The Stages of Recovery from the Bush Presidency

First there is disbelief:

We elected this guy as president? No way!

Then there is denial:

I won't watch him on TV, listen to him on the radio, I won't say his name, and so on (some of us kept this up for years).

Next, anger:

The birth of Shrillblog. Impeach!

Anger is followed by acceptance:

Shrillblog goes quiet.

Acceptance brings hope:

The election can't get here soon enough. Maybe, just maybe, things will change. It looks like the Democrats will win! Yeah!

But hope gives way to fear:

What if the Republicans use their dirty tricks to win again? Oh no, it looks like they might! Shrillblog has a flicker of new life.

Fear is followed by determination:

I won't let them win. I'll donate money, volunteer time, do whatever it takes to make sure the dirty tricks won't work this time.

And finally, resolution:

We did it! We won! It's over!

Or, horror of horrors, back to step one and disbelief:

I can't believe the Republicans won. I just don't understand how that happened. I am so depressed.

The Poor Man on the John Yoo Situation

Characteristically Restrained:

They write letters « The Poor Man Institute: [It is a] matter of little consequence to the average American: whether Prof. Yoo picks up his paycheck from Berkeley or Liberty University, or whatever Home for Temporarily Inconvenienced Wingnuts would happily scoop him up. But probably a matter of consequence to the [Berkeley] administration, who - unless they want to rebrand their university as Liberty West Coast Satellite Campus - might not want their most recognizable faculty member having as his primary field of expertise “concocting legal sophistries to undermine the foundational values of western civilization.” Perhaps also of concern to alumni, who might feel less inclined to cut large checks to their alma mater if their Golden Bears sweatshirts started inviting questions about whether they played home games at Abu Ghraib (football fans can be very cruel).

The student body might have an interest in this matter, as would, I imagine, faculty and staff at other UC campuses, and even the taxpayers of California, who might wonder if they wanted to be so openly associated with a person who scuttled around the dark corners of an administration... asserting, for example, that the President had the right to crush the testicles of children in order to compel or punish their parents. So it could matter to more people than you might think whether Prof. Yoo gets to practice his craft in decent society, or whether he has to join the other crackpots and undesirables in the shadow reality of wingnut academia, where Jesus rides a dinosaur and the Moonies pick up the tab and the vast liberal fascist secularist conspiracy doesn’t give a f--- what utter bullshit you get up to so long as you stay down in your f------ hole. The thing about the Universe is that it likes to align itself harmoniously. I suspect there’s a way of putting things in order here.

Matthew Yglesias Is Shrill!

He writes:

Matthew Yglesias (April 22, 2008) - The Blind Praising the Blind (Media): I continue to wonder what the point is of exercises like having Adam Nagourney or the team of John Harris and Jim Vandehei defend the ABC News debate. What the debate's critics are saying, after all, is that ABC's conduct was the apotheosis of everything that's wrong with MSM campaign coverage. To point out in response that the people most responsible for the MSM campaign coverage status quo thought it was good seems totally non-responsive.

What I'd like to see in defense of ABC would be to identify some likely Democratic Party primary voters in Pennsylvania or some other upcoming state who are now better-informed about the election than they were previously. Until that happens, though, I'm going to stick with James Fallows' observation that ordinary citizens show an extremely low level of interest in this sort of stuff. The fact that the people who've turned political reporting into appalling farce found the somewhat more appalling than usual farce of last week's debate even more delectable than the merely appalling debate work we'd seen earlier from Tim Russert and others is no kind of defense at all.

Felix Salmon's Ben Stein Watch: April 27, 2008

Boy is Felix shrill:

Ben Stein Watch: April 27, 2008 - Finance Blog - Felix Salmon - Market Movers - Portfolio.com: Stein is maybe a little bit chastened, since he seems to have given up on trying to impart his own ideas in his column. Instead, he gives himself a reading-comprehension test, taking a widely-circulated speech by David Einhorn and trying to boil it down to its most salient points.

Naturally, Stein fails the test.

Einhorn's speech is worth reading, but Stein's self-described "CliffsNotes version of it" isn't. For instance, Einhorn makes the point that since employee compensation is a function of revenues, investment-bank employees are incentivized to maximize those revenues by adding leverage:

The managements of the investment banks did exactly what they were incentivized to do: maximize employee compensation. Investment banks pay out 50% of revenues as compensation. So, more leverage means more revenues, which means more compensation.

Clear and simple, right? Here's the SteinNotes version:

The fellows who run big investment banks have a strong incentive to maximize their assets and leverage themselves into deep trouble because their pay is a function of how much debt they can pile on. If they can use relatively low-interest debt to generate slightly higher returns, the firm earns more revenue and executive pay increases. Often, an astonishing 50 percent of total revenue goes to employee compensation at Wall Street firms.

Longer, more convoluted, and - in the last sentence - utterly missing the point.

There's nothing "astonishing" about the 50% figure, in an industry which relies on human capital. Stein calls himself a lawyer, so he probably knows that the employee-compensation-to-revenue ratio at law firms is closer to 100%. And in any case, the 50% figure is well known to anybody who follows the investment banking industry, and long predates the credit crunch. That Stein is astonished by it only goes to show how ill-qualified he is to write about this stuff.

Stein also has no idea what "capital" is in the banking industry. Banks 'can hold some scary "assets",' he says, making sure to put the word "assets" in scare quotes just to reinforce just how scary it is. He then continues:

What do they hold as capital against such risks? You would think it would be cash or Treasury bonds, wouldn't you? But no...

The S.E.C. -- acting as one of Wall Street's chief regulators, mind you -- also allowed such things as "hybrid capital instruments" (much riskier than cash or Treasuries), subordinated debt (ditto) and even deferred return of taxes, to be counted as capital.

Once again, Stein has managed to mangle one of Einhorn's points. Here's Einhorn's clear English:

Only tangible equity, not subordinated debt should count as capital.

How Stein managed to read that bit about "tangible equity" and decide that it referred to "cash or Treasury bonds" is beyond me. Stein is clearly too dim to realise that cash and Treasuries are assets, which means that they can hardly be used as capital to hold against assets. The point about cash and Treasuries, of course, is entirely Stein's, it's never made by Einhorn.

But Stein isn't really trying to channel Einhorn, he's just using Einhorn as an excuse to bash the same old drum all over again. This is 100% Stein, for instance, and appears nowhere in Einhorn's speech:

Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, is calling for merging the S.E.C. with the easygoing Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in the financial equivalent of setting off a Doomsday Device.

A Doomsday Device? It would be great if Stein could tone down his language just a tiny bit, because while merging the SEC with the CFTC may or may not be a good idea, I don't think anybody (except perhaps for Stein) considers it to be tantamount to the End of the World. But then again, as the NYT itself pointed out, Stein is something of a master when it comes to such cheap rhetorical devices:

Blithely ignoring the vital distinction between social and scientific Darwinism, the film links evolution theory to fascism (as well as abortion, euthanasia and eugenics), shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with black-and-white film of Nazi gas chambers and mass graves.

No doubt Stein would do the same to Hank Paulson if he were allowed to incorporate B-roll into his columns. Let's just be thankful the NYT's multimedia push hasn't gone that far.

Paul Krugman Tells Us to Go Read Joe Klein from 2005

Here's Klein. The occasion is that he recycled the title of his column. The Democrats, you see, are always shrinking:

The Incredible Shrinking Democrats: There was a cheap metaphor to be had in the remarkable moment when Safia al-Souhail, who had just voted in the Iraqi elections, and Janet Norwood, whose U.S. Marine son was killed in Iraq, embraced during the President's State of the Union speech last week.... [N]othing should detract from the emotional truth of the moment, the magnitude of Norwood's loss, the exhilaration of al-Souhail's ballot. Yes, disentanglement will be difficult. And, yes, we shouldn't "overhype" the election, as John Kerry clumsily suggested. But this is not a moment for caveats. It is a moment for solemn appreciation of the Iraqi achievement--however it may turn out--and for hope.

The Democrats are having trouble with graciousness these days....

This was a symptom of a larger disease: most Democrats seemed as reluctant as Kerry to express the slightest hint of optimism about the [Iraqi] elections. Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi diminished themselves....

Reid's claim that George W. Bush would reduce Social Security benefits 40% was hogwash. The President has merely stated the obvious, that reductions will be necessary. Reid also made the absurd comparison between Bush's very conservative investment-account proposal and Las Vegas gaming tables. Finally, there was the boorish and possibly unprecedented hooting of the President....

The day after the President's speech, the party's congressional leaders gathered at the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial to carp. How 70 years ago! "Progressive" Dems—-and I use the term advisedly, since liberals seem more interested in preserving the past than in discovering the future—-are right to admire Roosevelt. But the Roosevelt they worship is a bronze sculpture, frozen in time. The real F.D.R. was a gutsy innovator. The current Democrats resemble nothing so much as the Republicans during the 25 years after Roosevelt's death-—negative, defensive, intellectually feeble, a permanent minority... undifferentiated opposition [to Bush] is obtuse and most likely counterproductive. The Democrats' current crudeness is a function of their desperation, and the imminent ratification of Howard Dean, the least charming presidential candidate in recent memory, as their party chairman only serves to punctuate the problem.

All of which leaves Bush with a lot of room to lead. His speech last week was striking... with the exceptions of his empty call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage--a congressional nonstarter, but a sop to religious conservatives--and his continued refusal to support federal funding for new stem-cell-research lines.... There is... a profitable discussion to be had between "ownership" Republicans and "third-way" Democrats about transforming the stagnant bureaucracies of the Industrial Age... the stunned and churlish Democrats are refusing...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Justin Logan Is Shrill!

It's the Weekly Standard:

Cato-at-liberty » More Strategic Brilliance from Our Friends at the Weekly Standard: Here’s Michael Goldfarb:

As to whether Bush is a recruiting tool for terrorists–who cares? Al Qaeda was recruiting before Bush was in office and they will continue to do so after he’s gone. The important thing is that we keep killing those recruits. Eventually, one side will give up.

Do they edit this stuff before putting it up? By this logic, why don’t we airdrop a bunch of copies of Penthouse Letters into the Kabaa? After all, al Qaeda will continue recruiting whether we do it or not. Or maybe we could declare war on all of Islam. After all, al Qaeda was recruiting before we declared it. Or maybe we could send Senator McCain’s “moral compass and spiritual guide” onto al Hurra to tell Muslims that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” After all, it’s not like al Qaeda’s not recruiting today.

Robert Waldmann's Shrillness Threatens to Destroy the Universe

Robert Waldmann is shrill:

WWW.WashingtonPost.com Manages to reach a new Low.

In the post below, I note the outrageous bias against Clinton and for McCain displayed on www.washingtonpost.com where the abstract of an article admits that McCain was the first to propose the egregious gas tax holiday, but the link under "most viewed articles" is labled "Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized."

It appears that the blatant contradiction between the article, which notes that McCain started it, and the link, which is written according to the rule that the words "McCain" and "Criticized" must not appear in the same seentence, has been noticed.

Thus the unmentionable fact has been removed from the abstract of the article which appears on www.washingtonpost.com. It has been edited to

Plan to Halt Gas Tax Criticized

Proposal supported by Clinton, McCain would offer little savings at the pump, economists say.

When I noted the earlier outrage, I didn't imagine that www.washingtonpost.com could do any worse. I certainly didn't guess that they would soon show even more outrageous bias in editing inconvenient but undeniable facts out from the same article.

update: Almost goes without saying that, by now (21:56 Rome time) all references to the fact that McCain has some connection with the proposal for a gasoline tax holliday has been removed from the front page of www.washingtonpost.com. Now we have just

Most Viewed Articles

* Trial Nearing, Alleged Call Girl Found Dead
* Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized

and

More Headlines
# Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized


The deceased alleged call girl is not Deborah Jeane Palfrey also featured on the page. That's two deaths in the great war on prostitution reported in one day.

posted by Robert permalink and comments8:43 PM

 
Washington Post.com totally in the tank for McCain

The Story as it appears on WWW.WashingtonPost.com

Economists Criticize Proposal to Halt Gas Tax

Plan first offered by Sen. John McCain, supported by Sen. Hillary Clinton, would spike demand, offer little savings at the pump, many economists say.

Alec MacGillis and Steven Mufson

But that's not all. It also appears under

"Most Viewed Articles"

With (as always) a slightly different headline and (as usual) the gross extreme blatant explicit shameful pro McCain bias is obvious and undeniable

the new headline written by someone whose name should not be hidden from the public is



" * Clinton Gas-Tax Proposal Criticized"

There it is, all on the web page (which I have, of course, saved).

On the very same web page the proposal is correctly described as "first offered by Sen. John McCain" and as "Clinton Gas-Tsx Proposal".

Maybe www.washingtonpost.com should just officially declare that they have decided that any facts which are embarrassing to John McCain are not to be reported.

Screen Shot with my higlighting in pale pale yellow



update: The Editorial suggests that the editorial board of the dead tree Washington Post is as in the tank as the nameless web page technician. They denounce the "Gas Tax Gotcha" writing "Alas, that hope was not warranted in the case of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has followed Republican John McCain in recommending a suspension of the federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day."

Odd phrasing. Ink and some shred of credibility would have been saved if they had written "Alas, that hope was not warranted in the cases of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican John McCain" but they chose not to. Why is the grammatical position of Clinton and McCain so different ? More importantly, why did the Washington Post editorial board wait until Clinton joined McCain in demagoguery to denounce it ?

There is no doubt in my mind that the explanations are that the Washington Post Editorial board is unwilling to denounce McCain without also denouncing a Democrat.

However, I may be influenced by the gross monstrous bias demonstrated by www.washingtonpost.com which is a separate organization (with the same owners).

www.washingtonpost.com is my browser home page. I was a huge fan of the Washington Post starting, I blush to say, when I saw the film All The President's Men (at the time I followed Watergate on TV and in Newsweek (hey I was only 13 when Nixon resigned)). I read the full page advertizement for themselves "All the Presidents Men. If you liked the film, you'll love the Newspaper" with joy appreciated their just pride. I bristled when people said the New York Times was a better newspaper.

I am sure that there is something the Washington Post could do to regain my trust. I can't imagine what it is, but it must be possible.

posted by Robert permalink and comments6:55 PM

Willed to Shrillnes

Close enough to shrill:

Popular Will, by Jonathan Chait: Barack Obama's comments about the white working class have thrown the political campaign into a particularly comic spasm of pretense and hypocrisy, but I was planning to let it go, I really was, until George F. Will decided to leap to the defense of the proletariat. Yes, that George F. Will. The fabulously wealthy, bow tie-wearing, pretentious reference-mongering, Anglophilic fop who grew up in a university town as a professor's son, earned two advanced degrees, has a designated table at a French restaurant in Georgetown, and, had he dwelt for any extended time among the working class, would be lucky to escape without his underwear being yanked up over his ears. …

TBogg Is Shrill!

He has a Shorter Ross Douthat:

: A horrifyingly mutilated, yet living, body might still crawl out of the flaming wreckage that is the Bush years and then he and I shall both be vindicated.

---

Here is Ross:

Ross Douthat (April 07, 2008) - The Worst President Ever? (Politics): An unscientific survey of 109 professional historians, conducted by the doubtless-unbiased author of Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion In America, reports that sixty-one percent of its sample considers George W. Bush's Presidency the "worst ever." Remarking on this, er, finding, Matt takes the contrarian view that "Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly." I wouldn't go nearly that far (and nor would Matt, I suspect, if you really pressed him), but I will say, as someone who judges the Bush Administration more or less a failure, that it's very easy for me to imagine a possible future in which Bush's policies are widely judged to have been vindicated by events. (I have a piece on just this possibility forthcoming in the June issue of the Atlantic.) It's also easy to imagine a future in which Bush ends up more or less forgotten - along the lines of William McKinley, say, whose Presidency Karl Rove famously set out to emulate, with the Iraq War swallowed up by the same amnesia that's claimed our bloody and misguided adventures in the Phillipines. And yes, it's also easy to imagine a future in which Bush ends up judged not only a failure, but a worse chief executive than James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover - though for this to happen, I would submit, the worst Bush-created disasters would have to still be ahead of us, since neither the occupation of Iraq nor anything else our current POTUS has been involved in rivals the Civil War or the Great Depression for sheer destructive impact.

All of which is to say that sixty-one percent of the historians' sample are ax-grinding fools whose nitwittery dishonors their profession. Judge Bush a failure by all means, but the fact that his legacy is only beginning its long unspooling ought to give anyone with even a glancing knowledge of history's cunning passages - let alone a so-called "professional" - pause before pronouncing his administration the worst in American history.

Wow!

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Him Now

Matthew Yglesias:

Matthew Yglesias (March 31, 2008) - The Horror (Foreign Policy): There was a time when I never could have imagined I'd be reading stuff like this about my own country:

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one...

Read the whole thing; I don't really have the heart to make a witty remark.

Only those people who embrace the idea of being evil and think that evil is cool have any business voting for the Republican Party ever again. Ever. Again.

Paul Berman Is a Deeply Broken Person

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: Stars Of Their Own Heroic Epic: Years later, it's hard to comprehend the depths of the narcissism of people like [Paul] Berman who obviously see events in the world as nothing more than referendums on their own awesomeness. He and his fellow travelers spent years berating dirty fucking hippies like me for daring to suggest that maybe war in Iraq was not some awesome idea, but instead, you know, bad. And now he wants to claim he opposed it?

This a deeply broken person.

He is reacting to Spencer Ackerman, who drops his jaw in amazement:

toohotfortnr: public witness ain't seeing too much: Paul Berman did a BloggingHeads with Heather Hulburt in which the arch liberal-Iraq-hawk strongly suggests that he didn't support the war. You be the judge. Relevant section is about 2:30 in.

On the Iraq war, I myself wrote a piece in The New Republic on March -- which came out in the March 3, 2003 issue saying George Bush was leading us over a cliff. And that his notion of how to deploy power was lacking in liberal principle and that his use of power was going to turn out to be no power at all. In short it was going to be a disaster. I published this before the war. I made that prediction before the war. It's true that afterward I haven't made a career of running around saying I told you so, but if you look it up, the major article ... yeah, I was in favor of getting rid of Saddam but Bush's way of going about it was quite bad, and I pronounced myself, I used the word 'terrified,' of what would come of it.

TNR's messed-up web archives have erased Paul's article.... But it doesn't say what Paul says it says.... Leave aside his odious arrogance. (He told me so?) Paul says his piece recognized Bush's strategic foolishness and illiberalism. He's right. The trouble is he recognized it as a caveat to his enthusiasm to the war, not as an impediment. In other words, Berman wanted a war for liberalism, recognized that it wouldn't be one, and backed it anyway. That -- to say the least -- implicates his judgment.

In order to whitewash this, he pretends his caveat was his argument. He did this before, in the New York Review of Books, where he quoted his caveat and said it rose "rising to what I like to picture as a crescendo." Well, it wasn't a crescendo. It would only have been a crescendo if it stopped him from backing the war. Instead he took the opposite approach. Fine. But own up to it, don't pretend that wasn't your judgment.

Update: Oh God. Toward the end of the clip, Paul says:

Then there's the intellectual debate. The intellectual debate should always tell the truth. It should never be modest. It should always be grandiose.

Please, please, please, step back from the cliff...

And to Matthew Yglesias:

Matthew Yglesias (November 12, 2007) - Did Paul Berman Tell Us So? (Foreign Policy): In the midst of an argument with Ian Buruma, liberal hawk extraordinaire Paul Berman tries to convince us that he actually called Iraq correctly, and has merely been magnanimous in not pointing that out:

I approved on principle the overthrow of Saddam. I never did approve of Bush's way of going about it. In the run-up to the war, I became, on practical grounds, ever more fearful that, in his blindness to liberal principles, Bush was leading us over a cliff. [...] It is true and it is a matter of satisfaction to me that, in the years since then, I have not made a career of saying "I told you so."

Here's what Berman was actually writing in February 2003:

In my own judgment, Fischer and his fellow thinkers in Europe and even in the United States are making a mistake in failing to press for a harder line against Iraq--a harder line that might bring about Saddam's collapse more or less peacefully or, if need be, not peacefully. It should be obvious that, in the Arab world, fascist and Nazi-like movements--political tendencies that call for random mass murder in the name of paranoid and apocalyptic ideas--have gotten completely out of hand. In the last 20 years, Baathist and Islamist movements--the two branches of what ought to be regarded as Muslim fascism--have killed millions of people and might well kill many more, and not just in the Muslim countries, as we have reason to know. A war against Muslim fascism ought to be seen as a continuation of the long struggle against Nazism and fascism in Europe--a continuation of the same decent and necessary cause that people like Fischer have always wanted to support, even if they have not always known how to do so in a sensible way.

He was worried about Bush's failure to embrace liberalism, but it wasn't a worry that this meant the war would go badly, it was a worry that Bush wasn't being as rhetorically persuasive as he should have been:

Maybe Fischer is not convinced because the Bush administration has presented a series of side arguments about weapons, U.N. resolutions, and dark terrorist conspiracies and has failed to present the main argument, which is the single huge argument that has always sustained the Western alliance. This argument is the one about totalitarianism. It is the argument that says: The totalitarians are dangerous to themselves and to us, and we had better fight them. Fight wisely, of course, which the New Left notoriously managed not to do long ago, but fight. Why can't Bush make that argument? I won't speculate. But he could change. He gave up drinking long ago. Let him give up his arrogance, small-mindedness, and aversion to large and idealistic ideas today. It might help.

And here he was in January 2004 when many people still thought the war was going well:

What was the reason for the war in Iraq? Sept. 11 was the reason. At least to my mind it was. Sept. 11 showed that totalitarianism in its modern Muslim version was not going to stop at slaughtering millions of Muslims, and hundreds of Israelis, and attacking the Indian government, and blowing up American embassies. The totalitarian manias were rising, and the United States itself was now in danger. A lot of people wanted to respond, as any mayor would do, by rounding up a single Bad Guy, Osama.

But Sept. 11 did not come from a single Bad Guy--it was a product of the larger totalitarian wave, and the only proper response was to comprehend the size and depth of that larger wave, and find ways to begin rolling it back, militarily and otherwise%u2014mostly otherwise. To roll it back for our own sake, and everyone else's sake, Muslims' especially. Iraq, with its somewhat antique variation of the Muslim totalitarian idea, was merely a place to begin, after Afghanistan, with its more modern variation.

In short, Berman was wrong. The reason he hasn't made a career of telling us "I told you so" is that, in this instance at least, he didn't tell us so. But now he's trying to tell us that he did tell us so. But all he told us was that had Bush employed more Berman-style rhetoric then maybe more of Berman's friends would, like Berman, have wrongly deciding that an invasion of Iraq was a good idea.

Paul Berman may or may not be the stupidest man alive^TM. But he surely is the most mendacious man alive.

For the record, I was in favor of the war on Iraq in the winter of 2003. I reasoned:

• Condi Rice is not-stupid and not-malevolent, and is for the war.
• Colin Powell is not-stupd and not-malevolent, and is for the war.
• This means that even though the public intelligence is bs, that there must be solid evidence of an advanced nuclear program in Iraq and of a willingness to give serious weapons to terrorist groups--otherwise attacking Iraq while we have real enemies like Osama bin Laden running loose would be really stupid.
• And although Bush is really stupid, not everyone in the administration is.

Wrong on all counts. I am very sorry.

I may be the stupidest man alive.

Glenn Greenwald Is Super-Shrill!

Glenn Reynolds links to Instapunk a whole lot:

This drives Glenn Greenwald into hypershrillness:

One of Instapundit's favorite blogs speaks on race - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: Just two weeks ago, Instapundit (which is, revealingly enough, one of Karl Rove's favorite blogs) promoted and praised a separate post on race by Instapunk, which proclaimed that (h/t Zack):

• Barack Obama "is none of us";

• "in his heart of hearts Obama understands nothing and no one, because he has never belonged anywhere or truly participated in anything";

• "It's Michelle Obama who hates America";

• it's feminists who have "done more to destroy the black family and promote the epidemic of children born out of wedlock than any conspiracy Jeremiah Wright could ever dream up"; and,

• "Even though Obama is not and never was an African-American, he has always been black enough to benefit from the superannuated slave culture that forgives every corruption and hypocrisy in those who have any claim on being black."

Reynolds is promoting ugly bile of this sort for one simple reason -- because, as always, exploiting racial resentments is one of the principal tribalistic weapons on which the Right intends to rely in order to win the election. As one blogger just wrote via email:

What I don't understand is why Glenn R. continues to visit and link to a blog where such racist sentiments are permitted to be posted. He must be aware that InstaPunk is a blog that permits contributors to spout venomous racial hatred. Why doesn't he find another blog to visit? I mean, if it were me, I would not keep up an association with a blog that thinks it's okay to let a contributor be so hateful. Why doesn't he disavow this guy?

As Reynolds himself wrote the other day about Obama: "Obama is giving us a 'national conversation on race,' but mostly by letting a lot of white people realize just what circulates, unremarked, in the black community." I believe that's similar to the way that the blogs and posts Instapundit promotes "let a lot of people realize just what circulates, unremarked, in the right-wing sewers."

Hilzoy Is Shrill!

Hilzoy: The fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton can't tell the difference between having an eight year old read her a poem on a tarmac and fleeing through a hail of bullets doesn't give me a lot of confidence in her grasp of military affairs...

Obsidian Wings: "We Just Ran With Our Heads Down": A few days ago, Hillary Clinton described her 1996 trip to Bosnia:

"I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That's where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Even before Sinbad challenged Clinton's account, I was skeptical: as I read somewhere (sorry, don't remember where), does it really make sense to suppose that if the trip was that dangerous, the President would have sent not just his wife but his only child on it?

Now, however, there is video of Clinton running with her head down through the hail of bullets. Except for, um, the running part, and the bullets part, and the part about the greeting ceremony being cancelled. It's worth watching to see the perils Senator Clinton endured. And it does support her story in one respect: as you can see in this picture, she did bend her head down on the tarmac, to hug an eight year old girl who had just read her a poem.

Harrowing stuff. No doubt all the nonexistent bullets flying around account for the fact that none of the reporters who were present mentioned any danger at the time. Obviously, they were so terrified that they repressed it all.

Honestly: there was no need for Clinton to do any of this. She did play a serious policy role in her husband's administration (even if she didn't help pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, as she claims.) The only reason for her to inflate a trip with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow into a serious diplomatic mission, and a trip to Northern Ireland involving "a visit to a women's drop-in centre and two business parks" into helping bring peace to Northern Ireland, is that by pretending to have been more involved in foreign policy than she really was, she can pretend that while Barack Obama isn't ready to be commander in chief, she is.

Frankly, though, the fact that she can't tell the difference between having an eight year old read her a poem on a tarmac and fleeing through a hail of bullets doesn't give me a lot of confidence in her grasp of military affairs. Who knows? If she were President, she might decide that she was under attack by helicopter gunships when she was actually standing in a perfectly peaceful receiving line at a state funeral, and declare war. If she thinks the video I linked to shows her running for safety in a hail of bullets, anything is possible.

McCain: Clueless as... as... Saying that Some Neo-Confederate Group Is Secretly Funneling Money to Louis Farrakhan

Hilzoy is the shrillest woman in the Boswash Megalopolis:

Obsidian Wings: Clueless: I didn't want to let this gem from John McCain pass unremarked:

Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

It's important to be clear about exactly how clueless this is. It's like saying that some neo-confederate group is secretly funneling money to Louis Farrakhan, and then having an aide have to whisper: no, no, it's the Aryan Nation; wrong extremists! It's like suggesting that McCain is making a play for Kucinich voters, and having to be told that, no, you really meant Ron Paul: wrong losing candidate! No one who had any understanding at all of Iraq, or for that matter about the Shi'a/Sunni split and which side Iran was on, would get confused about this....

McCain gets to say silly things like this without being challenged. His reputation as a serious thinker on national security can only survive so long as people don't notice things like this....

Today we saw exactly how intelligent and nuanced Obama is. In this series of remarks by McCain (and others; it's not unique), we can see exactly how unprepared he is to win an argument against Obama.

In terms of intellect, grasp of policy details, nuance, and depth of knowledge, McCain is just not in Obama's league -- or, for that matter, Clinton's. When we have a chance to see McCain debate a Democratic nominee, I have every confidence that this fact will become painfully obvious.

Thoreau Is Shrill. Really Shrill

It is CNN's fault:

Thoreau: Suddenly I Am More Outraged than Ever: Last night, on CNN, during one of the segments the background on the screen said "Iraq: Success or Failure?" And I just exploded. Of course it's a failure. When a marketplace is so dangerous that a Senator can't even go there with 100+ heavily armed men (recall that McCain could no longer visit the same market that he visited last year and proclaimed "safe" while surrounded by heavy security), thats one hell of a goddamn failure.

And it hit me: The media doesn't invite the Flat Earth Society to "discuss the controversy" every time they show a picture of the globe. They don't invite a North Korean official to argue that his country isn't a shithole when they want to do a story on North Korea. They don't invite NAMBLA to offer an opposing perspective when somebody is accused of child molestation. And they don't give a guest column in leading publications to a cheerleader for the Libyan regime. Yet when somebody wants to show up and argue that Iraq is a success story, that torture (fricking torture!) is OK, that unchecked executive power is just peachy, they invite that person onto the show and thank him. Instead of reporting the abuses of power they treat the apologists as honored guests.

No, I don't want a partisan media. But I do want a media with a better bullshit detector, one that doesn't feel the need to bend over backwards to be "fair" whenever somebody wants to say that torture and unchecked power are necessary to defend freedom. I want a media that won't let somebody show up and defend torture, treat him as a Serious Person, and then thank him for appearing on the show. Some shit is just plain wrong, but if you don't say that, if you treat the advocates for it as another perspective deserving equal time, then the crimes that are going on are perceived as "controversies" rather than blatant crimes. And that makes it impossible to be taken "seriously" when you argue in favor of treating this stuff as crimes, and impeaching those responsible.

Well I'm done with that. No more courtesy. Yes, there are genuinely hard questions in life, and we need open and respectful debate on those issues. But just as I wouldn't waste my time holding a debate with a Klansman every time he wants to insist that non-whites really are inferior, I'm not going to waste my time treating the hawks as Serious People. They aren't serious people. They're just plain wrong. And we need to say that, instead of giving them equal time and thanking them for spewing their BS.

Mind you, I of course favor the right of anybody to say what he wants. The First Amendment says that you can say anything you like. It doesn't say that you are entitled to guest appearances in high profile forums. If somebody tried to force a hawk off the stage I'd defend his right to speak. But I'd also say that the owner of the stage is an idiot for inviting him. (And I'd insert the libertarian disclaimer that the owner of the stage naturally has a right to invite anybody to speak on his private property, but I would reiterate that the owner of the stage is an idiot for treating the hawk like a Serious Person.)

I realize that this can go in a dangerous direction. I don't want to close all minds on all things and say that everything is black and white. But, you know, some shades of gray do in fact come awfully close to one or the other end of the spectrum. If the Flat Earth folks don't get invites to Serious Forums, if our media would never think of giving equal time to the commander of an Iranian torture chamber, why would they give equal time to the defenders of American torture?

I fear where this is taking me, but at the same time I know that some lines really do have to be drawn. At some point you have to say that an idea has been sufficiently discredited that it's time to move on and stop treating its proponents like the Serious People that they insist they are. As long as the worst ideas in circulation are treated as Serious, it's impossible to hold their proponents accountable because what they do is not a crime but merely a controversial decision.

Brendan Nyhan: Chris Matthews: Ignorant about policy

Brendan Nyhan is shrill!:

Brendan Nyhan: Chris Matthews: Ignorant about policy: Despite my extremely low opinion of Matthews, this is still staggering. He's on TV every day and he has no idea what the Democrats are proposing on the most important domestic policy issue in this election. None!

To paraphrase Brad DeLong's saying about Bush, Matthews is worse than I imagined possible, even after taking into account the fact that he is worse than I imagined possible. But as Somerby (obsessively) points out, most pundits won't say anything about him because they want to go on "Hardball" and raise their profile.

Cactus: We Don't Live in a Meritocracy, Exhibit A

Cactus is shrill:

Angry Bear: We Don't Live in a Meritocracy, Exhibit A: Kudlow this morning:

I%u2019ll be sitting down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with President Bush later this morning in midtown Manhattan. The interview will air tonight on Kudlow & Company

....

We'll discuss the economy, oil prices, housing, the credit crunch, Hill-Bama and McCain, the Spitzer scandal, the war on terror and more.

It wasn't that long ago that Kudlow was prattling incessantly about how the Bush economy was "the greatest story never told", or at least a "goldilocks economy". He used both terms in the same paragraph in January. And we've had enough posts here at Angry Bear questioning GW's awareness of how the economy works.

In effect, Kudlow interviewing the President is reminiscent of a high school cheerleader interviewing the school's quarterback (who she happens to be dating) for the high school newspaper after he's been sacked five times in a game, all of which follows months of bragging by the two of them about how his footwork makes him unstoppable. I'll confess a certain morbid curiosity, but not enough to watch it.

Hilzoy Is Shrill!

Hillary Rodham Clinton has done it to her:

Obsidian Wings: Crossing The Threshold: However, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that [Hillary Rodham Clinton] actually believes that Barack Obama cannot "cross the commander-in-chief threshold." One of the most important jobs a President has is to defend the country. If she thinks that Barack Obama is not qualified to do that job, then she should not support him over anyone who can. Specifically, she should support McCain over Obama.

That's why I think some enterprising reporter should ask her whether she would support Barack Obama if he were nominated. If she would, then she should be asked why she would be willing to support someone she does not believe is qualified to be commander in chief.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat's fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party's or the nation's.

Sadly, the Shrillness Begins

Obama begins his additions to the legions at Shrillblog. From Brad at Sadly No:

Gulp, by Brad, Sadly No: Is it too late for me to take back my Obama vote?

Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.

I’ll be so depressed if he takes this “bipartisanship” nonsense seriously. Personally speaking, I’d like any Democratic candidate to spend their whole first day in office standing atop the White House roof dressed in pirate garb shouting “NOOOOOOOO PRISONERS!!!!!” at the top of their lungs. I want someone who will appoint Rudy Ray Moore as a Supreme Court justice, who will punish the Keyboard Kommandos by passing a Constitutional amendment banning Cheetos and Funyuns, and who will look into every Republican’s eyes and tell them that he drank their milkshake. HE DRANK IT UP!!!

As I’ve said before, there are more important issues facing this country than my bloody-minded quest for revenge. But even if Obama doesn’t plan on systematically destroy every Republican by using the Justice Department to slap them with bogus corruption charges, he could at the very least not appoint any to his cabinet. And while it’s true that Hagel and Lugar are some of the least objectionable Republicans out there, they are still Republicans. They bear the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored.

No prisoners, Hussein X. Please don’t disappoint me.

Roy Edroso Is Shrill!

He writes, apropos of slut-shaming crunchy-cons: >alicublog: BIG-TIME NEGOTIATORS, FALSE HEALERS AND WOMAN-HATERS. A bride wants her wedding dress to reveal the tattoo on her back, and does not feel the need to appear virginal on her wedding day. So Rod Dreher calls her a slut. >It takes hours, and a visit from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to make Dreher retract the slur, though he still accuses the bride of "cheap morals" and "bad manners," and calls her behavior "slutty." Big difference. >Dreher frequently reminds us that Christians don't riot, as some Muslims do, when they perceive their values to be mocked. But he never recalls that for many, many centuries, Christians backed by the power of states harassed, exiled, and burned men and women who didn't conform to their prejudices in comportment or anything else. >When we mock Dreher here, we are not always thinking solely of the little fellow in Dallas who shakes his impotent fist at our times and manners. Often we also have in mind the loathsome traditions he wants to bring back to the civilized world, even praising the "order," "unity," and "purpose" of barbarous Islamic societies as a means of attracting us to a Western version with Jesus on top. Imagine a country where men like Dreher have the power to order a stoning. >It took us nearly two millenia and oceans of blood to reduce these savages to a noisome rump. We can spare a little attention to remember why we did it.