Mark Kleiman Says that Peggy Noonan Is Cured!

He writes:

The Reality-Based Community: Cured!: Peggy Noonan, reflecting on why just about everyone these days loathes and despises George W. Bush:

I'm not referring to what used to be called Bush Derangement Syndrome. That phrase suggested that to passionately dislike the president was to be somewhat unhinged. No one thinks that anymore.

I'm glad to hear it. (Quick! Someone tell Krauthammer and Don Surber and their fan Glenn Reynolds.) It feels good to be sane again.

But I have a question for Noonan and the other folks who have finally stopped drinking the Kool-Aid: When did I stop being crazy? When did it become consistent with sanity to notice that we are ruled by combination of fool, fanatic, bully, and weakling? Or is it barely possible that what "no one thinks anymore" was never the case, and that the derangement was on the other side?

If anyone on the Right, including Noonan, challenged the rhetorical tactic of questioning the mental health of Bush's critics, I must have missed it. Consider that the next time Wingnutistan picks itself a target.

I'm not expecting an apology. But would just a little bit of self-reflection, prompting just a little bit of humility, be too much to ask? I suppose it would.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Mark Kleiman Is Shrill Because Bush Thinks His Worshippers Are Idiots

Steve Benen writes:

Talking Points Memo | 20/20 Hindsight: The president sat down on Friday with a small group of sympathetic conservative journalists -- Bush is generally at his most comfortable around those who already convinced how right he is -- and offered some insights into his perspective on Iraq. "[L]ast fall, if I had been part of this polling, if they had called upstairs and said, do you approve of Iraq I would have been on the 66 percent who said, 'No I don't approve.' That's why I made the decision I made. To get in a position where I would be able to say 'Yes, I approve.'"

Mark Kleiman translated the remarks for the rest of us.

"I'm not nearly as stupid as my supporters. Back when I was telling the world that things in Iraq were going well, and you folks were helping me by calling anyone who said otherwise a traitor, I knew we were all lying."

It was an odd thing for Bush to concede, wasn't it? Last fall, the White House was insisting, aggressively, that critics of the war were confused and misguided. To disapprove of the war, the president and his aides said, was to support a dangerous agenda that would necessarily undermine national security.

Except now the president is prepared to argue that he was with the unsatisfied majority. Here's a follow-up: what does that say about Bush's opinion of the one-third of Americans who bought into the White House line and told pollsters that they approved of how the war was going?

Joshuas Micah Marshall: Impeach George W. Bush Now--for Frances Townsend If Nothing Else

Joshua Micah Marshall is shrill:

Talking Points Memo | Townsend's Dodge: Townsend's answer is that of course al Qaeda will use our attacks on them for propaganda purposes to further grow their movement. But it's silly to argue that we should never attack our enemies just because they'll try to use our attacks against us in this way. It's not a zero sum game, she argues.

Now, Henry didn't have the perfect follow-up ready for this response. But honestly it's not always easy to parry this sort of bamboozlement perfectly in real time. (Believe me, it's not that easy.) But the key point is that Townsend dodges the essential issue. This would be a decent response if people were making it as an argument against our invasion of Afghanistan, because that was after all al Qaeda's base of operation. We were attacking them where they were. So it would be silly or at least a weak argument to say we shouldn't have attacked Afghanistan just because al Qaeda would use the attack as a propaganda tool against us. As Townsend's logic suggests, sure they might use it for their media campaign. But that's far outweighed by the benefit of destroying their sanctuary.

But that's the heart of the issue, the one Townsend dodges and which Henry unfortunately didn't press. Iraq wasn't a sanctuary or recruiting or training ground for al Qaeda before we invaded. This has now been as definitively established as proving a negative ever can be. So, contra Townsend, it really is a zero sum game for us since we did nothing to hurt al Qaeda by invading Iraq -- they weren't there and had no prospect of being there. But we did help them almost immeasurably by giving the whole organization a new lease on life for recruitment, fundraising and more. And the rising unpopularity of the United States in the Muslim world because of the invasion has undoubtedly played a large role in preventing Pervez Musharraf from keeping al Qaeda from reestablishing itself in Pakistan.

Townsend sort of begs off this last point by saying that if al Qaeda didn't set up in one country it would set up in other. If not Iraq, then Somalia and if not Somalia then in the Magreb or Southeast Asia or wherever. But what sort of sad sack defeatism is that? If that's the case why are we spending so much time trying to stop them from getting set up in Iraq?

The whole point is stupid.

The simple fact is that the full picture is now clear. The White House was repeatedly warned in advance that attacking Iraq would strengthen al Qaeda. We did and it did. That's where we are now. The White House has no excuse and no answer.

Matthew Yglesias Thinks Little of Anne Applebaum and David Brooks

Young Yglesias thinks little of Anne Applebaum:

Matthew Yglesias: Hypocrites Everywhere: Anne Applebaum:

No troops? Though deeply appealing to the "we told you so" crowd, this plan is clothed in the greatest degree of hypocrisy. How many of the people who clamor for intervention in Darfur will also be clamoring to rush back into Iraq when full-scale ethnic cleansing starts taking place? How many will take responsibility for the victims of genocide? I'm not saying there will be such a catastrophe, but there could be: Mass ethnic murders have certainly been carried out in Iraq before.

This line of argument has been in vogue for some time now, but it seems singularly nonsensical. For one thing, I think there are real questions about the math -- how many people arguing for withdrawal for Iraq really are advocates of large-scale insertion of US ground forces to Darfur? Not me! Numbers aside, I think it's fairly obvious that if the US does withdraw from Iraq and full-scale ethnic cleansing does result (something Applebaum concedes is by no means certain) that very few withdrawal advocates are going to be clamoring for intervention. Here, I guess, is where the hypocrisy comes into play.

But it's not actually hypocritical to favor interventions to prevent mass slaughter where you think such interventions will be effective, but not otherwise. The idea that consistency's sake requires one to either be a pacificist or else to support whatever military adventure happens to be fashionable in the Washington Post opinion pages at the moment is daft.

And he thinks less of David Brooks:

Matthew Yglesias: Conservatives and the Government: His conclusion is odd, but today's David Brooks column is pregnant with things to blog about. For example:

Conservatives are supposed to distrust government, but Bush clearly loves the presidency. Or to be more precise, he loves leadership. He’s convinced leaders have the power to change societies. Even in a place as chaotic as Iraq, good leadership makes all the difference.

Now I suppose there must be some conservatives for whom this "are supposed to distrust government" dictum applies, but for the past fifty or so years that's clearly not the case. The mainstream conservative belief is that the government needs to be given dramatically greater scope to gather information and to deploy force -- including deadly force -- and threats thereof. This isn't an innovation of the Torture and Arbitrary Detention administration, it's a longstanding pattern. Conservatives didn't like the Warren Court's criminal justice jurisprudence, they didn't like the Church Commission's inquiries into the CIA, they chafe at contemporary military reticence about civilian casualties, etc.

There are exceptions to this (as there are exceptions to everything), but the dominant view in post-war American conservatism has been of almost boundless faith in violence and in large government institutions like the military, the prison system, etc.

This is what Jim Henley calls Heinlein-Goldwater Fusionism: "limited" government plus militarism.

Ezra Klein: What Does Larry Kudlow Know?

Larry Kudlow drives Ezra Klein into shrillness:

Ezra Klein: What Does Kudlow Know?: What Does Kudlow Know?: "Kudlow isn't a specialist in something else who's just freelancing in economic ignorance on the National Review blogs," writes Matt. "This is supposed to be his area of specialization. But he doesn't know anything about it."

I've done a fair amount of television at this point, and argued, in general, with a fair number of conservatives, and I have literally never encountered an interlocutor who seemed as utterly ignorant of his subject as when I went up against Kudlow. The guy may not be a health care specialist, but he professes to be a business economist, and anyone who's read The Wall Street Journal over the past decade should have at least a passing familiarity with the subject, and any economist should be able to quickly understand the various types of market failure bedeviling the system. But so far as I could tell, he knew, literally, nothing. That's not a condition of ideology. Plenty of conservatives can argue health care. This was a condition of truly spectacular ignorance. Spectacular not because he didn't know, but because he thought a few free market aphorisms were a sufficient substitute for actually knowing. And yet he's seen as an expert. It's bizarre.

Unqualified Offerings Is Shrill! Jim Henley on Anne Applebaum

Shut the Washington Post print edition down today. That's all I'm sayin':

Anne Applebaum Looks Also Into You § Unqualified Offerings: Anne Applebaum Looks Also Into You: This is the stupidest column anyone has ever written for any venue. I sure am glad Anne Applebaum returned to Washington in time to let us all know that, like Madeleine Albright’s America, she sees farther than others. I know just where “a dose of humility” is missing: Applebaum’s column.

There’s an implication lurking underneath the self-regard - that since all the Iraq options have downsides, what we happened to be doing at the exact moment Anne Applebaum started paying attention again is the sensible course.

Needless to say, there’s no argument in favor of, to coin a phrase, staying the course.

Meanwhile, the funny part . . .

No troops? Though deeply appealing to the “we told you so” crowd, this plan is clothed in the greatest degree of hypocrisy. How many of the people who clamor for intervention in Darfur will also be clamoring to rush back into Iraq when full-scale ethnic cleansing starts taking place?

Um, who cares? Look, you don’t even need to be as hard as I am on enthusiasts for intervention in Darfur to notice that despite their enthusiasm we still don’t have troops in Darfur. That suggests to me that Darfur hawks do not hold the whip hand in American politics. I think we could make an Iraq withdrawal stick if they’re the only issue. But what Applebaum is really up to here is the old “Prove your compassion . . . by hurting other people!” dodge. I’ve long since built up an immunity.

Glenn Greenwald on the Sewer that Is John Harris's and Michael Allen's The Politico

Glenn Greenwald is shrill:

Glenn Greenwald - Salon: The Politico sewer: The Politico today is prominently touting on its front page another vapid, petty, and inane "news story" -- the type of story which has, in just a few short months, become its hallmark:

Romney spent $300 on makeup 'consulting'

What kinds of things do you think of when you hear "communications consulting"?

Speechwriting? Message strategy?

Well, "communications consulting" is how presidential candidate Mitt Romney recorded $300 in payments to a California company that describes itself as "a mobile beauty team for hair, makeup and men's grooming and spa services."

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the payments -- actually two separate $150 charges -- were for makeup, though he said the former Massachusetts governor had only one session with Hidden Beauty of West Hills, Calif.

Impressively, they followed up their Romney scoop with a hard-hitting, probing interview that marks the outer limits of journalism of which their "reporters" are capable: But Stacy Andrews, who made up Romney for Hidden Beauty, said he barely needs makeup.

"He's already tan," she said. "We basically put a drop of foundation on him . . . and we powdered him a little bit."

This is not some throw-away blog item, but one of The Politico's featured front page news stories today.

One of the reasons why vapid petty-personality "journalism" of this sort has so disadvantaged liberals and so advantaged right-wing fanatics is because the latter are not only willing, but droolingly eager, to exploit these sorts of themes, while liberals in general are highly reluctant, almost embarrassed, to do so. Thus, even after months of John Edwards being mauled in every media venue as a result of the Pulitzer-worthy haircut "scoop" by The Politico's Ben Smith, these are representative reactions by liberals to the Romney "story":

Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly:

MAKE IT STOP....From the front page of The Politico on Monday: . . . Seriously. Can we just stop this stuff? Does anyone really think that the problem with presidential campaign coverage is that it isn't vapid and half-witted enough already? Jeebus.

Melissa McEwan, Shakespeare's Sister:

OMG -- Who GIVES a Shit?!

I swear to the fates, if there's ever a museum of internet journalism, celebrating the best the web has to offer, The Politico would best be represented by a turd in the unfinished basement bathroom.

The only remotely non-critical reference I can find to the Romney story is this seven-word statement from Oliver Willis, which seems more satirical than anything else.

The real issue here -- aside from the complete lack of journalistic standards at the Politico, which is old news by now -- is whether this trashy, worthless item will be given anywhere near the coverage and attention which the Politico's equally trashly, equally worthless Edwards item received. It goes without saying that the hordes of right-wing commentators who spewed one Edwards hair insult after the next will not do anything similar with Romney. Their utter lack of consistency is far too established to be worthy of commentary.

But it is worth recalling how intense and endless the coverage of the Edwards hair item was -- and continues to be -- in our establishment media. Ever since Ben Smith broke this story, we have been subjected to countless references -- one after the next -- not just by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but in The New York Times -- multiple, repetitive "news" articles for months, along with "news analysis" and substance-free Op-Eds. All of that is just from the NYT news and editorial pages alone (the Times' coverage of Edwards' haircut almost exceeds that of The Politico itself). It was also, needless to say, endlessly repeated by one television pundit after the next and other news outlets as well.

In fact, as Greg Sargent noted weeks ago, our broken, petty media's "coverage" of this "story" was so intense and endless that far more Americans were aware of it than they are of some of the most politically important facts:

Buried in the new Fox News poll is a startling number that doesn't reflect terribly well on the priorities of our political media:

From the new Fox poll of registered voters:

1. Do you happen to know which presidential candidate has been in the news recently for paying four hundred dollars for a haircut?

Edwards 44% Hillary 2% Obama 1% Other 1% Don't know 53%As Greg noted, a recent Harris poll had found that only 45% of Americans were aware that Saddam had no WMD's at the time we invaded Iraq. As Greg said: "the same number know about Edwards' haircut that knew the truth last year about Saddam and his phantom weapons."

And citing the poll numbers showing that Americans overwhelmingly believed even as late as September, 2003 that Saddam personally planned the 9/11 attacks, Greg observed:So nearly 20 percent more know about Edwards' haircut than believed Saddam wasn't behind 9/11 -- two years after the attacks and six whole months after the invasion.

Something's wrong here.

Yes, something is quite wrong here. But the establishment media will not voluntarily change its behavior. Why not? Because they do not think there is a problem at all. Quite the contrary. Let us turn to Newsweek's Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and hear again what he thinks about such matters: "the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general." Fantastic.

It isn't only that the press is petty and obsessed with worthless gossip at the expense of real reporting. It's also that their pettiness is so transparently one-sided. As MyDD's Jonathan Singer put it:

A whole lot of words have been spilled -- far too many, indeed -- over John Edwards' decision to spend $400 of campaign contributions on a haircut. But in the interest of balance, I suppose we should expect as much media attention to be poured on Mitt Romney's decision to spend nearly as much on a makeover this quarter. . . .

It has only been about three hours since The Politico ran with this story online, but to this point not a single other news service running its stories on Google news has run with the Romney makeover story, and the particular article quoted above has been scantly mentioned within the blogosphere thus far. This might change -- but I'm not betting on the right wing echochamber working too hard on bringing this story to the attention of the broader electorate.

There is a reason The Politico is referred to in some circles as "Drudgico" and/or "Drudge's little sister." But those terms are increasingly apt for our largest and most influential media outlets as well.

---

On a not entirely unrelated note, one of the panels I am on at Yearly Kos this year is entitled "Blogs and the MSM: from Clash to Civilization". The panel, to be moderated by The Nation's Ari Melber, also features Jill Filipovic of the Feministe blog and Mike Allen of The Politico, whose journalism I examined here.

---

UPDATE: James Joyner disputes what he says is my claim that "Liberals [are] Just Too Darn Nice to Play Politics." I don't actually think, and did not argue, that liberals are "nicer" or too elevated to engage in hard-core political warfare, including below-the-belt personality attacks, though there is, admittedly, an ambiguity in what I wrote that could account for that misreading.

When I said that conservatives are far more eager than liberals "to exploit these sorts of themes," I am referring to the gender-based personality attacks that have become a staple of right-wing campaigns and -- far more than the supposed "hypocrisy" from Edwards' poverty platform -- is what has made the Edwards hair story resonate. The standard right-wing attack on liberals generally, and on John Edwards specifically, is to attack them as being effeminate (in contrast to the swaggering, pseudo-tough guy GOP brush-clearing ranchers and military officers).

For some time now, it has been commonplace for Democratic candidates to be depicted as gender-confused freaks -- Al Gore, emasculated with earth colors at the hands of the controlling Naomi Wolf; John Kerry, the wife-dominated, French windsurfer; Hillary Clinton, the domineering, emasculating, pants-wearing dyke; and John Edwards, the pretty, womanly faggot obsessed with his hair. One can make a strong argument, as some have, that those personality-attack themes have played a far larger role in the outcome of the last two presidential election than any substantive issues, and liberals simply have nothing close to the potency of the right-wing filth machine in advancing these gender themes.

The muted, even critical reaction to the Romney story -- as compared to the still-ongoing feeding frenzy about Edwards' hair, not just among right-wing pundits but our establishment press -- demonstrates that point rather conclusively. Are there any right-wing commentators of any note who have ever objected to the "Edwards hair" theme -- which has endured for years -- as the worthless, petty, vindictive distraction that it is?

Daniel W. Drezner Is Shrill! He Writes a Letter to George W. Bush

Really shrill!

danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: Dear Mr. President: please leave Iran in limbo: Dear Mr. President: please leave Iran in limbo

Dear George,

I trust you and yours are doing well. I'm writing because Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger have this story in the Guardian that says you want to solve Iran by the time you leave office:

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.

"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.This story jibes with what I'm hearing about your mindset as well.

George, George, George.... haven't you learned to prioritize? Last I checked, Pakistan's tribal areas are falling apart, Al Qaeda seems resurgent, your homeland security chief has a bad gut feeling, and, oh yes, there's Iraq. Aren't there enough current threats to focus on without fretting about threats that could manifest themselves 5-10 years from now.

Speaking of Iraq, there's another reason I'd like you to kick the Iran can down the road. I was sent a screener of a new documentary, No End In Sight. Here's a preview in case it wasn't sent to you: The documentary consists almost entirely of observations from former administration officials and servicemen. What they have to say suggests that even if you are the decider, you and yours suck eggs at being the implementer.

The truth is, no matter how many times I game it in my head, I can't see a scenario where, by focusing your energies on Iran and adopting Cheney's perspective on what to do, you make the situation there even a smidgen better. And in almost all of them, you dramatically worsen the problem.

Please, I beg you, just stop worrying about Iran. Worry about other things instead.

Sincerely,

Dan Drezner

Fred Hiatt Drives Glenn Greenwald Shrill!

You would think that even Donald Graham would have cut an embarrassment like Fred Hiatt loose long ago:

Glenn Greenwald - Salon: Fred Hiatt defends the administration's mild, restrained secrecy: Senior Washington Bush spokesman Fred Hiatt -- who also works as the Editorial Page Editor of The Washington Post -- shatters conventional wisdom this morning by defending the Bush administration's mild, balanced, and restrained use of government secrecy. Government secrecy, you see, is a complex and serious issue -- we desperately need our leaders to act in secret, but they should try to balance that with a concern for civil liberties. And, decrees Hiatt, let us all be grateful that we have a Government that is so sensitive about this need for balance and is so fair and judicious in its use of secrecy privileges:

A PRESIDENT'S prerogative to protect national security secrets needs to be respected, but it should not unconditionally trump the rights of those harmed by the very programs the president means to shield from public view. Such is the tension in several cases involving Bush administration antiterrorism policies, including the use of "extraordinary rendition" to seize terror suspects and most recently the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. In defending against court challenges, the administration has invoked the state secrets privilege, which evolved from a series of cases dating to the 1950s and which allows it to hold back material that it claims if released would compromise national security.

. . . . The Bush administration appears thus far to have used the privilege sparingly, at about the same rate as predecessors, according to a forthcoming law review article by Professor Robert M. Chesney of Wake Forest University School of Law.

Because the law review article which Hiatt cites is "forthcoming," neither I nor, presumably, most other people have yet seen it. But what I do know is that virtually all other long-available evidence -- which Hiatt studiously ignores -- demonstrates exactly the opposite.

As but one example, Professors William Weaver and Robert Pallito of the University of Texas at El Paso, in the Spring, 2005 issue of The Political Science Quarterly, published a widely discussed and much-cited study (.pdf) documenting that the Bush administration's use of the "state secret privilege" is unprecedented in both quantity and scope...

The Washington Post Commits More Howlers in Moral Philosophy

It publishes Michael Gerson, who believes that the answer to "Why be good?" is "If you don't do what I say God commands, then he will smite you forever." But how do we know that what you say God commands is in fact good? We don't. In fact, lots of times what people like Michael Gerson say God commands is not good at all:

[God] said unto him, "Abraham:"

And he said, "Behold, here I am."

And he said, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

And Abraham said unto his young men, "Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you," And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, "My father:"

And he said, "Here am I, my son."

And he said, "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

And Abraham said, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering:" so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood...

Here's the mess the Post made on the floor:

Michael Gerson - What Atheists Can't Answer: Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.

Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma.... Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

The death of God has greater consequences than expanded golf time on Sunday mornings. And it is not simply religious fundamentalists who have recognized it. America's Founders embraced public neutrality on matters of religion, but they were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith. George Washington warned against the "supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." The Founders generally believed that the virtues necessary for self-government -- self-sacrifice, honesty, public spirit -- were strengthened by religious beliefs and institutions.

None of this amounts to proof of God's existence. But it clarifies a point of agreement -- which reveals an even deeper division. Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.

This form of "liberation" is like liberating a plant from the soil or a whale from the ocean. In this kind of freedom, something dies.

Why One Should Not Trust the New Republic

I think it was 1993 when the fact that an article appeared in or an author wrote for the New Republic became a signal that one should presume that the article was self-serving and misleading b---s---. The trend has continued.

Matthew Yglesias reports, and is shrill:

Matthew Yglesias: When conservative president George W. Bush, having promised to nominate conservative Supreme Court justices like Scalia and Thomas, selected life-long conservative John Roberts to be a Supreme Court justice, and this pick was met with universal acclaim among conservatives, sensible people espied a pattern here Roberts would be a conservative Supreme Court justice. Others, however, saw a more subtle pattern. An unsigned September 26, 2005 New Republic editorial argued:

If Roberts seemed reassuring, he did not seem dazzling. He appears to be a decent man with the soul of an attorney. He is a man of the establishment, smart but not quite wise, more suave than strident, and utterly without a trace of the radical temperament, which will be salutary in these volatile times. But who will President Bush nominate next? The conservative bench is not exactly riddled with Roberts-like reasonableness. So it is too soon for liberals to be disarmed. Confirm Roberts, and prepare for Owen.

Jonathan Chait, writing in the October 24, 2005 issue about Bush's betrayals of social conservatives argued:

Bush's betrayal of the social conservative cause did not begin with Miers. His previous high court appointment, John Roberts, ought to have been taken as such. Bush all but explicitly promised to nominate justices like Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia, but Roberts is not in that mold. He has not displayed a passion for overturning precedents that enrage the right, and he has disavowed the tendency, favored by conservatives like Thomas, to use the Court to smother liberal legislation.

In the September 19, 2005 issue of the magazine, legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen argued that:

The truth is that Roberts's nomination as chief justice was a peace offering from Bush to Democrats and a gift to principled liberal and conservative defenders of judicial restraint. Rather than listening to the siren song of ideological interest groups who are urging them to cast a symbolic but futile vote of opposition, Democrats should instead vote to confirm Roberts as chief justice with gratitude and relief.

At any rate, Roberts is on the bench now and, exactly as one would have expected, he's a party line vote for the Court's conservative wing. The new issue of The New Republic even has an unsigned editorial denouncing his ruling in the school desegregation case. And Jeffrey Rosen, of course, has a long article admitting he was totally wrong covering his ass:

Breyer's cautious hope that the Court might become less polarized in the future, combined with disappointment at the polarization of the present, seems like the right attitude. It is a far more productive model for liberals than self-pity or shock about the unsurprising fact that, now that Alito has replaced O'Connor, the Court has moved right. For example, Emily Bazelon of Slate has demanded that liberals and moderates who supported Roberts as a potential unifier (including me) recant. This is premature. Bush won the 2004 election, and the opportunity to replace O'Connor with Alito ensured that he would change the direction of the Court. Those of us who supported Roberts never denied his conservatism.

But, look, neither I nor Bazelon nor anyone else dredging this up are exhibiting "self-pity or shock." It's what we expected. Rosen now wants us to believe that he was making some kind of point about political realism ("The question was: Who among the candidates President Bush was plausibly inclined to appoint as chief justice would be most likely to avoid the radicalism of Scalia and Thomas and try to unify the Court?") but that's not what was going on. People were writing, in the face of the evidence, that Roberts marked a clear break with Scalia. And we're seeing that he unquestionably is a break in prose style but he makes the same rulings.

And, look, people make predictions that go wrong. After Howard Dean secured the endorsements of Al Gore, SEIU, and AFSCME I was quite certain he was going to win the Democratic presidential nomination. These things happen. But they should be admitted; that's how one learns.

Andrew Leonard is Shrill

 Andrew Leonard is puzzled by the survival of the stupid:

The Senate says "Om," Part 2, How the World Works - Salon.com: This afternoon, How the World Works will be your one-stop shop for regular updates on asinine Christian antics. A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the news that a Hindu prayer would kick off the U.S. Senate session on July 12 was not warmly received by some of the more troglodytic regions of the Web. Today, three self-styled Christian "patriots" physically attempted to disrupt the prayer, shouting, among other things, that "this was an abomination." … In combination with my earlier post today on the Christian jihadis in Boulder, Colo., this latest eruption of stupidity poses a puzzler for those of us who do believe in evolution. If Darwin was right, how does such religious idiocy survive? What is it fit for?

It's About Time

Joe Klein, after defending the use of term Al Queda to describe the enemy in Iraq, finally calls the administration on its deceptive use of the term:

The July Surprise - TIME: George W. Bush … demonstrated only an intermittent relationship with reality... Recently, in his desperation, starting with his speech at the Naval War College on June 28, he has been telling an outright lie, and he repeated it …: "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty."

That is not true. ... Bush's lie, which assumes a lack of knowledge on the part of the American people, was compounded by an outrageous bit of spin: "We just started [the surge]," the President said. General David Petraeus "got all the troops there a couple of weeks ago." In fact, Operation Fardh al-Qanoon, the military effort to secure Baghdad, has been going on since February.

We have had more than four years of a President who seems to have such a low opinion of the public that he can't bear to tell it the truth about a war gone sour.

Let's Just Shut Associated Press Down and Run with McClatchey...

Hilzoy is shrill:

Obsidian Wings: Through The Looking Glass: Matt is right: this AP article is just bizarre. Here's its main point:

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned. The conclusion suggests that the group that launched the most devastating terror attack on the United States has been able to rebuild despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it. (...)

Counterterrorism analysts produced the document, titled "Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West." The document pays special heed to the terror group's safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said.

Al-Qaida is "considerably operationally stronger than a year ago" and has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001," the official said, paraphrasing the report's conclusions. "They are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States."

Frankly, I'd be happiest if the AP didn't bother saying who, in their opinion, is likely to benefit politically from this state of affairs, and spent their time giving more details on the actual news. However, if they have to look into their secret crystal balls and tell us who profits from the rebuilding of al Qaeda, why say this?

The findings could bolster the president's hand at a moment when support on Capitol Hill for the war is eroding and the administration is struggling to defend its decision for a military buildup in Iraq. A progress report that the White House is releasing to Congress this week is expected to indicate scant progress on the political and military benchmarks set for Iraq.

Offhand, the idea that this administration has completely failed to cripple the organization that actually attacked us, in large part because of a combination of ineptitude (cough, Tora Bora, cough cough) and the clever decision to divert attention and resources from the fight against al Qaeda to the unrelated fight against Saddam Hussein, might strike an impartial observer as, well, a problem for Bush, not a source of strength. And the idea that it should strengthen his arguments for sticking with his unrelated war, which he has prosecuted every bit as ineptly as the fight against al Qaeda, might seem just a bit peculiar. What is this strengthened argument supposed to be? "I have completely screwed up, so you need to keep on supporting me"? "I have failed at everything I've tried so far, and with your help I can fail some more"? "Keep our armed forces tied down in Iraq so that al Qaeda can fully reconstitute itself"? "Total incompetence deserves your support"? Honestly, what?

Ladies and gentlemen: your so-called liberal media.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another Washington Post Should Have Fired David Ignatius Long Ago Edition)

If the Washington Post wants to survive five years, it should have pulled the plug on David Ignatius long ago. Every column he writes takes a flamethrower to the shreds that are all that is left of the Post's reputation. Just sayin'.

Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein say more.

Ezra Klein:

Ezra Klein: Return of the ISG: Do these people realize how they sound? Today, David Ignatius singlehandedly creates a safe, centrist ground that he can write all the dirty, hippy Democrats outside of, saying:

The Iraq debate in Washington this week is intense and angry. But as with the Palestinian conflict, the rhetorical fireworks mask the fact that there's an emerging consensus on what the final result should be. Leaders on both sides endorse the broad strategy proposed last December by the Iraq Study Group: a gradual withdrawal that shifts the American mission to training, force protection, counterterrorism and border security. That formula gets wide support from members of Congress and administration officials alike. As a senior administration official puts it, it's "where everybody agrees you want to go." The problem is getting there.

Oh lordy. You know who's not included in "everybody?" The "administration" that this "senior administration official" is part of. They, after all, not only rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, but took the reverse course and increased the deployment without any concurrent shift in strategy. But that doesn't stop Ignatius from saying:

There's broad agreement on the need to put Iraq policy on a sustainable path that will gradually withdraw American forces without producing the bloodbath that frightens people like Ryan Crocker in Baghdad. But Bush and the Democrats are running out of opportunities to make it happen.

Given that the whole of Ignatius's column focuses on the wisdom of the Iraq Study Group's recommendation, no, it's not Bush and the Democrats who are missing opportunities to draw down the Iraq War. It's just Bush.

But then, that's not the sort of thing a Very Serious columnist is supposed to say, is it?

Kevin Drum:

The Washington Monthly: STRAW MEN....David Ignatius today:

Getting into Iraq was President Bush's decision, and history will judge his administration harshly for its mistakes in the postwar occupation. But getting out of Iraq is now partly in the hands of the Democrats who control both houses of Congress. History will be equally unforgiving if their agitation for withdrawal results in a pell-mell retreat that causes lasting damage.

Can we please cut the crap? There are virtually no Democrats — and certainly none with any real influence — who are advocating a pell-mell retreat. But for some reason every columnist in the world seems to find it necessary to warn us against this nonexistent straw man. Why?

Those of us who want to leave want to do it in an orderly way. If the Pentagon says it will take 12 months, that's fine. 18 months? Also fine. It just needs to be real. Nobody wants to endanger any American lives by ignoring legitimate force protection issues, and I'm really, really tired of lazy writers who continually imply otherwise on no basis at all. Knock it off.

POSTSCRIPT: The rest of the column is about whether we should withdraw completely or whether we should leave a residual "training force" in Iraq. That's fine. It's a genuine argument. It would, however, be a far more genuine argument if Ignatius and others explained how the residual force actually had any chance of accomplishing anything. As Stephen Biddle persuasively argued yesterday, it's one of those things that's politically attractive but militarily untenable. In fact, I'd say it's the worst possible option available.

Having Fitz

For a court opinion, ths is close to shrill:

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: A judge told Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby to begin serving a term of supervised release, while saying he was ''somewhat perplexed'' that President George W. Bush said the prison sentence he ordered for Libby was excessive.  … The prison term was ''consistent with the bottom end'' of federal sentencing guidelines, Walton's opinion said today. ''The court is somewhat perplexed as to how its sentence could accurately be characterized as excessive.'' …  Bush had ''rewritten the statutory scheme'' to make it ''applicable to a situation that Congress clearly did not intend,'' the judge wrote.

Jonathan Zasloff Is Shrill!

Constitutional-crisis shrill:

The Reality-Based Community: The Gonzales Denounement--You Heard It Here First: Now that the Washington Post has revealed that Alberto Gonzales perjured himself while testifying before a Senate committee in 2005 (piling on top of his other perjuries), I will now offer the Ultimate Prediction on what will happen. Likely? No. But if it happens, you heard it here first:

1. The House of Representatives will impeach Gonzales.
2. The Senate, with the cooperation of Republicans looking to distance themselves from Mr. 26% Approval in the upcoming election, will remove him from office.
3. Bush will then give Gonzales a recess appointment as Acting Attorney General (which lasts until the end of the current Congress).
4. This recess appointment is illegal. Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 of the Constitution forbids anyone impeached and removed from "hold[ing] . . . any Office of Honor, trust, of Profit under the United States." (Impeached federal judge Alcee Hastings can serve in Congress probably because a legislative representative is not an Officer. While it is true that being Bush's AG hardly constitutes an Office of Honor, this probably carries little legal purchase).
5. The Roberts Court, in a 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy, will rule that no one has standing to sue over the recess appointment.

I think that a lot of the creation of the Imperial Presidency will happen in this way. Bush will break the law, and the Supremes will stop anyone from challenging it. Expect the same with the subpoenas and executive privilege.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another New Republic Edition)

Joshua Kurlantzick, for some reason, doesn't like Thailand--or any place in East Asia, for that matter:

Thailand's Potemkin village: [B]eneath the gold-plated surface, many of the problems that caused the [1997-98] crisis have not been resolved.... Thailand and Malaysia grew by relying on exporting to the West.... But an economy cannot grow on exports alone, and few East Asian nations have developed strong local consumer markets. Instead, they have simply gone back to their old model and exported their way back to growth. And as China--and low-cost Vietnam--increasingly dominate manufacturing, higher-wage nations like Malaysia will not be able to compete....

Many East Asian nations suffer from other unresolved issues. Though countries like Thailand boast strong primary education, which created a literate workforce necessary for basic manufacturing, they have not developed enough sophisticated secondary schools to make their citizens competitive in information technology, English, and other high-end skills of the twenty-first century. Instead, these nations lose ground to English-speaking India and face a situation where only a small percentage of their populations thrives, while their income inequality worsens and average people buy new mobile phones, cars, and clothes on credit. Already, the Philippines suffers from Latin American levels of inequality, with a tiny wealthy elite sipping coffees at Starbucks in Makati, the business district, while more than 100,000 people in Manila make a paltry living scavenging through the city's garbage.

Even the region's wealthiest nations, like Singapore, struggle to develop creative citizens who can start their own companies. Singapore's famously plan-oriented government has determined that its citizens must be creative, and it has launched a raft of state creativity-oriented initiatives, from building a new arts complex to allowing bar-top dancing, to get strait-laced Singaporeans to loosen up.

Worse, the type of local entrepreneurship needed to create a vibrant economy still has not been created.... [S]mall business people in Asia like Sirivat do not enjoy easy access to loans from banks or government agencies like America's Small Business Administration.

Then there is corruption... a study by the Asian Development Bank showed that in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, there was less accountability and other indicators of good governance in 2005 than there was in 1996.

With their massive currency reserves, most Asian nations are relatively immune from another total meltdown. And without a crisis to spur more reform--in education, or corporate governance--countries like Thailand may continue to muddle along, growing but never leaping into the ranks of developed economies, as many Thais once hoped. Their economies may have rebounded, but the payoff isn't there.

Outside of Japan and China, East Asia's economies today are twice the size they were in 1990, and a third larger than they were in 1997. Japan's economy is only 20% bigger today than it was in 1990 and 1997. China's economy is four times the size it was in 1990 and at least twice the size it was in 1997. As a whole, East Asia's economies are significantly more equal than America's--the Philippines is very much the odd one out.

Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan have successfully leaped into the ranks of the developed economies. All in all, the East Asian economies are the most "vibrant" in the world--and they remain the most rapidly-growing economies the world has ever seen.

So why does the New Republic pay Joshua Kurlantzick to deny reality?

Bush's first Surgeon General joins the Order of the Shrill!

From: rmoomaw@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Bush's first Surgeon General joins the Order of the Shrill
Date: July 10, 2007 4:35:26 PM PDT
To: loucks@see.com, mbobier@rcn.com, andrew@theatlantic.com, and 9 more…

During Congressional testimony, no less: http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=124418.

(Of course, Bush & Cheney won't lose anything more from this, since their argument has already been reduced to: "Yeah? What are you gonna do about it?")

Dean Baker Gets Shrill on CNN!

Sanjay Gupta and Wolf Blitzer need new careers:

Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect: Accurate Health Care Numbers: Michael Moore 1, CNN 0: CNN decided to have its health care expert, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, go after Michael Moore's new movie Sicko. One of the facts that he claimed the movie got wrong was its assertion that health care spending in the United States is $7,000 per person. Dr. Gupta said it was only $6,000.

Well, this is an easy one. We go to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services National Health Care Expenditure projections and find on Table 1, line 3, that projected per capita health care expenditure for 2007 is $7,498.

Along with Michael Moore, BTP eagerly awaits the apology for getting such a simple fact completely wrong. (Actually, they should make a double apology, since the point was to show that Moore was sloppy with his numbers. What exactly does CNN's health care expert get paid for if he can't read a simple table before presenting his stories to the country?)