or better yet, a financial solution which will keep the company open.

President-elect Obama has expressed support for the workers.

Illinois’ Democratic governor has ordered that the state stop doing business with Bank of America unless and until it reverses its decision not to extend the line of credit.

I perceive a new current here. American working people are growing increasingly intolerant of the transfer of wealth from them to the richest. They are growing increasingly intolerant and angry about how the solution to all financial problems is seen by Wall Street as cutting jobs, never in doing more long term planning and changing public policy to keep the companies that make up the dwindling but vital manufacturing sector open and competitive, with a high priority given towards the shared societal goal of maintaining and growing high wage jobs. This approach flows from the forgotten understanding that constant expectation of short term returns at the cost of long term growth and stability have hollowed out our manufacturing economy, and that such short term returns are unsustainable, because the economy depends on consumer spending and only through high wage jobs, as Henry Ford understood, will the workers have enough purchasing power to keep the manufacturing economy functioning.

Also, there is no other word for the government equity stake in Bank of America than socialism. Socialism is perceived by conservative economists as all right if the beneficiaries are financial institutions, but not all right if its goal is to keep American workers employed, productive, and spending money. Hence the ease of approval by the Right wing in government of the financial bailout, and their resistance to the paltry-by-comparison emergency loan program to preserve the continued existence of the Auto industry.

I think there really is a major paradigm shift going on here. People see three quarters of a trillion dollars in borrowed Federal money going to bail out excessive risk-taking and leveraging in the financial sector… socialization of risk; privatization of profit. And they are getting mad as hell, and won’t be taking it much longer. They are coming to expect, and demand, that if there is going to be, as there must, public sector investment, it must go to saving jobs, saving homes, and saving the consumer economy.

I hope the sit-in works, and pressures B of A to capitulate and extend the line of credit. Maybe Republic Window & Door won’t survive, but the welfare of its workers is a more worthy goal of the Federal money that’s saved B of A than making side-betters on Wall Street whole. And it’s a case of regulation by popular uprising. I hope we see more and more of this until the public and private sectors get the message: it’s time to change the way the economy functions to see to it that more of the unearned wealth legacy that we all own is in fact made to benefit the bulk of the people, and not only a tiny sector of the very rich. Clearly, “free markets” as promoted by the economic conservative regime of public policy that has prevailed in this country in the last 30 years, have made matters vastly worse, and it is time to completely revamp the regulatory system and economic policy with these vital goals in mind.

Update: Right after posting this, I saw the news about Gov. Blagojevich's arrest on allegations of corruption in connection with the selection of a temporary replacement for Obama's senate seat. Just as two wrongs don't make a right, a wrong action doesn't negate a right one, either, so this doesn't affect the fact that the governor's action in connection with the Republic Window & Door sit-in is praiseworthy, in my opinion.

Further Update: H/T Barbara. Yahoo news reports: Workers win a big round in Chicago factory sit-in.

I would like to see the Bank forced to make enough available to keep the doors open instead of just enough to pay off fired workers, but it's better than nothing. I don't know the details of the viability of this business, of course, but it seems to me there is no better use for public funds than maintaining American manufacturing jobs in existence, as a bridge to a time when public policy changes make American manufactures more competitive again and the companies can survive on their own. And a lot of BofA's money is public funds.

TPM Muckraker: Gonzo Prosecution?

TPM muckraker reports "it's looking more and more like prosecutor Nora Dannehy's investigation into the US Attorney firings has Alberto Gonzales in its crosshairs."

While I certainly applaud the Justice Department following the law and where the evidence leads (for once; Mukasey has proven only marginally better than Gonzales in this respect); I can't resist noting that there are far more serious crimes for which substantial evidence of administration guilt exists: in the areas of ordering and condoning torture, intentionally misleading Congress to induce authorization for military involvement in Iraq, and illegal surveillance of Americans, primarily.

Of course, that's not Dannehy's brief, but I'm just sayin'.

Pardon Power? I can think of more important constitional amendments we need

Josh Marshall asked for comments on the proposal by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to introduce a constitutional amendment to limit the presidential pardon power.

This was my response:

Not exactly answering the question, but:

I'm not opposed to some well-thought out limits on the pardon power, but there are far more pressing needs in the area of constitutional reform. Right off the bat how about these?

1. Direct election of the president. 2000 showed as clearly as could be needed how necesarry this is. Even 2008 raised speculation about the uncomfortable possibility, it turned out far from reality, that Obama might have lost the popular vote but still won electorally. What's sauce, etc.

2. A carefully designed Anti-Gerrymander amendment. It's often occurred to me that some kind of modifiable-within-limits mathematical algorithm to ensure that the Congressional districts are not designed merely to re-elect incumbents would go a long, long way towards restoring meaningful public participation in policy decisions.

Most Beautiful Desert Wildflower Notecards

Unquestionably the most beautiful California desert wildflower notecards are those based on paintings by Henry R. Mockel. They are available for $6.50 for 12, with envelopes, in several different sets (some animals too), from Henry R. Mockel's, P. O. Box 726, 29 Palms, CA 92277. Send for their order form (send a self-addressed stamped envelope; it's literally a mom+pop). Take my word for it, order them sight unseen... they're beautiful. Here are a few samples.

Most Disgraceful Element of Bush Legacy

I suspect that the single most disgraceful element of President Bush's legacy (at least from an American point of view) will be the historical conclusion that thousands of American soldiers needlessly died as a consequence of the adminstration's use and tolerance of torture. This is the allegation of former military interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) in an op-ed in Tuesday's Sunday's Post (11/30). "Alexander" is the guy who got Sunni extremists to rat out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, by using traditional confidence and rapport building interrogation techniques (the kind that actually work). He quite credibly says the number of American military killed as a result of the recruitment effect (on Arabs) of our country's torture policy will never be known, but it's reasonable to estimate it at close to the number killed in the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks.

Update: This comment from "Alexander" is telling, and chilling: "How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans."

In case it isn't self-evident, the mechanism for this tragedy is as follows: Arab nationalists, and such people as Iraqis displaced from their usual occupations and/or homes as a result of war, came to see America as a violent oppressor, which tortures captives (as do many Arab countries, but this was not America's former reputation). As a result, probably tens of thousands, or more, men became persuaded to fight against American forces. The results of the interrogations "Alexander" describes frequently included descriptions of precisely this process.

...
["Matthew Alexander" is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, and his op-ed is presumably in conjunction with a book tour. He appeared on Democracy Now! and Countdown this week, but otherwise has garnered little attention.]

Ways and Means to undo the current economic mess

I didn't mean to create a false impression with the post below, which was intended to be forward looking and prescriptive. I had previously commented on the need for completely rethinking the ways and means used to deal with the current failures of financial institutions; namely, the preservation of the underlying transactions and the sacrifice of the interests in side-betting derivatives. Very probably, the only way to save the likes of Citigroup and others up to their eyeballs in CDO's and CDS's, is to let them go into Chapter 11 and appoint a special master to oversee the public interest while guiding them out of bankruptcy. The goal would be to force the speculators in these side bets, which in the memorable phrase of one recent commentator I linked to are to the real economy like fantasy football to real football, to just walk away empty handed, or nearly so, while renegotiating the underlying loans and transactional securities, and preserving the existence of the institutions themselves. (While firing the top management wholesale). (See this piece by Michael Lewis piece in portfolio.com).

This, while it will no doubt rock the markets further, is preferable to the altnernative, which is, again, to watch the whole economy wash away in a sea of debt. There just isn't enough money in the world to make all these bets good, and the sooner the economic team around Obama, and the pres.-elect himself, realize it, the sooner we can start spending the huge sums of money we don't really have, but continue to borrow, to some actual effect rather than just throwing good after bad.

I don't claim to understand all this stuff, but, like many Americans, I've been trying to figure out what's gone wrong, and to understand what's needed to get out of this historic mess. The outlines not only of what went wrong but of the way forward are becoming clear to me, and to many others. Whether the new administration will end up seeing the forest for the trees is yet an open question.

Strange Inversion of Economic Conservative and Progressive views

When thinking about economic policy and where it needs to go, I'm struck by how it's become typical of our world that terms are inverted: up is down and down is up. "Economic conservatives" is a label used for people who promote, with zeal sometimes amounting almost to religious fervor, licensed speculation and side-betting on the economy, and trade regimes that result in the wholesale dismantling of production capacity. Their rationales for such policies sound good, until you realize that they're based on false assumptions and demonstrably untrue principles, such as that tax cuts always result in greater net revenue, and many others.

Economic "progressives," on the other hand, tend to believe in old fashioned, tried and true economic postulates like these:

• An advanced economy, with a rising standard of living for the majority of its citizens, cannot be sustained by trading alone, still less by financial speculation, still less by trading in derivatives from the actual transactions that take place in the "real" economy. Derivative trading creates bubbles and inevitable collapses, often huge ones, as is happening now. Production, not only of services, but of goods, is the real engine of economic growth and sustainable prosperity.
• "Free Markets" are largely fictions, which, to the extent they exist at all, must be regulated to ensure that financial transactions are not only fair, and reasonably transparent, but that excessive leveraging and "side-betting" (e.g. credit default swaps) are not permitted. At all. These have been seen, very clearly in recent events, to have extremely deleterious effects on the proper functioning of the financial system (i.e.,the allocation of capital and the fostering of the utilization of capital to create growth and overall prosperity).
• "Free Trade" is largely a fiction as well. Governments regulate trade in lots of ways, and the results should be controlled, to the extent they are controlled, not for the benefit of traders and speculators, but to foster the health of the production economy and its employed workers. This is a simple matter of national interest, and it is practiced by every successful and growing economy in the World.
• An inevitable result of an economy based primarily on financial activity is increasing public debt, which is ultimately unsustainable.

(This is because, in a very real sense, the trade deficit and the budget deficit are inseparably linked in a positive correlation, and eventually the size of the debt will cause the collapse of confidence and cause this form of "growth" to lurch to a halt. Then, if we haven't developed energy independence and a program to restore a production economy, we will really find out what 21st century depression looks like).

• Paradoxically, the only way out of a depression created by the foregoing problems is increased and sustained public spending, over the short and medium terms, but it must eventually be followed by recognition that the global economy depends on at least relative balance, and our trade and budget deficits cannot expand forever.

I am very concerned, as I've intimated elsewhere, that these are not the postulates, nor the implied goals, of the majority of the new president's economic advisers.

U.S. economic policy in the past thirty years has been an abysmal failure from this traditional point of view: it has tended to destroy the health of the production economy to the (temporary and unsustainable) advantage of the financial economy, resulting in huge wealth transfer from the former middle class to the plutocrat class. This looks from a long term perspective like nothing less than a giant rip-off. The middle class in America is on life support, as a result of this wealth transfer.

I've noticed that many very traditional "conservative" economic thinkers, while clinging to their belief in the panacea of so-called free markets, nonetheless have come around to agreeing pretty much entirely with the predicate of bullet point two above. Many people have come to recognize that even if you believe, philosophically, in relatively unrestrained capitalism, you have to have some rules to keep the transactions in the arena that actually results in positive economic activity, as opposed to simply gambling. Much of the activity that fueled the recently collapsed bubble was exactly that: side-betting on the outcomes of uncontrolled, unassessed, and incredibly risky securitized lending. This kind of activity is inherently destructive and must be eliminated from the universe of legal economic activity.

Some of what Pres.-elect Obama says is encouraging. He seems to favor investment in infrastructure and renewable energy to end dependence on fossil fuels. But I'm not sure he has a full-fledged commitment to, and understanding of, the need to restore the American economy to a production basis, or of the methods, in use in places like Scandinavia, to ensure that the economy is not only productive, but that it remains high-wage, and high standard of living, for the segment of the population which is actually engaged in production. Trickle-down economics has completely failed, and it's time to dump its paradigms and postulates entirely, and to adopt principles which have been shown to work elsewhere. We need to recognize that without some long term planning and, (quel horreur!) dirigisme, i.e., control over the direction of investment and such things as the health care "industry" and the energy and transportation industries (as examples) to promote public policy goals, there can be no successful restoration of a solid basis for long term prosperity. Also, of course, a regime of carefully balanced re-regulation needs to be imposed to control the financial markets.

Along these lines, the restoration of Glass-Steagall, which used to prevent banks, insurers, and investment houses from being the same people, needs to be a top priority, as do restoration of strict leveraging limits and the blanket outlaw of trading in transactions that amount to nothing more than wagering, involving no actual capital involved in production, which has been so destructive in the most recent bubble. As a friend who knows this stuff better than I do says, otherwise, we will simply "wash away in a sea of debt." (He undoubtedly doesn't agree with much of the above, especially about the necessary role of planning and direction of the production economy, or the necessity of suspending concern about the national debt for the duration of the worst of the emergency in order to inject money into the economy, but I think he'd agree with the other conclusions, and with the need for some serious sheriffin' to get the miscreants back in line).

Bailout needs Major Strictures, or no deal

Secretary Paulson, who let's not forget is a former chairman of Goldman Sachs and thus one of the foxes, wants a "clean bill" on the proposed 3/4 trillion bailout. Democrats need to say, "Your plan, as is, is DOA, sir, fuhgeddabout it!"

The bill, at minimum, needs to have the following provisions:

• Any company applying for bailout must turn over substantial equity, to be sold later to pay down the debt, and must agree to be bound by strictures.

• Among those strictures must be:
- Strict caps on executive compensation and severance
- Right of government oversight, including audit and dismissal of executives found to have breached fiduciary duties.
- Mandatory refinancing of principal home mortgages up to a certain amount (say $750,000) held by securities instruments
- Preferential treatment of small investors in any liquidations
- Cap individual capital loss write-offs over a certain amount; those who profited before should bear the loss now; no more privatization of profit and socialization of loss
- [I'm sure there are other things that will come up; the main point: Paulson says this shouldn't be punitive: like hell. This should hurt those who caused it.]

• Some of the $700 billion needs to come not from just raising the debt ceiling, but taxing the richest. I would say a tax surcharge on the top 1% would be in order, with a fixed duration, of ten years or something. (Mainly because the richest segment will be getting a tax increase soon anyway to help get the Federal Government on something resembling a sound footing going forward).

• Britain has a small tax on securities transfers, and it hasn't exactly gone belly up as a result; we should impose one too, to help pay for this.

• Some of the $700 billion needs to come from offsets. This can't practicably be in the bill itself, but at least the principle should be. (I would target unnecessary large weapons systems. This is especially important because the Bush administration has been saying for years that there's no money for infrastructure or health care reform, but suddenly there's $700 billion for this. So, if there is going to be infrastructure development and health care reform as well, we need to restructure spending to find the money for all this.)

• Some of the $700 billion needs to come from windfall profits tax on oil profits for three years. This could be in the bill itself, since otherwise it might be impossible to pass.

• No bailout of sovereign wealth funds.

• Understanding that major reregulation is part of the quid pro quo. The Gramm Leach Bliley Act will be repealed, the Glass-Steagall Act will be reimposed; etc. (Not literally, perhaps, but the laissez faire system that caused this debacle will be trashed).

Again, I'm sure there are other provisions that need to be put in the mix, but these will do for starters.

Why, when we can't bailout individual families losing their homes, or small businesses, or manufacturing, do we always seem to have plenty of socialism to save Wall Street? The reason is simple: they have us over a barrel, and the barrel is fear. Fear that the whole house of cards will collapse. OK, that's the reality. But the interests of those other than in the financial sector need to be front and center now.

Enough of Sarah Palin Already: Hit McCain and Use Direct Approach

A friend at work sent me yet another e-mail cataloging the faults and inexperience of Sarah Palin, some of them, like the "book banning" accusation, actually not even true. Nothing disarms an attack on integrity like using falsehoods yourself.

I think it's time for those of us who don't want to see McCain elected to pretty much ignore Sarah Palin. Her nine-day wonder has run its course. She's their VP candidate, so she will be mentioned here and there. There is a debate coming up, of course, which will call attention, but I think most of the attempts to portray her as a lunatic and a vindictive, retributive, parochial hick, however much some of them may be justified, have backfired. Better to ignore her, and shift focus to their presidential candidate, attack his lack of any real plans to do anything about the myriad problems that face us, and his willingness to betray principles and integrity to get elected. At the same time, and, even more forcefully: hit hard on the direct approach: promise specific program changes, and ask the voters for their support, in ads featuring Obama personally. I really think this is the path to victory, and I sure hope the O. campaign gets busy and starts spending their considerable warchest on this approach soon.

My Barack Obama Ad Script

George Lakoff has talked about how the Democrats need to change the frames in order to redirect the focus of politics. Obama needs to change the whole frame of the political conversation. Here's my suggested ad. Picture Obama in a chair, fireside chatlike, talking directly to the camera. (See Anonymous comment below for a suggested rewrite... the commenter makes good suggestions).

«I'm Barack Obama. The Republicans have done everything they could in this election to bring our national discourse down into the gutter, with outright lies, nonsense about celebrities and phony outrage about every turn of phrase. The reason for this is simple: in order to win this election, they have to distract the American people from the real issues, because they have no programs to benefit the American people on these issues. John McCain voted over 90% with George Bush, and a McCain administration would be more of the same for America: continued tax cuts for the very rich, a so-called health care 'plan' that would end up costing ordinary people more for their health insurance, if they have it at all; an impulsive go-it-alone attitude towards foreign policy that's been a disaster for our country; continued record deficit spending even while they call themselves conservatives; and continued disrespect for the very foundation of our country, the Constitution of the United States.

I want to run a different kind of campaign, but I need your help to do it. I want to talk about our plan to reduce taxes for 95% of Americans while asking those who are truly fortunate to pay more of their fair share. I want to talk about our plan to bring access to quality health insurance to all Americans. I want to talk about our plan to reduce the deficit, over time. I want to talk about not only how we will end the war in Iraq, which is not serving our nation's interests but has cost and continues to cost our nation dearly in the lives of its young men and women and in treasure, but also about how we will rethink our whole foreign policy, to restore prestige and respect to America. We will use force, when necessary, but only as a last resort, not as a doctrine of preemptive war, which has failed us so badly under the Bush administration. America used to lead the world through cooperation and negotiation through strength, it will again. I want to talk about how we will bring jobs to America, and stop giving breaks to companies that send jobs overseas. I want to talk about how we can renew our infrastructure and develop the technologies to free America from its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, within ten years, and develop renewable energy resources over time to help solve the worldwide climate crisis and at the same time end our nation's energy dependence permanently. We can do all of these things. We are a can-do country, and I believe the American people are tired of all the negativity coming from the other side. We can make our nation a better partner in the world, and a better place to live for all its citizens. But I need your help to get there. That's why I'm asking for your support in this presidential election. Thank you.

I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message. »

...................................................

And here's another comment I received via e-mail. These are good points, too:

As a somewhat objective observer, I think it would be a serious misstep for Obama to talk about what he wants to talk about. One of his perceived problems is that he's mostly talk and little action. But I get your drift. With some wordsmithing to address the 'talk' part, and a little more statistical content, you're absolutely correct. Although I think I would leave out or greatly shorten the opening. The contrast to the Repub style would be clear if O just actually adhered to a much more substantive and less reactionary direction. No need to call them out on it to such a degree. And don't remind people of any GOP message that has worked well, like the Britney/Paris spot. A more general statement would suffice.

A coupla things I've learned after 30 years in advertising....

My suggestions to David Pouffle, Obama Campaign Mgr

USE this video from Portland, ME.
Contrast Biden's sensible statements, intercut.

READ E. J. Dionne 9/11/08 on truthdig. HE has it exactly right.

RUN ADS making each of the points Dionne mentions:
McCain's "tax cut" is far smaller than Obama's for 95% of Americans! Plus, his health care plan will almost certainly result in higher overall costs for most working people, more than offsetting any tax cut!
Obama would guarantee everyone access to health care or that McCain's health plan might endanger coverage many already have!
Obama will create new jobs from major infrastructure to create renewable energy resources and get US off foreign oil!
These are positive points that McC CANNOT RESPOND TO!

We need MUCH MORE AGRESSIVE ADVERTISING, both positive and negative, and ....
WHERE IS HILLARY?
WHERE IS BIDEN?
Get them on the news everyday! Somehow!
Thank you.

McCain leading in tracking polls

I can’t really say I’m surprised that McCain is now running slightly ahead in tracking polls. Democrats, again, are failing to appreciate and effectively counter the Big Lie propaganda being put out by the Republican smear machine.

The fact that so many American voters are apparently responsive to the snide derision of something so ridiculous as community organizing for the benefit of people affected by a steel plant closing, coming from a right wing extremist who thinks global climate disruption is not man made and that creationism should be taught in the schools, is disheartening but not surprising. After all, more Americans vote for American Idol than vote for president. A woman who 20 months ago was literally the mayor of a village can stand up there and deride Barack Obama, with snide contempt; a man who’s been proven right about the disastrous turn of American foreign policy, the completely disastrous mismanagement of the economy by the Republicans in power, and the total failure to do anything about either climate change or dependence on foreign oil, by this same party in power, and people eat it up, because propaganda works. People don’t vote issues, they vote sound bites and images. Democrats must get better at this, or in this year, where 80% will say they realize America is heading off on the wrong track, too many will once again ignore their own self interests and vote for the better marketed feel good message of the very people who got us into this mess, and who, if you take the trouble to actually read what they say, intend to dig us in deeper as vigorously and as quickly as possible if they take office.

Ray Kurzweil

Futurist and Inventor Ray Kurzweil was interviewed on NPR program Science Friday last week. (He was on the SciAm podcast and the CBC's program Ideas recently as well). He's an interesting guy, with a surprisingly good track record for predicting technological changes. He also invented the first convincing sampling synthesizer to come close to duplicating the sound of a real piano... in the late 1970s. Anyway, he claims that machine intelligence will soon overtake human intelligence and the distinction between life and machine will gradually blur, as we evolve into something greater than either, at an amazingly rapid pace, in the fairly near future.

Hmmm. I would be convinced, if I could tell my computer, "Hey, slowpoke, you seem to be getting bogged down lately. What up with that?" and it could reply, "Oh, yes, I do feel a bit dyspeptic. Let me revise my registries and eliminate all the gunk you didn't authorize from google and what not... mmm... there... much better... and, oh, I thought of some ways to improve my communication with all these other devices you have hooked up to me, and here's a list of interesting ideas you might want to think about, based on what you're looking at.... brzzzt brzzt brzzt! " and so on. Instead, computers remain dumb. Fast, cleverly designed, and they work well as long as they're tended by humans who understand them, but about as dumb as a cricket, I'd say. Comments, commentariat?

Conservatives want to amend the constitution to elminate the Magna Carta?

My comment to Glenn Greenwald's piece on the authoritarian attitude of American conservatives and habeas corpus, posted on Salon.

It's commonplace nowadays (see Paul Krugman today for a for instance) to comment that movement conservatives in the U.S. want to turn back the clock to erase not just the new deal but all the way back to the gilded age, before the Progressive era and Teddy Roosevelt, when, as the odious Grover Norquist put it, "the socialists took over."

Now they seem to be dissatisfied even with that. The even more odious Lindsey Graham wants to turn back the whole 900 years to before King John at Runnymede, to eliminate the requirement that government give those being held in imprisonment the right to challenge the basis for their captivity.

But I almost hope they do try to amend the constitution. It will only show how wretchedly authoritarian and shortsighted they are. Fortunately, it's not that easy to amend the constitution, and I'd give their prospects of success about zero chance.

Matthew Hughes's Template

Matthew Hughes has been called the best kept secret in science fiction, but I say, why keep him secret? His novels of the “Archonate” in the “penultimate age of Old Earth” are riproaring fun, and, to the extent they are Jack Vance homage, they are absolutely the best of their kind.

Template, being published by PS Books soon and made available by the author in electronic format to people willing to review or comment, was actually written in 2003 but was not published. Stupid publishers, because it's a great read.

It has some of the elements of Jack Vance's Star King and other Kirth Gersen stories. A young man of exceptional ability and a dark, secret past, with mysterious and implacable enemies, in a galaxy of adventure. Also, Hughes has a somewhat similar sardonic wit and gift for atmospherics, esoterica, bits of philosophy, and a lovely way with unusual characterization. This is entertainment, not Deep Thought, but it's very well crafted and holds interest throughout.

There's a game in the story called birl, which reminds a Vance fan of hussade (also mentioned in passing), and there are many other nods of homage to Vance (Amboy, the planet of Emphyrio, is briefly mentioned, and there are others for the fan to pull out). The romance element is not really surprising, but it's believable, and the resolution of the mysteries, and of the plot itself, are Vancian and satisfying.

Highly recommended, especially to those who love a good old fashioned space opera, or, even more, to those who cut their teeth on Jack Vance.

House Passes FISA Reform, No Telecom Immunity, 213-197

For the first time in a long time, the Democrats in the House have stood firm on a major issue, in the face of strong Administration and pro-Administration Senate Democratic pressure (principally Rockefeller/Feinstein and their allies). Today, with no Republican votes (big surprise), the House passed, 213-197, a bill which more than adequately permits necessary antiterrorist surveillance, and which rebuffs the false and deceptive arguments for unbridled power to spy on Americans advocated by the Administration, and dutifully handed to them in the Cheney/Rockefeller Senate Bill. Greenwald, who has been on this story since its inception, has an excellent rundown.

As Greenwald points out, the House may yet capitulate, but this is an unexpected display of real backbone, and should be celebrated. He also explains why it doesn't really matter that the Senate is unlikely to pass this bill, or that, even if they did, Bush has already said he would veto it. We don't really need any bill, or if we do, only a single minor reform,* so if the "Protect America Act" just dies, it's a far better outcome than passing the bill Cheney foisted on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The House bill does not include telecom immunity, but it does contain a provision protecting telecoms' rights to present evidence, ex parte and in camera, to overcome any bar to defending themselves against charges of illegal conduct in surveillance due to claims by the government of the so-called 'State Secrets' privilege. The courts will be empowered to review the evidence and decide whther immunity is appropriate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU are both satisfied with this compromise. And, most importantly, litigation on the extent of illegal surveillance which occurred in recent years, going back potentially even before the Bush administration, can contine. This litigation is the only way Americans can ever find out to what extent the law was in fact broken by their own government, since the State Secrets privilege will protect the government from disclosing the facts.

To those who argue, as I have heard argued in good faith, that we should be glad someone's doing all this spying on Americans, and that catching the bad guys, regardless of legality, is more important than the law, I say, no, fear does not trump the law and constitution. These are what America is all about; if you want to change the law and constitution, propose it, get it legitimately passed, and those of us who disagree will have to live with it. But as long as the Fourth Amendment, the Telecommunications Act of 1934, and FISA, as amended, are the law, those who violate them should face the consequences, and the courts should have the power to uncover the truth. This is what is meant by the rule of law, and anything less is the way dirty little dictatorships operate, not the way America operates. Or used to, until recently.

-- *The actual reform arguably needed is simply to allow warrantless eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign communications that electronically pass through the US, something not clearly provided for in the original FISA but aruably now needed due to changes in technology. No one opposes this reform, and if it were offered as a stand-alone bill, it would pass immediately. It isn't clear that this surveillance is even prohibited under existing law; at worst the FISA court would have to approve them, in the absence of this reform. This was the law for thirty years, so it can't be so very impractical, especially since the FISA court, as is well known, has never turned down a warrant, and exists only to process (and essentially rubber-stamp), such requests; but at least it's some kind of oversight. The "Protect America Act" which has been in effect for six months, and which the Administration wants to make permanent (and even worse, in fact), goes far beyond this, and although it is pretty clearly unconstitutional, in the present climate there is no prospect of the courts so finding anytime soon.

Bush lies about motivations for litigation on telecom lawbreaking

President Bush outright lied...again...flagrantly, smugly (with his nauseating little smirk and heh-heh)... in his press conference yesterday, when he claimed that "trial lawyers" with an interest in making a lot of money, were behind litigation to uncover telecom lawbreaking in connection with the still-unkown scope of illegal surveillance by the government in the period between 2001-2003.

The reality, of course, is that ACLU and other public interest lawyers who have pursued this litigation operate on the most meager of shoestrings, from storefront offices, and are paid barely living salaries, as President Bush probably knows perfectly well. (Although it's always dangerous to assume he knows anything at all).

It is absolutely amazing that our so-called media have next to no interest in finding out what happened, and are either so mendacious, or so stupid, that they can't grasp that without the ability to bring lawsuits against telecoms who (apparently admittedly, per Dick Cheney) violated FISA and other Federal laws, the American people will never know the scope of this administration's now quite patently obvious felonious conduct.

I'm still shaking my head, but nothing changes.

See Greenwald today:

The telecom lawsuits are the last hope for finding any of this out. They're the last hope for ever having this still-secret behavior subjected to the rule of law and enabling the American people to learn about what their Government did for years in illegally spying on them. That's why -- the only real reason -- the White House is so desperate for telecom amnesty. That's what George Bush means when he says that amnesty is urgent "because the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance." In a functioning democracy, when high political officials break the law, such behavior is actually supposed to be "disclosed," not concealed.

Ad update

Back in November, I suggested a Clinton v. Giuliani advert for the general election, since it still seemed like Rudy and Hillary were the frontrunners. The ad would apply equally well to Obama (or Clinton) v. McCain.

Million Dollar Question

Assuming Obama continues his roll, ending up with a clear majority of elected pledged delegates, will Hillary step aside rather than slog it out with the superdelegates and try to steal the nomination at the convention? (Which isn't till LABOR DAY, thereby giving McCain ALL SUMMER to tear at the divided Democrats).

And the $500,000 follow up: How nervous should we be that (admittedly pretty meaningless) early national polls are showing even Obama within the margin of error when pitted against McCain? (And how can that be? Democrats should win with historic landslides in a recession year and in the wake of the most disastrous administration in modern history, by any reasonable standard, on the Republican side).

My suggestion for a Clinton ad for general election against Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani endorses George W. Bush’s foreign policy. He has chosen as one of his main advisers Norman Podhoretz, one of the architects of the failed war in Iraq a man who in the 1980s criticized Ronald Reagan for even talking to Russian leader Gorbachev.

The American people do not want more of the same. We want a new direction, that puts America’s interests first.

Ask yourself, are you safer today than you were the day after America was attacked on September 11?

George Bush, at the urging of Donald Rumsfeld, dropped the ball when America’s military forces had Osama Bin Laden on the run at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001, and let him get away-- so that Al Qaida could regroup; so that now Intelligence Estimates say these enemies are as strong as they were before 9/11. Thanks to George Bush.

George Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney, misled Americans, saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he didn’t; and saying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida, when there wasn’t, in order to launch an invasion of Iraq, that was supposed to be over in a month and cost no more than $50 billion dollars. Now, after over 3000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives, at a cost already approaching $1 trillion, what has been accomplished? How have we been made better off by George Bush’s foolish war in Iraq?

• Oil prices are $100 a barrel, mainly due to insecurity in the Middle East
• Thousands of lives lost
• Iraq in turmoil
• Sabre rattling for and even more calamitous war against Iran, if they can get away with it
• U.S. prestige at its lowest point in modern times
• The dollar at its lowest value in decades
• American moral example tarnished by an administration that can’t even understand that torture is un-American?
• And nothing has been done about Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden

Rudy Giuliani represents more of the same.

Vote for real change, for a new direction in the world. The Republicans have no strategy, and have failed to make Americans safer or advance our interests in the World. They’ve slashed taxes for the rich and run up huge deficits, but instead of advancing our interests, they have made matters worse.

Senator Clinton understands that unilateralism isn’t the solution, and knows how to talk turkey to foreign leaders, how to achieve America’s interests in the world by being smart, strong, and determined. She knows how to restore America’s leadership and moral example.

Vote Clinton/[Veep] in 2008.

Paid for by Clinton for President.
Hillary Clinton: “I approved this message.”

Feinstein is no longer a Democrat in any meaningful sense of the word

See Greenwald on Dianne Feinstein's latest capitulation to Bush Administration interests. I wrote recently to Sen. Feinstein deploring the fact that she is no longer a Democrat in any meaningful sense of the word. Some of her positions are actually worse than those of Joseph Lieberman. It's really unfortunate that she's Class I, meaning she's in through 2012. She's probably the ripest for a primary challenge on ideological grounds of any Democratic senator in California in a long, long time. I hope and pray when that time comes, she retires (she's 75 now), making room for a real Democrat.

US drops to 53rd rank on press freedom

I imagine the same folks who smugly don't care that U.S. access to health care is ranked just above Slovenia, i.e. about 40th in the world, aren't troubled by this either:

"...the U.S. has tumbled progressively downward in the worldwide press freedom rankings maintained by the widely respected journalist group, Reporters Without Borders. While oppressive countries such as North Korea, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran occupy their rightful place at the bottom of the list, the U.S. -- historically at or near the top -- has fallen drastically over the last several years to 53rd place. The U.S. is thus now tied with Botswana and Tonga and well behind El Salvador, Mozambique, Panama, Namibia, Jamaica, Israel and Lithuania. Its practice of arresting journalists [in Iraq] and holding them for years with no charges is obviously a significant factor."
(From Greenwald on salon.com).

You could make an argument that our founders invented press freedom. But if you don't get that this is a shameful --and frightening-- state to have fallen to, you just aren't paying attention. Because, if you don't think it affects you, you are wrong. Already the lack of access to truthful information has poisoned our political system. And it can only get worse without a concerted effort... i.e., political action... to correct these positively unAmerican developments.

My comment on news that Mukasey still refuses to say whether Waterboarding is Torture

Here's my comment on TPM Muckraker piece on Mukasey's continued refusal to answer the question "Is waterboarding torture?"

OK, fine. If Cheney and Addington (no need to ask where Bush is in all of this) want to resist any questioning of "presidential authority" to torture, and Mukasey's willing to be their stooge, then turn him down flat. And if they send up another stooge who won't answer legitimate questions in his nomination hearings, turn him down too. These people have to be shown that the Congress has constitutional powers no matter what dangerous crackpot theories they have, and if they want to paralyze the government by refusing to participate in the constitutional process, that's their choice, but the onus is on them.

Personally, I think Congress has been extremely remiss in failing to impeach Cheney AND Bush, a long, long time ago.

Why Tortureboy Rudy Giuliani is totally unqualified to be president

I would like to propose it as an axiom that anyone who is as morally unclear on the concept of torture, and why it is unacceptable in civilized society, as Rudolph Giuliani, is unqualified to be president of the United States, period. Ever.

Let's leave alone for the moment the obvious lack of qualification for the same office of the current incumbent and his patron, Dick Cheney, for the same reasons.

This isn't hard, or even close to being a judgment call. Water torture is never acceptable to civilized people. If you don't get that, get off the political stage and go crawl in some hole. It's truly nauseating that this kind of stuff can be said in ordinary political discourse in this country today without widespread, open-mouthed, wide-eyed-in-disbelief condemnation.

Here's Conason today in salon:

"It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."

Such lazy-minded clichés--"it depends on the circumstances" --
are emblematic of the moral relativism that swaggering absolutists like Giuliani claim to despise in liberalism. He went on to disparage media coverage of the technique, claiming that "liberal newspapers" have exaggerated its brutality. "So I'd have to see what they really are doing." Perhaps as president, he would attend the interrogations and even pour a few pitchers over the face of a suspect himself.

If tough Rudy does go waterboarding, however, he should have no illusions about its status under American law and tradition. As a former federal prosecutor, he should know that the United States has indicted, convicted and punished a substantial number of torturers whose offenses included waterboarding or, as it used to be known, "the water cure." American prohibitions on the mistreatment of prisoners date back to George Washington, but the earliest prosecution of an American military officer for using that particular technique occurred in 1902, during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

Following a series of Senate hearings led by Massachusetts Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, the Army tried Maj. Edwin Glenn in a court-martial in the Philippine province of Samar for misconduct and breach of discipline, including "infliction of the water cure" on suspected Filipino insurgents. The Army's judge advocate general rejected Glenn's defense of "military necessity," and he was suspended from his post for a month and fined $50 (not an insignificant sum in 1902). President Roosevelt affirmed the major's conviction. More severe punishments were meted out to the Japanese imperial officers who inflicted the water ure on Allied military officers and civilians during World War II in such places as Korea, the Philippines and China. In war crimes trials overseen by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander in the Pacific and a great Republican hero, testimony about water torture led to numerous convictions -- and sentences that ranged from years of imprisonment at hard labor to death by hanging. As head of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, MacArthur voted to uphold those convictions and sentences.

Just so there can be no mistake about what the Japanese perps were convicted of doing, here is a sliver of the copious testimony that can be found at Law of War, where an excellent essay on waterboarding and American law can be found. It comes from the trial in Manila of Sgt. Maj. Chinsaku Yuki, a Japanese military intelligence officer. The witness is Ramon Lavarro, a Filipino lawyer suspected by the Japanese of providing assistance to resistance forces. "I was ordered to lay on a bench and Yuki tied my feet, hands and neck to that bench lying with my face upward," Lavarro testified. "After I was tied to the bench Yuki placed some cloth on my face and then with water from the faucet they poured on me until I became unconscious. He repeated that four or five times." Such testimonies all sound very much the same because waterboarding is a simple practice that even Giuliani should be able to comprehend. When he argues that it is an act whose significance depends on who does it and under what circumstances, does he mean to suggest that the Japanese war criminals were wrong, but the CIA is right? Does he think that laws and treaties apply only to foreigners and not to Americans? Or that the president can abrogate those laws and treaties at will? That is a formula for tyranny -- and it was rejected by Republicans and Democrats alike, all much better men than he.

Giuliani, as Conason notes, was echoing Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, who also refused to say whether waterboarding (aka Chinese Water Torture) was, as it unquestionably is, in fact torture. The Democratic senators (Leahy, Durbin) who have announced that Mukasey's nomination will be blocked if he doesn't give an answer to this question, should be commended. For once, a bit of backbone in evidence.

Better if they'd said, "Look. This isn't a hard question. The fact that he couldn't... or wouldn't... answer it without hesitation means he's not qualified to be Attorney General and we will vote to block his nomination." But even what they did say is a step in the right direction.

Bush's Amazing Achievement

From Bush's Amazing Achievement, in the New York Review of Books, in which Jonathan Freedland discussed books by Chalmers Johnson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Dennis Ross:

One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve.

(Stolen from Prof. Juan Cole's incomprable blog, Informed Comment).

Chris Dodd for President

Mainly because of his principled stand against Telecom immunity for 4th amendment violations at the behest of the lawless Bush administration (which would foreclose the only avenue the people have to find out the truth about how far these violations of the constitution actually went)... and because of his support for strengthening and preserving the Constitution generally, I've decided to support Chris Dodd's presidential candidacy.

Issues: check out Dodd's stands.

Quixotic? Maybe. But at least at the Primary stage I refuse to vote for Centrists who are more interested in calculating what will least offend the Beltway elites than actually advocating what's best for the American people.

Dalai Lama Congressional Gold Medal

I reply to an (unconventionally) conservative friend who asked my opinion about the Dalai Lama receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, and in so doing remarking that it seemed like a provocation, comparable to another state awarding a medal to Osama bin Laden. (He also commented on positive role of China in resolution of North Korea crisis):

You kindly asked for my opinion, (paraphrasing and supplying some implicit context), on the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, i.e., whether it’s an unwarranted provocation to the Chinese. This has to be considered in light of their stated position that Tibet is part of China, and any recognition or even official conversation with the Dalai Lama constitutes interference in their internal affairs. (This has been their position since 1959, and has been expressed quite distinctly in these terms since the 1970s).

I’ll avoid giving you a long diatribe on the historical reasons for believing that the Chinese interpretation of their sovereignty over Tibet is untenable, although that is my opinion. Sufficient to say, Tibet was de facto independent, and at most a tribute state (early on the tribute usually went the other way), continuously from about A.D. 750 until 1959, when the Chinese invaded and enforced their claim, which they had proclaimed with the founding of the P.R.C. in 1949. Their primary interest in Tibet is its mineral wealth, which is enormous, and they have been systematically displacing the indigenous population and installing Han Chinese population. With China having a population of 1.2 billion and Tibet having a population of 6 million, the threat to Tibet’s culture and identity as a people is quite real.

I’ll also avoid a diatribe on the brutal oppression of the Chinese towards Tibet, which has abated somewhat in the last ten to fifteen years. There is quite strong evidence that the suppression (and outright destruction) of hundreds of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and political dissidents during the Cultural Revolution resulted in at least 200,000 Tibetans (out of that six million population) being killed.

So the case that China has bloody hands with regard to Tibet is there to be made. I am a little biased, I suppose, so in the interests of disclosure I admit I am a Buddhist, of the Gedan tradition of Je Tsongkhapa, which originated in Tibet, and that I have great love and admiration for Tibetan culture and spiritual traditions. But this isn’t really the issue. The fact is that Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, is not a separatist. This is a Chinese canard. He has called for autonomy with Tibet as a part of China, much to the dismay of some of his own refugee population. The Chinese position on Tibet is quite simply indefensible, and they know it. They are flat out lying about the position taken by the Tibetan Government in Exile, which is that there should be recognition of the interests of the Tibetan people and self-determination on issues of development and what’s normally called domestic policy. Much like the arrangement that Catalunya has with Spain. It’s all negotiable, and the Tibetans aren’t fooling themselves about how weak a position they’re in. But the Chinese are lying about this, claiming that the Tibetan Government in Exile is militant and separatist, which just isn’t true. It’s classic disinformation propaganda.

So, yes, I think the Congressional Gold Medal was perfectly appropriate. It’s not an interference in Chinese internal affairs to say, in effect, “we don’t have a beef with you, but we recognize the truth, too, which is that you need to negotiate a resolution to the legitimate interests of the Tibetan people, and we recognize His Holiness as a rightful representative of the exile community.” The Chinese will pout and stamp, but it’s posturing. They’ll get over it. And it is well for us to occasionally give them a little taste of resistance and speaking of truth. China is an authoritarian empire, much like what it has essentially always been. Our interests are not congruent with theirs, and an occasional reminder of that fact is not a bad thing.

Incidentally, I have to say that comparing, even obliquely, the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to Osama Bin Laden, is just preposterous. I have received teachings from His Holiness and heard him speak on several occasions, and I can tell you from personal experience that he is an honest man of peace. My spiritual tradition is in conflict with some of his religious edicts, but politically he is doing the best he can in a very difficult and precarious position to preserve and defend the interests of his extremely beleaguered people. Moreover, the Tibetans have never (in modern times) attacked the Chinese. Quite the opposite. So to compare their leader in exile in any way to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida is offensive and untenable. And, once again, the Chinese know perfectly well what the Dalai Lama has really said and done.

Korea is an entirely separate issue, and there it has been in the Chinese interests to help broker a deal, much to the chagrin of the more militant authoritarian neoconservatives in the White House, such as John Bolton and Dick Cheney. (I know Bolton’s out, but there are plenty of folks who think just like him). The Bush administration’s negotiator, Christopher Hill, is a State Dept. guy, aligned with Rice and Negroponte, and one of the best diplomats they've got. Before these six party negotiations were finally embarked upon, the administration’s policy towards Korea had been entirely less than zero. Here’s a good case for how, thanks to the neocons, NK built nuclear weapons they wouldn’t have otherwise built. But I agree with you that the Chinese were undoubtedly instrumental in bringing about a favorable outcome. (Let’s just hope it holds). The last thing they want is a unified Korea with American troops on their border, not that that was a particularly likely outcome. They want NK to continue to exist, and to gradually come under their hegemony as a sort of client state after Kim Jong Il dies. Which is a pretty likely outcome. Marxisim-Leninism is just a slogan for them nowadays, it’s all about hegemony and centralized control. If nothing else, the Chinese are smart enough to look down the road a bit further than we usually do. So, in this case, the Chinese interests and ours coincided, and we were smart enough (for once) to cooperate with them.

Anyway, in general I believe we need to find common ground with the Chinese where it serves the interests of peace and prosperity for our people, and diplomatically resist them when not. Pretty much like any other country. They don’t want open hostility with us any more than we do, so a watchful coexistence is the only course for both countries. Anyone who thinks we have anything more friendly than that going on with them, though, is, in my humble opinion, deluded. They will trade with us, of course, because that relationship is frighteningly lopsided in their favor. If it weren’t, they’d curtail it. They buy US made airplanes, and admittedly it takes a lot of 99ct widgets to pay for a Dreamliner, but if they thought we were getting the better of the trade relationship, they’d forego the benefit to their consumer economy and cut it back. Because they think strategically first and foremost.


I think it likely that in the long run, since they own so much of our debt, we're going to have to accommodate them more than we would care to. Not to mention there are disturbing signs that they will lose interest in US debt as the dollar becomes weaker and weaker, and start buying equity. At the end of the century they're likely to be the world's superpower, not us. Certainly, economically. A prospect that doesn't thrill me, although I'll be dead, so it won't matter to me personally.

McCain says Gore shouldn't have won.

The Des Moines Register reports that McCain said Al Gore shouldn't have won the Nobel Peace Prize. What an ungracious jerk.

Bush administration criminal leak

salon editor Joan Walsh notes:

« The latest debacle is the news that the administration leaked the most recent Osama bin Laden video, obtained by the private SITE counter-terror institute, to Fox News and other friends, after SITE shared the video with the White House for its intelligence value, while asking that it be kept under wraps. As a result of the administration leaks, SITE's ability to obtain comparable videos and other intelligence has been compromised. As its founder told the Washington Post: "Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless." Can you imagine the outrage if, say, Democratic leaders leaked intelligence information and cost counter-terror experts a valuable way into terror operations? Sure you can. »

If these jerks ever have the gall to imply a lack of patriotism on the part of a political opponent again, this should be thrown in their faces. Which it should anyway. I think this deliberate leak of sensitive intelligence for political purposes, just like the Libby and Rove Valerie Wilson identity leak, only fails to look like seriously detrimental, unpatriotic criminal conduct, bordering on treason, to the hopelessy deluded.

Rampant Lawlessness threatens our Republic

Greenwald today is in fine fettle. Unfortunately, what he has to say makes me fear more than ever for the future of our republic. Gentle Reader, if you don't see this, I fear that you, like many others in our society as Glenn mentions, are being willfully blind. Read the NYTimes article he links too in the first paragraph, and then tell me it doesn't concern you.

I say, we simply cannot afford to allow the rule of law to die in our country, and if we do, we will pay a very, very high price-- namely that our nation will have ceased all semblance of being a free society. Once that line is definitively crossed, it will be very hard, if not impossible, to bring it back. Our constitution is gravely ill, and if we don't take some action to save it, it will become little more than a shell.

Wake up, folks, this is not exaggeration. If future presidents are permitted to subscribe to the Bush/Cheney theory that they can violate any and all law "in the defense" of the country, in secret , and to act accordingly, then we will cease to be a republic and will become a nation with a form of government all to common in the world, authoritarian government effectively by executive decree. If you'd like an example, another nation has rushed even more headlong in that direction just recently, and it should stand as a stark warning to us. I refer, of course, to the rise of Putin's dicatatorship in Russia. What is happening here is not so very different, and the end result could easily be much the same thing.

In the past, our system has been self-correcting. Maybe this will prove true again. So I hope and pray. But what has made our system self-correcting in the past is that the people have become sufficiently disturbed by what they've seen that they've demanded reform and the removal of lawbreakers from office. I don't see that happening in this 21st Century America, where most people don't even vote.

Think about it. The legislative branch is about to meekly vote for $200 billion more to fund a war that 69% of the population wants to end as soon as it can be done logistically. $200 billion that isn't even in the budget, which is a joke, since our national debt is stratospheric and owned to an alarming degree by foreign governments. What kind of representative government continues, year after year, to enact and reinforce policies that more than two thirds of the population oppose? And continues to mortgage the future of our country's prosperity, without so much as a by your leave?

The legislative branch is effectively disconnected from accountability to the people. As for the executive, I think the case is so clear it doesn't even need to be argued. The people have next to no say in the policies of the executive. Just how can this be described as representative government? This is the way it already is. Take away, as is already well underway, the constitutional protections which allow us to at least find out about, and sometimes, at least, to restrain the secret torture, detention, surveillance of Americans, denial right of trial, habeas corpus, representation of counsel, as this administration has done, and what you are left with is not the constitutional republic our founders conceived, at all. I'm sorry, but it just isn't.

Can the First Amendment long stand in such circumstances? Do you really think so? And to anyone who still thinks, but it's just the terrorists, not ordinary folks, I say, come on. Think, please. Think about what Lutheran anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller famously said: "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

It's time for us, as Americans, to speak up, and to say, no more will we tolerate the subversion of our constitution by our own government. It's past time.

My e-mail to Senator Feinstein's office

Your automated e-mail reply says the staff "tallies" the input, but it seems to have no effect. The Senator continues to enable the right wing of the Republican party by voting for such atrocities as the Lieberman/Kyl amendment and the unconstitutional FISA extension. Surely Ms. Feinstein knows that these votes are inimical to the majority of her California Democratic constituents' views? Reliable and easily available polling data will advise her of this fact. I am wondering just what the Senator thinks it means to be a Democrat? I can tell you quite plainly what it does not mean. It does not mean endorsing conservative Republican foreign policy and "national security" initiatives which are contrary to the founding principles of our nation and counterproductive to our national interests. This, regrettably, the Senator has done repeatedly.

I'm sorry to have to put this so bluntly, but at this point I have to hope Senator Feinstein chooses to retire at the end of her term so we can elect a real Democrat.

Greenwald: Iran baiting, telecom immunity, so depressing

Astounding. Read Greenwald today. Even Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan (!!!) are repelled by the madness of Iran baiting that's going on in the media and political discourse in this country.

His other topic is so depressing. The damned Congressional Democrats are fixing to forfeit the rule of law again and hand extraordinary and just plain unAmerican immmunity to the telecoms for FISA violations. Why even have laws? The King and his minions need not obey them. Cause they say so, and that's that, and you have nothing to say about it.

Olbermann yesterday noted, and I think it was normally pretty tepid Howard Fineman who agreed, that any sort of logic of this particular Bush admin. request is utterly lacking. They claim, in their usual undocumented and dubious manner, that there were no FISA violations by the telecoms. If that's so, why are they and their Dem Congressional enablers so determined to cut a semi-secret deal, freezing out civil liberties advocates from even knowing what's in the bill, to immunize them for their past actions? Makes no sense. Or, wait. Sure it does. They're lying. Again. Big surprise.

The real reason, of course, is that they're afraid that the civil lawsuit against AT&T now pending in the Ninth Circuit will actually establish as irrefutable fact the already known massive illegal activities on the part of the Bush administration between 2001-2005. If this dirty deal passes, that suit is mooted immediately, and the Government's motion to dismiss is granted. Poof.

Blackwater Mercenaries Out!

I cannot for the life of me understand how it is that the killing of unarmed civilians last week by Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq has not produced (1) an official condemnation and 'statement of regret,' at least, from the U.S. Government; and (2) an outpouring of condemnation from the U.S. Public, accompanied by a demand that the use of lawless mercenaries be first reined in, then ultimately eliminated, from any ongoing or future U.S. military involvement on foreign soil.

The use of mercenary troops by the British was one of the justifications for the American Revolution, lest we forget. Their use by the current administration in Iraq, like many of their other war policies, is despicable and unAmerican.

My letter to both senators and Congressman re: no extension of FISA expansion and no retroactive immunity to telecoms

Dear Senator Feinstein/Senator Boxer/Congressman Berman:

I am writing to urge you to OPPOSE any extension of President Bush's previously and rightfully ILLEGAL use of warrantless wiretaps without court supervision; and further, to urge you to STRONGLY OPPOSE any retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies for their violation of then-existing law in the period 2001-2005 or at any other time.

It is vital that the secret usurpation of the rule of law by this White House be resisted, and that a strong message be sent that violations of the law will not be retroactively condoned.

I am of the view that this President, his Vice President, and others in the administration, should have been, and still should be, impeached for the clear commission of numerous felonies in connection with illegal wiretapping. But, AT THE VERY LEAST, it is vital that secret unconstitutional surveillance be stopped, and that those who violated the law be held to account.

Thank you.

David Studhalter

My letter to Glenn Greenwald, how about some commitments to demand from presidential candidates?

Mr. Greenwald,

I'd like to suggest that you would be an ideal person to formulate and explain a list of ten or so commitments which voters should demand of candidates for president (of both parties, but particularly Democrats), to reverse some of the worst excesses of the present administration. Things like: no warrantless wiretapping without compliance with FISA; no more signing statements asserting the right to act above the law; full compliance with the War Powers Act in spirit and letter, restoration of habeas corpus and endorsement of the right not to be held without due process, etc. You, much better than I, can think of and prioritize what's really important.

I fear that many of Bush's 'unitary executive' powers will be more than comfy for Democratic presidents in the future unless it's made clear to them now that the people want their Constitutional government back. It seems to me a little holding of their feet to the fire, demanding that they commit now to reversing these horrible developments, is in order.

Thank you.

Pathetic, W.

Josh Marshall about says it all with regard to the now completely pathetic explanations for the failed war coming out of President Bush's mouth:

Like I said, whatever. I know this reads like an expression of cynicism or disengagement. But while the president's chatter, with its brainlessness and brazenness, drives many to distraction, I think this is the only appropriate response. Anyone watching what's happening can see that what the president is talking about bears no relation to what's actually happening in Iraq -- a fact well confirmed by the fact that polls show no change in the public's take on what's happening in response to the president's speech. Primitive animals will sometimes keep chattering or twitching their muscles even after their heads have been cut off. And that's probably the best analogy today to the president's continuing enunciation of his policies.

The president's continuing power as commander-in-chief, behind a wall of 1/3+ support in the Congress, is key. His arguments aren't. They have simply predeceased his presidency.

The sad thing about all this is the victims: soldiers still dying and being injured for no legitimate American interests, Iraqis who by now would, on the whole, have been better off had we never been involved there, and the absolute fiasco that is American foreign policy and damage to its repuation in the world for decades to come.

Bush already setting up Dolschtoss

Here's the conclusion of Krugman's column today (unfortunately behind Times Select wall):

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

Only a right-wing ideologue could disagree with this, I'd say. But in actual fact, they fully intend to use this Big Lie in the future to try to shift blame for 'losing the war' to Democrats.
.....
-- * Dolschtoss (n. -Ger.): 'a stab in the back.' Used by Nazis as a code word for alleged betrayal by Weimar liberals in acquiescing to Versailles strictures, among other things.

Moveon.org: General "Betray Us" and double standard in political rhetoric

Glenn is absolutely right that there's a huge double standard in the "permissible" rhetoric of pro-war and anti-war politics. When Fox News' most rabid right-wing loudmouth hosts (or fawningly approved guests like Michael Reagan) do things like call for Howard Dean to be "arrested" and "hung for treason," everybody just chuckles at the rhetorical excess, but when an anti-war ad refers to General "Betray-Us" in reference to the general's demonstrable deliberate political shilling for the administration and its failed policy, and in reference to the cooked numbers in his testimony before Congress, which are deceptive in a deliberate effort to influence policies that the majority of Americans now believe will harm America's interests, even the "liberal media" (like Time's Joe Klein) gets all in a lather about the "grave slander."

Slander (or libel), it should be pointed out, requires untruth, and opinion isn't slander. I read the moveon.org ad. Whatever you think of the use of the loaded pun (at worst, in my view, dumb because it stirred up a pointless controversy)... it isn't slander. We do still have a First Amendment in this country, at least for the present.