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Michael Steele does the Unforgiveable

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Poor Michael Steele.

Throughout his tenure as RNC Chair he has earned a reputation for saying things that are both untrue AND politically embarrassing for the Republicans. That combination has made his tenure uncertain, since while Republicans have no problem with spreading untruths, they prefer to make political capital from them.

How ironic then, that Steele may have self administered the coup de grace by delivering himself of a statement that was mostly true, yet even more politically embarrassing for that very reason.

Steele came here to our little section of Groton (I was not invited, for reasons I can’t fathom) and made two points. The first was that the Afghanistan conflict was a “war of Obama’s choosing” and the second was to the effect that the war was unwinnable, something, he said, any student of history should realize.

The members of his party are calling for his head, not so much for the first statement, which is arguably inaccurate, but for the second, which is absolutely true.

As a matter of historical fact Obama did not start the conflict in Afghanistan. But he did choose to prove his tough guy credentials during his presidential campaign by declaring that it was, in effect, the “good war” and that he would win it, whatever that means in context, if elected. It was one of the two or three promises he made that I devoutly hoped he would discard once elected, but along with his other sop to the ignorant, support for off shore drilling, he has kept that promise, or tried to do so, to his and our detriment.

That’s the assertion for which Steele is taking heat from the press, because as a matter of concrete fact, he is wrong. In a broader sense, he’s right.

But, as I said, it is his claim that the war cannot be won that most riles his fellow Republicans. The proper formulation, according to them, is that the war can be won, but not by Obama, thereby implying that we must remain in that god forsaken hell hole, pouring borrowed money into a losing effort (no problem with non-stimulative deficit spending for this worthy cause), until at least 2013, when they fantasize Obama will be replaced by a Republican, who will then proceed to “win”. For the sin of speaking truth on this point, Steele may well lose his job.

So, let us pause for a moment of silence for poor Michael Steele, a career of lying destroyed by a single moment of truth.

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Friday Night Fourth of July Music-And More!

Friday, July 2, 2010

This goes up early, since we have company coming.

This being the Fourth of July Weekend, it’s only appropriate that we feature our National Anthem, in this case memorably performed by Marvin Gaye:

Now, if you think Marvin drew that out a bit, he can’t hold a candle to the late Bleeding Gums Murphy, who performed the song on the Simpsons:

I understand that Bleeding Gums actually had an edge on Marvin in terms of drawing out the song, since he had access to the missing verses discussed here:


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Andrew Sullivan will not give up

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

When the story first surfaced I was intrigued by the Sarah Palin Trig story. As you may recall, there was some speculation that the baby was not hers, given the disappearance of her daughter from public view in the months before the birth, and the bizarre story of the baby’s delivery-which included a trek on Sarah’s part from Texas to Wasila to have the baby-after her water broke.

I am leery of buying into a conspiracy theory, which this whole thing resembles, but the fascinating part of the story is that the truth, at least as Sarah tells it, is so improbable that one must seek for alternate explanations. The problem is that there is no explanation that makes any sense, unless Sarah’s daughter gave birth one day and proceeded to get herself pregnant again within hours of her delivery.

Andrew Sullivan has been on this story since Palin was nominated, and he refuses to give up. On Monday he wrote an interesting post about why the issue matters, and it’s well worth reading. The real story, according to Sullivan, is not so much that Palin is obviously lying, but that the national press, to a man and woman, declared the story off limits from the start, despite the strong stench of something rotten at the heart of it all:

But in many ways, my real frustration here is not with Palin, who has behaved in ways that are rational for a gambler of such proportions. My frustration is with the media who have never questioned, let alone seriously investigated, the story, and who have actually gone further and vouched for its truthfulness and accuracy without any independent confirmation. I know why. It was because they wanted, as the WaPo ombudsman put it, to avoid any further damage to the mainstream media “among conservatives who believe it is not properly attuned to their ideology or activities.”

That’s why the Washington Post actually operated as an extension of the McCain campaign against the press in the last election, through the Republican sock-puppet, Howie Kurtz. So my issue here is of the same kind as my issue with how the MSM missed the Hastings scoop. They are simultaneously in bed with the powerful and afraid of the masses. So they end up in this ghastly middle.

…

But there has been no press scrutiny. In fact, there has been enormous pressure from the press not to investigate the story and to mock anyone who does so. No MSM interviewer of Palin has ever asked a single question about the bizarre stories that Palin has told about her political prop – not Oprah, not Couric, not Gibson, not anyone. Newsweek has reprinted minute details of Palin’s story as fact with no independent confirmation but Palin’s own words. No MSM newspaper has asked for or demanded easily available proof of the pregnancy and birth – except the Anchorage Daily News, after the election, which prompted Palin not to quietly offer proof to an editor keen to put the entire controversy to rest, but to explode in rage.

I won’t go over the “facts” that simply make no sense, Sullivan does a bit of that in his article, and you can easily find more detail in the many posts he’s written on the subject. Despite my own aversion to conspiracy theories, I can’t help believing there is something not quite right about this story. I just wish I could even imagine where the truth lies, since none of the alternate theories make any more sense, practically or biologically, than the utter nonsense we have been asked to believe by Palin. Maybe I’m just not very imaginative. In all events I agree with Sullivan that the press should have pushed on this and made life a little uncomfortable for Sarah.


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Turning down something for nothing

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

If you’ve been reading Paul Krugman’s column, and more especially, his blog, you know that he has been decrying the fact that the G-20 countries have embarked on an austerity drive, just when running up deficits is precisely what the doctor ordered. Here’s his latest.

It does seem counterintuitive to think that you can get yourself out of a depression by spending money like a drunken sailor. In a manner of speaking, we could repair our crumbling infrastructure, rescue our foundering states, get ourselves on the path to a sustainable energy future, and educate our kids, all while achieving the laudable goal of putting our friends and neighbors to work and pulling ourselves out of a depression, while assuring that the eventual deficit will be less than it would be if we practice austerity. It sounds too good to be true, but the strange thing is that it’s not.

And yet, as Krugman keeps reminding us, the so called experts who got us into this mess can’t bring themselves to do what’s required, not because the stimulus spending to date has caused problems, but because it might, at some distant point in the future, do so, despite evidence in the form of the nation of Ireland that austerity just causes more problems. Better to inflict pain (always on other people of course) than to do what economic theory suggests. (I should amend that to say that it is what the only flavor of economic theory that has been consistently right suggests).

One would be tempted to believe that this is solely caused by a puritanical streak in our lords and masters, but on closer reflection, that’s just not so. We’re told that deficits are evil, but it depends on what you do with the borrowed money, apparently. They think nothing of running up huge, and often off-book deficits, in order to flush money down the toilet to fight counter-productive wars. We get a negative return on that investment, and since so much of the money is spent elsewhere, very little in the way of stimulus. And it’s not like they are repelled at the thought of getting something for nothing. In fact, they insist that you can get something for nothing: increased governmental revenues and economic bliss through tax cuts, always disproportionately for the rich, no matter the circumstances, despite the fact that the experiment has been tried and it has failed repeatedly since Saint Ronald got his tax cut in 1981. We are still hearing demands for precisely that kind of tax cut, and if the Republicans take over, no doubt they’ll insist on passing one again, which Obama will sign in a magnanimous show of bi-partisanship.

So, one must ask, why are the folks, who all over the world, but particularly here, are not adverse to deficits, and not morally opposed to something for nothing, draw the line at letting the “small people” get something for nothing too? Maybe that question answers itself.


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Preserving access

Monday, June 28, 2010

On one thing, both the left and the right can agree. The press in this country is dysfunctional. One can argue about the overarching narrative that dysfunctionality protects, but not really very convincingly. To the extent reporters are stenographers, they reinforce corporate and governmental messages.

Huffington Post reports that Lara Logan has criticized Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings for breaking a confidentiality agreement that she presumes he must have made, though apparently the only evidence for that is the word of a person who refused to be identified. Logan is good reporter, who has the guts to put herself in harms way and actually inform herself on the issues about which she reports, but even she has bought into a destructive ethos.

She denies that real reporters, reporters like her, treat their sources with kid gloves in order to preserve access so that they can continue to write stories in which they treat their sources with kid gloves. But the access issue is real, as is the fact that too often the big media reporters identify with the people they cover.

At times, I’m discouraged by the fact that the internet is destroying conventional newspapers and, more hopefully, broadcast “journalism”, but perhaps the development has nothing but a bright side. Something will arise in its place, and there’s always the chance that journalism in the internet age will, at least for one brief shining moment, be committed by and to the type of reporter that existed before the current crop became fat and lazy transcriptionists. The framers, I truly believe, gave the press freedom because they wanted the press to be a burr in the side of politicians, not enablers or amplifiers. They did that knowing full well that they themselves would feel the heat of the press that they had protected. Witness the attacks endured by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. Of those four, only one, to his everlasting shame, ever took steps to shackle the press, and it’s hard to believe that Adams went to his grave believing he should in fact have signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Were the American press only the mainstream media not a single politician would ever even pine secretly for a return of the Sedition acts. In truth, the American people are not safe if the press is content simply to preserve its prerogatives.

You can watch the video of Logan, who is certainly not anywhere near the worst on this issue, at the link. It’s interesting that she speaks so highly of McChrystal, and bemoans the fate of this fine man. How many people in this country know that the man in charge in Afghanistan was complicit in the Pat Tillman cover-up, a fact he has admitted. Not just complicit, really, but the man most responsible. Logan surely knows, but it doesn’t seem to occur to her that perhaps that fact tells us something about the man. In any event, it’s a fact that should have been more widely known, something the insider press is much too unlikely to assure. After all, you can’t keep reminding the public of an uncomfortable fact about a man, if you are trying to preserve access to him or his flunkies. Rolling Stone did us a favor. If they can take down Petreaus, (who, unbelievably, is dubbed a “liberal favorite” by Howard Kurtz, the host of the show) they will really do the country a favor. Maybe if Obama runs out of generals he’ll get out of Afghanistan.

Prologue:

After I wrote this, but before I posted it, I watched last Wednesday’s Daily Show, which I hadn’t seen last week. Here’s Jon Stewart, who convincingly demonstrates that access is all that’s on their minds. By the way, if you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching for the Fox and Friends takedown near the end.


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Yet another suspect conviction

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Boston Globe casts doubt on an arson conviction of a man who has now been in prison since the mid 80s. It’s a familiar story-the primary evidence against him was a confession obtained after hours of police questioning. The details of the confession were are variance with the physical evidence at the scene, but who’s going to sweat the details when you have a confession?

We will never know what led up to his decision to put pen to paper. Is the interpreter’s (the convicted man was Hispanic) story true:

The translator who assisted in the police interrogation has made a dramatic reversal of the account he gave at trial. In a sworn affidavit provided to Rosario’s current attorneys, he says Rosario was delusional during the questioning and did not understand what he was signing.

It is a continuing mystery. Why do we allow a confession into evidence if the police do not also produce a complete videotape of the interrogation? It’s not like the technology is expensive or difficult to operate. If the police can’t handle it, they can hire high school kids, who could use the extra money.

Of course it’s not really a mystery at all. The police don’t want to do it, because it would deprive them of the ability to get quick and easy confessions, actual guilt or innocence be damned. The judges don’t want to require them to do it, and ditto with the state legislatures of the various states. Of course the police will maintain there is absolutely nothing untoward going on in the interrogations, and, absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the courts will profess to believe them.

In this case, at least according to the Globe, there was probably no crime at all. The fire in question was probably accidental. But the man convicted by his own confession has now been in prison more than half his life, and the chances are, at best, about even that he will get the new trial he is requesting.

In any sane world we would have an exclusionary rule: no video, no evidence.


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Whitnum still at it

Friday, June 25, 2010

I just got a robocall from Lee Whitnum, to the effect that there is Good News! There is going to be a hearing on her discrepancy charges. I confess, I instinctively did what I always do with robocalls, regardless of the source. In this case I shouldn’t have hung up, as I would be interested to know how she’s bending the truth this time.

On a related note, why doesn’t the legislature ban robocalls. Their constituents would bless them, and it would be to their collective political advantage. One of life’s mysteries.


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Friday Night Music and a bit of mindless blather

Friday, June 25, 2010

I listened to this song a lot back in the day. At least, I distinctly recall the song starting, but by the time it ended – well, all I can say is that my memory is fuzzy. I can’t imagine why.

Roundabout by Yes.

On a more political note, I have, for the most part, spared the world my rants this week because the personal and actual political side of my life has intruded. Wednesday I went to Hartford to act as a moot court judge at UConn. It is always fun to play judge and take out my frustrations on the helpless law students. It doesn’t even matter that the problems always involve criminal law, about which I know next to nothing. They don’t know that, and even if they did, they’d still have to pretend to respect me.

Last night, we had a town committee meeting. Ned Lamont dropped by after his Norwich headquarters opening, most of the Mary Glassman family (sans Mary) in tow. It’s encouraging that both Ned and Dan Malloy seem to recognize that they should stick to the high road in this campaign. I know there’s been a bit of sniping, but so far nothing that is going to cause any lasting damage no matter who wins. Along with his usual talking points, Ned made the point that we need to come together after the primary, no matter who wins, and he went out of his way to note that Malloy stuck to the issues during their recent debate.

We did break with our usual practice and endorsed Kevin Lembo in the primary. We don’t normally endorse a contested election, but apparently Jarjura has blown off Eastern Connecticut, so we didn’t see any reason not to return the favor.


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Not really very smart

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Linda McMahon is accusing Rob Simmons of waging a secret primary campaign against her.

There’s actually a kernel of truth to what she’s saying, but whining about it is a particularly stupid move on her part. She’s exacerbating her problems with Republicans and making herself look pretty petty to everyone else.

She has a lot of money, but as crunch time approaches, it’s looking more and more like she doesn’t have the skills.


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Time for attack mode

Monday, June 21, 2010

Steven Benen points out here that Obama took what is, for Obama, direct aim at the Republican strategy of obstruction during his weekly address to the nation. That would be the weekly address that none but hard core political junkies ever watch.

These types of “attacks” to the extent they can be dignified with the name, will never work, because Obama prefers to talk in abstractions, without assigning any blame or obloquy to any real life person.

Obama should take a page from FDR’s book. FDR went after his enemies by name, classically in his attacks on Martin, Barton and Fish. Obama has been a target since he was inaugurated, a target made all the more useful to Republicans because the (usually) unspoken subtext of race is involved. It’s time to turn the table. You have to put a face on the enemy.

Obama has to take aim at the Republicans for obstructing progress, and he has to name names. Make Mitch McConnell and a few of the other obstructionists prime targets. I’m sure his speechwriters can come up with an alliterative phrase or two. Of course they’ll scream that he’s not being nice, or bi-partisan, but if there was ever a time for either of those qualities, that time has long since passed. You can’t rail against the system; that doesn’t work. You have to blame somebody. It’s best, by the way, if you pick someone, like McConnell, who is used to working pretty much in the shadows and won’t be comfortable if you turn the light brightly on him. Nationwide it would be great if the Democrats would run spots exposing the people the Republicans will be putting in charge of Congressional committees, should they take control. Barton is exhibit one, but he’s by no means the only crazy waiting in the wings. Democrats have the advantage, if they would only use it, of being able to “attack” by merely quoting their opponents. Republicans will call even that negative politics, but who cares?


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