Worldview: Political Games
by A Concerned Citizen
back to the Worldview Menu
Retired on 31 December 2007
Table of Contents
General
Introduction
Political Correctness
Politics and Reality
The Parties
The Democrats
The Republicans
Politics and Money
Introduction
Political Corruption
Distribution of Wealth
Corporate Predators
Social Elites
Other Items
Political Debates
Labor Unions
Gerrymandering
Miscellaneous
General
Introduction
April 06: This chapter tries to expose all kinds of political games. It might as well be about politics in general, since one scarcely knows where the games end and the 'serious' politics begins. To illustrate what I mean by 'game', consider the case of political correctness (or PC), to be discussed in more detail in the next section. PC is the obnoxious disease of the Left invented in recent decades, whereby honest debate about human behavior is sometimes rendered taboo by labeling it 'prejudice' or 'discrimination'. Thus, Larry Summers at Harvard could not voice the opinion that maybe women, on the average, are not as good at mathematics as men. More seriously, PC has prevented honest debate about minority crime or Islamic ideology.
Of course, PC is just one of the many games played by all political groups. For example, many American conservatives have long branded as 'socialistic' any public measures that do not benefit the richest members of society (though let me insist that I am well aware of the danger of excessive socialism). Thus, any debate about universal health care is cut off with the dreaded words 'socialized medicine', even though universal health care could complement private medicine and come in many different forms, some of which might actually reduce the load on the taxpayer, as I have discussed on my Healthcare page.
Or notice how we have erected a mythology of Adam Smith small-business capitalism, when in reality we have an oligarchy of major corporations, which seem, through campaign contributions, to pull the strings of both parties.
Last but not least, one cannot overestimate the importance of simplistic rhetoric on the current war in Iraq. Believe it or not, there are gradations between appeasement and an aggressive and reckless foreign policy, and not all sensible patriots choose the latter. The verbal games are endless, but they have real-world consequences.
Back to Political Games
Political Correctness
Introduction (April 06): Political correctness is a curious contemporary phenomenon, largely confined to our intellectual and political elites. I find it quite annoying, since it cloaks untruth in a veneer of apparent benevolence. As mentioned, a glaring example is the reluctance of key public figures in the West to address militant (a.k.a. traditional) Islam in honest terms, preferring instead to spin a sentimental fiction that all religions are fundamentally good and that only individuals on the fringe can be bad. If a religion seeks to impose its repressive ideology on the world through aggression and intimidation, then it is a dangerous political movement rather than a true religion as understood by Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews and most Christians. It is as simple as that. Now would the airheads please read the classic Muslim scholars, as described in books by Andrew Bostom and others, not to mention the many prominent contemporary Muslim clerics who echo those classic scholars, often verbatim.
Consider an article by Nobel laureate and Harvard professor of economics Amartya Sen. His basic point is that we should not stereotype people as purely religious beings; rather we are complex and multifaceted. This is all well and fine for the nice people he talks to in his ivory tower (though after the Larry Summers incident one may wonder if Harvard is not populated with another kind of fanatic). Sen completely ignores the fact that Islam has a powerful mainstream tradition, stretching back to the prophet, which considers Islam supreme and the Sharia the divinely-ordained model to be imposed on the world. In other words, the antithesis of his lame and preachy words, so characteristic of ivory tower PC.
One litmus test of PC perpetrators is that they always seek a moral parity between two opposing sides, especially if one side is Western and the other barbaric. Thus Christian fundamentalists are equated to fanatical Jihadis. It is indeed true that some Christian fundamentalists have odious views regarding other religions, but the simple fact is that Christians are not engaging in acts of terrorism at anything remotely approaching the rate of Muslims. (At least this is true outside of India, which has a Christian separatist movement in the Northeast.) Virtually all American Christians respect the law and try to impose their views through the ballot box. To simply brush this aside and concoct a moral parity is not only disingenuous but deceitful. And then to present this as 'open-minded' thinking is nauseating. Finally, to have this coming from a Nobel Laureate at Harvard is ludicrous. Such is the power of Leftist ideology, whereby any opponent of America or of Capitalism must have some redeeming values that reestablish a fraudulent moral parity.
Back to Political Games
Politics and Reality
Back to Political Games Introduction (15 Oct 06): This rather ambitious and ill-defined section was prompted by an article in the Apple Gazette called Muslim Community Responds: We Love the Apple NYC Cube. The story is about a modernistic glass house built by Apple in NYC, which some Muslims think resembles the Kaba and is thus offensive. This created a bit of a furor on the internet, reinforcing the impression that Muslims are opposed to modernity even in trivial matters. The author protests that a comment by a random Muslim on a random website was blown out of proportion, since other Muslims have posted in approval of the glass house. What caught my attention is how this author focuses on MEMRI (Middle East Research Institute) as the website that started the fuss, and he refers to it as 'an oft-criticized group that supposedly translates Arabic media into English'. He further says that 'if you look again into MEMRI's background, the organization seems to be a source not known for being unbiased'.
It so happens that I have relied on MEMRI as a source of much disturbing information about the worldwide Muslim community; for example, check out this video. I have stated very clearly that many Muslims may be decent, but the fact remains that the dominant tradition is intolerant and aggressive, and this is something the West needs to reckon with, regarding foreign policy, immigration policy, and other matters. As stated on my Islam page, I developed this opinion by reading articles and books promoted by websites such as Jihad Watch that are unabashedly conservative and pro-Republican. (To be precise, Jihad Watch had a semblance of being non-partisan, until it teamed up with the unabashedly conservative and pro-Republican FrontPageMag.) Now, I am a political moderate, who belongs to no party, but who has voted Democratic more often than Republican. Yet I am able to sift through the rhetoric on these websites to glean the hard core of fact about the Muslim tradition, which is quoted from the most reliable sources, namely the chief scriptures of Islam, called the Koran and Hadith. Furthermore, I am quite sure that most of MEMRI's translations are correct. Do you doubt the one just shown? Perhaps MEMRI has focused on the worst of the Muslim world, but there is surely plenty of it!
So my point is this. It doesn't matter how large a body of reliable fact one accumulates about some hot-button political issue. Those who wish can always dismiss it in some way, by accusing it of being selective, misleading, or whatever. Most people operate this way, as does the author of this article, who no doubt fits the stereotype of the blue-state Macintosh liberal. (This moderate also likes his Mac!) And I even agree with the common liberal theme that there is much nasty 'prejudice' on the right, which may spill into unfair abuse of innocent Muslims. Yet at the same time, I am disgusted by the political correctness on the left, which, for example, tends to excuse crime or terrorism by dwelling on the root causes of alleged oppression as an excuse for anti-social behavior. In particular, I think it is grossly unfair to dump on Israel, but that is another story.
Returning to the article under discussion, notice how a single case of allegedly sloppy reporting by MEMRI, combined with the vaguest allegations of bias on the part of this group, is enough to discredit a website with an important and generally reliable message. No doubt, MEMRI gets associated in the author's mind with other right-wing websites, such as FrontPageMag and Jihad Watch, not to mention the fiasco in Iraq, which I also deplore. This conflation is further associated in many a liberal mind with McCarthyism, the KKK, racism, and so forth, as forming part of the core conservative mentality, which invalidates anything they may have to say about Islam. Since few liberal or left-oriented scholars or journalists are willing to talk honestly about orthodox Islam — even though that version of Islam is the very antithesis of what liberals are supposed to stand for — it follows that many liberals such as this author in the Apple Gazette never pause to find out that truth. A whole mental plexus of ideological preconceptions has effectively filtered out the truth. Needless to say, this kind of impulsive thoughtlessness happens just as much on the right, and our dear leader has been a chief culprit. Thus, a little story about a glass house is illustrative of much of our political debate.
Back to Politics and Reality
Pro-War Pundits Get Rich (10 Jan 07): It is both hilarious and disturbing to learn how small a price is paid by those many pundits who cheered us into this ruinous war in Iraq. Not all of them were conservative or Republican, either. Many so-called moderates and liberals drank the democracy crusade kool-aid, even though the sectarian violence was entirely predictable to anyone who was even slightly informed. (It wasn't just the lack of US troops, as Andrew Sullivan would self-servingly have us believe.)
But why should they care? There is no price to pay for being wrong. What matters is being well-connected to the corridors of power, and for that it probably helps to spout the imperialistic rhetoric about America's special destiny to go around trying to fix the world by forcing people to be as we would like them to be. So what if 100,000 Iraqis die as preparation for a bloody and now seemingly inevitable civil war? It was all for a good cause. Pundits and politicians in fancy conferences scratch each other's backs with all the empty, self-serving talk of democracy and freedom. It makes one feel so enlightened and progressive, while simultaneously getting rich and famous! Let reality and other petty details be damned. There is no price to pay, anyway. If there were, they might have been a lot more cautious, and perhaps even have done some serious homework and tried to understand the people we were messing with. You'd think we might have learned that in Vietnam. Of course, mere foreigners have always been pawns in the dreams of crusaders.
Re-reading Friedman's columns from the six months or so prior to the invasion of Iraq can induce vertigo. Unlike many of his hawkish colleagues, he grokked all the vital details of the situation. He understood that there were alternatives to war ('Bottom line: Iraq is a war of choice'). He understood that the WMD casus belli was for the most part a convenient line (cautioning that it was merely the 'stated reason' for the war, and early on calling out Bush and Blair for 'hyping' the evidence). He took a shine to the idea of regime change, but seemed clear-sighted about its low chances for success ('Setting up the first progressive Arab state ... would be a huge undertaking, though, and maybe impossible, given Iraq's fractious history'). He grasped that the consequences of failure would be dizzying ('if done wrong, the world will never be the same') and that to succeed, at the very least, would require exceedingly deft execution on the diplomatic front as well as the military one. Yet he also noted that the Bush Administration was incompetent in at least the former respect, and recognized them as essentially a bunch of pathologically insensitive and hyperaggressive bumblers ('we are talking about nation-building ... [and] the Bushies seem much more adept at breaking things than building things').
So even a Webelo-grade logician knows where to go from here, right? You connect the dots and conclude that while it would be very nice to get rid of Saddam, it would also be stupid and dangerous.
But somehow he still managed to come out in favor of the war. And if the whole thing weren't so tragically misguided, his reasoning would be worth a chuckle. Says Friedman: 'something in Mr. Bush's audacious shake of the dice appeals to me'. A nice ballsy gamble of a war. Sure, it could throw the region into chaos, bankrupt this country, and dye the fertile crescent red with the blood of civilians; yet an audacious war is like a red lollipop — who isn't powerless to resist it?
Career status: On top of the world. Before the war he was charging less than $40,000 to give a speech; these days it's a rumored $65,000. And afterward the audiences are encouraged to scoop up copies of the World is Flat, his paean to corporate globalism that has been on the Times best-seller list for 91 weeks. The royalties certainly help defray the costs of a $9.3 million mansion in Bethesda and a second home in Aspen that — if the local phone book and Google Earth are to be trusted — is a massive chateau with its own lake on the swanky northern side of town, where Prince Bandar has his monstrosity.
[. . .]
Analytically though, Beinart is even less astute than Friedman. He swallowed the WMD line and called any other rationale 'disingenuous'. Of course, it's now increasingly accepted that the prospect of Saddam ever using WMDs against the U.S. was overblown. Bush Administration insider and national security expert Philip Zelikow reportedly acknowledged this even in 2002 and some of Beinart's more clear-eyed colleagues were making this case compellingly. They were called pussies.
Career status: Prognosis positive. Beinart is steadily climbing toward the penthouse of punditry. Just named as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (a favorite among conspiracy theorists searching for the secret clique that runs the world), Beinart is also now a columnist at the Washington Post. He's constantly on the cable networks, with a list of the shows that regularly feature his insight filling out two paragraphs in his bio. A recent book, published by HarperCollins, was prominently (and positively) reviewed in all the best places.
[. . .]
But we are left with the astounding fact that one of the war's crucial media proponents — apart from Zakaria's ubiquity and sterling reputation as a foreign policy analyst, his is by far the most prominent Muslim voice in the press — helped craft the arguments that Bush used to take the country to war. Then for 16 months leading up to the invasion, he wrote columns, edited news coverage, and appeared as an analyst on television putatively evaluating those same arguments for his vast audience. Needless to say, Zakaria found the case for war a strong one.
Career status: Telegenic, debonair, with burnished intellectual credentials, Zakaria has emerged as the golden boy of media pundits. (Being a Muslim who supports a hawkish foreign policy hasn't exactly been a hindrance to his career either.)
Back to Politics and Reality
Voters Are Malleable (27 Jan 07): Here's an interesting story about how voters have no strong opinions on even the most contentious topics, and so are vulnerable to public relations campaigns, at which Republicans have been faring better than Democrats. The author argues that the Democrats would be better served by staking strong, liberal positions, rather than pandering to the elusive 'centrist'.
Indeed, the differences between candidates' positions on all issues combined accounted for only 4 percent of the average voter's decision, according to the data. That means that pandering to the middle by pursuing moderate policies is unlikely to have much impact for the average voter, who is unlikely to be aware of them or to factor them heavily into his or her decision.
In comparison, economic conditions account for 10 percent of a voter's decision; a voter's perception of a candidate's personal qualities (particularly whether or not the candidate is considered a 'strong leader'), 11 percent; and a candidate's party a whopping 33 percent (Republicans tend to vote for Republicans and Democrats for Democrats).
Why don't issues have more of an impact? One reason is that voters tend not to have strong opinions about even the most contentious policy issues of the day. This is the dirty little secret of every poll and focus group.
[. . .]
The softness of most voters' issue positions has enabled Republicans to make previously unpopular policies about invading Iraq, immigration and taxes popular almost overnight through aggressive advocacy and concerted public relations campaigns.
[. . .]
While Democrats have very little to gain from shifting issue positions, doing so could cause considerable damage. If they're seen to be shifting their agenda out of political expediency and not out of conviction, it could hurt them when voters are considering whether or not Democrats are 'strong leaders' or 'have integrity', two measures that matter to voters far more than a candidate's issue positions.
Moving to the middle also could turn off the millions of progressives who made phone calls, donated money and blogged for the Democrats in 2006. These progressives — and the organizations that represent them — do watch the issues very closely. My feeling is that a great many Americans are decent people, who don't want America's tentacles everywhere in the world, who respect freedom and free markets but don't particularly love the Big Business that buys up our politicians, and who are swayed by devious rhetoric, such as that which got us mired in Iraq, especially when the Democratic leaders are too spineless to challenge the rhetoric. There are many potential progressives who have opted out of the political system due to cynicism or indifference. The Democrats should go after those, instead of constantly being spooked by the threat of Republican smear rhetoric. Even now the Democrats are so cowardly. They have betrayed America out of love of self.
And I agree that people care a great deal about the perceived character and integrity of politicians, above and beyond the issues. I can't believe that Hillary has any deep support or respect. She is so transparently the kind of politician that decent Americans instinctively disdain. Why is she a 'front-runner' in the first place? Oh, that's right. Money. So why is she getting so much money? Is it because her sometimes neocon positions appeal to a small group of well-funded hawks who try to hedge their bets with both parties?
Back to Politics and Reality
Other Articles
Back to Politics and Reality
The Democrats
Back to Political Games Introduction (Summer 2006): For some time, the Democrats have been displaying a curious political incompetence. Especially now, given the Iraq war fiasco and deep divisions among conservatives over many issues, one would expect the Dems to be getting their act together for a slam dunk in November. This does not seem to be happening. More generally, they need to stop being seen as political opportunists and to start presenting their detailed plan for securing the nation. I think there are more than a few Americans who would like to concentrate on the homeland rather than on grandiose plans to change the world in our image.
Back to The Democrats
Bullmoose's Advice to Dems (24 Jun 06): Will Marshall, a.k.a. The Bull Moose, has an article on how the Democrats can become the majority party again. Interestingly, he notes that 'conservatives' outnumber 'liberals' 3 to 2, and the Democrats have no hope of regaining power if their 'radical' wing predominates. Basically, he suggests being tough on defense, closing the cultural gap, championing middle-class aspirations, and cracking down on corruption.
This all sounds fine in broad outline. What about the details? Let us focus on national security. It's pretty vague, with a Beinart-like appeal to 'Truman-Kennedy' toughness. So do we begin a (slow) withdrawal from Iraq, in order to put pressure on the Iraqis to get their act together? The only hope for Iraq is if Iraqis want to come together. That is their choice, not ours, and now is the moment of truth. Marshall is not specific. How about the fact that half of Americans think the Iraq war was a mistake and that we should begin withdrawing? Does that not put the alleged 'conservative majority' in perspective? (Not to mention that quite a few 'conservatives' like Pat Buchanan are not too enthusiastic about the war either!)
Marshall says that the Dems must appear patriotic and in favor of fighting terrorism. Of course! Duh. The question is how. Can we really reform the Middle East, or is that just dreaming? Is it even our business to resurrect the 'White Man's Burden'? Or should trying to engineer the minds of hundreds of millions perhaps be compared, in terms of its futility, to the Communist experiment? (Oh wait! I forgot! Our brilliant elites assure us that 'Islam is a religion of peace'!) What would the repercussions be of such a forceful policy on Russia, China and the rest of the world?
We must think long term. The pendulum swings; we may no longer be a superpower in 30-50 years, and other nations have long memories. China is already cozying up to the Muslim world and other countries. They read their Sun Tzu. Perhaps the most realistic solution is to concentrate on defending the homeland, a touch of 'isolationism' if you will, and to spend billions on securing ports and other domestic targets, rather than pouring that money into the sands of Iraq. A defensive policy which carefully screens all immigrants, and is not shy about profiling Muslims. Sure the cost of such surveillance would be great, but the Iraq war already clocks at $200 billion, or is it $300 billion, or $1 trillion? Marshall's article is superficial. He must be aiming for a top post in the party.
Back to The Democrats
Elites of both Parties are Same (27 Jun 06): Continuing with the theme of political games, Paul Campos argues that both the Republican and Democratic elites really want the same thing: for the rich (i.e. themselves) to get richer. And they're both willing to play games with the dumb masses to get elected. The Republicans make a lot of noise about gay marriage, abortion and other cultural issues, but nothing changes. And the Democrats make a lot of noise about the rich getting richer, while doing nothing about fading labor unions, outsourcing or the repeal of estate taxes for the richest 1% of Americans. Both parties agree on 'gigantic' tax cuts for the rich and economic deregulation, as though they took their marching orders from Wall Street. Sure enough, the gap between rich and poor has been growing at a fast clip, but who cares? As long as poor, rural, white voters are distracted by gay marriage and flag burning...
Back to The Democrats
Is Lamont Good for the Dems? Having said that, perhaps I should quote from the transcript at some length, as it is vitally important for the US to have an opposition party with an intelligent message. Let's see if Lamont can do it. First, he was asked if fighting in Iraq is necessary in the war on terror:
He is right that the war in Iraq is not making the homeland safer, and is probably firing up the Muslim world and increasing the chance of terror attacks. Furthermore, it is indeed an expensive distraction from the war on terror. He is asked whether we should leave:
I think it's time to change strategy. I think it is time for us to start
bringing our troops home, and it's time for us to tell the Iraqis 'It's your
country and only you'll be able to solve this.' We'll be there in the
background. We'll be there for political support, humanitarian support,
reconstruction. We're going to take this very American face off the
occupation. That's our best hope for success in Iraq.
We have chaos. Look at what's going on over the last couple
years. You know, 3,000 dead last month alone. You know, I don't think you
can just keep doing what we're doing. That's a recipe for disaster. And
that's why I really believe that if we get back, pull back from the front
line, that's when the Iraqis will step up. I have confidence they will. I agree that the Iraqis need to assume responsibility for their country, but I am more pessimistic about what will happen when we withdraw. The problem is not training but will. Is the army divided along sectarian lines? That is what matters, and we have no control over that. So we might as well pull back and let the inevitable play out. And no doubt the American presence aggravates the situation, because we really are hated in the Muslim world, something our elites just can't quite grasp, because they talk to their counterparts in the Muslim world, who are not representative of the angry masses.
I think he's wrong. You know, I think that's a false sense of security again, you know, the fact that we haven't been attacked since 9/11. You know, Bill Clinton could have said that after the first, you know, attack on the World Trade Center. The idea that we're going to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here, the number of terrorist attacks around the country — looking at London, looking at Madrid, looking around the world — is on the rise. And that's why this is no time for us to lower our guard. We are indeed bogged down, and with the Iran threat looming, this could become catastrophic. (On the other hand, one could argue that the troops are 'pre-positioned' for Iran!) Anyhow, it is clear to me that the fight against terror must be primarily through surveillance and pre-emptive police work. The reason we have not yet had another 9/11 has nothing to do with the war in Iraq. It is because our domestic security people have done a good job! But do they have enough resources? The answer is no, because those resources are being drained away by Iraq (and pork barrel spending). We may not be able to inspect all cargo containers, but the more, the better. And so on. It's really not that complicated.
Furthermore, we simply cannot change the Middle East. The people there are not robots who can be programmed. Instead, they are a huge mass of angry Muslims who hate our guts. Our support for Israel is bad enough, though essential, but being in Iraq makes it that much worse. We must focus on protecting the homeland, which will require a big discussion about changing our police strategies and modifying our civil liberties a bit, to make them more in line with the tougher UK standards. Pre-emptive intelligence will require good relations with allies, something we must patch up. Iraq has been a big distraction. The Republican mantra that 'we must fight them there rather than here' is patently stupid. There are (at least) two different 'thems', one the Shiites vs. Sunnis in Iraq and the other the small but deadly cells of international jihadist terror. To lump them all into a single 'them' is a kind of anti-Muslim racism, but worse than that it is simply stupid and actually helps to bring about the merging of Muslims into one vast enemy. But this crude tactic seems to work with the Republican base. That is why I am shifting to the Democrats, despite their many failings and lack of integrity, backbone and a coherent message. We need both brains and backbones, but the brain is more essential.
And it doesn't stop there! The devious Republican oversimplification of being pro or anti war is also a dangerous distraction from many other pressing problems:
I'll give you one example: We have a health care system in this country I think is broken. I think it's broken not only because we have 47 million people with absolutely no health insurance, but as a small business guy, I can tell that the high costs are beginning to crush entrepreneurship in this country. And that more and more working families are being bankrupted. You know, for 18 years our government's done very little when it comes to dealing with the health care crisis in this country. I think as a business person I can talk to Republicans and Democrats, labor and management, and deal with an issue like that in a serious way. I'm a little less enthusiastic about this characteristically Democratic sympathy for international organizations, especially the anti-Semitic UN. However, we have no choice but to work with allies:
It was Abe Ribicoff, our senator from Connecticut, who some years ago said, 'The United States is most influential and most helpful when we have credibility and respect throughout the Middle East region and throughout the world.' I think we lost a lot of that, and it's time for us to regain it. All in all, I think this message is more realistic and intelligent than what Bush, Cheney and Rove are giving us. (Or Lieberman, for that matter.) And I am in no way 'anti-Bush'. I have no bad feeling against him whatsoever. I think his intentions were always good, but I simply disagree with his analysis.
By the way, I share the conservative disdain for the Daily Kos types who brought Lamont to the fore. They do not seem mature and thoughtful, and they are too full of partisan hatred for Bush. They may have served an instrumental purpose in finding an alternative, but now it would be best to show them some benign neglect. It would disastrous for Lamont to be too closely identified with those brats. It would be better to look like Adlai Stevenson!
We know this because we have been here before. The Lamont-Lieberman battle was filled with echoes and parallels from the Vietnam era. Democratic reformers and anti-establishment insurgents weren't wrong about that conflict, either. Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue. In turning viciously on stalwarts of the Cold War era like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson, anti-war insurgents called into question the Democratic Party's underlying commitment to challenging Communist expansion. The party's Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense — and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism — helped push a lot of Americans who didn't much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon.
UPDATE (11 Oct 06): More Lamont bashing from David Horowitz in this YouTube video. Horowitz accuses the supporters of Ned Lamont of being 'apologists for terror', of being 'more dangerous than the terrorists', of being the 'final nail in a centrist Democratic party', of being manipulated by the 'shadow party' of billionaire George Soros, of wanting us to lose this war in Iraq as we did in Vietnam. Furthermore, he claims that some leftists support Hezbollah, and that the purpose of the Iraq war is to prevent Iraq from becoming another Iran.
Let us disentangle this. A reasonable case can be made that Iraq is a failure, an ever deepening quagmire that is sucking up American resources and lives, that Saddam was not related to Al Qaeda in a serious way, that it is up to the Iraqis to decide what to do with their future, and that it is not the role of the US to babysit a civil war. Moreover, one could argue that being bogged down in Iraq actually prevents us from being able to deal effectively with Iran, and that our presence is generating more anti-American hatred which breeds terrorists. Nobody knows exactly what will happen if we stay or leave, but there are at least some good reasons for leaving. Therefore, Ned Lamont is presenting a reasonable alternative, and Lieberman's 'punishment' is nothing but the political process at work (he will probably still win in the general election). Horowitz simply paints a view he doesn't like as beyond the pale and hopes the public will be confused or intimidated.
However, one must also say that there are indeed some on the far left who support Hezbollah and other terrorist groups and who call America a terrorist nation. Most Americans, and most Democrats, reject these fringe elements, and it is dishonest to paint them as representative of the Democratic party. How many Democratic politicians say such things? That is what matters.
As for George Soros, how is he different from Rush Limbaugh, or Fox News, or other 'extra-party apparatus' trying to persuade the public of their views? The way to deal with Soros or his counterpart on the right is to discuss them in the press. Soros is a legitimate part of the debate. (This issue is a bit more complex, though, because I am sympathetic to limiting direct donations to candidates.)
At one point, Hannity brings up the favorite broad-brush conservative smear that liberals and Democrats 'have always been deeply, profoundly wrong of defense matters'. Surely he doesn't mean FDR and Harry Truman. He is thinking of the Vietnam war, which Democrats allegedly 'lost'. That was another complicated quagmire, where we failed to comprehend the local dynamics and simply viewed a civil war through the lens of the Cold War, and both parties were at fault. But what matters is the present war, so that painting critics with so broad a brush is simply dishonest; it is an attempt to manipulate gut instincts on the right with a simplistic and polarizing caricature of the war critics. At the same time, many of these critics do go too far, when they indulge in an equally simplistic caricature of the US as the source of most of the world's problems.
Come to think of it, isn't it a bit shocking that so many conservatives insult the majority of Americans who have serious misgivings about the Iraq war? Might that not come back to haunt them?
Back to The Democrats
The Cult of Soros (25 Aug 06): David Horowitz claims that the 'network' created by 'megalomaniac billionaire' George Soros 'controls the purse strings of the Democratic Party'. That's a pretty strong statement, and I am skeptical. He credits Soros with infusing the Democrats with the notion that the 'war on terror' is fake, and that if terrorists exist, it's because George Bush created them. I can certainly disagree with this view. There is no doubt that terrorists exist who wish to attack us, based on US foreign policy and on their implacable hatred of Israel. The question of US foreign policy is complex, and I have discussed it elsewhere, but we should all support the existence of Israel. One thing that bothers me about Horowitz' thesis is that he makes much of a Soros-Hillary link. Now isn't Hillary the Democratic front-runner who is known for being relatively hawkish on Iraq? This doesn't quite 'compute'.
The problem with an article like this is that, once again, the people at FrontPageMag have set up an artificial and misleading juxtaposition: between those who want to fight the terrorists and those who don't. This is the favorite dirty trick of Republicans everywhere. In fact, the distinction to make is between those who wish to dig us deeper into the quagmire in Iraq, which has little to do with protecting ourselves against terrorists, and those who wish to deal with the terrorists intelligently. The latter alternative may in fact lean more on police work than on social engineering through military power. The 'war on terror' — which perhaps should be called the 'war on Islamic terrorists' — cannot be simply conflated with the war in Iraq, which does now look like a blunder. Anyhow, I think that the influence of the Daily Kos type of bloggers supported by Soros has been way overblown. If Connecticut voters reject Lieberman in October, it is not because of the nefarious propaganda of Daily Kos, but because Lieberman remained so stubborn on the war, instead of allowing his views to change with the facts on the ground. This suggests an infatuation with rhetoric and a disconnection from reality.
At any rate, groups like FPM do a public service if their investigations present reliable information on the inner workings of political groups. Horowitz claims to have presented such evidence in his new book, The Shadow Party. The problem is that they mix it up with their politics and rhetoric, probably on purpose. I haven't read his book, but I suspect that Soros is more like the David Horowitz of the Democrats, a prominent agitator who is stirring things up, though with far less bang for the buck! (Horowitz does not dispense donations.) One of Horowitz' themes that I can agree with is that all connections between terrorists groups and Muslim student bodies or civic associations must be investigated. That is simply a matter of law. As for terrorist sympathizers among the faculty, there would seem to be a problem with academic freedom, but the alumni should certainly complain and withhold their money. That would get the attention of the trustees!
UPDATE (29 Aug 06): I cannot agree with this logic from Richard Poe of FrontPageMag. He is upset that billionaire George Soros allegedly exerts so much influence over the Democratic party, driving it to the left. I am in principle against wealthy individuals having too much power over the political process, though I realize that measures to limit this influence can easily backfire. However, Poe seems to be taking a dangerous and somewhat paranoid new turn by asserting that certain political positions are inherently treasonous. For example, the mere fact that Soros and Lamont wish to withdraw troops fairly quickly from Iraq is characterized as 'evil':
Poe: He uses it to push the Party leftward. He is systematically purging the Party of moderates and packing it with radicals. For instance, the Shadow Party ousted Senator Joseph Lieberman in favor of Ned Lamont, because Lieberman refused to support a 'cut-and-run' policy in Iraq.
FP: Isn't that just politics as usual, though - wealthy fat cats funding their favorite candidates?
Poe: Funding ordinary candidates, be they Democrats or Republicans, would be politics as usual. Funding radical candidates who seek America's destruction is not. Money is a tool. It can be used for good or evil. The Shadow Party is using it for evil.
FP: Does the Shadow Party really seek to destroy America?
Judge for yourself. In his new book The Age of Fallibility, Soros writes, 'The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.' He announced in 2003 that it is necessary to 'puncture the bubble of American supremacy'. Soros is working systematically to achieve that goal.
On the economic front, he is shorting the dollar in global currency markets, trying to force a devaluation. At the same time, Soros is orchestrating a nationwide movement to encourage mass immigration into the United States, and to mandate the provision of free social services to illegal immigrants. These measures alone have the potential to bankrupt the nation. However, if they fail, Soros has another program that will certainly finish the job. A long-time Soros operative named Jeffrey Sachs has been placed in charge of the United Nations Millennium Project - a global war on poverty designed to transfer wealth from rich countries to poor ones. Sachs is currently demanding that American taxpayers turn over $140 billion per year to his global welfare bureaucracy.
On the political front, Soros has poured massive funding into such groups as the ACLU, which uses lawsuits to hamstring the War on Terror. Soros also funds Amnesty International, whose US executive director has called for the arrest of President Bush as a war criminal. Another Soros-funded group, The Center for Constitutional Rights, has drawn up detailed articles of impeachment against the President. I have enjoyed being informed by FPM's unconventional non-MSM reporting for several years now, but this is too much! A traitor is someone who seeks to harm the US by violating specific laws having to do with national security, such as those involving state secrets, or who seeks to organize an armed rebellion against the state, etc. Everything that Poe mentions is a legitimate political position, however misguided. Leaving Iraq quickly may or may not be disastrous for the image of the US, but it is certainly a view that any citizen may legally entertain. The same goes for immigration, currency speculation, wars on poverty (including in foreign countries), ACLU lawsuits, Amnesty International, and so on. Even Soros' animus against 'American supremacy' may simply mean that he wishes for a more restrained foreign policy. Are isolationists traitors?
I too have reservations about many of the opinions of the 'hard-left', including some positions of the ACLU and AI, but to call such views beyond the pale of democratic discourse is paranoid, bizarre and a violation of democracy. If the American people wanted socialism, even socialism promoted by some fat cat, that would be their right. Such issues are decided at the polls, not by alleging treason. The 'liberals' play around with the constitution when it comes to abortion, but the 'conservatives' tend to do this with defense, by assuming imperial powers for the president, expanding the definition of 'treason', and so on. All of this is dangerous for America's future. What FPM does have a right to do is to inform the public, but they should be factual and not inject their own twisted view of what is acceptable public discourse.
UPDATE (11 Oct 06): Here is a YouTube video where George Soros is accused of calling Bush a Nazi. Actually, what Soros said is that some of Bush's rhetoric is similar to Nazi propaganda techniques, such as baldly asserting that 'you are either with us or against us in the war on terror'. Another example might be the frequent Republican charge that those who want to get out of Iraq — a majority of Americans — are 'cutting and running' and surrendering to terrorists. Should Soros have chosen his words more carefully? He admits as much in this video. At the same time, it is clear that many on the right are using dishonest techniques to paint anti-war liberals like Soros or Ned Lamont as something they aren't. They are in fact using the well-know totalitarian technique of suppressing criticism, especially of a war, with charges of treason and cowardice. Many on the left are also guilty of going overboard with their rhetoric, such as accusations of fascism and theocracy on the right, in some cases far more crude and explicit than anything Soros has said. The kernel of truth in all this heated rhetoric from both sides is that a tendency could become a reality if unchecked by calm, moderate, factual reason. One hoped-for benefit of democracy is that idiots on both sides will cancel each other out to some extent.
UPDATE (11 Oct 06): Speaking of dirty politics, why do Hannity and Colmes even have this utterly marginal person who represents nobody on their show? I'll tell you why. Because having this repugnant character inflames conservative hatred against all 'liberals', whom this guest is taken to represent. The worst thing that many liberals did during the Vietnam war was to turn on the troops, as this clown is now doing. The troops are performing a brave and honorable job, regardless of the politics back home. Leave them out of it! None of the war critics who matter are saying anything about the troops this time, so this misfit is utterly insignificant and a deceitful waste of precious air time. George Soros is at least having some influence, though again he is being used in a manipulative and dishonest way to press emotional buttons. There is so little serious discussion of the war on our airwaves! It is mostly about simplistic slogans and personal animus.
Back to The Democrats
Identity Politics (06 Sep 06): Paul Waldman may be putting his finger on one of the most important aspects of American elections, if not human behavior in general:
After it's all over, Democrats wonder why they lost, when a majority of the public favors nearly all the items on their agenda. Americans want a higher minimum wage, legal abortion, strong environmental protections, universal healthcare, and a tax policy that isn't tilted toward the wealthy, to name a few. But voters don't read policy papers, and they don't make decisions with a checklist of issues in their hands. That's why Republican campaigns operate on a different level: Whom do you identify with? Whom can you trust? Who is strong, and who is weak? These questions transcend issues, which is why Republicans — who know they are at a disadvantage on the issues — spend so much time talking about them. At any rate, it is perfectly true that, due to mass manipulation egos, politics is never simply a matter of rational self-interest on the part of the voters. Islam also operates by appealing to identity, as has Christianity over the ages, and even today. The much vaunted elections in Iraq were mostly about identity. The appeal to identity is particularly dangerous when mixed with religion, ideology or ethnicity, as it often is.
Frequently, the issues are complex and can be argued in different ways. That is when identity politics dumbs everything down to a level of idiocy which leads to disaster. The Republicans may play a lot of cheap tricks, but the Democrats set themselves up for it, by holding their fingers to the wind, rather than voicing a clear and vigorous alternative.
Finally, to tell the truth, the left fringe of the Democratic party does not want to fight any war, nor call an enemy an enemy. But this is no worse that the right fringe of the Republicans, which blindly follows their Commander in Chief into any war, no matter how misbegotten.
Back to The Democrats
US Christians Are Not Jihadists UPDATE (22 Oct 06): But see here!
Back to The Democrats
Good Sense for Liberals There are many reasons, beyond the humanitarian ones, and based on good economic sense, to favor some form of employer-funded universal health insurance. However, without political discipline, such a program could be a blank check to the medical industry, as is the current drug bill. There was no attempt to take on the drug companies and their exorbitant prices, if only by allowing a genuine free market with cheaper foreign drugs. Indeed, the Republican legislation prevents the government from negotiating prices! Such is the power of the drug lobby over Congress, yet the issue is barely discussed on television. Is this a conspiracy of silence from both parties? Then there is the danger of providing free health care without also pressuring the recipients to look for the jobs to finance it. As for education, I tend to think that the basics should be emphasized at the pre-college level, which requires discipline rather than money. The teachers unions are indeed a problem for the public, which Democrats are loathe to discuss.
I agree that such a high rate of illegitimacy is a severe threat to the fabric of society, and the public can be forgiven for associating it with the welfare state. (In fact, studies have demonstrated a clear correlation, where it actually becomes profitable for poor teenage women to have babies.) It is certainly true that a liberal and caring government must also instill a sense of responsibility in society, or a disaster will eventually ensue. Furthermore, the politicians themselves must be mature and responsible. They must avoid the temptation to exploit resentful identity politics. No sane 'liberal' could disagree with this. The socialist nightmares are produced by cynical opportunists, not true liberals. Conservatives like Will can make it seem otherwise, because too few prominent liberals speak up with the right moral tone, just as too few of them seem comfortable talking about defense. (The irony is that prudence in defense is almost always the proper policy, which we are not getting lately from the Republicans.) Likewise, responsibility in administering social programs is essential, or scandals and waste will result, and the conservatives will easily manipulate public disenchantment. The problem with liberals is not the basic essence of liberalism but the lack of backbone and integrity on the part of liberal politicians. We have seen this both in both domestic and foreign affairs.
Back to The Democrats
Anti-White Backlash at Duke?
Alan Dershowitz: Harvard coup against Summers [more]
Mike Rosen: Tuning out liberal television
Peter Beinart: A Darker Breed of Conservatism
Chip Berlet: Response to David Horowitz's Complaint
Ken Silverstein: The Church of Morris Dees
Joe Klein: Can the Democrats Handle a Heretic (Jim Webb)? [more]
Gerard Baker: BBC Bringing 'Sophisticated' News to America
Robert Spencer: Jihad Denial in Toronto [more]
Discover the Network: Katrina vanden Heuvel, a limousine liberal
Discover the Network: The Nation's cruise seminar [Robert Scheer]
John M. Templeton: Freedom of Religious Speech
Introduction
Pro-War Pundits Get Rich
Voters are Malleable
Other Articles
PROWAR PUNDITS GET RICH
BROOKS, FRIEDMAN, BEINART, ZAKARIA...
Jebediah Reed, Radar Magazine, 10 Jan 07
Tom Friedman
Peter Beinart
Fareed Zakaria
NOTE: You can also read how journalists who called the Iraq disaster correctly — like Robert Scheer, William S. Lind and Jonathan Schell — paid a price for it. Robert Scheer was fired 'without explanation' after being on the 'liberal' LA Times for years!
COMMENT: There are so few stories like this! The mainstream press never gives us these exposes on the inner workings of our elites, because they would have to shine a light on themselves. Seymour Hersh may come close. I'd never even heard of this obviously 'left-wing' Radar Magazine, but the facts are all checkable and sound entirely correct to someone who was following the war online. I wish the Washington Post or New York Times would do similar reviews of their own pundits!
Head of Intelligence Committee has no clue about Middle East
Media Matters: Kristol absurdly rewarded with new job at TIME
David Corn: Kristol clear at TIME (a look at his record)
Paul Craig Roberts: Disrespect for truth has brought a New Dark Age
TP: Tom Friedman blasts liberals, claims anti-Arab prejudice
David Sirota: The Rats Are Jumping Ship from Iraq
Huffington Post: Once pro-war Andrew Sullivan jumps to The Atlantic
MOVE TO MIDDLE HURTS DEMOCRATS
Glenn Hurowitz, Baltimore Sun, 28 Jan 07
I analyzed more than 20 years of exit poll data in presidential elections from the University of Michigan's American National Election Study. The results were clear and echoed the conclusions of dozens of other studies: A candidate's issue positions have only a tiny influence on a voter's decision in the ballot box.
I'm not sure I follow all the logic here. If undecided voters can be 'programmed' by 'public relations campaigns', then they do care about the issues, once they have been programmed! So Democrats have an interest in programming (or 'persuading' if you prefer) the independents to become progressives. That makes more sense than trying to persuade the progressives, who do have beliefs, to become more centrist. Of course, an effective public relations campaign means buying lots of expensive television time, so the well-funded Republicans may have an insurmountable advantage. Money is always power!
Gregory Cochran: Twilight Zone (the administration's invented history)
Lew Rockwell: The Reality of Red-State Fascism
Adam Howard: Why Do Democrats Keep Losing Presidential Elections?
Introduction
Bullmoose's Advice to Dems
Elites of both Parties are Same
Is Lamont Good for the Dems?
The Cult of Soros
Identity Politics
US Christians Are Not Jihadists
Good Sense for Liberals
Anti-White Backlash at Duke?
Pelosi Too Liberal?
John Kerry's Pre-Election Gaffe
The Reagan Democrats
Pelosi's Plan
Barack Obama
Chris Dodd
Hillary Cinton
D'Souza on 'The Left'
Other Articles
idiotic ill-considered first commandment of the Republican party.) See the video here, or read the transcript here. Ned Lamont is much smarter than the superficial nobody he has been portrayed as; in fact, I think he is smarter than Lieberman. I say this because he spoke sharply and in detail, with more substance than most established politicians. He reminds me a bit of Adlai Stevenson. He has a good mind and command of the facts, but he may be too 'intellectual' looking for the public, a bit thin and tense. Good qualities, but people want a father figure, a regular guy, or whatever... I give Lamont a lot of credit for being a bit specific and avoiding the vague, self-serving rhetoric of so many bigshot Democrats, which infuriates me no end. The elite of the Democratic party is the worst enemy of the Democratic party.
No, on the contrary. I don't think our invasion of Iraq has done anything when it comes to the real war on terror. I mean, here we are talking about Saddam Hussein, but look what happened. It was a terrorist cell coming out of Pakistan, going through London, threatening the United States of America five years later. You know, if nothing else I think our country's gotten a little bit complacent when it comes to the war on terror right now. Maybe this is a wake-up call. Maybe we'll take into account the 9/11 Commission recommendations when it comes to homeland security, be it the ports, public transportation, airports, nuclear facilities. I think this is a time for America to be vigilant.
Well, first of all, we've been there for three and a half years.
By the end of this year we'll have been there longer than we were involved in
World War II. And let's face it, our very front line military presence,
having 132,000 troops stuck in the middle of this bloody civil war, is not
making the situation better. I say the situation's getting worse, and it's
getting worse consistently. So now is the time for a change of strategy.
That's the big difference between me and the senator — and the president, by
that token.
I'm afraid us being bogged down in that civil war is being taken by a victory by some of those people. That's why it's so important we change course, and that's why it's so important we get our eye back on the ball when it comes to working with our allies, shared intelligence like, you know, Pat Roberts was just saying. You know, dealing with a war in a — war on terror in a serious way. I think the war in Iraq has been a terrible distraction from taking care of the people's business.
It's not a question of being an anti-war candidate. It's a question of is our country making the right decisions that allow us to prevail going forward? And I'd argue that we're not. I'd say we're making a lot of bad decisions. As I go around the state of Connecticut, people ask me about $9 trillion in debt. What type of a country we are? Should we — we should be investing in our kids and investing in our future, and instead we're mortgaging our kids' future. That's wrong. People talk to me about 63 lobbyists for every single congressman in Washington, DC. That number has doubled in the last five years alone. Who's really taking care of the people's business down there? We know who the lobbyists are taking care of.
Look, we're always going to have the strongest military on the face of this earth, Scott. But I think we're a stronger country and we're more secure, we work in concert with our allies, and we stay true to our values, and we treat the rest of the world with respect. I think we've lost some of that right now.
Ned Lamont: The Democrats Mean Business
Ned Lamont: What Voters Want From Their Senator
WHY LAMONT'S VICTORY SPELLS DOOM FOR DEMS
Jacob Weisberg, Slate, 9 Aug 06
Lieberman's opponents are not entirely wrong about the war. The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake. There were no weapons of mass destruction to be dismantled, we had no plan for occupying the country, and our troops remain there only to prevent the civil war we unleashed from turning into a bigger and more horrific civil war. Just about everyone now agrees that the sooner we find a way to withdraw, the better for us and for the Iraqis. The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush's faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.
COMMENT: I maintain that what I have just quoted from Lamont himself doesn't sound this far to the left, but perhaps his image is permanently tainted by the 'net roots', who too closely resemble the irresponsible anti-military Vietnam era protesters Weisberg is talking about. So much of politics is perception! Especially if pundits like Weisberg make it so.
Eric Alterman: Think Again: An 'Honest' Failure
FrontPageMag: Richard Poe on the Shadow Party
Cliff Kincaid: An 'Extremely Evil Person'
Marty Peretz: Soros and Israel
FP: How does Soros use his influence over the Party?
Soros Bumped as Top Political Giver by Swift-Boat Group's Perry
ELECTIONS ARE ABOUT IDENTITY, NOT ISSUES
Paul Waldman, Boston Globe, 6 Sep 06
Think about what happens in campaign after campaign. The Democrat comes before the public and says, "If you read my 10-point policy plan, I'm sure you'll vote for me. Let's go over it point by point." The Republican then comes before the public, points to the Democrat, and says, "That guy is a weak, elitist liberal who hates you and everything you stand for. I'm one of you and he's not." And guess who wins.
Actually, I don't know that the Democrats are ever all that specific, but I do agree about the politics of identity, and all the cheap tactics that flow from it. Let us remember, though, that the Democrats have often played this game at the domestic level, with PC, quotas, grievances, injustice against minorities, and ad nauseum. Their failure to identify radical Islam as something evil seems like a continuation of pandering to 'minorities'. And they have failed to voice a clear, vigorous and intelligent approach to fighting terrorism, thus giving Bush a blank check to blunder.
Buzzflash: Interview with Paul Waldman
Paul Waldman: The Liberal Moderates
Paul Waldman: When Bush trusts his gut
Paul Waldman: Adapting To Win In 2008
Amy Sullivan: Democrats losing more religious voters
Jonah Goldberg: The Magnifying Trick of Liberal Paranoia
Edsall complains that conservatives pursue an agenda that does not have the public's 'decisive support'. Whatever that means, liberals such as Edsall are ineligible to make that complaint. They increasingly have abandoned persuasion and legislation and resorted to litigation and judicial fiats to advance an agenda the public finds unpersuasive.
Edsall must be referring, for example, to giant tax cuts for the rich and the ban on stem cell research. However, Will's claim that the liberals have relied too much on courts needs to be examined case by case. I agree that the right to abortion cannot literally be found in the Constitution, but neither can the royal power the Republicans wish to grant the president in times of war. So which party is a greater threat to the constitution? I agree that quotas, e.g. in college and law school admissions, are basically unfair, but there may be some extreme cases that need redress. It is quite true that gratuitous money-grabbing lawsuits undermine our economy, but without them corporations would probably ride roughshod over the public. It is all a question of good sense and balance.
If Edsall really thinks Republicans are marching efficiently in lock step, he has missed bitter intraparty arguments about spending, immigration and nation-building. Edsall says the conservative agenda is 'to dismantle the welfare state'. Oh? With a prescription drug entitlement that is the largest expansion of the welfare state since enactment of Medicare in 1965? With a 38 percent increase in discretionary domestic spending unrelated to homeland security — including a 135 percent increase in the Education Department's budget — since 2001?
Edsall notes that one-third of American children — and almost 70 percent of African American children — are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an astonishing passage about this phenomenon, which is the cause of most social pathologies, from crime to schools that cannot teach, he explains how Americans differ concerning what he calls 'freedom from the need to maintain the marital or procreative bond.'
The story involves the Duke lacrosse team, made up mostly of rich white boys, which hosted the usual drunken party to which some local black strippers were invited. Of course, that was a big mistake right there! One of the strippers claimed she was raped, but another stripper, shown last night on 60 Minutes, convinced me that it was a setup. Not to mention gross prosecutorial improprieties to which a black Duke law professor objected; indeed, it was he who wrote the guidelines for the state of North Carolina. I might also note that he had a pleasant, mature and calm demeanor.
What was particularly frightening was the large crowd of angry black locals baying for blood. This is reminiscent of the Tawana Brawley affair of 1987, in which a black girl championed by the 'Reverend' Al Sharpton claimed she was raped by some white men. That case was thrown out for a lack of evidence, but this time the case is going forward, despite a lot of convincing exonerating evidence such as DNA tests, etc. I must say, though, that a silver lining to this sordid story is that it is the second black stripper, of all people, who has shown courage and honesty. The only reason I can imagine she might lie is if she is being paid, but that would be enormously risky on the part of the defendants. Besides, she seemed honest and intelligent to me and would have persuaded me if I were on the jury, barring overwhelming counter-evidence. For example, she related how one of the boys at the party used the 'N-word', but instead of expressing bitterness and anger, she laughed it off, which is the mature thing to do (unlike certain rabble-rousing 'reverends').
The honest stripper
Note that the prosecutor in this case is a white man seeking black votes. This no doubt sends chills up the spines of many in white America, who wonder what might happen to the political and legal systems when (not if) non-whites become a majority, made all the likelier by the attempts of business interests to grant citizenship to millions of illegal Hispanic aliens. I have a generally good impression of Hispanics, but maybe that's because I live in the Northeast rather than in, say, San Diego. Anyhow, it is a fact that many black people still have retribution on their minds for past slavery and discrimination and are willing to stoop to dirty tactics to get even, with the help of unscrupulous lawyers and prosecutors. Maybe that is a good reason for giving citizenship to the Hispanics! The Democratic love of minorities may not be such a threat to white people after all, if it includes all kinds of basically decent minorities who balance each other out (no jihadis please).
Stuart Taylor Jr: Duke players framed by PC NYT
Breitbart: Prosecutor Yet to Interview Rape Accuser
ABC: Dancer 1 to 2: 'Go ahead, put marks on me'
Thomas Sowell: Duke Case: The Worst Worsens
Thomas Sowell: The Real Issue at Duke
Back to The Democrats
Pelosi Too Liberal? (29 Oct 06): Here is a typical conservative criticism of Nancy Pelosi, who is poised to be the Speaker of the House if the Democrats win the midterms:
GOP: PELOSI'S PARTY TOO LIBERAL FOR AMERICA
Robert J. Caldwell, San Diego Union Tribune, 29 Oct 06
Pelosi voted repeatedly against the counterterrorism Patriot Act, opposed creation of the Department of Homeland Security and voted against a resolution condemning the leak of the National Security Agency's highly classified program for monitoring terrorist communications. Pelosi also reportedly told colleagues that she would appoint as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee overseeing America's counterterrorism efforts Rep. Alcee Hastings, an ultra-liberal and at least formerly sleazy Florida Democrat. Hastings was impeached and removed as a federal judge by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1988-89 on bribery and obstruction of justice charges.A Pelosi-run Democratic-controlled House would also make New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Rangel says he would oppose extending any of the Bush tax cuts past their expiration in 2010 — imposing a huge tax increase on an economy fueled by Bush's first-term tax reductions.
Chairmanship of the investigative House Government Reform Committee would go to California Rep. Henry Waxman, among the most partisan liberal Democrats in the House. No one doubts that Waxman would use his committee and its subpoena power to launch a flurry of investigations of the Bush administration, including its counterterrorism intelligence programs.
Voting against these acts does not mean she is 'weak on terrorism'. It means she is concerned about the civil liberties aspects and wants to improve the bills, so that they achieve the proper balance between security and freedom. I don't know about Hastings; I agree that an impeached judge should probably not receive this position.
Regarding the tax cuts, everyone knows that they overwhelmingly benefited the rich, in a time of war. The Democrats should be a bit less timid regarding the 'class warfare' charge, but they should also be very careful about taxing the (genuine) middle-class. They should not be shy about mentioning specific incomes and tax brackets. The affluent and educated Democrats will find out anyway, and the more civic-minded and responsible won't mind, given the war and huge deficit, provided taxes are reasonable.
As for investigations of the war and the intelligence fiasco, I am all for them. It never hurts to obtain more information, especially about one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in American history. I don't trust the previous Republican investigations, and the 'nonpartisan' investigations may have been smoothed over to some extent. But no impeachment, as Pelosi says, though Democrats have every right to remind the public how hypocritical the Republicans are on the issue of impeachment, which they gleefully exploited against Clinton.
Overall, this article is deceptive, but typical of the conservative media. I'm not saying the liberals are any more honest. Indeed, the Democrats have not been forthright in telling us how they would fight terror, and they have seemed a little too concerned about civil liberties. Nevertheless, they are right to be concerned, and the Republicans have not been concerned enough.
COMMENT: I don't see why the Republicans have such a visceral hatred of Pelosi. She doesn't look like any kind of wild-eyed radical Berkeley firebrand to me. On the contrary, she looks to me like the nicer kind of real-estate agent. The Republicans should feel comfortable with that! :-) And don't forget: she's a mother of five.
Rupert Cornwell: Bush's great fear: Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Howard Fineman: Planet Hillary-Pelosi
William Greider: Pelosi's Moment
Eleanor Clift: Rolling With Pelosi
PELOSI'S UNINTELLIGENT CHOICE
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, 31 Oct 06
If Democrats win control of the House next week, Nancy Pelosi's first test as speaker will arrive long before the 110th Congress convenes. Her choice to head the House intelligence committee — unlike other House committees, this one is left entirely up to the party leadership — will speak volumes about whether a Speaker Pelosi will be able to resist a return to paint-by-numbers Democratic Party interest-group politics as usual.Pelosi is in a box of her own devising. The panel's ranking Democrat is her fellow Californian Jane Harman — smart and hardworking but also abrasive, ambitious and, in Pelosi's estimation, insufficiently partisan on the committee. So Pelosi, once the intelligence panel's ranking Democrat herself, has made clear that she doesn't intend to name Harman to the chairmanship.
The wrong decision, in my view, but one that's magnified by the unfortunate fact that next in line is Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings. In 1989, after being acquitted in a criminal trial, Hastings was stripped of his position as a federal judge — impeached by the House in which he now serves and convicted by the Senate — for conspiring to extort a $150,000 bribe in a case before him, repeatedly lying about it under oath and manufacturing evidence at his trial.
Ordinarily, that might doom Hastings's chances, but the situation is further inflamed by racial politics: Hastings is African American, and the Congressional Black Caucus has made it clear that it will not tolerate his rejection. Another black lawmaker, Georgia's Sanford Bishop, was passed over to accommodate Harman, who reclaimed her seniority when she returned to Congress in 2000 after a gubernatorial run. And the black caucus is still smarting over Pelosi's move to oust Louisiana's William J. Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee after the FBI found a freezerful of cash in Jefferson's home.
THE GOP PELOSI PILE-ON
John Heilemann, NY Magazine, 6 Nov 06
Pelosi's admirers — she has some — contend that all this is inside baseball, with few national electoral implications. They point to polls (like a recent one from Gallup) showing that 30 percent of voters don't even know who Pelosi is, with the rest split evenly between those who like her, dislike her, and don't have an opinion. On Pelosi's own view, this makes her a decidedly sub-optimal Republican punching bag. "I think it's going to be a hard sell for them to try and say it's not about George W. Bush and his failed policies ... it's about Nancy Pelosi, somebody [voters] most overwhelmingly have never heard of."The problem with this analysis is the same as the one that bedevils so much of the reportage and polling on the 2006 campaign: It suffers from what you might call the fallacy of the national electorate. Democrats rejoice when they read about the results of the most recent USA Today/Gallup poll, which has their party leading the Republicans nationally by a solid margin of 54-41 percent — just as they take heart in Pelosi's relative national anonymity. And just as they reassure themselves that, across the country, swing voters have more important things on their minds than the future of Alcee Hastings.
In the age of Rove and Ken Mehlman, however, Republicans have demonstrated that swing voters are an overrated concept. They've shown that what matters, especially in midterm elections, isn't what the national electorate thinks about the two parties at a point in time but what a small number of voters in a small number of congressional districts actually do on Election Day. As White House political director Sara Taylor put it bluntly last week, "In a traditional midterm headwind, Republicans are going to have to make sure they turn out their base. In places where they do that, Republicans are going to win races they're supposed to win."
PELOSI'S WAR BLUNDER
Jack Kingston, Washington Times, 2 Nov 06
Mrs. Pelosi demonstrated that she does not understand the global nature of the threat when she stated flatly 'the war on terror is the war in Afghanistan'. She may think the war is limited to Afghanistan, but where does al Qaeda believe the war is? Al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a letter to the leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, was clear about the location of the global jihad and the importance of victory in Iraq:"Victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world ... As for the battles that are going on in the far flung regions of the Islamic world, such as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Bosnia, they are just the groundwork and the vanguard for the major battles which have begun in the heart of the Islamic world."
Zawahiri reminds Iraqi terrorists, like Abu Musab Zarqawi, that God has blessed them 'with the splendor of the spearhead of Jihad'. Translation: Islamic fascists led by al Qaeda are fighting a global jihad to establish a Muslim caliphate from Egypt to Iraq. They will attack anyone, anywhere, with any means, that will further their violent cause.
COMMENT: The 'global caliphate', like some new Warsaw Pact, is not a realistic problem at present. Even if some Muslim nations were united, they would not have a serious conventional military force. Individual acts of terrorism are the problem, and they are not dealt with by a massive World War III against the entire Muslim world, which is impossible anyway. Iraq is no more a threat to us than any other Muslim country, where terrorists can also train. Suicide terrorism doesn't require much 'training' anyway. It is mostly a matter of will. The primary defense is intelligence, and antagonizing the entire Muslim world won't help there. A simplistic and misleading but typically conservative analysis, which will probably prove effective against the Pelosis of America.
Washington Times editorial: A look at Pelosi's voting record
Jihad Watch: Rangel won't call Hezbollah 'Islamic terrorists'
THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE SPEAKER
Debra Saunders, SF Chronicle, 5 Nov 06
Pelosi's positions are those of a classic liberal. She voted against the welfare-reform bill signed by President Bill Clinton and supports same-sex marriage. She wants choice for children who don't want to notify their parents to have an abortion, but not for poor District of Columbia parents who need vouchers to send their children to private school. Pelosi voted against the war in Iraq and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.Her 2005 liberal rating by Americans for Democratic Action was 95 percent. She is happy to dismiss President Bush as an idiot — or, as she said in 2004, Bush 'has no judgment, no experience or knowledge of the subjects that he has decided upon'. From the other side of her mouth, she promises to restore 'civility' to the House if she becomes its first female speaker.
[. . .]
What sets Pelosi apart from, say, most S.F. supervisors is that she is also pragmatic — and she understands what will and will not play in Peoria. Pelosi announced in May that if the Dems win the House, impeaching Bush will not be on the table. While she opposed the war in Iraq, she will not de-fund the war — which has earned Pelosi occasional protests when she visits her district. At a 'Day of Remembrance' event for Sept. 11 victims shortly after the attacks, when a supervisor blamed America for provoking the terrorist attacks, Pelosi had the good sense to rebuke him by noting, 'The act of terrorism on Sept. 11 put those people outside the order of civilized behavior, and we will not take responsibility for that'. In other words, Pelosi doesn't rant like a fringe activist — and that makes her a moderate in San Francisco.
J. Peter Pham: Speaker Pelosi's Impending Intelligence Failure
WSJ: Speaker Pelosi (election a referendum on GOP failure)
Rachel Konrad: Pelosi's Hometown Disputes Liberal Image
Bob Novak: CIA officials: Harman a prima donna; Hastings cooperative
Back to The Democrats
John Kerry's Pre-Election Gaffe
(01 Nov 06): In a recent speech at Pasadena City College, John Kerry supposedly said that the students should study hard or they'll 'end up stuck in Iraq'. This is outrageous, and if the Dems lose because of this, they should drum him out of the party. This incredible stupidity and arrogance reinforces all the worst stereotypes about the Democratic party. I didn't like his persona during the last election, but now I'm outraged that such a fool could be allowed to rise to the top of the party. Will this be the October surprise that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory? How ironical that it didn't come from Karl Rove after all. Even if the Democrats can't get rid of Kerry, they should still ostracize him within the party. And they should have immediately and unanimously condemned this in no uncertain terms. Perhaps they are unfit to govern after all. Perhaps they do have too many rich, spoiled kids out of touch with America. The G.O.P. isn't really that different in terms of privilege, but they do seem more in touch with ordinary folks.On the other hand... Eric Alterman, in this diavlog, points out that recruitment standards have plunged, with more recruitment of people with criminal records, emotional problems, lack of basic education, and so on. He speculates, not unreasonably, that this has been affected by how the military has been treated: an ill-defined and futile war, lack of body and vehicle armor, extended tours of duty, raiding the national guard, etc. The Iraq war will likely turn out to be not just a geopolitical disaster but also a disaster for our own military. Another good reason not to plunge into a risky war based on half-baked premises.
UPDATE (01 Nov 06): Imus video: 'Please stop it. Stop talking. Go home, get on the bike...' Unfortunately, fat-headed Kerry is still indulging in pompous excuses rather than showing some shame. The Dems need one of those canes that they used in vaudeville to yank people off the stage.
UPDATE (02 Nov 06): Ooops! It looks like I got suckered too. Christopher Hitchens and others have said that Kerry really did botch a joke that was supposed to have been about George Bush, and that even Kerry would never have been so stupid as to mock soldiers as he seemed to. The whole furor over Kerry was sheer nasty politics, says Hitchens. Well, that may be, but this is not the first time Kerry has put his foot in his mouth, and someone with this unfortunate foible should really not be a major politician.
Mark Steyn: Election season is bad time for slip of the quip
Jeff Jacoby: SF school board abolishes JROTC
Back to The Democrats
The Reagan Democrats
(07 Nov 06): James Pinkerton discusses the Reagan Democrats, their importance as a swing block, how they were alienated from the Democratic party in the cultural wars, and how the Republicans may have recently lost them.
BUSH'S REPUBLICANS LOSE WHAT REAGAN WON
James Pinkerton, Newsday, 7 Nov 06
Reagan Democrats are the key swing voting bloc. As their name suggests, these folks — typically, middle- and working-class Catholics in the North, and similarly situated white Protestants in the South — are Democrats by ancestry, but have voted Republican more recently. That is, they voted for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but then switched to Bill Clinton or Ross Perot in 1992. Since then, they have been mostly with the GOP.[. . .]
The Reagan Democrats are, in a phrase, somewhat socially conservative and somewhat economically liberal. Historically, working classes are never liberal on social issues; they live by family values and patriotism. They have real jobs that don't pay that well - and pay even less when they go overseas, to fight our wars. And when they retire, they want the country to treat them with dignity and respect and, yes, perhaps a little generosity.
The old Democratic Party was happy enough to embrace these values, which is why the pre-1968 Democratic Party stood in the majority. But beginning in the '60s, and mostly ever since, the Democratic Party has lurched leftward on avant-garde social issues that never played well in Peoria — or Emporia, or Astoria, for that matter. Issues such as abortion, gay rights, banning school prayer, school busing, criminal rights, welfare, racial quotas — these were like so many knife strokes, each hacking away at the once-mighty New Deal Democratic coalition.
Oh, and once upon a time, it would never occur to a top Democrat to dis our troops, or to neglect the importance of God in public life. On June 6, 1944, D-Day, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on the radio to lead the nation in prayer, seeking divine aid for our GIs storming ashore at Normandy Beach. It is, shall we say, hard to imagine such Democrats today as Howard Dean or John Kerry leading the nation in prayer.
But while Republicans are in tune with Reagan Democrats on social-cultural issues, they are not necessarily in tune with them on economic and fiscal issues. Reagan Democrats mostly like Social Security and Medicare, and they support spending for education and infrastructure, too. And though the Reagan Dems always support the troops, they are impatient with foreign wars that don't seem to make sense anymore, such as Iraq.
Certainly, the Democrats of the FDR and JFK years were unquestionably patriotic, but who says they are not today? The GOP has been effective with propaganda, turning resistance to failed policies into an apparent lack of patriotism. Only fools would 'dis' our troops for the failures of our leaders, and I think this has been overblown. Such scandalous episodes were limited to a few immature students back in the Vietnam years, who got disproportional photo coverage. However, a case could be made that liberals don't always choose the right rhetoric, preferring to deal with ideas. As for investigations of torture and denial of habeas corpus and other alleged infringements of civil liberties, these are too important to be left to public whim. If it seems 'unpatriotic' to discuss and criticize such matters, then so be it. Nobody said it would be easy to keep our Constitution, nor that it would always be popular. The Founding Fathers were probably ahead of the general public in terms of their wisdom, e.g. in keeping God out of the Constitution. Nevertheless, they knew how to lead and bring the public along.
I'm not so sure that the old-time Democrats (or Republicans) were as overtly pious as Pinkerton claims, as I have read that the constant spouting of 'God' in political discourse is a recent phenomenon stirred up by the Republicans for partisan advantage. D-Day was a rather special event, and Kennedy reportedly ended his Cuban Missile Crisis speech with a simple 'Good night'. The word 'God' was not introduced into the pledge of allegiance until the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s. At any rate, the Constitution was clearly conceived and written without appeal to God, and it must be kept that way. Some backbone is necessary on this fundamental issue, which is why the chief danger from the GOP may be the judges they appoint. Scalia thinks the Constitution comes from God.
As for social issues, the liberals may go too far in some cases, such as gay marriage. Perhaps they could have avoided a lot of flack by settling for civil unions. Partial-birth abortion was a gross distortion (i.e. lie) on the part of conservatives, since it was only ever intended when the life of the mother was at stake. Flag burning is a petty issue and not essential to freedom of speech, in my opinion. I don't care if they ban it, or don't, but it's not worth losing elections over. Racial quotas cause much irritation, and I think they have been overdone; they seem intrinsically unfair, except in the most extreme cases of a historical wrong that must be redressed. Pinkerton also warns us that the ACLU has a pent-up agenda which is the opposite of what Reagan Democrats want, and, due to thitseir greater fluency, the ACLU may prevail, to the detriment of the Democratic party.
Pinkerton's message stirs up the following thought in my mind: Americans who are more educated and culturally sophisticated also tend to be more socially liberal. That education may be acquired without a fancy degree, as with Mark Twain. This has been a characteristic trend throughout human history and can be seen in the red-blue pattern of America today. Greater education leads to more open-mindedness and acceptance of difference. However, the relative sophisticates are prone to treating their reactionary brothers with derision, thus igniting the ugliness of identity politics, which the Republicans gleefully exploit. Kerry was a terrible choice for presidential candidate, because of his seeming arrogance and aloofness. On the other hand, Clinton drove the GOP crazy with his common touch, which enabled him to steal their game.
Please note that when I speak of the open-mindedness fostered by an educated mind, I am thinking of enlightened gentlemen like Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. The vulgarity and offensiveness of so much of popular culture today is an unfortunate by-product of freedom, which again the Republicans are pleased to exploit. The word 'liberal' has come to stand for the latter, in the minds of many Americans. This is most unfortunate, and the true liberals do share some blame, for not being more criticial of such excesses.
In general, politics cannot be understood purely in terms of economics and foreign policy. The power of identity must not be underestimated, and this overlaps with another powerful force that rationalists barely comprehend, namely, religion. I would prefer to leave all religion out of politics, but perhaps some corners need to be cut.
Ed Kilgore: Review of What is the Matter with Kansas?'
Back to The Democrats
Pelosi's Plan
(09 Nov 06): Here is a pamphlet from the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, on the Democratic plan for America. It has been criticized as superficial, as is most such political literature, but let's take a look, starting with defense. The summary page has this paragraph:Reclaim American leadership with a tough, smart plan to transform failed Bush Administration policies in Iraq, the Middle East and around the world. Require the Iraqis to take responsibility for their country and begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006. Double the size of Special Forces to destroy Osama Bin Laden and terrorist networks like al Qaeda. Rebuild a state-of-the-art military capable of projecting power wherever necessary. Implement the bipartisan 9/11 Commission proposal to secure America's borders and ports and screen 100% of containers. Fully man, train, and equip our National Guard and our police, fire fighters and other first responders. Honor our commitments to our veterans.
Actually, this isn't too bad; there is some serious detail. It is enough to say at this point that we should start to gradually withdraw from Iraq and turn the country over to its people. She even specifies this year as the time to begin. One wouldn't want to be more specific about 'timetables' at this point, not without first engaging in the bipartisan debate that the Republicans have been so zealous to suppress. She is dead right that we need to concentrate more on protecting the homeland than reforming the world, and her emphasis on inspecting 100% of cargo containers is something I have said several times and is no doubt the first line of defense against a terrorist nuke. The suggestion to fully the 9/11 Commission proposal, neglected due to the burden of Iraq, is a detailed and bipartisan solution that makes eminent sense. This single paragraph is quite a bit better than boilerplate, so let's stop being so cynical.
Rather than examine every issue, let's just look further at healthcare:
Fix the Medicare prescription drug benefit by putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices and ending wasteful giveaways to drug companies and HMOs. Promote stem cell research that offers real hope to millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.
Again, not too bad. The failure of the Republican Congress to allow negotiation of drug prices in the recent Prescription Medical bill was nothing short of bald-faced corruption, especially egregious in a time of exploding deficits. The stem-cell ban was a national embarrassment, indicative of a medieval religious mentality in some circles. It would be nice if she could raise the issue of some form of single-payer healthcare, as exists in almost all developed nations. France, England and Canada pay half of what we do for medicine yet have lower mortality rates. Healthcare is an economic issue with many peculiarities which make some degree of government intervention necessary, as with highway, and a single-payer system is not really 'socialism' if done right. However, due to skillful brainwashing of the American public, it is probably too dangerous to discuss this right off the bat, so Pelosi can be forgiven for being prudent.
All in all, a promising start, and better than one might have expected. The Democrats must now tread carefully and guard against rhetoric and disinformation, not to mention the excesses of some of their own. If people like Pelosi and Schumer can keep a grip on things, they stand a good chance of success. Poll after poll shows that the American public is behind them on most issues, but the word games and other dirty tricks of politics are maddening and can derail the best plans and intentions.
Back to The Democrats
Barack Obama
(22 Nov 06): I haven't been paying attention to all the fuss over Barack Obama, the junior Democratic Senator from Illinois, who has been hailed as a possible candidate for president, as early as 2008. This claim seemed so ridiculous to me that I ignored the whole story as journalistic hype. However, there is something about Obama that appeals to many people, so I will begin to pay attention. He has an interesting story, growing up in Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii and other such exotic places. His father is a Harvard-trained economist from Kenya, and his white Mother is from Kansas. A uniter, not a divider! He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He certainly projects a pleasant personality. Here is what Michael Tomasky says about him in the New York Review of Books:
THE PHENOMENON
Michael Tomasky, NYRB, 30 Nov 06
What is at the heart of his appeal? His name, memorable and euphonious, helps. So do his looks — his eyes and face project ease and warmth and sincerity; nothing about them is hard or inscrutable. He comes across, to both African-Americans and whites, as someone who simultaneously epitomizes black advancement and transcends race. But the main reason for his success surely has to do with the central theme of his rhetoric. In the convention speech, as in all his major speeches, Obama aimed far higher than the usual uninspiring Democratic laundry list of health care, good jobs, devotion to Roe v. Wade, and the rest. His subject is our shared civic culture, which he sees as under threat — mostly from the right but also from the left. He believes our red-versus-blue politics of today is positively toxic, and he thinks that our only hope is to rise above it. The theme of The Audacity of Hope is not how the Democrats can win more elections, or how a certain liberal policy goal can be attained; it is, he writes in the book's early pages, 'how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life'. He wants a political culture that is, to be sure, liberal in its outlook but does the difficult work of trying to speak to people who don't share liberalism's assumptions (without being accommodationist to conservatives in power; Obama is no Joe Lieberman).
Well, if he thinks he is the man to undo the cynical propaganda of the Rove years, let's give him a shot. Not necessarily in the White House, though I would vote for him over John McCain, who clearly will not get us out of Iraq. I also agree with his basic premise that conservatives often say truthful things and should be listened to with respect. A real liberal leans in a left-of-center direction without embracing a fanatical agenda; nor is he blind to the many faults displayed by the left, who are as human as anybody else.
Obama has also shown the good judgment not to hog the limelight of celebrity and make his senior colleagues feel resentful. (Never underestimate the ego of a senator!) This shows good personal skills that are invaluable for a successful politican and leader. He was a good sport when McCain slapped him down after he stuck his neck out over some campaign reform legislation. Unlike Pelosi, he doesn't seem to carry grudges. That is very important; we can't have prima donnas screwing our lives up over personal pique.
Kathleen Parker: A World Gone Barack
George Will: This is the Time for Obama
Froma Harrop: Obama Scores as Exotic Who Says Nothing
Barack Obama: Escalation Is Not The Answer
OBAMA SETS LOFTY GOALS
Dan Balz, WP, 11 Feb 07
'I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.'[. . .]
'What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.'
[. . .]
'Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more — and it is time for our generation to answer that call.'
[. . .]
'It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war', he said Saturday. 'That's why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.'
COMMENT (11 Feb 07): Most of this sounds like empty rhetoric. What specifics does he advocate to get US troops out of Iraq? It's too bad Dan Balz didn't mention the details. Or are there any? A look at his campaign website reveals that:
Senator Obama introduced legislation in January 2007 to offer a responsible alternative to President Bush's failed escalation policy. The legislation commences redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007 with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008 — a date consistent with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's expectations.
Perhaps I could quibble that he didn't stand up to Bush's recent 'surge', as far as I can remember (but I am having trouble finding online documentation to back me up). I guess Obama is as antiwar as one can reasonably be in the US Senate. Some may think he is the new McGovern, who will be rejected by a basically aggressive American public. At the present time, I agree with those who say he is sufficiently Kennedyesque to capture the hearts of a winning majority. I am interested. And despite my repeated criticism of Islam, I don't care that his middle name is Hussein. I am convinced by my impressions that he is a real liberal. I just hope he is more than empty rhetoric. Anyway, Obama and Edwards seem way more sincere than Hillary Clinton. I hope one of those two makes it. Let us stay tuned.
UPDATE (15 Feb 07): Then again, maybe I'm naive.
Froma Harrop: Obama Scores as Exotic Who Says Nothing
Lynn Sweet: Obama, Clinton vie for health care edge
Dan Balz: Obama Sets Lofty Goals
Robert Spencer: Barack Obama and Islamic apostasy
Matt Taibbi: Obama Is the Best BS Artist Since Bill Clinton
Niall Ferguson: Obama's muddled foreign policy
Tucker Carlson: Obama's faith is 'suddenly conspicuous'
Ed Lasky: Obama Speaks Before AIPAC
Justin Raimondo: Obama, the Lobby, and the next war
Walter Shapiro: Barack Obama's quiet rebellion
Karen Tumulty: Obama's Inconvenient Truths
Jeff Taylor: The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama
Charles Krauthammer: Strike Two for Obama
David Corn: Obama Blunder or Not?
Pat Buchanan: Hillary's Late Hit
Alan Dowd: Barack Obama: Ignoring Genocide
Obama's JFK Strategy: Bay of Pigs Next?
Barack Obama: The War We Need To Win
David Corn: An Obama Doctrine?
Obama: No nukes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan
Hillary to Obama: Be careful with nuke talk
Justin Raimondo: Obama As The New Kennedy
Pat Buchanan: Onward — Into Waziristan!
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The First Casualty of Obama is Obama
Obama clarifies his message on Iraq
Back to The Democrats
Chris Dodd (26 Dec 06): While leading Democrats Joe Biden and Harry Reid express support for a surge in troops, Sen. Christopher Dodd puts his foot down and says no. True, Biden says he would only support the surge if the Iraqis could give him 'some reason ... to believe that they have a political solution', but that is unlikely until we start withdrawing the troops to put pressure on them. Moreover, it leaves open the door for all kinds of games, on the part of both the Iraqis and the Bush administration, as does Reid's seemingly naive support for a surge that is 'short', which is all too reminiscent of the 'light at the end of the tunnel' from Vietnam days. Only the Iraqis can decide their future, and they might as well do it now. So that is why I favor Dodd's no-nonsense boldness on the issue. Further, he is, to the best of my knowledge, a straight arrow with none of the disturbing equivocating qualities of a Hillary or a Kerry. He is articulate and has a strong and manly personality suitable for the presidency, and he is very experienced in all areas. He is no peacenik and certainly would defend the nation in ways that make sense. At the present time, he seems by far the best Democratic presidential possibility for 2008. That he may have a name-recognition problem just shows how derelict is the American public. He could easily win if only the public knew him better. In terms of his visceral media impression, he would be somewhat like a McCain whose brains were still intact, but he would be a lot more liberal, e.g. on healthcare, which is a good thing and something most Americans thirst for, contrary to the conservative propaganda you may have heard.
Margaret Carlson: Connecticut's Dodd Is the Ideal Un-Hillary
Bob Geiger: Dodd on withdrawing troops and presidency
Yahoo News: Dodd to enter 2008 presidential race
WP: Dodd Declares 'A08 Presidential Candidacy
George Will: White-Haired Guy Gets Mad
Back to The Democrats
Hillary Clinton (13 Jan 07): The following article reviews whe