DADT

Yah team. So, how, one wonders, is the repeal of DADT a slap in the face by Obama to various liberal/left groups?

Relatedly, John McCain waxes incoherent:



And Rachel Maddow exposes his flippidy floppitdy:



Just imagine if that warmongering nutbar was our president.

Beauty

This bike is beautiful; if it had fenders it would be godlike.

Like this one:

via

Falls Don't Always Fall

Niagara dried up.




Pictures here.


via

Working at The Wrong Shop

Matt Yglesias is.  The proper response to Republican obstructionism:

In this lame duck session, Senate Republicans are grasping at every possible reason to “run out the clock” on any Democratic priority. Their brazen obstruction, however, took some victims last week when they used another filibuster to block the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. Named after a New York City policeman who died from health complications, this legislation that provides health care to 9/11 first responders and emergency workers who suffered illnesses from working at Ground Zero.

From Think Progress, where the Liberal Lion Yglesias touts obstructionism as a sign of being a serious legislator. 

This is why Taibbi wouldn't be happy with a debate dominated by Yglesias and other faux center-left commentators.

Missing The Point Yet Even More

Matt Yglesias writes for an progressive think tank. All progressives and most Americans believe that an accused fellow citizen is innocent until proven guilty.  Lots of his and my fellow citizens think that Wikileaks is no big deal and to the extent that it is a big deal it's a good thing.  What Yglesias thinks about the second point, I don't know; what he thinks about the first point is illuminated here (via here):

So as best I can tell Manning is, in fact, guilty of serious crimes.

What does this mean?  As best he can tell from? Press releases? The Government's accusations?  The various stuff floating hither and yon on the web?

Another thing all progressives and many Americans believe is that the state ought to improve prison condition particularly for individuals awaiting trial because they have yet to be convicted and, consequently, are presumed innocent.  Yglesias thinks

Somewhat punitive post-arrest pre-trial measures are kind of a necessary evil, but the prolonged confinement of Manning under cruel conditions go well beyond the necessary into the straightforward evil.

So Manning's treatment is "evil" but some lesser form of the "evil" is "kind of necessary" because? It's irresponsible to reform prisons and jails unless that reform involves the destruction of unions and decreasing prison workers salaries?

Is it the case that Yglesias has been making bad arguments for so long that he has now ascended to the Broderosphere where he is free at last, thank God almighty free at last, to simply assert position central to the progressive worldview, in this case reform of necessary evils, i.e., prisons and jails, will lead inexorably to a humane system of incarceration for the presumed innocent as well as the proven guilty  fellow citizens hapless enough to fall afoul of the state's policing function.

And while were at it Megan McCardle, in a similar wrong-headed analysis of something else, she comes up with two tiers of crime: white collared and blue collared:

This is basically a variant of complaints that white-collar crime is treated less harshly than blue collar crime.  And there's some justice in the complaints--white collar crimes usually involve larger sums, and the people who commit them can rarely claim that they are victims of society.

White-collared crime is clear to all: Madoffesque stuff.  Blue-collared crime is? Calling in sick when you're well? Does she mean "ordinary" crimes like murder, rape, and etc?  Does she mean to suggest that only the lower orders commit such crimes?  She seems to because she, humorously?, suggests that the lower orders who can blame society for their crimes, as in Kniock Any Door starring Humphrey Bogart, commit blue collared crimes.

And those of us who want to tax the rich to pay for the things we need tomorrow today are accused of class warfare; McArdle classifies violent crimes as the work of only the lower orders.

Would it surprise you to know that they are pals?

UPDATE:
Yglesias on private mass transportation

And, yes, I’m well-aware that none of this is going to happen any time soon. But I think people are oftentimes insufficiently utopian in their thinking about public policy. Think about how different policy was in 1960 compared to today.

Got that? When in comes to incarceration of the presumably innocent some degree of abuse is a "necessary evil" when it comes to making a buck off of getting from here to there, people just aren't clapping loud enough.

Tarp

Yesterday, I watched this guy quiz Timothy Geitner on lot of things but one of them was why Geitner wasn't trying harder to get banks to absorb more of the losses associated with underwater homeowners.  It actually took Silvers three tries before Geitner would even address the issue of lowering banks' profits.  One weird exchange, it was.  It seemed as though Geitner had no idea that lowering profits, as opposed to funding homeowner bailouts, was possible.  Indeed, Geitner claimed that the government couldn't do a thing when it came to banks' profits; hands tied, not possible, he said.  Why on earth would that be, one wonders?  If what Geitner said was true, and Silver thought that it wasn't, it is almost as if the governments only power over banks is to give them money when they get drunk and blow it on hookers and bad drugs or mortgage backed securities, whichever comes first.

In any event, the whole thing is worth watching, if only for Geitner's cluelessness when it comes to effective regulation and the government's power to persuade. 

Missing the Point

Matt Yglesias some time ago:

Mitch McConnell is a bad man, but he's very good at his job: http://ygl.as/h6to8F
2 hours ago from TweetDeck

He refers to this article which details McConnell's decision to stop the Senate from governing by threatening Republican senators who wanted to work with the Democratic majority to, you know, govern.  This kind of procedural obstruction to bipartisan action on the various problems confronting the US right now is  a being "very good"  minority leader because Yglesias is under the misapprehension that being an obstructionist is the hallmark of a good legislator in a democratic system.  In other words, he is a dolt.  Unless, of course, like him you make your decision on good and bad based on some set of ideological abstractions that protect you from any concrete realities.

More On Bernie Sanders

So, he has a web page with video casts, here's one, and comments.  Unlike many Conservatives who either do not have or robustly censor their comments, Sanders lets freedom ring, which -- in this case -- means that a lot of the comments are Ayn Randian and Austrian in tone; this makes for a odd dissonance.

The Economic Problem in a Nutshell

Fred Clark on the arithmetic of mass lay offs:

The most recent figures, if you want to be precise: 14.2 million looking for work; 3.4 million job openings. That means 10.8 million Americans right now, today, are royally, epically screwed.

That means it wouldn't matter if every unemployed American followed all the advice for what job-seekers are supposed to do. If every single one of them keeps a positive attitude while still being willing to settle for less, if each and every one of them takes classes and volunteers to keep their skills sharp, if each and every one networks furiously, gets up every morning, showers, shaves and gets dressed for the office before sending out dozens of perfect, enticingly crafted résumés all day, every day, then 10.8 million of them will still not find jobs because there are 10.8 million fewer jobs than there are job seekers.

Representing Interests

One of the points Bernie Sanders is making is that far too much of what the Congress does takes from lower and middle class Americans and gives to the wealthiest among us and that the taxes code is skewed in favor of the rich and the Republicans are making things worse for the vast majority of America.  Jonah Goldberg, in his reliable wrong way, insists that one support for the middle class isn't socialism, as he understands it -- which is a round about way of saying he hasn't got a clue of what Sanders' Democratic Socialism is,  and two, following Burke, that legislators owe us their judgment.

In terms of two,  Sanders' correct judgment is that the current system is screwing working and middle class Americans, that is the vast majority of Americans, and legislating in the interests of a wealthy and powerful minority and the American congress needs to stop doing this.  Instead of making a coherent, let alone intelligent, argument about how this position is wrong, hint: it's not, Goldberg makes a series of non-sequitors that serve to illuminate his inability to understand an argument.

After nearly 30 years of neo-Liberals like Goldberg and Yglesisas, and the rest ruining this country you would think that at the very least they would be able to make a coherent argument in favor of the policies that have crippled America.

Socialism

Bernie Sanders is on CSPAN right now complaining intelligently about the tax deal, and he has promised to continue until his boy ranger legs can no longer support him.  He is a great American.

UPDATE:
If nothing else Sanders is making in public from a position of some importance the best available arguments against the dominate neo-Liberal consensus that holds that the best way to protect the country and improve the economy requires screwing the vast majority of Americans by following a neo-Liberal path already shown to lead off a cliff.

Blaming Obama

The tax deal is appalling and shouldn't be passed as negotiated.  It's not appalling because Obama is a wretched human being; it's appalling because it is bad policy.  Gitmo's continuation is equally appalling.  But it isn't Obama who is responsible.  So while I agree that

[i]t is morally wrong to support a president who keeps open GITMO, escalates wars and begins new ones, gives taxpayers' monies to bail out banks, lowers workers' pay, and cuts taxes for the rich when the poor are desperate.

I disagree that Obama is responsible for all that stuff as he is one actor among many.  He is wrong about the taxes and wrong about the wage freeze but right about extending unemployment and right to try and stop GITMO over Congressional objections, right about DADT, the banks are paying back the money and propping up GM and Chrysler was the right thing to do, the health care reform is a good first step, and so on. If you were right all the time you'd be god or me.

Another Article I Never Finished Reading

The opening paragraph:

On August 8, 1897, Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist, shot Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the Prime Minister of Spain. Cánovas had dominated Spanish politics for decades, even during periods when he was nominally out of office, helping shore up Spain’s tottering monarchy and its possession of Cuba and the Philippines through torture and wide-scale military repression. Spanish imperialism in the Americas died with him: Cuba and the Philippines soon drifted out of Spain’s sphere of control and into that of the United States. A bullet from an anarchist’s pistol had changed global politics.

In the first instance, Canovas's policies had already failed before his death and, what is more, even had he lived Spain was in no position to retain its empire.  More importantly neither Cuba nor the Philippines "drifted" into the growing American empire.  Cuba was winning its long struggle for independence from Spanish rule when the USA stepped in. Initially, we went to aide our friends to the south in the brave struggle for liberty until imperialists realized that we could win Cuba for America at which point the Cubans went from brave liberty strugglers to inept racial inferiors who need our help in gaining and maintaining their freedom and liberty.  It really is a sordid little tale, much like the violent takeover and occupation of the Philippines. 

If you cannot face fairly and squarely the US's use of violence to create an empire why should I think you can get the ins and outs of anarchism right?

Nailing Wikileaks

In a long essay, Charli Carpenter revisits Julian Assange and continues to find her kid's argument the better.  She is, I thought, wrong about the insight of her wise child, full of grace though it undoubtedly is. One of her current complaints about Assange is equally wrong-headed. Building on others' essay about what Assange thinks, as opposed to reading Assange himself, she argues that Assange is not consistent in his arguments for transparency and at different times deploys different justifications that fall into three main categories: information wants to be free, transparency will lead to reform, and rendering states and governments so paranoid that they cannot continue to function.  I am not sure why this is a problem as none, as far as I can tell  and she doesn't show that they are, are contradictory.  It is not clear why offering three effective justifications for an action is problematic.

She also notes that states and governments can function secretively and yet effectively because it is difficult to prosecute for genocide. Guess what?  It is difficult to prosecute for lots of things and the difficulty of one of the more difficult is not an argument against what Assange is doing.

Cartoons

This wordless graphic novel, which is a kind of odd novel in as much as it has no words, is well worth viewing.

Via.

No, You're Wrong, You're Very Wrong

Matt Yglesias quotes Matt Taibbi on fake left-wing pundits:

[t]his career path is so well-worn in our business, it’s like a Great Silk Road of pseudoleft punditry. First step: graduate Harvard or Columbia, buy some clothes at Urban Outfitters, shore up your socially liberal cred by marching in a gay rights rally or something, then get a job at some place like the American Prospect. Then once you’re in, spend a few years writing wonky editorials gently chiding Jane Fonda liberals for failing to grasp the obvious wisdom of the WTC or whatever Bob Rubin/Pete Peterson Foundation deficit-reduction horseshit the Democratic Party chiefs happen to be pimping at the time. Once you’ve got that down, you just sit tight and wait for the New York Times or the Washington Post to call. It won’t be long.

And then insists that although he

think[s] it’s safe to say that Taibbi is somewhat to the left of the TAP alumni of the world it seems to me that a hypothetical universe in which Bob Kuttner, Harold Meyerson, Josh Marshall, Jons Cohn & Chait, Ezra Klein, Dana Goldstein, and myself dominated the public debate would be one that’s considerably more congenial to Taibbi’s policy preferences than is the actual world.

Not really and not really the point.  Yglesiasis a neo-Liberal who consistently trumpets market-based solutions for non-market-based problems.  He is at home with the current obsession of discussing any policy in terms of trite economic phrases and inapt economic concepts.  The rest of the list, I don't know so well, although I Marshall's recent bloviation about how Lady GaGa could get a cease and desist order where the Department of State can't and consistent over-estimation of Palin's and Bachman's political importance suggest that he needs to think a little harder about his pundicratic priorities.

If It's Not a Problem, Why Do You Keep Hitting It?

If Assange and Co's release of the trove of secret documents offered little new information and painted a positive picture of our diplomatic professionals how come everyone is moving heaven and earth to stop Wikileaks funding and arrest Assange for "sex by surprise"? It couldn't be that there is more available and that the heedlessly heedless Wikileaks is carefully editing the remaining documents so as to redact the innocent and indict the guily, could it?  I mean and after it all, it's not like the Bush Administration lied its way to war and that the Obama Administration is expanding the franchise into, at least, Yemen, could it?

Pathbreaking Answers

I have mentioned Fred Clark's long-running review of the Left Behind series and now suggest you read this short discussion of the nature of questions, answers, and paths.

The Company One Finds One's Self In

I think Ron Paul's fetish about recreating the golden fetters of yesteryore marks him as a kook, which it does,  but am now rethinking my position that once a kook always a kook based on this:

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."
"This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?" he added. "This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"

He would seem to have a clue when it comes to civil liberties and the needs and justifications for transparency.

Many People Wonder Why Many Other People Make Fun of Norwegians

So I was trying to find TMBG Older for its yearly birthday playing and I found these two videos for some Norwegian tv show which seems to deal with b and b+ list celebs long past their prime.  Watch the first one just so as to hear Radar O'Reilly lipsyncing Bob Dylan.



I am not sure there is any reason to watch this one except to feel better about yourself because, well, you didn't take part.

More Yet Even Again Already With The Wikileaks

Charli Carpenter on why Wikileaks ought to be more circumspect

[the leaks] confuse the press and the public by encouraging us to treat rumor and hearsay as actual news. “US Claims North Korea Shipped Missiles to Iran, Russia Doesn’t Believe Them” becomes “Iran Obtains North Korean Missiles Which Can Strike Europe” and “Western Powers Discuss Fears of Pakistan’s Arsenal” becomes “Wikileaks Cables Highlight Pakistan Nuclear Threat” and “South Korea tells US China told South Korea it’s annoyed at North Korea” becomes “China Ready to Abandon North Korea.”

Let's call this one the need for secrecy because of the dangerous dunderheads who are too dim-witted to report accurately what the revealer has revealed

And

Assange’s statements suggest he wants to reveal information to combat corruption and abuse. The key critique of diplomats based on these cables is that they are two-faced.

But for a diplomatic corps, that’s hardly a vice. That “courtesy” I was talking about, the willingness to not say every tactless opinion that comes into your brain, at least not publicly? That level of discretion and politeness we inculcate in our youngsters? Diplomats have perfected this art. That’s what diplomacy is.

Let's call this one the theory that if a thing is a thing any attempt to change the thing is wrong because the thing losses it's essential thingness and becomes something new or all attempt to reform diplomacy are doomed because reforms mean diplomats have to do things differently. [N.B., since she began this with one of those tedious wisdom of children thingies, tell the little one to never say in private what you wouldn't want repeated in public and never act in private etc.]

And

It’s not just in the diplomatic corps. Good governance in general, as well as authoritarian governance, sometime benefits from discretion. 

Isn't there a fundamental difference between "discretion" in regular life, this cake is stale and I going to eat it anyway, and saying one thing in public and another privately in political life, like the Saudi encouraging more American military violence in the Middle East.


And when someone starts a sentence

Consider another parable from family life, the staple piece of wisdom generally dished out to co-parents by family counselors

It is important to point out that there are no real functional similarities between governments, states, and families and that all such analogies are silly.

And her conclusion is 

that the “radical transparency” agenda promulgated by Assange and others needs serious qualification if it is to makes the world better governed, rather than ungovernable. 

Which I take to mean: if everybody knew or had access to information concerning all the stuff, odious and otherwise, that its government and state got up to the government and the state couldn't get up to all the stuff, odious and otherwise, that it gets up to; therefore, only "sever" or "real," whatever those mean, infraction ought to be exposed.

Surely, the answer to all this hemming and hawing, which is really another way of agreeing with Bismarck on legislation and sausages, is that I would rather know or have the ability to know what my state and government are getting up to so that I can make an informed decision about what the state and government are getting up to and I get to decide what is odious and what is trivial.  Anya?

Once More Into The Wikileaks

Noted privacy expert Steve Aftergood castigates Wikileaks because they exposed secrets he wouldn't have. He errs, I would argue, because he mistakes disagreement on a specific case as evidence that all things of that kind are protected by the same right of privacy. None of the kinds he mentions, sorority rites, religious rites, secret society rites, police investigations, and etc, are of a nature that they are categorically above exposure.  Indeed, each one is liable to abuse, sororities haze, the police punish innocents and let off the guilty if powerful, and so on, and in those cases require energetic pursuit and exposure. Aftergood is right, I think, that illegally publishing a book is wrong, and he is right that everyone has some right to privacy. 

Explain How This Works

Over to the NRO former McCain flunky and all around dishonest fella Douglas Holz-Eakin looks at the bleak job numbers and thunders:

But mostly this is an alarm bell for the lame-duck Congress. No more games — extend all the tax cuts for two years, patch the AMT, and turn to cutting spending and tax reform.

The thunderousness of his thundering renders, it would seem, making an argument about how further job reductions and less money in circulation and more money in rich folks pockets is going to create jobs unnecessary.

Megan McArdle Doesn't Understand Choices

 Megan McArdle quotes Julian Assange argument that

in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

And then mocks it:

This must be why Wikileaks has been getting so much material from the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, and why internal documents from Cargill are currently dominating their traffic.  Ooops!  That was a flash from an alternative universe where what Assange is saying isn't nonsense.

This is called missing the point.  Assange makes a theoretical argument about how a decentralized internet or other communication method eases the lot of dissidents in unjust societies.  Its easier to distribute information on Facebook than via Samizdats. Consider the recent case of Iran.

She also argues that

I mean, it's certainly true that closed, secretive networks become less effective--but that doesn't mean they become less effective at the things we dislike them doing.  Stalin remained exceptionally good at purges and liquidations all through World War II, and that didn't stop him from helping to win the war, and dominating half of Europe.  It's just that it took more dead Russian boys to do it, because being secretive and purge-oriented kind of hampered the efficiency of the economy, leaving them a little short of key items like guns.  But since Stalin was running a super-secretive, centrally controlled regime, that insight didn't really matter.  

Except for being wrong about Stalin during the war, when the purges had to stop because they were inefficient and the fact that crash industrialization combined with lend lease led to more guns during the war, as opposed to before and after, she's absolutely right; which is to say her historical analogy proves the opposite of what she wants it to.

And she makes the claim that

 forcing the US military and the state department to become more secretive might well hamper their effectiveness.  But it seems most likely to hamper their effectiveness at things like nation-building and community outreach, where you need a broad, decentralized effort.  I don't see why they'd be much less effective at launching drone attacks.  To be sure, the drone attacks might kill a lot more innocent civilians.  But no doubt Assange thinks this is all to the good because it heightens the contradictions or something.

Why? Killing civilians via drones needs necessarily to be secret, saving people's lives is supposed to be open and above board. DoD and DoS can speak openly about providing food and clean water to civilians but they can't about the wedding party they killed under the mistaken impression that it was the Terrorists Annual Ball.  Similarly, the less openly they can speak about the odious things they do the harder those things are to accomplish, ayna?

She asserts that

[i]t's also worth noting that the assumption that secretive organizations will necessarily be undermined by leaks is only even arguably true in a world where they can't expand their sphere of influence to control the propagation of those leaks.  It will be clear to anyone who has ever visited China that we do not live in that universe.  And of course, the US government has plenty of room to expand its power.  And what truly worries me about Wikileaks is not the immediate damage that has been done by the release of this sort of information, but the fact that the latest drop has created an enormous, nearly unanimous backlash in the United States.  

Her point, I take it, is that Wikileaks will lead to a police state here in the good old US of A, long may her purpled mountains majesty.  Let's call the last but here the Franz Ferdinand Falsehood. People often say, when asked, that Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination sparked WWI and overly literal people think that the statement is meant to be literally true. It is actually a kind of short hand for a longer argument having to do with preexisting conditions, rising international tensions, short-sighted military and political leadership, and reactions to the assassination. If we avoid over reactions like McArdle's and others and insist on more transparency because, after all, everybody knew what was in Wikileaks, we can all live happily ever after, with tax increases for the wealthy and a pony for everybody else.

My larger point is and remains how we, as opposed to the state, respond to Wikileaks is our choice and, after living through the stupidity of 9/11 responses, I chose to applaud in the hopes of more transparency and less odiousness.

Faster Wikileaks, Kill, Kill

As lots of people have been arguing, here's the most lucid, Assange, who is allegedly going to be arrested for allegedly sexually molesting someone or some someones, seeks by the exposure of state secrets to expose the state's secrets and to make the state, or really any secretive lying entity, so paranoid that it guards ever more closely its secrets until such time as either it can't function, because it has become so secretive that it hides the truth from itself or stops taking altogether, or, it seems to me, the state realizes that it gains nearly nothing from being a secretive lying entity and decides to be open and above board.  Despite what Packer and the rest of the defenders of secretive lying insist the only reason to be a secretive liar is because what you're doing is so odious that no one must know what odious things you're doing so you hide these things and then lie about them.

One of the many things that President Wilson sought was increased transparency in international diplomacy so that everyone could figure out what the heck was going on. He wasn't particularly successful however, think of how different the world would look if the the 20th and 21st century diplomacy looked like Vienna in 1814. For democrats, many American politicians, journalists, and etcs really hate democracy.