GE to KO: STFU

[A version of this post previously ran as my regular Friday night column on Firedoglake.]

Hey, waddya say tonight we go after some big game? Yeah, I know what you’re thinkin’: elephants by definition are big game. Or, maybe you’ve watched the video clip here, and you’re thinking, Bill O’Reilly is a big target, but kind of an easy one. Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, think bigger:

For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.

It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to bring it to an end.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the two networks. Then — even though the feud had increased the viewing audience of both programs — they instructed lieutenants to arrange a cease-fire, according to three people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and the anchors for the most part found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

“It was time to grow up,” a senior employee of one of the companies said.

Instructed lieutenants??? Oh, wait, I should add this:

The rapprochement — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.

And there we have it, don’t we? It wasn’t that it was personal, it’s that it was business—and not the news business, G.E.’s business.

Read more »

What Dreams May Come? Rolling Back Media Consolidation and Reforming Campaign Finance in the Wake of Stewart and Cramer

Perhaps much of this has been said before, but some of the fallout from Stewart vs. Cramer—the calls for changes in the way business “news” is handled—puts some long-simmering arguments about media consolidation back on the front burner.

Media conglomerates do not exist to deliver news, they exist to deliver shareholder value. It is in their interest to fluff the stock market and to curry favor with government regulators so that they can continue to acquire, conglomerate, consolidate, profit, and pay dividends.

There are individual reporters that try to do their jobs, but increasingly with less staff and more demands for additional content. Reporters are rewarded and promoted more often these days not for their clips as much as they are for their rolodexes and their ability to serve the needs of the parent company as detailed above. It is natural for them to want to get ahead and ensure job security. Pissing off powerful contacts doesn't really meet any of these needs as the industry is currently structured.

Is there a fix for this? Yes, but it's a very heavy lift. Roll back media consolidation. Re-impose limits on ownership that existed prior to 1996. Take away special wavers for multiple major channels in single markets.

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Meghan McCain: On Message

You didn’t really expect Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John “yes, I may have lost, but I’m still a cranky, idea-free asshole” McCain, to break news during Wednesday’s appearance on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, did you?

OK, yes yes yes, she has “taken on” Ann Coulter, saying writing out loud in The Daily Beast all the things that, well, 89% of the sentient population already knows. But hey, props where props is due: it’s not like everyone is blogging about how noxious Coultergeist is, now, is it?

So, it wasn’t “breaking” news that we got in a head-scratchingly super-sized double segment, but there was some refreshing honesty—or, if not honesty, at least a sort of self-awareness. You think that I’m going to mention hearing a McCain admit to zero understanding of “economic things”—nah, too easy. Truly old news. But, check this out:

I really think we’re on the precipice of possibly becoming a party that’s irrelevant to young people. It’s truly possible in the next election unless the right politician, the right message, and it starts with message, which I think people are missing, too. . . .

Well, Meghan, they very well might be missing the right message—there was that November election, after all—but that your Republicans are missing that “it starts with message?” We beg to differ:

[House Minority leader John] Boehner reminded Republicans that they are no longer in the business of legislating and should focus almost solely on communicating their message with voters.

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Bush’s Final Presser: Redefining Success, One Rooftop Rescue at a Time

Still-President George W. Bush, looking on Monday morning like most of America now feels, stood before the White House press corps one last time to express his undying gratitude for their piss-poor performance during his eight-years in office. From groggy start to rambling finish, it was a jaw-dropping performance.

In keeping with a long-standing pattern, Bush repeatedly “admitted” that his “rhetoric” might not have been right (“Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”). All the deeds were fine; he just didn’t sell them well. For the Boy King, this has always been the PR presidency; he is now just more loose-lipped about it. Like with so many crappy, Peter-Principled CEO types, he has made the strategy the tactic.

In that vain vein, the most startling moment to my ear and eye was Bush’s perception of his failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina with anything resembling appropriate gravity:

Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed.

You know, I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them. . .

Wait, hang on—I just have to interrupt for minute: “Helicopter drivers?” “Coast Guard Drivers?”

I think we call them “pilots.”

OK, carry on. . . .

You know, I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs -- 30,000 people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. That's a pretty quick response.

Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely.

But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, then what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 that got pulled off the roofs?

Amazing, right? It doesn’t even occur to Bush that having to pull people off of roofs is wholly emblematic of the slow response. Last time I checked, the standard advice when faced with a big hurricane is not “First, get on your roof.”

As for the levees breaking, the floods, well, “no one could have anticipated. . .” except, well, um:

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. . . .

In a second document. . . a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina's likely impact to that of "Hurricane Pam," a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse.

The hurricane's Category 4 storm surge "could greatly overtop levees and protective systems" and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures, the FEMA report said. It further predicted "incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)" and the displacement of more than a million residents.

So, that’s four days notice—or six days before those helicopter drivers got to work—but the “Hurricane Pam” simulation, that was done a full year before Katrina.

But why stop there? Bush was actually warned about the problem with the New Orleans levees over four years before Katrina; his response:

Funding for flood prevention was slashed by 80 per cent, work on strengthening levees to protect the city was stopped for the first time in 37 years, and planning for housing stranded citizens and evacuating refugees from the Superdome were crippled. Yet the administration had been warned repeatedly of the dangers by its own officials.

In early 2001, at the start of Mr Bush's presidency, his Government's Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) warned that a hurricane hitting New Orleans would be the deadliest of the three most likely catastrophes facing America; the others were a massive San Francisco earthquake and, prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York.

So, I guess, in a manner of speaking, his “response” wasn’t slow at all—Bush laid the groundwork for those wonderful rooftop photo-ops four years in advance.

This sort of truth-squading could be done with just about every response Bush gave in his presser. And it should be done, not just today, but for every instance of Bush legacy burnishing we will be forced to endure, push back on, fight, and re-fight for many years to come. Though it might be rare to see the burnishing this unvarnished, it has been made apparent from these instant re-writes on current events, through the neocons’ Vietnam revisionism, to the recent attempts to trash-talk the New Deal that nothing is safe or sacred.

Certainly not the truth.

. . . .

On a related point, nothing exemplifies just what a petty, egomaniacal, vindictive jerk this president was, is, and will always be than his treatment Helen Thomas. Bush had stopped calling on Thomas long ago, the White House press office even tried to take away her front row seat—a “punishment” for asking tough questions—but to not give her the honor of the first or last question at his final presser was, to my mind, classless.


cross-posted on Firedoglake

Too late

Over the next two months, Mr. Paulson must impose some coherence and clarity on the bailout. Otherwise he will only fan anxieties and mistrust, which will undermine the effectiveness of his good decisions and amplify the fallout of his bad ones. With markets gyrating wildly, and the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation needs clear leadership and a sound plan.

After spending the entire length of today’s lead editorial demonstrating just how badly Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has handled the economic crisis and ensuing attempts at a “bailout,” the New York Times undermines its point with this half-hearted admonition. Honestly, if the Times editorial board knows of a good decision by Mr. Hanky, might they have shared it?

The nation does need clear leadership and a sound plan, but, to date, the nation has gotten neither. As pointed out in this very editorial, any “modest easing the bailout initially brought about in the credit markets is now being reversed over doubts about the Treasury’s stewardship of the plan.” Paulson’s actions have been reactive and woefully behind the curve; he lacks anything like a coherent strategy, and the moves he has taken seem less motivated by an interest in protecting wage-earning Americans than in protecting Paulson’s pals and ideological biases.

There is also zero transparency—something many econ-watchers consider of utmost importance to stabilizing credit markets. . . not to mention the stock market. Beyond the lack of oversight as to what the banks are doing with the billions in bailout cash that they have received (much will end up going to bonuses, balance sheets, and the buy-ups of competing banks), it has now been revealed that there was another $2 trillion (!) dispensed by the Fed that is completely opaque.

Paulson has refused to use any of the TARP cash to help homeowners facing foreclosure, even though that might slow the bleeding and even stimulate some local economies, and now he has also rejected using his precious kitty to help the auto industry. Though it’s true that an auto-industry bailout administered with a similar chaotic attitude and the same lack of rules and requirements would do little in the long run to fix systemic problems in this sector, deciding that Goldman Sachs was “too big to fail” but GM is not is as stupid as it is hypocritical.

Given that record, I have no need to extend the rhetorical lifeline the Times so generously offers. Clear leadership and a sound plan cannot come soon enough, and given the noted rapid deterioration of the economy and the number of Paulson’s remaining days, it probably won’t.


(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

Doubt, by the numbers

A snippet of “analysis,” courtesy of the AP (here via the LA Times), seems to have dictated what fast became the received wisdom on the “be careful what you fish for” conundrum of the Obama campaign’s drive for increased minority turnout vis-à-vis the very unfortunate passage of Proposition 8 (eliminating marriage rights for same-sex couples):

California's black and Latino voters, who turned out in droves for Barack Obama, also provided key support in favor of the state's same-sex marriage ban. Seven in 10 black voters backed a successful ballot measure to overturn the California Supreme Court's May decision allowing same-sex marriage, according to exit polls for The Associated Press.

More than half of Latino voters supported Proposition 8, while whites were split. Religious groups led the tightly organized campaign for the measure, and religious voters were decisive in getting it passed. Of the seven in 10 voters who described themselves as Christian, two-thirds backed the initiative. Married voters and voters with children strongly supported Proposition 8. Unmarried voters were heavily opposed.

The sound of this report, what with it being grounded in a poll and all, makes it hard to refute—and, indeed, it seems few have tried. The language in the top paragraph, or some slight variant, appears in most of the major reports I’ve read or heard in the two days since the November 4th referendum. The implication is clear, and has been said outright, first-time non-white voters brought into the system by the Obama campaign provided the margin necessary to pass Prop. 8.

Except that if you look at the data from the AP exit poll, that isn’t clear at all.

Unless there are cross-tabulations from this poll that have not been made publicly available, I cannot see how the numbers support the certitude of the claim. The above narrative is a possibility, but so are many other stories—and I feel that other conclusions are likely just as viable.

First off, while it is true that African American voters in California did vote overwhelmingly for the marriage ban—70% YES to 30% NO—Latinos were more closely divided: 53% YES to 47% NO. That’s significant, but not in the same league as the margin from African American voters. It also should be noted that African Americans accounted for 10% of those polled; Latinos, 18%.

More to my point, however, is the missing cross-tab. There are a good number of sub-samples available in the published results (more on some of those in moment), but “African American first-time voters that voted for Obama-Biden” or even just “African American first-time voters” are not among them.

It is quite possible that with that many cuts, the sample size is too small to yield results that pass statistical muster, but without the ability to run my own cross-tabs, I can’t tell you.

Here’s what I can tell you (based on what is posted), and it is some of these numbers that make me at least harbor doubts about the “new Black voters are conservative on social issues” storyline.

(The first number in brackets is the % of the total sample, the second number is the % that voted YES, and the third is the % that voted NO.)

Democrats (42) 36 - 64
Republicans (29) 82 - 18
Independents (28) 46 - 54

Is this the first year you’ve ever voted?
Yes (14) 38 - 62
No (86) 56 - 44

Union Household (25) 56 - 44
Non-union Household (75) 50 - 50

Who did you want to win in the nomination?
Dems for Clinton (15) 39 - 61
Dems for Obama (23) 31 - 69

Suburban voters (51) 59 - 41
Large city voters (45) 45 - 55

Do you think Obama’s positions are:
Too liberal (32) 74 - 25
Too conservative (7) (sample too small)
About right (56) 31 - 69

Voted for Obama (60) 32 - 68
Voted for McCain (38) 84 - 16

Democrats overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, first-time voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who are in accordance with Obama’s positions overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who supported Obama in the primary overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who voted for Obama on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8.

Urban voters rejected the measure by a ten-point margin, while suburban voters supported it by eight. I don’t know what the racial breakdown is of California’s suburbs, but I would assume that large cities would have the larger African American populations.

The only category that could have been influenced by the “Obama effect” (for lack of a better name) is the union vote. It has been widely reported how active organized labor was in getting out the vote for Barack Obama, and, as you see above, union households favored the marriage ban by 12 points. However, and this is a big however, this number might also be deceptive because the “households” category, almost by definition, includes a lot of families. Married with children (31% of the sample) voted YES 68% of the time (all others—69% of the sample—rejected Prop. 8 by ten points).

While none of what I have just detailed rules out the hypothesis that first-time African American voters brought to the polls by the Obama candidacy proved the difference in the passage of Proposition 8, I think there is enough here to call that narrative into question. For all we know, most of the 70% of the African American population that voted YES on 8 would have come out and voted even if Obama wasn’t on the ballot. Conversely, it might be the case that the 30% of African Americans that rejected the measure are the ones voting for the first time. Might be—I just can’t tell.

And if I can’t tell, I am figuring that most of the establishment press parroting the AP’s narrative probably can’t tell either.

No doubt there is much to be done to combat the homophobic bias evidenced in this tally, and in similar outcomes in other states, but the discussion about what is to be done could be influenced by perceptions of which groups bear responsibility for the final outcome. Indeed, the way Obama governs could be shaped by the larger story about what kinds of voters provided the president-elect’s margin of victory. Without the ability to further analyze the exit poll data, we should not accept the center-right narrative or claims of any particular Obama effect.


(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

NYT endorses Obama; makes a mistake

Easy, easy. . . there’s a semicolon up there. . . so, please, just read on.

In a lengthy editorial, published Friday, the New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for president:

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.

In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Well, I could quibble with just what the Times might call McCain’s accomplishments, for most are ephemeral or singularly self-serving, but that is nothing to get too up in arms about really. Within a generation, John McCain’s “career,” for lack of a better term, will be reduced to an interesting footnote; the editorial’s reference to “accomplishments” might be little more than a rhetorical flourish.

Instead, I take umbrage at an assumption quite casually tossed out in the section of the endorsement labeled “National Security”:

The American military — its people and equipment — is dangerously overstretched. Mr. Bush has neglected the necessary war in Afghanistan, which now threatens to spiral into defeat. The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly and responsibly as possible.

While Iraq’s leaders insist on a swift drawdown of American troops and a deadline for the end of the occupation, Mr. McCain is still talking about some ill-defined “victory.” As a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting American troops and limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.

Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

[emphasis added]

While I wholeheartedly advocate a quick end to the US occupation of Iraq, even if the next president engineers that exit, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan—because as numerous experts, General McKiernan, and even Barack Obama understand, there is no military solution to the problems in Afghanistan.

While I personally find it infuriating enough that it is accepted as dogma that the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was moral, necessary, and unavoidable (if our goal was to apprehend Osama bin Laden, other options were on the table), it is now even more exasperating to hear talk of escalation in that theater treated as if it were America’s strategic “big duh” moment. The Times’ asserted consensus ignores both recent experience and centuries of history, but, even more concretely, it ignores the current debate.

Take, for example, former New York Times Berlin and Istanbul Bureau Chief Stephen Kinzer, writing earlier this month in the Boston Globe:

The McCain-Obama approach to Afghanistan, like much of US policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia, is based on emotion rather than realism. Emotion leads many Americans to want to punish perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They see war against the Taliban as a way to do it. Suggesting that victory over the Taliban is impossible, and that the United States can only hope for peace in Afghanistan through compromise with Taliban leaders, has been taken as near-treason.

. . . .

In fact, long-run success in Afghanistan - defined as an acceptable level of violence and assurance that Afghan territory will not be used for attacks against other countries - will only be possible with fewer foreign troops on the ground, not more.

A relentless series of US attacks in Afghanistan has produced "collateral damage" in the form of hundreds of civilian deaths, which alienate the very Afghans the West needs. As long as the campaign continues, recruits will pour into Taliban ranks. It is no accident that the Taliban has mushroomed since the current bombing campaign began. It allows the Taliban to claim the mantle of resistance to a foreign occupier. In Afghanistan, there is none more sacred.

The US war in Afghanistan also serves as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. It is attracting a new stream of foreign fighters into the region. A few years ago, these jihadists went to Iraq to fight the Great Satan. Now they see the United States escalating its war in Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan, and are flocking there instead.

Civilian deaths alienating a local population, the honor inherent in resisting a foreign occupier, a US presence serving as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda—it all should sound chillingly familiar to even the most casual news consumer (no less a newspaper). It certainly seems to for at least one US Senator. . . and that one would be Russ Feingold:

We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan? How many troops would be needed and for how long? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives? And – with the lessons of Iraq in mind – will this approach advance our top national security priority, namely defeating Al Qaeda?

. . . .

Regardless of whether we send more troops, we need to understand that, as in Iraq, there is ultimately no military solution to Afghanistan's problems. Unless we push for diplomacy and a regional approach, work to root out corruption, stamp out the country's narcotics trade, and step up development and reconstruction efforts, Afghanistan will probably continue its downward trajectory.

Not every paragraph of the Feingold piece is as clear as the ones above (if those are even that clear); in many ways, Feingold hedges his bets by refusing to rule out options and posing much in the form of questions. But at least he is asking a question. The New York Times (and, to an extent, the man that they endorsed) has not.

To be fair to Obama, I think he has made it pretty clear that he is a stronger advocate for multinational, diplomatic solutions than either Bush or McCain. But the nature of that diplomacy is yet undefined, while the “need” for more US troops in Afghanistan is a stated given. If and when a President Obama must make his plans more concrete, he would do well to enlist Feingold as an ally, and let the Democrat from Wisconsin ask him the questions quoted above. Obama would also be well served by talks with people who think like Kinzer:

Even if the United States de-escalates its war in Afghanistan, the country will not be stable as long as the poppy trade provides huge sums of money for violent militants. Eradicating poppies is like eradicating the Taliban: a great idea but not achievable. Instead of waging endless spray-and-burn campaigns that alienate ordinary Afghans, the United States should allow planting to proceed unmolested, and then buy the entire crop. Some could be turned into morphine for medical use, and the rest destroyed. The Afghan poppy crop is worth an estimated $4 billion per year. That sum would be better spent putting cash into the pockets of Afghan peasants than firing missiles into their villages.

Deploying more US troops in Afghanistan will intensify this highly dangerous conflict, not calm it. Compromise with Al Qaeda would be both unimaginable and morally repugnant, but the Taliban is a different force. Skillful negotiation among clan leaders, based on a genuine willingness to compromise, holds the best hope for Afghanistan. It is an approach based on reality, not emotion.

Perhaps the New York Times editorial board should give Kinzer a call as well.

* * *

But the Times actually needn’t go out of house. Here’s Nicholas Kristof from their own editorial pages:

Our intuitive approach to fighting terrorists and insurgents is to blow things up. But one of the most cost-effective counterterrorism methods in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may be to build things up, like schooling and microfinance. Girls’ education sometimes gets more bang for the buck than a missile.

A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.

I quoted Kristof in a post last August. I also quoted Iliana Segura, who looked at the same RAND study and also applied it to Afghanistan:

If the United States really wants to improve the situation in Afghanistan, it should start by ending the occupation. It should then cough up money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. (One estimate puts the tab at $10 billion.) This is not just for the sake of Afghanistan, but for the sake of Americans as well, who are no safer today than they were when the planes hit the towers. Ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the first, crucial step in that elusive goal of "winning hearts and minds" that the United States claims to be so committed to in the region. As Iraq has demonstrated, occupying armies are not a deterrent to terrorism. Occupying armies breed terror.

Most important, it's time to stop thinking of Afghanistan as the "right front" of the so-called "War on Terror" -- an idea that has been perpetuated by everyone from Barack Obama to Jon Stewart (who idiotically told Colin Powell in 2005, "the Afghanistan war, man did I dig that. I'd like to go again") -- and start questioning the legitimacy of the "War on Terror" itself. . . .

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," wrote Seth Jones, the lead author of the study. "Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory."

I added my own two cents to those two fine columns, but you can go back and read those with a simple click. I expect Barack Obama has at least glanced at that RAND report; what could it hurt to sit down with Kristof and Segura, too?


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

November 5th comes early:Newsweek’s conservative cover story tries to make winners out of losers, and vice-versa

It is paragraphs like this one that make it hard to get all dewy-eyed over the predicted death of the dead-tree media:

So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. According to the NEWSWEEK Poll, nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996), and in those years they were led by Southern Baptist nominees who ran away from the liberal label. "Is this a center-right country? Yes, compared to Europe or Canada it's obviously much more conservative," says Adrian Wooldridge, coauthor of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America" and Washington bureau chief of the London-based Economist. "There's a much higher tolerance for inequality, much greater cultural conservatism, a higher incarceration rate, legalized handguns and greater distrust of the state."

Writing the cover story for the October 27th issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham wastes his magazine’s ink and its readers’ time arguing that the United States is (and always has been) a right-of-center country, and will continue to be, no matter what happens two weeks from Tuesday. Should Obama attempt to govern otherwise, Meacham opines, there will be hell to pay—most notably by the new President himself.

It is, firstly, an editorial masquerading as news—and that alone should earn Newsweek’s editors a harsh reproach—but the sheer number of factual and logical errors in Meacham’s screed, compounded by the dialectic straw men, sins of omission, and an over-reliance on conservative columnists and frustrated, fading DLC-ers for the framing of his argument, should make the news weekly’s entire subscriber base wonder if there aren’t cheaper ways to line a birdcage.

Let’s start with the paragraph above (though many others would prove my point equally as well). Twice as many people might “call themselves conservatives as liberals,” but when a self-described conservative can just as easily be a Wall Street CEO pocketing his bailout billions as he can be “Joe the Plumber” simultaneously relishing and ruing his fifteen minutes, I’m not sure what lesson we are supposed to learn from such a “fact.” (Further, as is mentioned in the piece, Rick Perlstein notes that after a generation of equating “liberal” with “all that is distasteful and alarming,” that side of the ID equation is messed up, as well.)

The real truth, as it has been for some time now in poll after poll, is that on the issues, American voters are what we used to call “liberal,” or “left-of-center,” or now might call “progressive.” Be it on the role of government, on minimum wage, on tax equity, the environment, universal healthcare, or stem cell research, the population of America is allied with the Democrats—and not so-called conservative or centrist Democrats, but progressive Democrats. On the supposedly more difficult and divisive issues like equal rights and pay for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals, the upholding of Roe v. Wade, and licensing requirements for guns, the preponderance of evidence again says that Americans are, in reality, liberal, whether they call themselves such or not.

That the United States does not elect presidents by popular vote should give anyone pause before declaring that the Oval Office is an accurate bellwether of our collective political proclivity; that fewer than half that could vote do vote should render it a non sequitur. In addition, it is hard to argue on the one hand that the Democrats that won the White House did so because they did not attach themselves to core Democratic ideals, but then contend on the other that their defeats and failures were rebukes of the Democratic Party.

I can’t dispute that parties on the European left are a measure further to that end of the spectrum than the US Democrats are as a party, but as many of the poll numbers alluded to above will show, the American people might be much closer to their European brethren than Meacham’s lot would care to believe. And, to Meacham’s use of Adrian Wooldridge, since when is “a much higher tolerance for inequality, much greater cultural conservatism, a higher incarceration rate, legalized handguns and greater distrust of the state”—even if true—an admirable space for a people to inhabit?

Almost every paragraph in the article is worthy of this multipoint takedown. For the sake of argument, let’s sample one more:

Like the apostles of Jesus who expected their Messiah to return in triumph before they themselves died, many liberals are almost certain to be disappointed in a President Obama. "I think right now people are in a pragmatic mood, not an ideological mood," says David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. Perhaps, but on the off chance that ideology is on the mind of a voter or two, Axelrod's candidate has taken care to avoid the L word. Obama opposes gay marriage; talks about tax cuts, God and veterans' benefits; and is spending money to try to remain competitive in traditionally Republican states such as Virginia, North Carolina and even West Virginia, where Hillary Clinton trounced him earlier this year. "I think he will govern a little right of center," says Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman and chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. "He is not an ideologue."

Some number of liberals might, after a certain amount of time, indeed find themselves disappointed or frustrated with a President Obama should he fail to realize and take advantage of his political moment—but if they are, they will have a lot of company. If the electorate is left wanting—if Obama is stymied by obstructionist blocs in Congress, or just fails on his own to push hard enough for the change he seems to promise—then they might show less enthusiasm come the 2010 midterms. But that will not be because Obama was too much the liberal Democrat—it will be because he was not able to deliver the progressive policies that the majority want and perhaps will soon expect.

In that regard, Obama could be the next Clinton (though I hope that this will not be the case). However, keep in mind that when I make this comparison, I am seeing Clinton as a failure not because he was too liberal, but because his first two years failed to make real the liberal benefits he promised during his 1992 campaign.

As for avoiding the “L” word, if Meacham were to be taken at face value, if Americans are not keen to call themselves “liberals,” then why on earth would a smart candidate use that word? And that is doubly so when you understand that the term is as meaningless as it is problematic.

Let’s use Meacham’s own metric: Sure, Obama is on record as a opposing “gay marriage,” but he is, as are a majority of Americans, pro civil unions, and Obama is also staunchly opposed to the federal “defense of marriage” act. Legally defining marriage as solely the union between one man and one woman is the conservative position; Obama is opposed to that position—and America is, too.

Obama talks about tax cuts. . . for the middle class—a segment that has been squeezed by the conservative approach to tax policy. Obama is also just as open about advocating a return to pre-Bush tax rates on those making over $250,000, or the top few percent of the entire country. It is the conservatives—for lack of a better word—that want to extend the inequitable, failed, and unpopular Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

As for God and veterans’ benefits—since when are either of those the province of conservatives? In fact, in the case of the veterans, it has been the Democrats who have pushed for more and better equipment in the field, and more and better care at home. It has been the conservative Republicans who have opposed these efforts every step of the way, up to and including the new GI bill.

That Obama is now spending money and making campaign stops in “Virginia, North Carolina, and even West Virginia” (especially when he doesn’t necessarily need these states to win) doesn’t mean that he is acting less like a liberal—it means that voters in those states are noticeably turning away from Republican conservatives. That this bit of “analysis” made it into the final version of this article is only slightly more astounding than the idea that Jon Meacham, after submitting it, still has a job.

Meacham’s quoting Harold Ford Jr., a man desperately trying to stay relevant (and if he has to undermine his nominally fellow Democrats, so be it) is hardly worth mentioning. But it is worth mentioning what almost no one in the establishment media ever does: that conservative Democrat Ford was the only Democratic candidate for Senate in 2006 to lose his contest.

This is all but a sample of the inanity that is supposed to sell copies of Newsweek this week, but it would be too easy to just point at it—and its author—and roll on the floor laughing our asses off. Meacham, Ford, Ronald Brownstein, and David Brooks, and even those conservatives like Christopher Buckley that have more openly embraced Obama, are scrambling to remake the next president in something akin to their own image, even before he is elected. It’s a rough job—trying to both claim that they played a part in Obama’s post-partisan success while pre-chastising him for refusing to embrace the failed ideology of the conservative movement—but establishment outlets like Newsweek, the New York Times, CNN, and the National Journal are all proving up to the task. Without a substantial pushback from the other side—the liberal side—claptrap like Meacham’s might become a policy trap for the Democrats.

Newsweek does offer an asymmetrical counterpoint to Meacham’s “news” story. In a shorter article, indeed labeled “counterpoint” (a dismissive appellation, I must note—Meacham gives us a “news” item, while this is mere “opinion”), Jonathan Alter argues that “We’re heading left once again.” Where Meacham grandstands for caution, Alter contends that if Obama pulls his punches, he can’t possibly win the fight to re-right and de-right the country.

Alter points to FDR, who used his first 100 days to push bold and sweeping government initiatives. The depression might have lasted another eight years, but Roosevelt showed that he had heard the voters, that he was on their side, and demonstrated just what an engaged government acting in the public interest could do for its people.

We are again at a place where a president could and should do what FDR did, much to the chagrin of Meacham and the movement conservative minority. That they are in fact an unpopular minority shouldn’t be in doubt—just look at Newsweek.com’s lists of most viewed and most e-mailed stories. In both cases, Alter’s “The country is heading leftward” is number one; Meacham’s “We’re a conservative country” is number two.

Is there any doubt on which side the presidential winner should be?


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

Breaking News: Obama is Still Black

Though far from quieted, the constant drumbeat of “party disunity” is being drowned out by the thunderous sound of conventioneers cheering BOTH its top primary candidates. Senator Hillary Clinton spent 23 minutes on Tuesday night talking up and wholeheartedly endorsing Barack Obama, and, with the exception of a few small pockets, delegates and assembled guests inside the Pepsi Center embraced the message with several standing ovations.

By the time the Big Dawg finishes barking Wednesday night, the schism that has so dominated the establishment media narrative will have been officially and publicly put to bed. (I am not denying that some private rifts still exist between specific members of the campaigns, but all that I speak to here—and I have made a point of asking everyone I meet, from delegate to campaign official to fundraiser—expresses first and up front that everyone knows what has to be done to elect Democrats in November, and that starts with uniting behind Obama-Biden.)

Troubling, I know. Because without an unofficial official through-line, we might actually have to make this campaign about access to affordable healthcare, or a post-hydrocarbon economy, or Iraq and Afghanistan, or about the hundreds of issues where Barack Obama and John McCain. . . and that would take time and at least one google search.

But, do not furrow your pancaked and powdered brow, it appears that the broadcast media, at least, have gotten word of a new and groundbreaking meme: Barack Obama is apparently (are you sitting down?) African American.

Oh, what am I saying, that’s not how they put it. Take two: Barack Obama is black.

And he’s running for president, too! (Talk about your audacity of hope!)

This "Breaking News" was broken (or is it that this is broken news?) by Joe Scarborough on Wednesday’s Morning Joe—I will let leevank give you the rundown:

It seems that Barack Obama is like Ivy League MBA who shows up on the shop floor and lays everybody off. And then it got to how Barack Obama managed to get into all of those elite schools he attended. Pat Buchanan volunteered a story about hearing from an alumnus of some Catholic high school that they'd had three members of their most recent graduating class admitted to Harvard, and how he'd said, "That's great!" And how he'd heard in return, "They were all black."

I was stunned. The story line is now EXPLICITLY that Barack Obama is the unqualified black guy who is taking YOUR job, or YOUR kid's spot in college, simply because of the color of his skin.

But, apparently, it is not enough that Scarborough and Buchanan hip us to (what is actually half of) BHO’s racial background—Obama needs to tell us himself.

A few hours after Morning Joe, Brian Williams was anchoring DNC coverage on MSNBC and asked if there wasn't "some point during this campaign—maybe during one of the debates—when Obama has to look into the camera and say to America, 'I'm black.'" (Not an exact quote—I am catching TV on the fly here in Denver—but it is very close to a verbatim.) Williams qualified it, sort of, by saying this was about acknowledging that some people won't vote for an African American.

Then there is the “gentleman of the Old School” (to quote Media Bistro), Charlie Gibson of ABC, who has been dragged (kicking and screaming, apparently) into the blogosphere as part of his convention coverage. What does Charlie have to say about this experience? Well, it seems what comes to mind is that Barack Obama is, um, you know. . .

They throw around the word historic a lot in conventions and yet this one really is. . . .

If you had told me that before I died, one of the major parties in this country would nominate an African American for president, I'd be amazed.

To be fair, Gibson is reflecting on how far America has come since his personal experiences reporting some 40 years ago in a segregated Lynchburg, VA, and even I think that there are many aspects of Obama’s rise to become the Democratic standard-bearer that could be called “historic,” his mixed-race background among them. But, still, I think a lot of us in and outside of the medias (sorry about the plural plural) have been aware of and moved on from the color of Obama’s skin being issue one in this election.

Still, old memes never die, they just get repeated (that’s pretty much by definition, I guess), and the New York Times, perhaps sensing that they have but one day left to flog this dead stalking horse, led with this:

Mr. Obama’s name will be put in nomination some time after 3 p.m. local time (5 p.m. Eastern time), but only after his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is also nominated. Roughly half of her 1,640 delegates said in a pre-convention poll that they intended to vote for her when her name is put in nomination, but there have been intense private negotiations between the Obama and Clinton camps to cut short the roll call and make Mr. Obama the unanimous nominee.

. . . .

But the formal nomination of Mr. Obama will not end the drama that has riven the Obama and Clinton camps and provided a consuming story line of this convention.

Say, what? As I wrote earlier, and has been seconded, even in the establishment press, this is not the consuming story line of this convention for anyone who is actually at the convention.

As I am writing this, the roll call is proceeding—and proceeding smoothly. Is that a story? Only, I suppose in contrast to the establishment reportage.

Tonight, Bill Clinton will make his speech, and

An aide to the former president said Mr. Clinton will be as supportive of Mr. Obama as Mrs. Clinton was in her 23-minute address on Tuesday.

"It’s as strong as she was in every respect," the aide said. "And shorter."

And then what will John Broder and his establishment buddies have to write about?

I guess the broadcast media is ahead of the press, so we can shed the anxiety that we might sympathetically feel for our better-paid friends. The troubles with the Clintons might be yesterday’s non-story, but Barack Obama continues to be black.

Establishment Media Desperately Seeking Disunity

Riding the 16th Street bus between venues this morning, I encountered a young woman, DNC delegate credentials slung around her neck, sporting two buttons on her shoulder bag—one said “Hillary ‘08” and the other “Obama ’08.”

And that, as best my impressions tell me so far, is the extent of party disunity at the Democratic National Convention.

Perhaps you have a different impression, and if you happen to be somewhere else this week, maybe a place where your best news options are USA TODAY or a cable news channel, I don’t blame you.

Just take a gander at the number one story on the cover of today’s USA TODAY:

Poll: More than half of Clinton backers still not sold on Obama

DENVER — Fewer than half of Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters in the presidential primaries say they definitely will vote for Barack Obama in November, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, evidence of a formidable challenge facing Democrats as their national convention opens here today.

Sounds grim, right? But read past the first paragraph. . .

In the survey, taken Thursday through Saturday, 47% of Clinton supporters say they are solidly behind Obama, and 23% say they support him but may change their minds before the election.

Thirty percent say they will vote for Republican John McCain, someone else or no one at all.

The way I see it, that is an aggregate 70% strong or moderate support of Democratic nominee Barack Obama among former supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps this lead, from the New York Times, is more to your tastes:

Delegates for Clinton Back Obama, but Show Concerns

Delegates to the Democratic National Convention arrive in Denver having largely put aside the deep divisions of the primary fight between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, although some hold lingering concerns about Mr. Obama’s level of experience, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

More than half of the delegates that Mrs. Clinton won in the primaries now say they are enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Obama, and they also believe he will win the presidential election in November, the poll found. Three in 10 say they support Mr. Obama but have reservations about him or they support him only because he is the party’s nominee. Five percent say they do not support him yet.

The poll, which was taken before Mr. Obama selected Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as his running mate, also suggests that Mrs. Clinton’s 1,640 pledged delegates are evenly split over whom they plan to vote for on the floor of the convention during the roll call vote on Wednesday evening.

A much more accurate read, as I’m seeing it here in Denver.

Of course, the two articles above are based on different polls, so you might assume that the given biases of Gallup/USA TODAY versus NYT/CBS might account for the different takes on the same story. Or maybe you’ve noticed that the USA TODAY survey is of registered voters, while the Times story focuses on DNC delegates. But my look at the numbers (as far as the two news organizations will let me look, anyway) tells me that the stories with the disparate headlines are based on very similar stories.

The campaign for the Democratic nomination was over-long (that’s the party’s fault, not the candidates’) and hard fought. A lot of time, money, energy, and self-esteem was invested, and with that much invested, it is hard for some to just flip a switch and sing Kumbaya.

But we do not elect presidents by group sing. We vote. And by the measures of both polls, an overwhelming majority of Democrats are going to vote for Barack Obama

So, why the fascination with the “schism” narrative?

Yes, in this giant sports metaphor we call American culture, conflict always seems like a sweeter story than unity. The “I belong to no organized political party—I’m a Democrat” narrative is older than the man that coined that phrase, Will Rodgers. And, if you buy into the idea that the establishment media has a vested interest in keeping the general election race (Obama vs. McCain) close, then stories about possible Democratic defections are a natural. But I can’t help but feel that there is something else, something, perhaps, much more insidious, at work here.

What does it say when you tell voters over and over that some people just can’t vote for an African American? What does it say when you repeat ad absurdum that Clinton supporters, mostly identified as women, are not team players? What does it do to paint well in advance of a possible victory a Democratic president with the taint of illegitimacy?

Besides reinforcing traditional biases, besides incubating distrust where there might have been none (or, at least, little), the repetition of these memes discourages participation in, and the evolution of, the system.

In sum, it breeds cynicism. And nothing kills hope like cynicism.

I don’t necessarily want to start singing Kumbaya myself. I have not been drinking the Kool-Aid inside the Pepsi Center (in fact, I have not been drinking ANYTHING—there is nothing besides a drinking fountain in the press center, and I am THIRSTY). I did see one man here passing out “Hillary ‘08” stickers. There are some divisions over issues inside the Democratic Party. And there are likely a few people here (and I think that is a very few) who will have an episode of blind cynicism themselves and vote for four more years of failed and corrupt Republican leadership. But all of that is so clearly outweighed here in Denver by a strong sense that in order to march the ball up the field (to use a sports metaphor myself), in order to move this country forward, in order to restore some modicum of responsibility and morality to the White House, Democrats of all stripes will be voting Obama-Biden come November.

But don’t take my word for it, read the papers—past the headlines if you must.

Can Democrats unite behind a single ticket this election cycle? From here in Denver, the word is (OK, words are): Yes we can!


UPDATE: Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine—who is here in Denver—gets it right:

Given all that buildup, it may come as a surprise that the Democrats who will gather around the gavel in Denver are actually more united than perhaps at any other point in the past 30 years. When Obama accepts the Democratic nomination on Thursday night, he will inherit a party focused on its determination to take back the White House, and that overarching goal should paper over any lingering resentments or policy differences, at least until after Election Day.

It’s a solid article all the way through. Does being in Denver give reporters a different perspective?

(h/t Ian Fried)


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos. . . and, I hear, Air America, too! Welcome!)

An update to yesterday’s post about the words of Rev. Wright

(I wanted to make a point of updating yesterday’s post about the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and, because I think it is important not to leave any misconceptions or mistakes on my part simply hanging out there, contributing to all the noise on this subject, I wanted to do it in a separate post, instead of a simple update, so that more people might see it. I thank you for your indulgence. –guy2k)

I may have misunderstood Rev. Wright’s sodomy reference Friday night on Moyers. A reader sent me a link to a post that includes this passage from David Mendell:

Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday.

If this is the case, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, what to make of this Wright quote from Friday?

That the perception of God who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country. Same thing you find in Psalm 137. That those people who are carried away into slavery have a very different concept of what it means to be the people of God than the ones who carried them away.

A search of other posts around the ‘sphere indicates that many believe that when Rev. Wright included Sodomy in this litany, he was making a reference to Abner Louima, the Haitian émigré who was beaten and sodomized with a plunger handle by New York City police officers (who allegedly told Louima it was “Giuliani time”) in 1997.

Given both the broader context of Wright’s words, recently and in the past, this seems like a valid interpretation, or at least a strong possibility. I fear, however, that if the subtlety was lost on me, it was lost on many whom would not take the time nor show the desire to understand it further. I’m not sure that Wright cares about that; I do think that Moyers might.

A discussion of hermeneutics—which is what Wright and Moyers are engaged in here—is not really the stock and trade of the establishment media. They of the black-and-white print and the color TV are not so much into explaining shades of gray. Whatever would they make of Wright’s reference to Psalm 137?

Psalm 137 is the one that recounts the yearnings for Jerusalem by enslaved Jews. It begins with “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept,” and then tells of how the slaves cannot comply with their captors’ request for a song of joy: “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” It ends with the enslaved dreaming of avenging the sacking of their city by seizing Babylonian children and dashing their heads against rocks.

A difficult passage? Certainly. An angry passage? It seems so. A vengeful, dangerous—radical, even—tract from a man named Jeremiah? Why, as a matter of fact, yes—the prophet Jeremiah. . . from the Bible.

(You know, maybe it’s for the best that the establishment media is too busy/lazy for this part of discussion after all. . . .)

I now return you to your regularly scheduled war/recession/discussion of flag pins.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

Rev. Wright does Obama a solid

(Thin gruel for the rest of us)

To start, I can’t believe I am even writing about this. Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ranks about 127th on my list of important issues this election season. Don’t get me wrong, some of the things Rev. Wright has said are worthy of discussion, but not so much in the way it “relates” to Obama (because it pretty much doesn’t).

God damn America? Now that was an interesting speech. Have you read the whole thing, or maybe heard more than a nine-second clip? Here’s the run-up to the “offending” phrase:

When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them [in] scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.

I don’t know about you, but I think that there is stuff in there to talk about—and I don’t mean just talk about it as it relates to Barack Obama’s white grandmother, either.

Sure there are other parts of that same sermon that flirt with what I would categorize as baseless, pointless conspiracy mongering (“The government lied about Pearl Harbor,” said Wright. “They knew the Japanese were going to attack,” to give one glaring example), but the point about damning rather than blessing America for all of the wrongs it has perpetrated against its African American citizenry—I can see talking about that. I might even go so far as to say that I agree with it. At the very least, that, to me, is good place to join the conversation about why a man like Jeremiah Wright inspires so many in his flock.

Which brings us to this week’s doings. Reverend Jeremiah Wright started his comeback tour with a rather subdued and sensible appearance on Bill Moyers last Friday (though even there, Wright snuck in a swipe at the “sin” of sodomy—a swipe that Moyers either missed or chose to ignore), but rounded out the long weekend with a performance at the National Press Club that included some rude put downs of the event’s female moderator and the allegation that the US government could have unleashed the AIDS virus on minority communities as a form of genocide.

I have a few thoughts:

First off, I think that Wright did Obama a big favor on Monday. Much to the chagrin of the Obama campaign and intelligent voters everywhere, the Wright-Obama “controversy” (no, please don’t let me get away with that—it is not a controversy—let’s just call it a “gab fest”) was not really going away. It was ebbing and flowing, but in the end, the people (and when I say “people,” I mean a handful of establishment media icons and members of the punditocracy) wanted blood. Even after Obama took it to kowtowed to Fox News this weekend, the screaming hordes would not be appeased. Why wouldn’t Obama engage in something more ratings-savvy than a 40-minute discussion of race? Why was he being so selfish? America demanded a smackdown!

And now, because Rev. Wright pushed the envelope, the “people” have what they wanted. Senator Obama has had to repudiate the angry black man. In the words of various media outlets, Obama has “cut the cord” and “made a clean break.” He has not only renounced the words, he has disavowed the man.

(Shall we wait to see if the establishment demands similar actions from John McCain vis-à-vis Rod Parsley and John Hagee?

I thought not.)

With his strong, un-nuanced, perhaps even angry renunciation of his former pastor, Obama has now been deemed “presidential.”

Secondly, what is up with all the old guys making a scene?

This political season seems like it has been dominated by post-middle-aged men trying desperately to cling to relevance: Jeremiah Wright. . . Bill Clinton. . . John McCain. All in denial about their best days being behind them, all still begging for attention, all refusing to get out of the way of progress (or whatever passes for progress these days). It’s all a little tawdry, a little hard to watch, a little embarrassing.

And, finally, rather than get all righteous about Wright’s “outrageous remarks” (to use Obama’s words), why not think a bit about why his words have resonance with a not insignificant portion of America’s populace. This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard the allegations about the government and the AIDS virus—and I doubt it’s the first time Obama has heard them, either. Surely the distinguished members of the establishment press have come across such stories. Why, years after the science of HIV has been integrated into our culture, does the myth of government-sponsored genocide waged against its own still have legs?

I have some ideas (the Tuskegee experiments, government foot-dragging during the early days of the pandemic, poverty, lack of access to affordable healthcare, lack of a modern science curriculum in our schools, to name several possibilities), but I don’t have the time to start dissecting them right now. Rather, I want to suggest that we at some point try. Instead of just writing off Wright, or continuing to act scandalized by his very existence, I think it would make for a better campaign and a better country if we could talk about why what Wright says affects us the way it does.

Of course, doing that in the context of a presidential campaign is probably asking much too much of a candidate or our current corporate media construct. The poor substitute of having Barack Obama simply and clearly distance himself from Rev. Wright will have to do for now. It is certainly preferable to the “all Wright, all the time” alternative.


Meanwhile, as we all focus like a laser on Jeremiah Wright, a second US carrier group has moved into the Persian Gulf, the recession that Bush refuses to acknowledge continues to deepen, the Iraqi occupation slogs along at over $341 million per day, suicide bombers kill in Kabul, Pakistanis struggle to restore an independent judiciary, a real genocide is happening in Sudan, our government continues to justify torture—the list goes on. Take a moment to compare how much time and space your favorite media outlet is giving to these stories. . . now compare that to today’s coverage of Obama’s remarks about Wright. . . .

Thought so.

God damn America.


*Please see my May 1 follow-up to this post.*


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

Obama on Fox: drinking the Kool-Aid or making lemonade?

Shorter me:

I just don’t see what Obama could accomplish on Fox that couldn’t be done better somewhere else.

Longer me:

As most are by now aware, Barack Obama has agreed to tape an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace for air this weekend on Fox News Sunday. Good idea? Bad idea? What will he accomplish—for his campaign and for progressive causes, at large? First, take into account. . .

• Fox’s audience is dwindling in general, and their campaign coverage is lagging behind CNN and MSNBC.
• Of the Fox audience that’s left, a large chunk of them are doing the political equivalent of covering their ears and going “la la la la, not listening.”
• Even unedited, Obama on Fox does not control the horizontal, does not control the vertical. The initial interview might air unedited, but it will be cut up and excerpted on other Fox shows as best suits their narrative. Clips will also be distributed among Fox fellow travelers to further perpetuate the nonsense issues that will no doubt be the red meat of Wallace’s questioning.
• Obama can’t “go to the video tape.” It’s not his show—he can’t cut to examples of where he’s right and Bush/McCain/Fox is wrong. Alas, on a Fox show, Fox can plug in their own “gotcha” clips.
• Other news organizations will be less likely to pick up large pieces of Obama since they will have to credit Fox for the clip.
• Even if he says otherwise, Obama’s appearance on Fox undercuts roots efforts to delegitimize FNC, if for no other reason than his positive brand halo is extended over the Fox brand by having his face/voice/presence coupled with the Fox bug.
• The Obama appearance will likely be a ratings boost that can be used by Fox to increase ad revenue.

All of that said, I guess Barack Obama is going to tape a show for Murdoch & Co., so I hope he’s got something special in the tank.

And, by “special,” I am not so much thinking about “taking it to Fox” (as much as I would like to hear that stuff myself—preferably from people speaking on networks other than Fox). Slamming Fox on Fox can just as easily appear angry or whiny to their viewers. I can even imagine the Clinton camp getting on him for not being able to “take it,” blah, blah, blah.

Sure, tell Fox that they are neither fair nor balanced, but then move on to tell America why.

Screw flag pins and “bittergate,” and elevate the dialogue to explain why the Fox take on the economy, on Iraq, on torture, on privatization, on healthcare, on global warming, etc. is dead wrong. Instead of spending a lot of face time with Fox’s loyal viewership going after Fox, spend that time going after Bush, McCain, and Republican Congressmen and Congresswomen. If there is some perception that Obama needs to talk to Fox’s audience, then he should talk to them about why they should vote for Democrats in November.

That’s the closest I can come to making a sweet citrus beverage out of this truckload of sour lemons.

Anything less will likely leave me parched and bitter.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

By any other name

When five US combat brigades depart Iraq in July—because their over-long, 15-month rotations are up, and not because of any actual strategic decision—it will represent the end and sum total of what George W. Bush not-too-long-ago called our “return on success.” As reported in today’s New York Times (via Think Progress), it “now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president.”

In other words, what the Bush Administration successfully branded as a “surge” proves to be exactly what I insisted it was over a year ago, an escalation.

Even though most of this escalation in forces will remain in Iraq through the end of Bush’s term, I will bet that most in the establishment media will continue to call it a “surge”—just as the same scribe corps continues to parrot and push the never true and constantly disproved myth that “the surge is working.”

Just to reiterate, because it seems that we all have to, the latest escalation has not worked. It certainly didn’t promote any kind of grand political reconciliation—its purported strategic goal—and even the claim that it decreased overall violence is extremely suspect.

After fourteen months of this tactic, the occasion of reaching 4,000 dead troops serves to underscore the escalation’s abject failure. Not only does that number promise to go ever higher for the rest of Bush’s reign, the last two weeks got us to this tragic milestone much faster than expected. The 25 killed in the last fortnight represents the highest death rate for a two-week period since September 2007 (which came at the end of the bloodiest summer of the war).

Iraqi deaths are also creeping back up, Sunni and Shiite militias appear to be growing restless, and the US still has no set plan for transitioning out of this occupation.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both proposed more rapid US troop redeployments, but John W. McCain has a different idea. . . or, rather, he has the most un-different idea. To quote the Times: “The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, has advocated following a policy close to that of President Bush’s.”

Four more years of an over-stretched military, mission drift, and continued escalation—overseen by a guy that doesn’t even seem to understand the conflict? Sounds like the Republicans are offering McMore of McSame.

. . . .

For a different—as in better—way to deescalate the occupation, please check out A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq (this is my review, or click below to read about the full plan and who is supporting it).




(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)