Crack Brain Zealot For Democracy

"I have a condescending attitude toward this op-ed"

Also, too, go read Matt. I'm gonna be laughing for the next 10 minutes about that one.

The Best Blogger On The InterTubes

Seriously, kids. No one - and I mean no one - can hold a candle to Ta-Nehisi Coats. Stop what you are doing are read this. I'm just... wow.

Glenn Beck As A Performance Artist

First this: Glenn Beck’s Christmas Sweater: A Return To Redemption

And now this: The Plan

You cannot understand what this guy is doing if you start with the idea that he's first and foremost a political activist/journalist. He is not. He is a performance artist who uses politics as his medium to separate millions of people from their hard earned cash. If along the way that art also affects political change, so much the better, as it both broadens and lengthens his career. But that is secondary.

That said....

His performance art does have very clear political ramifications, particularly this latest 100 year plan thing (and he says Obama has a dangerous ego!).

For example:

The plan will require you to not only know history, read history, learn history but to teach history because the system is not teaching it. The system is not doing the job.

Beck considers Thomas Paine to be his personal hero. And yet more than any of the other Founding Fathers, Paine was a proto-socialist. You don't have to take my word for it. Just go read Paine's response to the founding father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, on the subject of the French Revolution in The Rights of Man. It's a pro-social welfare, pro-estate tax, anti-military spending, anti-concentration of wealth, anti-hereditary wisdom, anti-individual sovereignty, pro-French, anti-Federalist masterpiece. Or to put it another way, it's opposed to virtually everything Beck supposedly stands for.

But of course that's not the Paine that Beck and his followers will teach. Which is to say, the Paine they will teach will not actually be Paine. To make this movement work, inconvenient facts will be either ignored or eliminated. And that is a very dangerous thing.

Deep Thought

Like conservatism, Sarah Palin cannot fail. She can only be failed.

If the Bush Administration was a failure, that's not because it pursued conservative policies. It is because the policies it pursued weren't conservative enough.

If Sarah Palin's political career has been a disaster, it's not her fault! It's the fault of everyone around her, all those whack libs tryin to keep a hard workin hockey every-mom down!

Mid-Week Bits + Bobs

Lots of interesting things going on out there that are too long for a Twitter post and too short for their own blog post. And no, I don't need no damn micro-blog either. Something like this works just fine:

+ Let's put this right up top. John Farmer, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, has just written a book that provides evidence that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney provided false testimony to the 9/11 Commission. Even worse, he uses FAA and NORAD records to show that the Bush Administration sought to alter official government records to make their performance on 9/11 look much, much better than it actually was.

Wondering why you haven't heard about this yet? The NYT buried the story in its Sunday Book Review. Isn't it crazy how liberal that newspaper is? And how biased against conservatives?

+ Via Ezra Klein, a great quote from Rahm Emanuel on the pragmatic politics behind health reform:

“Let’s be honest. The goal isn’t to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution. I’m passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents... I’m sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal.”

+ Meanwhile, Republicans continue to drive themselves off an ideological cliff. Political Wire / CNN / Ezra:

The poll indicates that a slight majority, 51%, of Republicans would prefer to see the GOP in their area nominate candidates who agree with them on all the major the issues even if they have a poor chance of beating the Democratic candidate. Forty-three percent of Republicans say they would rather have candidates with whom they don't agree on all the important issues but who can beat the Democrats."

In constrast, Democrats polled "seemed to place a slightly higher priority on electoral victory: 58% say that they would like their party to nominate candidates who can beat Republicans, even if they don't agree with those candidates on all the issues."

A party ceases to be a national political party when its members care more about ideology than about winning elections. Why? Because the only purpose a political party has is to win elections. It serves no other purpose.

+ Via Kevin Drum, a great example of SoCal conservative thinking:

It's like living in a Third World country not to have sewers. But nobody wants to pay that sort of exorbitant fee. If we need a sewer system, you expect government to provide that service.

Those fees the gentleman is complaining about? They are otherwise known as taxes. This approach is very typical of conservatives, particularly in California. Government ought to provide the services middle class people need to live a middle class lifestyle, but it must never ever collect money from middle class people to do so. Nor from small business. Nor from big business. And that, in a nutshell, is why the budgets of both CA and the USA are such a disastrous mess.

This really is quite simple: Taxes pay for the things that the people ask their government to do on their behalf. Without taxes, no services. No police. No fire fighters. No military. No 911. No public hospitals. No courts. No jails. No prisons. No roads. No public parks. No sewer systems. No food safety. No public transportation. No street lights. No national forests. No air traffic control. No airport security. No public universities. No public schools. No NIH. No bank deposit insurance. No... are you getting my point here?
Here's the less ranty version from CBO director Doug Elmendorf

The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.

Without taxes, there is no government. Period. Full stop. The end. No government whatsoever, including all of the things that we take for granted, and that in the words of this jackass, separate us from the "Third World."

+ Not to turn this into all taxes, all the time, but this from a recent Attackerman guest blogger is just too good to pass up:

A key part of living in a democratic society is accepting the fact that a majority of your fellow-citizens might favor a policy that you’re opposed to, morally or otherwise. Hell, a key part of living in a democratic society is accepting the fact that the government will grant certain rights – like reproductive freedom inclusive of abortion – that you find deeply immoral. Now, as a full person within said society, you can work and lobby to restrict the extent to which that right can be exercised. But what you can’t do is force the government to abandon rights or responsibilities that you find distasteful. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of bloated defense budgets or open-ended imperial adventures, and ideally, I would not want my tax dollars to support said projects. As a society however, we’ve agreed that I am not allowed to not pay taxes because I don’t like a particular action. Instead, I have to convince my fellow citizens that my stance is the correct one, and watch it go from there.

That's just one of two ways that the recent debate over insurance coverage for abortions highlights some very basic misperceptions people have about how money works in both our economic and political systems. Here's another, this time from Steve Benen:

As we talked about this morning, all the RNC has done here is opt out of abortion coverage for RNC employees. RedState wants an explanation of how this went unnoticed for 18 years.

But more important is the underlying logic. The new-and-improved RNC policy will insure its employees through Cigna, and Cigna will still pay for abortions, just not for RNC employees. In other words, RNC premiums will go to the company, and the company will then use its pool of money to pay for abortions. That's the "fix" RNC Chairman Michael Steele scrambled to make.

RedState and the Republican National Committee support the Stupak amendment, and according to its reasoning, the RNC will still be indirectly subsidizing abortions with its premiums. Leon H. Wolf wants an explanation for the previous mistake, without realizing that very little has actually changed here.

One of the most very basic qualities of money is its fungibility. Since all dollars are equal, any dollar collected by a single organization is the same as any other. Once its been collected, it can't be separated out. Any one dollar is interchangeable with any other.

For hard core pro-lifers, this should present a very serious problem. If abortion is so evil that it cannot be supported, then pro-lifers cannot buy insurance policies from companies that provide abortion coverage to anyone. Their individual policy is irrelevant. When their insurance company collects premiums, it puts all of the money into one giant pool. That's true with all financial transactions in general, but its specifically true with insurance, which is built entirely around the idea of pooling risks and costs across a giant group of people.Thus, if you are pro-life and you purchase insurance from a company that provides even one person with coverage for abortion, you have supported something you find morally abhorrent. If you really are as serious about this as you say, you will cancel your insurance right away. Right?

+ Here's a second great example of the bizarre contradictions in what passes for modern conservative thought. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) recently suggested that Carrie Prejean, the beauty queen turned anti-gay marriage activist turned conservative hero turned sex tape star, might make a good candidate for office. His reasoning:

[Carrie] has the ability to draw crowds and if she has a strong message to go with that, who knows what she can do? She has star power which can open doors.

We’ve all made mistakes when we were 17. [The sex tape] is going to be an impediment, but people are excited about her convictions and her beliefs.

Sure thing, she's done something that conservatives abhor. And that might be a problem. Except she says all the right things! And people like her! So no matter. After all, morals are about what you say, not what you do, right? Its words that matter, not deeds. Just like Jesus wanted. Wait. Hang on...

+ Andrew Sullivan writes about the real lessons of both 9/11 and Ft. Hood:

The awful truth is: what 9/11 revealed, and what it was designed to reveal, is that there is nothing we can really do definitively to stop another one. They had no weapons but our own technology. The training they had was not that sophisticated and the costs of the operation were relatively tiny. There were 19 of them. None of the key perpetrators has been brought to justice. Bin Laden remains at large. If you calculate the costs of that evil attack against the financial, moral and human costs of the fight back, 9/11 was a fantastic demonstration of the power of asymmetry to destroy the West.

Everything that has subsequently transpired has merely deepened that lesson. The US is now bankrupt, trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of our lives, unable even to prevent the two most potentially dangerous Islamist states, Pakistan and Iran, from getting nukes, morally compromised and hanging on to global support only because of a new president who is even now being assaulted viciously at home for such grievous crimes as trying to get more people access to health insurance.

Yes, security is much better. Yes, it's amazing that more attacks have not taken place. Yes, Muslim-Americans have not joined Jihad the way many Europeans have. Yes, we have gained some small benefits from ousting the Taliban, and Saddam ... although at terrible costs. But we have done nothing to show that we can really win this war by the methods we have used so far. The biggest blow to al Qaeda as a global brand has not been what we have done to them, but what they have done to themselves, by their flagrant violence against fellow Muslims, their nihilism, and their barbaric brutality.

And now, in the wake of Fort Hood, we face the possibility of radicalizing Muslims in America and polarizing more Americans against them. This does not help.

+ Marc Lynch follows on:

The grand strategy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues is, and has always been, to generate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West which does not currently exist. Their great challenge is that the vast majority of Muslims reject their theology, ideology, strategy and tactics. That's especially true of American Muslims. They therefore feel the need to change the environment in which Muslims live in order to change their calculations about the appropriateness of extremist identities and ideologies and actions.

Terrorism is a means towards that end. The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity. They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it).

+ Meanwhile, Bruce Schneier (via Kevin Drum) takes on our nonsensical approach to preventing terrorism:

Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No-one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards.

....Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

....Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible. Such measures include enhancing the intelligence-gathering abilities of the secret services, hiring cultural experts and Arabic translators, building bridges with Islamic communities both nationally and internationally, funding police capabilities — both investigative arms to prevent terrorist attacks, and emergency communications systems for after attacks occur — and arresting terrorist plotters without media fanfare. They do not include expansive new police or spying laws. Our police don't need any new laws to deal with terrorism; rather, they need apolitical funding. These security measures don't make good television, and they don't help, come re-election time. But they work, addressing the reality of security instead of the feeling.

The arrest of the "liquid bombers" in London is an example: they were caught through old-fashioned intelligence and police work. Their choice of target (airplanes) and tactic (liquid explosives) didn't matter; they would have been arrested regardless.

+ TNC nails why Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best games of its generation. And yes, I've already completed one play though. As a Dalish 'you can take our lives, but you will never take our freedom!' Elf, thank you very much.

A Losing Strategy

For the past week or so, I've been unable to figure out what to write about the special election being held in NY-23. But the news that the Republican Party's candidate, Dede Scozzafava, has dropped out to make way for the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, has fixed that.

The district should be a safe seat for the GOP. The party's nominee, Scozzafava, is actually to the right of the median member of her party in the NY State Assembly. Hoffman, meanwhile, doesn't even live in the district. And his party is mostly a joke. Here, for example, is the entirety of their position on NATO, one of the 20 major issues listed in their drop-down menu:

"NATO must redefine its mission or we should deem it an institution that outlived its usefulness."

But once a weird collection of national conservative activists got involved, Scozzafava's campaign tanked and Hoffman's took off. And the result? The GOP is now rallying behind the Conservative Party candidate.

Looking back over the entirely of American history, there are plenty of examples of a strong majority party co-opting the ideas, ideals, and language of a small third party that posed a threat to its coalition. But its hard to find an example where a party that had recently badly lost a series of national elections found their way back to the majority by embracing the candidates and ideologies of a fringe third party. In fact, so far as I know, there aren't any examples of that. And my guess is, this won't be the first.

The point of a political party is to build an organization that can bring together a diverse coalition of peoples and groups to win elections, at the state, local, and national levels. You don't do that by having out of state activists overrule the decisions of leaders at the local level. You can try it if you like, but in the end you'll discover I'm right. It won't work.

UPDATE: Well, okay then. Apparently Newt Gingrich agrees with everything I just said.

UPDATE II: And then Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens. Here's her statement:

"You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it's about the people of this District.

"It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

"It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress. John and I worked together on the expansion of Fort Drum and I know how important that base is to the economy of this region. I am confident that Bill will be able to provide the leadership and continuity of support to Drum Country just as John did during his tenure in Congress.

"In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first.

"Please join me in voting for Bill Owens on Tuesday. To address the tough challenges ahead, we must rise above partisanship and politics and work together. There's too much at stake in this election to do otherwise."

This is exactly, precisely why the party purification strategy that hard core conservatives are pursuing will drive their party further into the minority. You cannot grow if you insist on purging anyone at the margin of your party that's closest to the center.

And while I'm updating... several of you wrote me to ask how this is different from the strategy the Netroots pursued from 2004-2008. One or two even suggested that I'm being hypocritical. But no, I'm not.

The Netroots pursued a "more Democrats, better Democrats" strategy, which meant that you first expand the size of the party by welcoming in people at the rightward edge of the coalition, then you improve your candidates by nominating people who better represent the party's core values. Or in terms of voters, first you convince them to vote with your party, then you convince them to vote with you on the issues.

Conservatives have inverted this, and are instead pursuing a "better conservatives, more conservatives" strategy, and that won't grow their party back into the majority.

Playing Catch Up

I have so many posts saved that its almost overwhelming. While I watch baseball, time to play catch up....

+ Another in a series of "this is why we voted for Obama" moments. Kevin Drum:

It's a testament to the difficulty of healthcare reform and the power of the healthcare lobby that it's able to make reform of Pentagon procurement look almost easy by comparison. But that's how it's turned out: at the same time that President Obama's healthcare reform has been fighting through the congressional underbrush one painful subparagraph at a time, his defense cuts have practically sailed through. Remarkably enough, he's succeeded almost completely in cutting back the weapons platforms he targeted earlier this year, and he's succeeded so quietly that I'd pretty much forgotten it was even happening. But it did, and the defense appropriations bill Obama signed yesterday included nearly all the cuts he had asked for...

+ This, however, is not why we voted for him. To be honest, there still is not enough public pressure to make this happen. And without public pressure, it won't happen. Which would be sad, except: that's how our system is supposed to work!

+ I don't care who Obama plays basketball with. Wait no, I do... I want him to play basketball with whomever he wants to play basketball with. He's a guy, so like all guys, I suspect it he will play with other guys. Why anyone would see this as a problem is beyond me. Oh, wait... The only people who see it as a problem are people in the media who are looking for a good controversy that will "drive the conservation" for a day or two.

+ I might have mentioned this before, but I had absolutely no idea that Glenn Beck's last book is supposedly inspired by Thomas Paine. And I say "supposedly," because there is absolutely no way that Beck would say such a thing if he had actually ever read Thomas Paine. Take, for example, his pamphlet on Agrarian Justice, which is really just an extended riff on one of the many subjects he covered in Rights of Man. It's an argument for a redistribution of wealth from landowners to the rest of society for, in his words "for the loss of his or her natural inheritance." As in, its an argument that we would today describe as "socialist." So... either Glenn Beck is a socialist, or he hasn't read the works that he claims directly inspire his arguments beliefs.

+ Speaking of strange conservative arguments, check out this bit of analysis from the Democracy Corps study of the conservative movement:

A central part of the collective identity built by conservative Republicans in the current political environment is their belief that they possess knowledge and insight that the majority of Americans – whether too lazy or too misguided to find it for themselves – do not possess. A combination of conservative media outlets are the means by which they have gained this knowledge, led by FOX News (“the truth tellers“), and to a lesser degree conservative talk radio. Their antipathy and distrust toward the mainstream media could not be stronger, and they fiercely defend FOX as the only truly objective news outlet.

This is how many movements work late in life. They become so insulated, and so self-referential, that they become convinced that they and only they know the truth about the world around them. So long as the movement retains majority support, this isn't much of a problem. But once they fall back to minority status - as all movements inevitably do - this obviously becomes an enormous problem.

This time around, this particular movement faces a very unique problem. Fox News, their "truth tellers," have absolutely no interest in actually telling the truth. Their interest is in ratings, and in affecting the 24-hour, short term news cycle. Top-down broadcast media do not and cannot do long term party building. And that, I suspect, is creating a feedback loop that is driving both the network and its politically active viewers further and further from the center of American politics. The more extreme the view, the more attention it gets and the more polarized Fox viewers become. What breaks the cycle? Honestly, I have no idea. Yet. But give me some time. That's one of the things I'm working on.

+ Former Pres. Clinton was in VA recently on behalf of the Deeds campaign, and he offered up a great explanation of the meaning pre-election polls:

...polls are both accurate and they're not."

"So are the polls right?" he told the audience gathered in McLean. "The answer is yes, no and maybe."

"Yes, the polls are an accurate measurement of the voter groups that they talk to in proportion to each other," Clinton said. "The no answer is, that's not a profile of the people who voted in the primary...or in the general election in 2008."

"The maybe is you," he told the crowd. "The maybe is what you do in the next two weeks, and whether you're prepared to step into the breach."

+ Speaking of polls... if only 20% of Americans consider themselves Republicans, but nearly double that number self-identify as "conservative," what does this mean? Most likely, it means that some people are so conservative that they don't feel at home in the GOP, some are conservative Democrats, and some don't know what they are talking about. More importantly, it means that you should ignore these "liberal vs. conservative polls" and focus only on the ones measuring party ID. After all, its party ID that's important come Election Day. And ideology? That's only important in discussion section.

+ Andrew Sullivan's take on the blackness of America is a must read. As is TNC's short response.

+ You know how I'm always railing on about the natural irrationality of human behavior? Here's a great bit of evidence backing my view. It's not just humans. It's monkeys too. Which, assuming you aren't one of those people who wants to
"teach the controversy," shows that our behavioral biases might just predate out humanness. They are old. They are deep. And they are something we will never be able to overcome.

+ While I'm standing on my favorite soap boxes... Data show that the strength of the economy when you graduate from college has an impact on your wages more than 15 years later. The stronger the economy, the more money you can and will make a decade and a half later. You know what that means, kids... we aren't in this alone. We rise and fall together, no matter how fantastic our individual talents are. We are the community, and the community is us.

+ This might be my favorite quote from the entire debate over health insurance reform:

The political beauty of the public option opt-out, in a nutshell: the red states will throw a tantrum & hold their breath -- until they turn blue.

+ If this is true, its incredibly depressing. Short version from Kottke:

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs made $6.8 billion in profit last quarter. Basically they borrowed money from the US Govt at 0% and then bought bonds from the US Govt that paid 2-3%.

+ If you haven't seen this, you need to stop and watch it. Its four minutes you'll never forget. Its also while I will always and forever believe in "we, the people" - and by we, I mean all of the people:

+ Last but not least. Its fucking fall, bitches:

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

Rush vs. The NFL

So Rush Limbaugh wanted a football team. But first the players, and then the team owners, decided that they didn't want him. So Rush isn't going to get his football team. And now... in reaction to that very public rejection, Rush is going to take on the NFL... and the wingnuts are launching a boycott.

Call me crazy, but I think they're about to get a very serious demonstration of the limits of their own power.

Seriously? Rush wants to try and convince his audience that the NFL is too liberal to watch? He wants to take on football? Football?

Weekend Update

I don't expect to have any time to blog this weekend, and since its been awhile.... some thoughts:

+ Video of the Week: In case you haven't already seen it:

Josh Marshall responds:

With Sen. Kyl pointing out that men have no interest in having insurance cover child birth, no doubt women will note that they have little interest in covering prostate and testicular cancer. And surely men will get back into the act and want to get out of under the cost of covering breast cancer, which very few men get. Indeed, you can see how everyone should probably insist on special customized insurance policies which cover the ailments they plan on getting and avoid paying for the ones they don't. As long as everyone plans well and makes good predictions everyone should be able to save a lot of money.

+ The Paranoid Style: Hendrik Hertzberg is dead on in his description of the GOP as a party led not by politicians but by talk radio personalities. But the rest of this post? Nonsense. Anyone who thought that Obama wouldn't face this kind of backlash has forgotten the 2008 campaign. And the idea that "lunatic paranoia" has always been confined to the fringe is equally ridiculous. It only appeared to be on the fringe because that was where our top-down, elite driven media placed it. But it was always at the heart of the Southern Strategy, and the Southern Strategy is at the heart of Republican success for more than three decades. So much so, in fact, that the South is all they've got left.

But Hertzberg's conclusion is dead on:

The boorish South Carolina Republican who shouted “You lie!” at the President after he said, truthfully, that reform “would not apply to those who are here illegally” did the public weal a favor by underlining bipartisanship’s futility. A bill that reflects a necessary compromise among Democrats is bound to be stronger than one that reflects an unnecessary compromise between Democrats and Republicans. And that’s no lie.

What I don't understand is why people don't see that this was always understood by Obama's team as one of the possible outcomes of bipartisan outreach. Calling your opponents obstructionist is nothing more than name-calling if you don't first give them a chance to obstruct!

And - shocking! - although this seems to be something that neither our talking heads nor most of our elite bloggers understand, the American people get it. Greg Sargent reports on the results of a new CBS/NYT poll:

The poll finds that an overwhelming majority of 64% think Republicans are opposing Obama’s health care plans mostly for political reasons. But it also finds that an equally large number, 65%, say Democrats shouldn’t pass a bill without Republicans — even if they think it’s right for the country — and should instead compromise to win over some GOPers.

This shows, I think, that Democrats have convinced the public that the GOP wants Obama and Dems to fail at all costs. But they’ve failed to make the case to the public that GOP obstructionism may leave them no choice but to go it alone in order to realize reform.

Senator Chuck Schumer has been privately telling Dem colleagues that much more needs to be done to lay the political groundwork for doing health care alone through the “reconciliation” process, should it come to that. The numbers above suggest he’s right.

Greg frames that as a problem, but I don't see why. The Democrats have won the argument on its merits. They've also convinced the public that the Republicans aren't serious partners in reform. Now, and only now, can they move on to the final stage of convincing citizens that the GOP has left them no choice but to go it alone.

We're almost there, people. Almost there.... Oh, and for the record: I was right about what all the teabagging would do for public opinion. Oh ye of little faith....

+ Speaking of Talk Radio: Ezra Klein:

“In the course of a few years," writes Michael Gerson, "a fringe party was able to define a national community by scapegoating internal enemies; elevate a single, messianic leader; and keep the public docile with hatred while the state committed unprecedented crimes. The adaptive use of new technology was central to this achievement."

That party? The Nazis. That technology? Talk radio. But Gerson's subject is not talk radio or the Nazis, but the vast expanses of the Internet. "User-driven content on the Internet often consists of bullying, conspiracy theories and racial prejudice," writes Gerson, which is interesting, as I thought it consisted of porn and teenagers holding party cups. "The absolute freedom of the medium paradoxically encourages authoritarian impulses to intimidate and silence others," he continues. "The least responsible contributors see their darkest tendencies legitimated and reinforced, while serious voices are driven away by the general ugliness."

That doesn't describe the Internet I know (unless, for some reason, you don't think Autotune the News is a serious voice), but the Internet is big, and Gerson might visit parts I miss. "The exploitation of technology by hatred will never be eliminated," he concludes. "But hatred must be confined to the fringes of our culture -- as the hatred of other times should have been."

What's striking is that this doesn't really describe the Internet. Hateful voices remain on the fringe. And they stay on the fringe. The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe. Controlling a Web site or a blogspot domain is not like controlling a radio station or a television network.

Gerson's examples, in fact, come from comment threads, which virtually disproves his thesis. But there is a major medium where the hateful voices sit firmly in control of the content, and it's the same medium that begins Gerson's remarks: talk radio. And, to a lesser extent, cable news. That's where society's most hateful conspiracy theories sit and fester, where its most explosive lies are recounted and amplified, where its least responsible elites have control of the means of production. I don't worry about jewhater429, the 97th entrant in a comment thread. I worry about Beck and Limbaugh and Savage.

Look, this is really simple: Authoritarian political systems need hierarchical, top down systems of media to propagate their ideologies. Bottom up, decentralized networks are a direct threat to everything they stand for. You cannot build a system of absolute control atop something that is fundamentally uncontrollable.

Was the Nazi system built atop talk radio? Absolutely. Because talk radio is both hierarchical and centralized. It doesn't actually allow citizens to communicate with one another, or with their leaders. It, like TV, only makes it appear to others as if there is a conversation going on. And that appearance is part of what makes their system so seductive. It convinces you that you and your hatred are part of a vast, previously silent majority. But its a trick. An illusion. Nothing more than a funhouse mirror reflecting back a single image as if it were from a million unique sources.

"The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe." Think on that. Deeply. If you want to understand how the world has changed, you must understand this. Stop thinking of the world in 20th century mass broadcast terms. The center of the media universe is gone, and it is not coming back. In its place we now have a million centers. Like the ever expanding universe, no matter where you stand you are at the center, looking out on an infinite horizon that is moving away from you at the speed of light.

Gerson doesn't get it. Limbaugh doesn't get it. Beck doesn't get it. The empire they have built is an illusion. They scream into the void. Sometimes the void screams back. But in the end, all they are doing is screaming at themselves. Our national conversation? The real one that's happening between average citizens day in and day out? It is moving further and further away from them. Here's why:

+ It's About TIme: I'm really late getting to this one, but TNC had the best of all possible responses to the "Limbaugh blames high school bullies on Obama" ridiculousness:

For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us.

It's intensely grating to live say, in Atlanta, and have some dude in Harlem crowned as your unelected leader. It's even more grating if said dude's agenda seems, in large measure, come down to standing in front of cameras and tweaking his opponents. It's no mistake that O'Reilly and Sharpton would break bread together at Sylvia's--they feed each other.

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

It's about time.

If everything is now the fringe, then there are no longer shadows in which demagogues can hide. Once upon a time they could mask their hatred by wearing a mask whenever they spoke to the wider world, only revealing their true natures when appearing before "friendly" audiences. But you cannot control who hears and sees you anymore. There still may be many publics, but the lines separating them are now so porous as to be virtually nonexistent.

TNC is right. None of this is new. What's changed is that it is all now being exposed. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it isn't the decentralized nature of our newly reborn public sphere. But if not this, what? What else explains this change if not our new grassroots system of communication?

+ The Coalition Cracks: The birthers and turning on one another. The talk radio hosts are turning on one another. This is what happens as a multi-decade coalition collapses into itself. And yes, as TNC just said, it is intensely gratifying to watch. Stay focused on the very long view and you'll see what I mean.

+ Making the Trains Run On Time: Speaking of the birthers, Glen Beck called them and their fellow travellers to DC a few weeks back, and a whole bunch of them came. Not a million. Not even close. But still... When they got back home, guess what? They complained that Metro - you know, the DC area's "public option" for ground transportation - wasn't properly prepared for their arrival. Because nothing says "die hard anti-tax conservative" like demanding low cost, high quality public transportation in the congressionally controlled District of "taxation without representation" Columbia. Morons.

+ Just Say No To PROPAGANDA: My "favorite" lowlight from last week's Texas Board of Ed meetings on rewriting the US history curriculum.

Propaganda is a "negative" so we shouldn't use the word, she says. She even cites our nation's experience under President Wilson as the reason for her plea. Ummm... OK. For the record:

Pres. Wilson hired George Creel to head the United States Committee on Public Information during World War I. Here is how Creel defined his mission:

Not propaganda as the Germans defined it, but propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the "propagation of faith."

But since that word is too "negative" (you know, like on the SAT's!), students in Texas won't be allowed to hear it. Brilliant.

+ Somewhere Mr. Jefferson Is Smiling: If I had to describe my religious beliefs by fitting them into a single tradition, I'd almost certainly say I am a deist. I would have thought I was largely alone in this. But wow... as many as 1 in 5 of my students would be right there with me.

You want to know what the Founders really thought about God? Start here. If you understand what you find there - and much more importantly, what you do not find - you'll be a long way towards understanding the faith of our fathers.

+ Tipping Points: There are 9 climate change tipping points. All of them appear to be irreversible. For those who want to go deep into the weeds, Science has an in-depth set of articles on CO2 sequestration. Sadly, you either need a subscription or access to a university library. Here's the conclusion for those who cannot click thru:

On the 10-year time scale, it is not technology, but legal permission, business development, and public opinion that will determine whether CCS experiments and demonstration plants are built sufficiently rapidly for CCS to be deployed in 2020. On the 20-year time scale, these initial demonstrations must enable a new CCS industry to be born. Low-cost reliable capture at clusters of CCS power plants must emerge, and national pipe networks must be developed, delivering to aquifer storage capacity that must have been validated. CCS also needs to be built and operated in developing economies with high national but low per capita emissions. If CCS is difficult to afford now in Western economies, then it is even more so in India and China. Additional payments for CCS demonstrations will accelerate the above-mentioned actions.

Simply pricing carbon in a market is not enough to encourage CCS or to enforce decarbonization. During peak demand, venting of CO2 will be commercially beneficial. If the price of carbon is set very high to avoid such effects, that taxes the whole economy, not just dirty electricity. Additional policy levers will be needed to enforce CCS operation. Lessons from previous clean-up technologies applied to power plants—such as SOx and NOx removal from flue gases—show that voluntary codes do not work, but clearly signed and enforced rule changes do.

New power plants can now be built "capture ready," to be converted when CCS is established. This is the death-or-glory test of governments, as there is industry pressure to build new coal and gas plants now, increasing CO2 emissions, and perhaps convert to CCS later. Substantial difficulties can be anticipated in government-enforced plant-by-plant conversion. Another regulatory route is the introduction of emissions performance standards, expressed as amount of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced. These standards are conceptually simple and directly address the issue. Care will be needed to avoid unintentionally incentivizing gas-fuelled plants, which are not fitted with CCS but lock-in CO2 emissions. A permitted emission amount decreases through time, enforcing innovation. A key difficulty is that firm rules and dates cannot be applied to technologies that do not yet exist.

Coal and gas combustion can become more sustainable. To change black fuel into green energy, the acceleration and scale-up of CCS is required, from tens of power plants within 5 years, to hundreds of large plants by 2025, and then to thousands of small power plants by 2035. This progression can defer climate change problems and buy time. To do this, bold policies of clear vision to include CCS emissions reductions must be explicit. CCS may be the single most effective and direct climate action available. It is not yet too late, but good words need to be matched by hard actions and good money; the present level of committed funds is too low and needs a 4- to 10-fold increase in order for this climate mitigation to be successful.

+ Julian Sanchez gets positively medieval on FireDogLake and other lefty blogs cheering on the DEms get tough approach to DOJ hearings:

So it looks as though Al Franken reading the Fourth Amendment to DOJ’s David Kris has blown up on lefty and/or privacy-friendly blogs. Look, I appreciate the sentiment, I really do.  I want to see Senators reciting the Fourth Amendment to representatives of the executive branch every time there’s a hearing.  I want them to tattoo it on their legislative aides’ foreheads and have it played as a background soundtrack in Dirksen like subliminal Brave New World programming. But for the serious? David Fucking Kris does not need to be schooled on the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirements by Stuart Smalley.  I spent Thursday afternoon reading the chapter David Kris wrote on how the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement applies to FISA taps in his ginormous reference book on national security surveillance.  If  the name doesn’t ring a bell, Kris is the stone cold killer who put a bullet in the head of the legal sophistry invoked to justify Bush’s warrantless wiretap program without breaking a sweat. Alternatively, you may recall him as the guy responsible for exposing the bogus claim that investigators needed broad new powers in order to be able to eavesdrop on wholly foreign conversations. Or the guy who torpedoed the dishonest technological argument for expanding FISA wireline intercept powers.

His job is now to defend the renewal of roving wiretap authority in foreign intel investigations. But you know what? There should be roving wiretap authority in foreign intel investigations. No sane person says there shouldn’t.  No, really. Call the ACLU or CDT and ask. The surveillance hawks want the debate to be “should this power exist or not?” because—since it should—that means they win. The real question is whether there should be clearer limits on roving applications to ensure that if a warrant gets to “rove” across communications “facilities” (e.g. disposable cell phone numbers) you at least have to specify an individual target precisely and follow robust, enforceable minimization procedures to guarantee you’re only picking up your target’s communications. When I hear Kris saying we shouldn’t implement that reform, I’ll shed a single sad-clown tear for the smart man we’ve lost to the Sarlacc Pit of government work. What I’m actually hearing so far are offers to work with Congress to fix the insane legislation that—who now?—oh yes, Congress passed when a different bunch were running DOJ.

Memo to Democratic legislators: The people there now are relative friendlies.  They’re extending olive branches, which you should probably stop setting on fire. You’re just giving Bushie dead-enders an excuse to paint this as “civil liberties hippies vs. the Brave Americans Fighting Terror.” I watched John Conyers spend a good chunk of Tuesday’s hearing on the House side being a condescending dick to Todd Hinnen, one of the fiercest critics of Bush-era detention and interrogation policies. This just leaves smarmtastic bottom-feeders like Jim Sensenbrenner and Jeff Sessions to cast themselves as solicitous Grima Wormtongues by contrast. It makes for an awesome YouTube clip on Firedoglake, right up until the part where you fucking lose.

Let’s write a new script.  I call it “Civil libertarians and sober intel people trying to craft good policy together, thereby depriving psychotic executive branch maximalists of the cover they need for their fearmongering.”  Not, admittedly, a particularly pithy title.  It’ll never be a Regnery bestseller.  But we’re talking C-SPAN here; work with me people.

+ The Future Is Crowdsourced: People are often skeptical when I tell them that crowdsourcing is the future of commerce. Not e-commerce. Commerce. But check it out: CBS Radio agrees with me. They're getting set to launch a Last.FM powered radio station. No DJs. Just the wisdom of the crowd. If that doesn't kill off satellite radio, nothing will.

Moral Relativism, Torture, And The Religious Right

Here's another example of people misunderstanding their own religion.

Do me a favor... Find the part of the Ten Commandments that mentions "intent." I'll wait. Go on....

You shall not murder, unless you do so with the right intent?

You shall not steal, unless you believe it necessary?

You shall not commit adultery, unless you're certain you really, really need to?

I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember not only when conservatives opposed torture, but when they decried moral relativism, too. Now they are explicitly using relativistic arguments - "intent is integral to determining whether and when certain techniques, including water-boarding, are morally permissible. - to defend our use of torture.

So what now... as long as your intent isn't sadistic... as long as you are doing it for what you believe to be a good reason... then it is the Christian thing to do? Really? Really?

How precisely does this argument differ from the one offered by religious extremists in defense of terrorism? I'll tell you how: it doesn't.

God's law is relativistic. I guess I really have heard everything now.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Sen. McCain deserves some for this:

I'd love to know precisely what Obama has done that makes people think he doesn't know we have a constitution.

Institute a torture regime?

Cut out Congress' role in executive oversight?

Create a massive extra-legal domestic surveillance system capable of capturing all phone and email traffic inside the country?

Argue that the VP's office represents a fourth branch of government?

Monitor the activities of groups like the Quakers for anti-American activities?

And pretending for a moment that he is doing all of these thing, I'd then love to know why, if the constitution and the rule of law are their concern, these people didn't object when Bush was doing them?

Hmm... Or maybe is there something else that bothers these people so much about Obama?

Now the GOP Loves Medicare? Of Course!

If there has been one constant in Republican politics over the past 50 years, its been their party's insistence that Medicare is the leading edge of socialism. Given that, their opposition to any heath care reform that includes new forms of government regulation or talk of a public plan makes perfect sense.

Except, of course, now they are standing four square behind Medicare.

Why?

Because they don't actually stand for anything. Other than opposing whatever it is that Democrats want, of course.

6 months ago Medicare was socialism and needed to be cut. Now it is as American as apple pie.

1 year ago they were for torturing people in the name of preventing terrorism. Now they are running around proudly calling themselves right wing terrorists determined to use any means necessary to stop Obama's brownshirts.

18 months ago, massive domestic surveillance programs with no legal or congressional oversight were necessary to protect the republic. Today, when the White House asks citizens to send in email examples of health care misinformation, it is the beginning of a totalitarian state.

2 years ago, speeches by politicians that were delivered overseas and even vaguely hinted at opposition to Bush administration foreign policy were a threat to national security. Now they are a sign of patriotism and leadership.

I could go on, but I think you get the point: These people do not stand for anything other than their own political power. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, because they have been admitting it for years.

So should Obama stop negotiating with them? Absolutely not. Why? Because only by attempting to negotiate can you demonstrate just how hollow your opponents ideas and rhetoric really are. Negotiate. Expose. Ignore. Repeat.

Reform isn't supposed to be easy. Realignments are supposed to be hard. And the election of 2008 was the beginning of the fight, not the end.

UPDATE: More like this, please!!!

Begala On Progressive Politics

Ezra posted this while I was prepping for Netroots Nation. It was a must read, and in case you missed it, here it is again. The key section:

Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.

Our history teaches us otherwise. No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farm workers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't.

Baucus and the others working on health care have earned the right to take their best shot, and we progressives should hold them to a high standard. I carry a heavy burden of regret from my role in setting the bar too high the last time we tried fundamental health reform. I was one of the people who advised President Bill Clinton to wave his pen at Congress in 1994 and declare: "If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we'll come right back here and start all over again." I helped set the bar at 100 percent -- "guarantee every American" -- and after our failure it's taken us 15 years to start all over again.

Politics isn't supposed to be easy. Big projects aren't supposed to come without a fight. And we're never, ever going to get everything we want in a single legislative act. That's not how our system works. It's not how people work. So please, don't ever let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and don't ever let your morals stand in the way of doing what is good, right, and just.

Douthat on Apatow... Um... OK...

Can somebody please explain to me just what the hell Ross Douthat means with this? Please?

No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie has made the case for abortion look as self-evidently awful as “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 keep-the-baby farce. No movie has made saving — and saving, and saving — your virginity seem as enviable as “The 40-Year Old Virgin,” whose closing segue into connubial bliss played like an infomercial for True Love Waits.

“We make extremely right-wing movies with extremely filthy dialogue,” Seth Rogen, Apatow’s favorite leading man, told an interviewer during the promotional blitz for “Knocked Up.” He was half-joking, of course, and it’s safe to say that you won’t see Apatow and his merry men at the next Christian Coalition fundraiser. But the one-liner got something important right. By marrying raunch and moralism, Apatow’s movies have done the near impossible: They’ve made an effectively conservative message about relationships and reproduction seem relatable, funny, down-to-earth and even sexy.

I never did see Knocked Up, but I have seen 40 Year Old Virgin. And I cannot for the life of me figure out how Douthat saw that movie as one that made saving your virginity seem enviable. At no point in that movie did I ever once things to myself, "Gee, self, wouldn't it be nice to be more like Steve Carell's character? Boy, if only...." And the ending sequence wasn't an infomercial for "true love waits." It was an infomercial for "sex is pretty fantastic."

Talk about missing the point.

Also, what's up with this?

More than most Westerners, Americans believe — deeply, madly, truly — in the sanctity of marriage. But we also have some of the most liberal divorce laws in the developed world, and one of the highest divorce rates. We sentimentalize the family, but boast one of the highest rates of unwed births. We’re more pro-life than Europeans, but we tolerate a much more permissive abortion regime than countries like Germany or France. We wring our hands over stem cell research, but our fertility clinics are among the least regulated in the world.

In other words, we’re conservative right up until the moment that it costs us.

Or, in other words: We aren't actually conservative. Rhetoric that isn't backed by action is meaningless. If America chooses to have the most liberal divorce law, and it chooses to act in ways that produce the highest rates of divorce, then we don't actually "deeply, madly, truly" love marriage. We love the idea of marriage, which is altogether different from loving or valuing marriage itself.

Finally, just what the hell does "loving" marriage have to do with being conservative or liberal anyway? So far as I can tell, both from observing people and the political process, they have nothing to do with one another. But people like Douthat insist that they do, so much so that they use the very scarce pages of the NYT to write op eds arguing that Apatow really is a conservative at heart. He makes funny movies. Who the hell cares what his political philosophy is? Why does everything in our culture have to be turned into a political debate. Can't some funny things just be funny?

Douthat gets to the NYT, and this is what he chooses to do with that opportunity? Really?

Absolutely, Perfectly Backwards

Andrew Sullivan - channeling Justin Miller - couldn't be more wrong if he tried:

A useful reminder of a previous occasion on which the Republican base called the president a communist. The president was Eisenhower. Eventually, the Birchers were kicked out of the party; today, the Birthers are 70 percent of the party. It will take a helluva civil war to kick them out.

Miller relies on William Buckley Jr.'s version of the story of how the Birchers were "exiled" from the GOP, but of course Buckley isn't an unbiased source here. Because if you read the story you'll find that he's placed himself at the center of the story. Which is true, so far as this tiny bit of the history goes, but of course this tiny bit isn't enough. Not nearly enough.

Goldwater and Buckley might have liked to believe that they had "exiled" the Birchers, but all they really did was exile the organization known as The John Birch Society. The ideology lived on, as did the people who called themselves Birchers. And guess what? All of them became Goldwater Republicans.

That's just a basic historical fact, Buckley's self-serving narrative notwithstanding.

The Post Office, Medicare, And Health Care

ThinkProgress catches Arthur Laffer, the conservative economist responsible for REpublicans endless fascination with tax cuts, making a ridiculous mistake:

LAFFER: I mean, if you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait until you see Medicare, Medicaid, and health care done by the government

Two thoughts:

1. What's up with all the Post Office bashing? Yes, on the rare occassion when I have to go to a physical Post Office, I often have to stand in a long line. But the rest of the time? The rest of the time the Post Office gets shit done. When was the last time they lost a piece of your mail? And those blue boxes on every other street corner? Those are kind of convenient, aren't they? And really.... 44 cents to send a piece of mail anywhere in the country? When a cup of coffee costs $2? I don't understand what the problem is.

2. Medicare is a government program. If one of the most influential conservative economists of the last 25 years doesn't know this.....

Paradoxical

Andrew Sullivan writes:

But my point was that the principles of classical liberalism know no inherent race, class or gender. The challenge for conservatives is to include all citizens into this project of formally equal, self-reliant individuals, able to forge their own futures without being molly-coddled or bossed around by government any more than absolutely necessary. Making these principles universal is more than a few generations' work - but the point is: they can be universal.

OK, I'll bite. Conservatism by definition values the conservation of tradition. Traditionally, the principles that he correctly identifies as those of "classical liberalism" have never been applied universally. Thus, the fight to universalize those principles is by definition a fight to upend tradition. It is at its very essence anything but conservative. And yet Sullivan calls himself a conservative. I don't get it.

The GOP Civil War Is On

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we can set down a marker by today's date as the day the GOP Civil War truly began.Santorum At CPAC: ‘Absolutely We Hope That’ Obama Fails, ‘I Believe His Policies Will Fail’

As I mentioned in my big weekend update, this past weekend was the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual gathering of movement conservatives in DC. The update chronicled all kinds of craziness at the event, but it was written before Rush Limbaugh delivered his closing speech to the group, so I knew that there was a better than even chance that things would get even crazier. But even I didn't expect this....

Limbaugh's speech was originally scheduled for 15 minutes, but in Chavez-like fashion he carried on for well over an hour, no doubt in part because both CNN and Fox covered it live and without commercial interruption. I couldn't make it through the entire thing, and frankly you shouldn't even try. A few excerpts are more than enough to highlight just how nuts this guy is, and more importantly, just how disastrous his influence is going to be on his party.

Here's the first one:

Everybody asks me — and I’m sure it’s been a focal point of your convention — well, what do we do, as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this? … One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas. […]

Our own movement has members trying to throw Reagan out while the Democrats know they can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters. We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections.

The party of ideas? That's for losers! Under Limbaugh, the GOP will be the party of fighting and winning. It will  win because it fights, and it will fight because that is how you win. Ideas? Those are for librul girlie men. Or something.

And here's the second one:

Limbaugh warned that Republicans should not let concerns about racial insensitivities limit criticism of Obama's policies. "It doesn't matter to me what his race is. He's liberal, and that's what matters." 

"The racism in our culture was exclusively and fully on display in the Democrat primary last year," Limbaugh said. "We didn't ask if he was authentically black. What we were asking, was, 'Was he wrong?' We concluded, 'Yes.' " 

"The racism, the sexism, the bigotry that we are all charged with ... doesn't exist on our side," he added. "We want everybody to succeed." 

That's so silly, I'm going to let Steve Benen's response stand in for mine.

Finally, the third and fourth excerpts come from the end of the speech, when the event organizers awarded Rush their Defender of the Constitution Award. Here's what the award presenter had to say:

The king of England sat with his advisers, and they read the writings of Ben Franklin. They said, “The colonists will never be successful if they read what he writes.” Just as the king’s successor, who is in the White House, said the other day, that conservatives will never be successful if they listen to Rush Limbaugh. The only way we will be successful is if we listen to Rush Limbaugh!

And what did the Constitution's Defender have to say in response? Among other things, he claimed that the Preamble to the Constitution included words from the Declaration of Independence, and in the process, he even managed to get the words wrong!

We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness.

 

Now on its own, none of this would be a sign of civil war within the party. But in context, I think the conclusions is absolutely unavoidable.

The first excerpt showed Limbaugh attacking the idea that the Republican Party should be the party of ideas. That was a direct attack on Newt Gingrich, who has recently been positioning himself for a 2012 run based almost entirely on his reputation as a "man of ideas." It was, as just one small example, the entire premise of his CPAC speech this weekend. For the record, here's Newt's 12 point plan:

1. Payroll Tax Stimulus
2. Real Middle-Income Tax Relief
3. Reduce the Business Tax Rate
4. Homeowner's Assistance
5. Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget
6. No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud
7. More American Energy Now (Energy exploration)
8. Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains
9. Protect the Rights of American Workers (from ... Unions)
10. Replace Sarbanes-Oxley
11. Abolish the Death Tax
12. Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure

Now sure, I agree completely with Steve Benen that Newt's "ideas" are anything but new, but given that I'm not the intended audience for his plan, that doesn't much matter. The people at CPAP, including Rush Limbaugh, are his intended audience, and it appears that they have rejected them outright.

But notice what is happening here. This isn't a rejection of Newt's ideas, or of Newt himself. This is a rejection of ideas in general. For reasons I cannot fathom, Rush is deliberately creating a cleavage within his party around the idea of ideas. On one side, you've got people like Newt who think the party needs to offer new solutions to the nation's new problems. On the other side, you've got people like Rush and the CPAC masses who think that ideas are irrelevant.

And now, thanks in part to efforts like Rahm's and in part to the way political media is naturally drawn to controversy, Republican officials are being forced to take sides. Are you with Rush or against him?

On Sunday, it was House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, who, like SC Gov. Mark Sanford just a few days before, was forced to distance himself from Rush's professed desire to see Obama fail:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So the Rush Limbaugh approach of hoping the President fails is not the Eric Cantor/House Republican approach?

CANTOR: George, absolutely not. I don’t think anyone wants anything to fail right now. We have such challenges. What we need to do is put forth solutions to the problems that real families are facing today.

Unfortunately for Cantor and his party, it isn't just Rush who is openly rooting for Obama to fail. Michelle Malkin, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay have all gone on record in just the past few days to loudly proclaim a similar position. 

Notice the dynamic here? On one side you have talk radio personalities and out of work politicians, each of whom have nothing to lose and much to gain by using bombastic rhetoric. On the other side, you have currently serving elected officials, each of whom has everything to lose and nothing to gain by rooting against a very popular president. That gives us both a deep ideological cleavage (ideas vs. no ideas) and two committed and well organized opponents (talkers vs. elected officials).

All that's missing is for the head of the GOP to weigh in, and well... Take a look at what ThinkProgress caught last night:

Last night, RNC Chairman Michael Steele appeared on D.L. Hughley’s show on CNN and disputed Hughley’s statement that Rush Limbaugh “is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.” “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party!” Steele insisted. Steele admitted that Limbaugh’s shtick is “incendiary” and “ugly”:

STEELE: So let’s put it into context here. Let’s put it into context here. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.

And now put it together with this from CPAC:

And I’ve got to say a few words about the Right in this situation too because sometimes we get what we deserve on this issue because we are oftentimes a lot of cowards. We don’t stand up for our own, we don’t stand up for what we believe, we allow ourselves to be tortured in the news media and a lot of us end up selling out to the other side for a guest spot on Meet The Press or Larry King Live because they know that a conservative saying something bad about another conservative is automatically going to be newsworthy and get them a higher profile. Well, those people ought to be ostracized and punished.

And that, my friends, is what the beginning of a civil war looks like. If Rush wins, the party is doomed. If he does not, it will only be because Republican elites purged him from their party. Because as CPAC just finished demonstrating, Rush has the masses on his side, and the masses are apparently ready to rumble.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look at what no less than David Frum has to say today:

Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging: 

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership?

And the worst part for the GOP? This whole thing is going to take years to unfold. Years, not months. Years....

UPDATE: George Packer provides some context:

This clip from the weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference reminds me exactly of what meetings of the Democratic Socialists of America sounded like in the nineteen-eighties. Just substitute “free-market capitalism” for “big government,” “the New Deal” for “the era of Reagan,” and everything else—the defensive contempt toward popular rule, the retreat into the comfort of a purified “philosophy,” the denunciations of unnamed appeasers within the ranks, the call to “stamp out” middle-way weaklings—is the same. I attended some of those conferences. With each year they became more righteous and more insular, and I remember exactly what it felt like to know that my side was going to be the losing side for years to come. I remember looking around at my fellow democratic socialists and wondering whether I really even belonged there.

So if there were any quietly doubting conservatives at the CPAC conference, they have my sympathy, and a bit of unsolicited advice: the biggest obstacle to your eventual return to power is the kind of resistant and intolerant politics embodied so amply in the man at the podium.

My prediction is that, in the short term—between now and at least 2012—this spirit will dominate the Republican Party, until the doubters become numerous and brave enough to make trouble. The very seriousness of the stakes in Obama’s gamble will drive most conservatives into an increasingly fanatical and self-isolating opposition.

Extremism In Defense Of Liberty

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
- Barry Goldwater, 1964

So this is just a quick post to note publicly that I'm done reading and linking to Glenn Greenwald. For years, he has helped lead the charge against the most outrageous, lawless activities of the Bush administration. But over the past few months, I feel like he's crossed a line where he is now doing far more harm than good.

Today's attack on Marc Ambinder, for example, does nothing whatsoever to help his cause. Greenwald is right - Ambinder's use of anonymous sources here is definitely unfortunately and probably unnecessary, but there's no need to respond to this the way he has. For example:

I'm not arguing that there's no value in hearing from official sources, even if they're hiding behind a wall of unwarranted anonymity, but what Ambinder just did here isn't any different than what Robert Gibbs would do if asked about this incident -- namely:  convey what DOJ officials said, perhaps site a source that agrees, and leave it at that.  That isn't "reporting"; by definition, it's subservient pro-administration stenography.   And nobody who objected to this practice when it served the Bush agenda should cheer it on when it serves the Obama agenda.

Actually, that's exactly what Glenn is doing here. The post Glenn objects to is here, and it is just one of many on this subject, with no doubt many more posts to come. Nevertheless, Greenwald goes on to make a number of ridiculously absolutist statements about Ambinder, The Atlantic, Obama supporters, and various other involved parties. It would be one thing if his sole objection was to the anonymity granted to Ambinder's sources, but his critique goes much further than that. Because Ambinder granted anonymity in this case, and because Greenwald is absolutely certain that this was not necessary, everything Ambinder writes must be dismissed as "uncritical, mindless, one-sided recitation." Which is nonsense.

Worse, he takes the same approach with a variety of complex legal arguments, suggesting that the position taken by Obama's DOJ is "so absurd as to be insulting," and implying that anyone who doesn't think precisely as he does is either dishonest or mentally impaired. Here's an example:

The anonymous quote Ambinder passes along -- "If you decide today precipitously to waive this privilege, you can't get it back.  If you decide to assert it, you can always retract it in the future" -- is thus absolutely wrong.  They would not have waived their right to assert privilege over actual secrets had they abandoned Bush's generalized claim.  And is there anyone anywhere -- other than Marc Ambinder -- who thinks it's remotely likely that the Obama DOJ, having actively defended the Bush theory in open court in this case, is going to retract it at some point?

Before I answer his question, I have one of my own: What is Greenwald's definition of "active defense?" Because as I read what the DOJ did yesterday, I don't see an "active defense." Although I see a legal team that told a judge that they will continue to stand by their previous "state secrets" claim, I don't see them offering any new defense of this action. Is a refusal to disavow a previous argument an "active defense?" It isn't to me.

More to the point: He asks if there is "anyone anywhere -- other than Marc Ambinder -- who thinks it's remotely likely that the Obama DOJ... is going to retract it at some point?" Yes, there is. Me. I explained this yesterday, both before and after Ambinder wrote about his anonymous sources. And I'm fairly certain I'm not alone on this one.

All of which brings me back to where I started. Greenwald can follow Goldwater's path down the rabbit hole if he likes, but I'm not going with him. This is where I get off. Extremism in defense of liberty can be a vice if over the long run that extremism does more harm than good. Same thing with justice. 

No one person has a monopoly on wisdom and understanding. We all make mistakes in judgement all the time, and sometimes even those with the best of intentions can end up doing more harm than good. We must always stand for what we believe is right, but we must do so knowing that it is nevertheless possible that we are wrong. Greenwald appears to have forgotten that, and until he remembers, I have no interest in reading his words. No doubt he could care less, but that's not the point, now is it?

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.
--Benjamin Franklin

Adding... This is a much better approach: Ta-Nehisi Coates:

But implicitly supporting people who would take a razor to man's genitals, is, by the lights of Obama's own campaign rhetoric, disgraceful. Andrew thinks we should slow down, given that we don't know how it all will shake out. I think there may be something to that. But I also think there's something to raising the volume, to making it sure this doesn't slip through the cracks while the country is focused on the economy.

Obama can, should, and must take heat over this. But there's absolutely no need to be so self-righteous about this, nor is there any need launching personal attacks simply because you don't like the way one reporter decided to do his job. That's not even remotely helpful to the cause.

Bottom line:  If this is where you choose to fight, then fight! But as you do, stay focused on who and what this is about. This is about the detainees that have been abused, not you. Put down your ego and walk away.

Adding further... This would also seem to be a much better place to expend energy. There are much more constructive ways to go about fighting this fight. 

Adding still further... See Andrew for an interesting response that includes links to both this thoughtful piece from Dahlia Lithwick and this, well, how does one characterize this?

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.

In the letter to the president [PDF] , Stafford Smith urges him to order the disclosure of the evidence.

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the "bizarre reality" of the situation. "You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command."

It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment.

The letter and its blanked-out attachment were disclosed as two high court judges yesterday agreed to reopen the court case in which Mohamed's lawyers, the Guardian and other media are seeking disclosure of evidence of alleged torture against him. Mohamed's lawyers are challenging the judges' gagging order, claiming that David Miliband, the foreign secretary, changed his evidence.

In a judgment last week, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones stated repeatedly that Miliband claimed the US had threatened to stop sharing intelligence with the UK if information relating to Mohamed's alleged torture was disclosed. Miliband subsequently denied the US had applied such pressure. The case will be reopened next month.

After a meeting with Mohamed's US-appointed military lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, Miliband said yesterday that the US had granted permission for Foreign Office officials to visit Mohamed. The Foreign Office said the officials would be joined by a Metropolitan police doctor, who would accompany Mohamed back to the UK if he is released.

Stafford Smith said he believed this trip was to check Mohamed was fit to fly after the hunger strike that he has maintained for over a month. He stressed that no date for his client's release had been fixed, but "I think we're talking about a week, I sincerely hope so".

Millband said the US administration had agreed to treat Mohamed's case as "a priority", adding that Britain was working with Washington for "a swift resolution". Bradley said later: "We haven't been given any specific date about Mr Mohamed's release."

Which raises one last counterpoint to Greenwald. After spending years railing - and in most cases correctly, I must add here - about how the Bush administration has perverted our system of justice, why does he assume that simply because we have a new president and AG, all of a sudden everything is functioning just as it should. Does Greenwald know that the president has been fully briefed on this? If so, what are his sources? Does he know why the lawyer in the case said and did what he did? If so, what are his sources?

Oh, right. He doesn't have any sources. His answers to Ambinder, Sullivan, and the Obama Administration are simply his opinions. But hey, when your opponents arguments are all "so absurd as to be insulting," there's no need for reporting, right? When you've got certainty on your side, everything comes naturally. Riiiight.....

How Close We Came To The End

Via Ezra, here's Rep. Paul Kanjorski, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, providing details that should help convince those ofy ou who still doubt:

On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

Nate Silver simultaneously outlines what comes next and demonstrates why everyone should take him seriously as both a data and political analyst:

Nobody, absolutely nobody, has more incentive to get this right than the Obama Administration. If the economy collapses -- well, more than it already has collapsed -- then the Democrats get slaughtered in 2010, Obama is a one-termer, health care doesn't happen, the poverty rate increases by a couple orders of magnitude, and the imperative to fix the environment gets put on the backburner. To suggest that Obama or Geithner are tools of Wall Street and are looking out for something other than the country's best interest is freaking asinine. Maybe their ideas are wrong -- but their hearts are in the right place....

I'm sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this particular issue. And I'm certainly in the majority on this one. My anecdotal experience for the past several months has been that the more someone knows about the economy, the more they know (or at least are willing to admit to) what they don't know. Anyone who is professing with certainty that this or that will work -- nationalizing the banks, for instance -- is an idiot....

So if I'm telling you to lay off the ideological smelling salts (not that you will) and that your ideas on policy are probably not contributing very much to the discussion (don't worry -- neither are mine) then what, exactly, do I want you to do?

What I'm asking you to do is to clear the playing field. This is neither the time nor the place for mass movements -- this is the time for expert opinion. Once the experts (and I'm not one of them) have reached some kind of a consensus about what the best course of action is (and they haven't yet), then figure out who is impeding that action for political or other disingenuous reasons and tackle them -- do whatever you can to remove them from the playing field. But we're not at that stage yet.

One major complaint about TARP II, both from the right and the left, is that Obama/Geithner don't  "Appear" to know that they are doing. For the past few days, I've had a growing suspicion that this "obfuscation" might be by design. I see I am not alone. 

Yglesias:

If you read Tyler Cowen’s list of theories as to why the TARP/TARP II decision-making has been so murky you’ll see that one possibility that keeps coming up is that it’s deliberately being made confusing so as to confuse people. If you put that together with Obama’s remarks on Sweden and the fact that the plan Geithner announced yesterday does in fact leave open nationalization as a possibility, then I think we need to at least consider the possibility that Obama believes the banks will need to be nationalized but doesn’t believe it’s politically feasible to say this or get congress to agree to it. Thus, he’s unveiled a confusing “non-nationalization” plan that he does think he can put into place and that will, at the end of the day, permit bank nationalization as an option.

Ambinder:

I'm decidedly not an expert on bank nationalization, but from discussing the matter with some experts and administration officials, the primary reason why the Obama Administration decided not to nationalize (or even quasi-nationalize) banks (a.k.a., take the Swedish approach) is because the government doesn't have the capacity or the staff to do so, because the Treasury and the Fed wouldn't be very good at it, and because it would precipitate a political and policy fight that's much larger than what the administration could reasonably handle at a time when it has so many urgent tasks. We're talking about the Big Banks here, and not the smaller ones that have already been nationalized.

Ezra responds:

There's an undeniable logic to that, and I'm not in much of a place to evaluate the specifics. But it raises a simple question: The Obama administration has said that we're facing an unprecedented problem of tremendous scope. This response on nationalization reads to me like they're saying that the solution is simply beyond their capacity. That's entirely possible. The government was not ready for this crisis. But it's not comforting.

To which I would add: My hunch is... 

a) that all of our nation's major banks are already insolvent. They know it, but they do not want to admit it. This should not be surprising.

b) that to clearly announce their insolvency all at once would invite a panic that would make the Great Depression look mild by comparison; 

c) that the political will to do what must be done does not currently exist, either in our leaders or in the polity;

d) that Obama + Geithner recognize that in our constitutional system of government, nothing can happen until congress is forced by events to recognize the full magnitude of the problems we face.

e) that although the "stress test" provisions of TARP II are designed to help this process, we will nevertheless continue to muddle though until things get demonstrably worse.

f) and that in the end, Roubini will once again be right, and we will be forced to nationalize most if not all of the major banks in the US system, fundamentally altering our capitalist system for decades to come.

There - I've made my predictions. Let's see how they hold up over the coming months and years. I was right about Obama, right about the housing bubble, right about pre-Surge Iraq, wrong about post-Surge Iraq, and...  I hope to God I'm wrong about this.

Fractures

If this isn't a sign the the coalition that Reagan built is fracturing, nothing is. Via Balloon Juice, check out the Politico:

The administration is betting on at least three Republican moderates to help see it through, and the traditionally Republican-leaning business lobby is beginning to exert itself more as well. 

In announcing his support Friday night, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) pointedly read from a Chamber of Commerce endorsement. The National Association of Manufacturers has also weighed in, telling Republicans that votes on the bill “including potential procedural motions” may be considered for designation as key votes in NAM’s scoring of their legislative record. 

Doug J adds:

The main purpose of the Republican party is to support the interests of big business (this is also one of the primary purposes of the Democratic party). I’ve always thought, though, that some day the Republican party would become so insane that it would begin to frighten big business. That day may have arrived.

This is what I mean when I say that their politics have become so far divorced from reality that they no longer make any sense. Even the Chamber of Commerce is on the opposite side of the fence from the GOP on this issue. And Atrios is right, Republicans are "ignoring their base," but that's only because the party has become so incoherent that it has two mutually exclusive bases. On the one hand there's big business, who understand that this is an economic crisis where only government can save us; on the other are an entire generation of know-nothings who literally know nothing other than empty "cut taxes, cut government, liberals hate America!" rhetoric. 

Once upon a time not all that long ago, I thought Republican leaders were simply playing to people's ignorance to implement a set of policies that would help the rich at the expense of the poor. But watching the debate play out this week, I'm beginning to think I overestimated them. They aren't playing people for fools; they are fools. They actually believe that "government has never created a single job in the history of mankind," that "tax cuts always raise revenues," and that "spending isn't stimulus." It's not an act designed to play to people's ignorance; It's ignorance itself.

A Thought on Limbaugh

ThinkProgress reports:

The Los Angeles Times’ Faye Fiore and Mark Z. Barabak observe that “Rush Limbaugh has his grip on the GOP microphone,” having become “the politically wounded party’s unofficial leader.” Limbaugh — who has declared his sincere hope that Barack Obama will fail — has seen his “prominence and political import” increased.

I have no problem with this. And it isn't just because Limbaugh is a deeply unpopular national figure. A brief history lesson will explain why.

Limbaugh's rise to national prominence began in 1988, the year his local show went national. Over the next four years his popularity exploded, setting the stage for him to become the "voice of the opposition" during the early Clinton years. When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, one of their first acts was to name Rush an "honorary member of Congress." Over the next 6 years, his show, along with Fox News, became the center of the conservative media universe, helping to drive the various "clinton corruption narratives" through to impeachment and beyond. Over the last few years, however, Limbuagh's popularity has gradually declined, and although his show is still the most popular show on talk radio, the gap between him and everyone else has closed substantially. Given the declining popularity of his party, this should not be surprising.

Rush Limbaugh helped create the "Republican Revolution" that took control of DC in the 1990s. There is a straight line from him to them and on to President Bush. Because he helped bring know-nothingism to DC, I've long suspected that he would outlive it in DC. Thus, I see it as a very positive development that Republicans have decided to cling to him in their hour of political need. 

Rush Limbaugh cannot save the Republican Party, because he is what is wrong with the Republican Party.  Follow the rot to the roots and you'll find him. Discrediting his allies in Congress isn't enough - we need to take Limbaugh on directly, too. Thankfully, they've decided to make this far easier than it would have otherwise been by forming an open and explicit alliance.

2009 is not 1994. Rush may not realize that yet, but he will soon. In the meantime, if the GOP wants to put this guy out as the face of their party, I'm down:

And just for good measure, don't forget this:

I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team.

The Cult of Bipartisanship

Brilliant catch by Yglesias, who has been on fire since coming back from vacation:

Washington Post editorial page offers up an excellent example of the highly ideological nature of Beltway pragmatism and centrism:

The gang of 20 or so moderate Democrats and Republicans, led by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), heeded the president’s call for bipartisanship and hunkered down to produce the bill announced Friday night. Though the details of the package still need to be examined, the senators’ effort was an admirable one — one that aimed at providing the quick and large injection of funds into the economy experts say is necessary, while modifying or removing parts of the bill that were too long-range or complex for an emergency bill, or which blatantly served special interests.

As we see here, the cart of bipartisanship is straightforwardly put ahead of the horse of policy merits. They say the details of the package need to be examined, but don’t actually examine them before deciding that the effort deserves praise. But there’s no indication that the Collins-Nelson modifications actually do these things. Elements of the package such as special tax breaks for homebuyers or new car purchases that are ineffective stimulus but likely to benefit the prosperous and special interests were left in, while highly effective stimulative measures like fiscal aid to state governments and an expanded child tax credit were taken out.

You really couldn't make up a better example of how empty and incoherent the establishment's definition of "bipartisan" is if you tried. No need to examine the details of the package - by definition, the compromise is good because it is a compromise. Facts? Who needs them! This is about personalities and politics, not policy.

And not to belabor the point here, but the President has never called for bipartisanship. He's called for post-partisanship. And there are not the same thing.

"Post" And "Bi" Are Not the Same Thing

Post-partisan and bipartisan are not the same thing. Watch this. This is post-partisan, but it is not bi-partisan:

Diana Butler Bass follows-on:

President Obama campaigned as a postpartisan candidate.  Postpartisan means that politics must move beyond the current party structure.  A postpartisan vision recognizes that there are many voices in the larger body politic--and that a good number of those voices have never been heard in the American process.  Thus, postpartisan, a sort of generational mantra for those under 40, is an attempt to create new relationships, draw diverse people and perspectives to a table, and develop innovative possibilities to address social and political issues.

In case no one in Washington has noticed, postpartisan does not mean bipartisan.  Yes, the root word--partisan--is the same, but the prefix is different.  "Post" means "after, beyond, or subsequent to;" "bi" means "two."

Now, folks in Washington are a very smart group--they attended lots of private schools and good colleges and most of them probably studied Latin.  Yet, every time the new President says "postpartisan," they substitute "bipartisan."  For nearly two weeks now, pundits have been fuming about the failure of "bipartisanship" on the recovery package.  Republican politicians have asserted that because they didn't vote for the act, President Obama's attempt at bipartisanship has failed a mere ten days into his administration.  "He's just like Bush," some say.  "Bush came to office calling for bipartisanship, but he was really just the old politics of division."  In other words, bipartisanship can never work in our political system.  Someone has to take charge--be a leader--and enforce their party's will on the other side.

The new progressive vision is not based in the idea that there are TWO parties.  "Progressive" is not simply a linguistic find-and-replace for "liberal" as in "liberal" versus "conservative."  Emerging progressive politics--and religion as well--insists that there are more than two voices.  The voices of the common good and the voices of vibrant faith come from multiple traditions and perspectives, and all of these voices matter.  Progressives, unlike old-style liberals, approach this multiplicity with a certain degree of modesty.  Progressive politics isn't about winning nor is it about balancing two agendas.  Progressive politics is about setting tables, about hearing and listening, about constructing new possibilities where none currently exist.  It is pluralistic and adaptive, not dualistic and winner-take-all. Progressive politics is not a zero-sum game....

President Bush promised "bipartisanship," a bringing together of two parties.  That failed.  President Obama never promised bipartisanship.  He promised a new era of moving beyond the old two-party politics--he promised "something different" around "big changes."  He promised to create something "after, beyond, or subsequent to" the two-party divide that would include those who have been excluded.  He is trying to forge a post-partisan path to an innovative future. 

More Like This, Please

Check out Obama at the House Democrats' retreat in Williamsburg, VA. If you're still confused about the point of all of the "post-partisan" rhetoric, you need to see this. Start at about 3:30 and watch from there. If you still doubt that he will step up to defend his proposals, go to 10 minutes and watch through to 15. I'd provide the transcript, but during that period he goes so far off script that the prepared remarks are useless. He doesn't pummel the people opposing him, but he absolutely destroys their ideas.

If doubting and worrying are your thing, then go right ahead and keep doubting him. That's your prerogative. But doubting and worrying are as pointless now as they were last January. And last June. And last August. And last September. And last October. And last November. Remember last November? Remember how that turned out? 

Yes, we did. Yes, we will. Yes, we are.

UPDATE: Before the inevitable  "why did it take him so long?" questions come... He has been president for 16 days, OK? 

Humanoid Forms

Watch in amazement as conservatives begin to remember that political and economic systems are dependent on culture, and that culture is difficult if not impossible to deliberately change. 

And then, watch further as they blow past that point to conclude that our cultural "others" are, and I quote, "humanoid forms...more divergent from our behavioral norms than the weirdest crew member of the starship Enterprise."

But seriously: The idea that cultures cannot and should not be deliberately transformed has served as the bedrock of conservative thought for literally centuries. How and why conservatives chose to forget that these past eight years is something I don't think I'll ever fully understand.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions (TX) says that his party has a lot to learn from the Taliban.  And no, I'm not kidding.

UPDATE II: On a more serious note, via Andrew, E.D. Kain sums up neoconservatism in a way that more substantively gets at the point I was driving at above:

The Islamic world is nothing like the Western world.  We have few, if any, of the same values and virtually no historical commonality save our shared, centuries-old conflict with one another.  The Islamic world, by and large, has none of the laws or customs necessary to develop an organic democratic society the way Western nations have. Therefore, the only way to achieve peace with the Islamic world is for them to adopt our notions of plurality, democracy, and humanism. They won’t do this on their own because of their lack of shared values, and so it follows that we must intervene on their behalf to impose these values, and fashion democracies for them in our image... 

One would think the fallacy here too apparent, and yet it has shaped much of our foreign policy in regards to the region for the past three decades.

Its yet another example of how irrational our political debate has become over the past decade. How is it that these people are still, to this day, taken seriously by the media? Why wasn't and isn't the obvious contradiction contained within this world view ever pointed out?

Put Some Tussin On It...

What does post-partisanship mean? It means getting past asinine arguments like this. There's nothing here but a purely political argument, and as a result, its nonsensical. Being post-partisan doesn't mean getting both parties to agree on everything. It means marginalizing fools like this. And this:

We're just listening again to Rep. Flake (R) who appears to have outdone himself in militant statements of economic nonsense. Earlier today we heard Flake claiming that tax cuts have no stimulus effect if they go to low-income earners who pay payroll taxes and not income taxes.

Now he's explaining how capital spending on AMTRAK is also not stimulus because AMTRAK doesn't run a profit. Again, total non-sequitur. I think rail is something we should be spending a lot more on. But you can certainly disagree with that on policy terms. But you can't claim that that capital spending on rail stock and rail upgrades doesn't provide jobs. Of course it provides jobs. And whether Amtrak is profitable or not is completely beside the point.

As TPM points out, Flake isn't just a random idiot. He's the idiot the GOP picked to help lead their pushback against the president's plan.

One of the biggest problems for our system is that many of our elected officials don't seem to understand the distinction between policy and politics. "Tax cuts are good" was once a policy argument, but over the past 15 years or so it morphed into a political one. At this point, it doesn't matter what the policy problem is, for Republicans tax cuts are always going to be the solution. Running a surplus? Tax cuts! Running a deficit? Tax cuts! Economy growing? Tax cuts? Contracting? Tax cuts! They already know the answer, so it really doesn't matter what the question is.

In a weird way, it's kind of like this:

MSNBC To Add Third "Liberal" Prime-Time Show?

I missed this last week:

Building on the momentum of its prime-time hours, MSNBC is developing a 10 p.m. program that would complement its left-leaning evening lineup, the cable news channel’s president said this week.

A new program could increase the competition between MSNBC, a unit of NBC Universal, and its two chief competitors, Fox News Channel and CNN, for news viewers in the time slot. Unlike most major networks, MSNBC’s original programming ends at 10 each weeknight. The 8 p.m. program “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” is rerun at 10 p.m., where it usually ranks third.

But Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, is making 10 p.m. a priority now. In an interview on Tuesday in a studio on the Mall, hours after the inauguration of President Obama, Mr. Griffin said that the channel needed a third original show in its lineup.

“We can’t let this momentum stop,” he said.

There is no obvious candidate to host the 10 p.m. hour; the network seems to lack a substantial bench of opinionated hosts-in-waiting. Then again, Rachel Maddow became a political analyst for MSNBC just 12 months ago, and now her 9 p.m. program, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” outrates CNN’s “Larry King Live” in the 25-to-54 age group.

Whomever they pick, I hope and pray it isn't someone from Forbes' ridiculous list of the 25 most influential "liberals." Here's how they define the term:

Broadly, a "liberal' subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman's right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

I'll let Andrew Sullivan, a Burkean old-skool conservative who made the list, take up the response:

For the record, I support a flat tax and, as my liberal readers know, find progressive taxation unjust and counter-productive; I'm skeptical of universal healthcare on European lines and have long defended a free market in healthcare and pharmaceuticals; I have no queasiness in fighting a war against Jihadist terror - in fact I have long been one of the most passionate supporters of it. I just oppose the illegal use of torture, the creation of a de facto protectorate in violation of the Constitution, and war-making without prudence, strategy, foresight or any conception of winning the long war of ideas. I have long supported marriage equality - because I think the conservative values of family and responsibility should not be withheld from a small section of society and because I know that gay people are as human and as worthy of respect as anyone else; I believe all abortion to be morally wrong, but would support legal abortion in the first trimester as a concession to genuine disagreement in a multicultural society and to the rights of women to control over their own bodies; I am skeptical of cap-and-trade and Kyoto-style approaches to climate change and favor a much higher tax on gas, balanced by a cut in payroll tax, to help innovate new energy sources. Not many liberals, I wager to say, endorsed Ron Paul for president for the GOP in the primaries. Not many liberals, I dare to say, have written books on conservatism which rest on a reading of key conservative thinkers such as Burke and Oakeshott and Montaigne and Hobbes. And the conservatism I adhere to, as any reader can tell, has remained very constant for twenty years. There is very little shift in tone or argument from my first book, "Intimations Pursued," to my last, "The Conservative Soul." It spans twenty years.

...None of these positions is in any way a mystery - every single one is in the public record multiple times. So why am I a liberal to these people, to someone smart and decent like Tunku Varadarajan? Why do I earn the prize of "most annoying liberal" out of countless others whose liberalism is avowed and long and uncomplicated, and none of whom supported Reagan and Thatcher and Bush in '88 and Dole and Bush in 2000? I mean: I'm more liberal than Michael Moore?

The answer, as both he and his readers have pointed out, is that to Forbes and many other conservatives, a "liberal" is anyone who they believe is motivated by an identity that they do not approve of:

Did you notice how many people on the list were seemingly chosen not for their writing or their politics, but rather their identity?  Oprah is a liberal because she is black, Hitch is a liberal because he is atheist, and you are a liberal because you are gay.  These are not just things that are mentioned in the list -- they are the primary reasons given which, coupled with any support at all for Obama in the past election, set your name in stone as a liberal one.  I suspect that a few of the choices for that list say much more about the Forbes writers' politics than it does about yours.

This helps explain why people like Christopher Hitchens, Gerald Seib, Maureen Down, Fareed Zakaria, Oprah,  But how Fred Hiatt and Chris Matthews made the list I'll never understand.

Conservatism's descent into identity politics is one of the primary reasons I no longer consider myself a conservative. Unlike Sullivan, I've actually also simultaneously shifted to the left on some issues over the years - for example, having examined the historical record, I now understand that our lives as individuals have been deeply shaped by the social and economic structures that existed well before we were born, making conservative claims about the primacy of individual effort and merit farcical - but on many issues I still remain fundamentally "conservative." I do, for example, believe that long-standing human institutions often contain a great deal of wisdom, and that efforts to modify or replace them should almost always proceed very carefully. In our own nation I believe the US Constitution to be among these important institutions, a belief that explains my constant defense of its text against reinterpretation by "conservatives" who paradoxically insist that it must be ignored in order to be saved.

In the end, I've discovered what so many other "conservatives" of my generation have discovered: that viewed from the long reach of history, I'm much better described as a classical liberal than as a conservative. Timothy Garton Ash explains:

GOVERNMENT and markets both have their place in a decent society, President Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, but can become a force for ill if they are without restraint. Missing from Mr. Obama’s address was only the proper name of the political philosophy, coded into the constitutional DNA of the United States, that proposes this and other balances: liberalism.

Like many of Mr. Obama’s speeches, the Inaugural Address presented, in substance, a blend of classical constitutional and modern egalitarian liberalism. The thing, but never the word. Anyone who knows anything about contemporary political discourse in the United States understands why.

Just over 20 years ago, a group of leading American intellectuals, gathered by the historian Fritz Stern, placed an advertisement in this very paper trying to defend the word “liberalism” against its abuse by Ronald Reagan and others on the American right. It was in vain. Over the last two decades a truly eccentric usage has triumphed in American public debate. Liberalism has become a pejorative term denoting — to put the matter a tad frivolously — some unholy marriage of big government and fornication....

As the Oxford political theorist Michael Freeden observed, if just one of the necessary components — for example, the free market — dominates, then the result can be illiberalism. The vital, never-ending debate over liberalism is not just over its indispensable ingredients, but also over their form, proportion and relation to one another.

A plausible minimum list of ingredients for 21st century liberalism would include liberty under law, limited and accountable government, markets, tolerance, some version of individualism and universalism, and some notion of human equality, reason and progress. The mix of ingredients differs from place to place. Whether some distant cousin really belongs to the extended family of liberalisms is a matter of healthy dispute. But somewhere in this contested, evolving combination there is a thing of enduring value.

This has been an American argument, some would say the American argument, for more than 200 years. In fact, the United States is still full of liberals, both progressive or left liberals and, I would insist, conservative or right liberals. Most of them just don’t use the word. Liberalism is the American love that dare not speak its name.

All of which is a very long way of saying: If and when MSNBC decides to add its third show, I hope it thinks carefully about what it means when it says "liberal." More Rachel Maddow, less Keith Olbermann, OK?