Those of us who are addicted to the internet—and most particularly to doing research online—should be of good cheer at reading this news. It turns out that surfing’s good for you.
Honduras update
Here’s a discussion of the latest on Honduras.
FDR and the expansion of the executive branch
There’s been a great deal of discussion on this recent thread about whether Obama is contemplating a tyrannical takeover of the statist type, and whether he can possibly succeed. I’m not going to address that topic again right now (perhaps later; see this and this for two of my previous attempts).
But I’d like to take a little step back in time. Virtually all of us have heard of FDR’s First Inaugural Address, the famous 1933 speech in which he addressed a distraught nation and said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That phrase is so well-known that it’s possible that few of us have gone on to read the rest of the speech, which contains some interesting things.
Towards the end of FDR’s address we have this, for example:
Action…to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis””broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
It never came to that, fortunately. And FDR’s efforts to pack the Supreme Court and therefore exercise stronger control over that branch of government failed, as well. But these efforts offer a guide to how a crisis in this country could be used by a president determined to expand the reach of the executive beyond previous peacetime measures, acquiring war powers in the absence of war.
Afghanistan: no decision is itself a decision
I’ve written before about Obama’s Hamlet-like indecision on Afghanistan. Some call his approach thoughtful deliberation, and perhaps it is (although I don’t happen to think so).
But how long should pondering go on before it becomes procrastination? And never think that lack of a decision means no decision: failing to act, or postponing action, is a decision with consequences, too.
It is interesting that European leaders, who originally hailed Obama as a breath of intellect and fresh air after the cowboy Bush, are finding that there might be some pluses to dealing with cowboys after all. At least you know where they stand.
And you can expect them to stand firm where troops and military commitments are concerned. Don’t forget that during the campaign there was a lot of tough talk on Afghanistan from Obama, and back in March it appeared he’d done enough studying and had a strategic plan for that country. Why do I say that? Well, he said so himself; the following is from the speech he gave in March [emphasis mine]:
Good morning. Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office…
For three years, our commanders have been clear about the resources they need for training. Those resources have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, that will change….
Then in June, President Obama appointed a new commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal. The stage seemed set.
But as the musical King of Siam once said, “Very often find confusion/In conclusion I concluded long ago.” And the sort of confusion—or dithering, or stalling, or lengthy deliberation, or whatever you want to call it—that has gone on since in the Obama adiminstration regarding Afghanistan is not without consequences, especially when a war is going on.
There’s an old saying in family therapy, and it goes like this: “you can’t not communicate.” So a lack of decision in Afghanistan—or a lengthy postponement of a decision—communicates something.
It sends a message to the troops who are fighting there, and it’s not that there’s now a firm and knowledgeable hand on the tiller. It sends a message to the enemy; one of weakness. It sends a message of disarray and discord to our allies.
And yes, we do have allies in Afghanistan. Here’s what some of them are thinking and saying, now that it’s been 76 days since Obama’s hand-picked General McChrystal requested more troops:
“Everyone is waiting for what is going to be decided in the Oval Office, without having any chance to have our say,” moans a senior commander in one European army…
And while they wait, they will stew. In conversations with senior European officials visiting Washington, and at a transatlantic conference sponsored by Italy’s Magna Carta Foundation last weekend, I heard an earful of Euro-anxiety about the strategy review Obama is conducting. Some of the concern is simply about the spectacle of a young American president hesitating about going forward with a strategy that he committed himself to just months ago — and what effect that wavering might have on enemies both in Afghanistan and farther afield.
But a surprising amount of the worry, considering the continental source, is about whether Obama will be strong enough — whether he will, in the words of one ambassador, “walk away from a mission that we have all committed ourselves to.”
European governments bought in to Obama’s ambitious plan to pacify Afghanistan when he presented it in March. Unlike the U.S. president, they mostly haven’t had second thoughts. By and large they agree with the recommendations developed by the commander Obama appointed, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who says that unless the momentum of the Taliban is broken in the next year, the war may be lost.
This reminds me of French President Sarkozy’s perturbed reaction to Obama’s Iran policy and UN speech on disarmament in late September. It is alarming when Europe has more commitment to the Afghan campaign than President Obama (who after all made it a centerpiece of his own campaign) does, and are more willing to hang tough. True, their troop numbers are small compared to those of the US. But they are clearly worried that the man who just got the motivational Peace Prize is not capable of fighting even a war to which he’d been strongly (if only rhetorically) committed.
Europe is used to relying on the US militarily. They may not have realized how much they relied on it, till now. Caught in the throes of Obamalove, they should have heeded that old admonition: be careful what you wish for.
[NOTE: There’s a lot of information in this article about the differing opinions on Afghanistan within the Obama administration. I wonder how much of it is true, how much is disinformation, and how much is guesswork. The meme that’s being spread is that Joe Biden is against more troops, and that Obama is leaning in the opposite direction. However, I doubt that respect for Joe Biden’s opinion is what’s keeping Obama. I think his indecision reflects the fact that he is far more focused on his transformative Leftist domestic and economic agenda, with Afghanistan a very distant afterthought; as well as the political quandary he finds himself in. If he sends more troops, he riles his left flank. If he doesn’t, he risks another instance of going back on his word, and offending much of the American middle on whom his election originally depended. The Right? He never had them to lose in the first place.]
Have I turned into Victor Davis Hanson?
At least as far as his disconnect from current culture goes.
I can relate to nearly everything he says. I follow news assiduously. But I rarely go to the movies, and when I do I’m almost invariably disappointed.
Music? I think it ended some time in the 70s, with only a few songs penetrating after that (many of them just happen to be by Leonard Cohen, but there are a few others such as this monster, and this tuneful one, and they’re pretty good too).
I probably read the NY Times more than Hanson reports that he does, but it’s mostly blog-related, and in the nature of watching a slow-motion train wreck. I stopped watching network TV news over thirty years ago; I guess I always preferred print to TV journalism anyway. No sports any more, although I date my turnoff point a bit later than Hanson’s: it was when the Red Sox won the World Series.
Then again, maybe Hanson and I are just undergoing the ordinary developmental process of turning into old fogeys.
Obama’s long enemies list grows ever longer
And the health insurance companies are most definitely on it.
I can’t recall this level of invective from any American president in my lifetime. But that seems to be Obama’s specialty. Everybody’s a liar except him.
[NOTE: Here’s the President’s address.]
Those paranoid conservatives: who are you calling deranged?
From a TNR piece by Jonathan Chait [emphasis mine]:
Democracy Corps has a very interesting survey about the worldview of conservative Republicans. The focus group interviews show that the Republican right, which consists of about a fifth of the electorate, is held together by a set of beliefs that goes well beyond small government and traditional values. “Our groups showed that they explicitly believe [Obama] is purposely and ruthlessly executing a hidden agenda to weaken and ultimately destroy the foundations of our country,” reports the survey. Conservatives further believe that Obama’s policies are not merely misguided but “purposely designed to fail.”
Conservatives pundits tend to be extremely touchy about the subject of right-wing paranoia…The most interesting conclusion from the Democracy Corps survey is the degree to which the GOP conservative worldview stands completely apart from the rest of America. Conservatives do not have a slightly more radical version of the same beliefs as other Americans. They have a completely sealed-off belief system. Even the most right-leaning independents find the right-wing worldview, with its conspiracies and persecution complex, unrecognizable…
Although he doesn’t explicitly say so, Chait strongly implies that members of this group—for want of a better term we’ll call them the Republican Far Right (RFRs)—are paranoid. He claims that they have a “completely sealed-off belief system” with a “persecution complex,” which sounds pretty much like “paranoid” to me. Based on the Democracy Corps survey, he sees those who disapprove of Obama as divided between this more extreme group and a more moderate one that disagrees with Obama on certain issues but doesn’t see him as pursuing extremes such as socialism.
I agree that those who don’t like what Obama is doing at this point (Independents and even some moderate Democrats are in this mix as well as most Republicans) are divided into two camps: (1) those who have come to believe that Obama is fundamentally opposed to many basic American principles and is working to undermine some of them, and (2) those who do not agree with that statement. However, since I used to be in the latter group, but some months ago I entered the former, I don’t see any fundamental and permanent disconnect between the two.
Nor do I consider myself a conservative or even a Republican. I am an Independent. But I do believe that “Obama is purposely and ruthlessly executing a hidden agenda to weaken and ultimately destroy the foundations of our country” and that some of his policies, such as his promise that we can keep our current health care insurance, are indeed “designed to fail.”
I’ve come to these conclusions reluctantly and slowly, over a fairly lengthy period of time, based on intense and daily study of Obama: his words, his deeds, and analyses on both sides (Left and Right) of the consequences of his policies. But it seems that Chait believes that a person who comes to such a conclusion is most likely delusional and suffering from a “persecution complex.”
But as the old joke goes: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. It’s a joke, of course, because paranoia is by definition unjustified. But looking objectively and closely at a person and deciding, for example, that he or she is conning you, isn’t paranoia at all if the person really is a con artist. It’s a correct evaluation of a situation in which a threat exists. The real question is whether RFRs are correct or not.
Chait also mentions critiques (such as one by Peter Wehner) of people suffering from what’s become known as Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). In his piece, he defends BDS by saying that its sufferers were not just “wild-eyed left-wing radicals who suffer from some unusual derangement,” because:
In reality, by the last few years of the Bush administration, more than half the public strongly disapproved of Bush as president. If “Bush Derangement Syndrome” existed, it afflicted most of America.
I would submit that “strong disapproval” is quite a different thing from BDS, and that it is an invalid assumption to conclude, as Chait seems to, that those who professed the first must inevitably have suffered from the second. The two groups may have been as far apart as Democracy Corps’s two groups of Republicans who don’t approve of Obama, with only the most extreme suffering from BDS.
One thing we do know (although Chait conveniently leaves it out of this article) is that Chait himself was one of the most vocal and prominent sufferers from BDS in its most hateful and irrational form. You be the judge: here is the text of a well-known article that Chait wrote during the 2004 campaign entitled, “The case for Bush-hatred: mad about you” (I couldn’t get the full text from TNR because I’m not a subscriber and the article seems to have been moved, so I got it from the linked site). Some representative Chait quotes:
I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I’m tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so…He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school–the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks–shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks–blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing– a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.
It goes on—for quite a long time, actually—and you’re welcome to read the rest if you care to. The piece ends with this from Chait: “There. That feels better,” and I’m sure it did. But getting that rant off his overburdened chest certainly doesn’t foster confidence that Chait is the one of the more reliable and objective observers of what Obama critics are saying and why they are saying it.
It is instructive to go to the Democracy Corps website and examine their report itself. It’s a study of focus groups, including the RNRs and Independents (by the way, Democracy Corps was founded in 1999 by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg in “outrage” over the Clinton impeachment).
It’s a very long study, and it lacks reporting of important hard data such as the number of subjects in each group (at least, I couldn’t find the information there in an admittedly quick perusal). But the picture it paints of the RNRs is quite a different one from the bubbling bile of Chait’s own screed against Bush.
To begin with, as far as all those charges of “racist” go, Democracy Corps couldn’t find a bit of support for them among this group, although it wasn’t for lack of trying:
With [the possibility of racism] in mind, we allowed for extended open-ended discussion on Obama (including visuals of him speaking) among voters ”“ older, non-college, white, and conservative ”“ who were most race conscious and score highest on scales measuring racial prejudice. Race was barely raised, certainly not what was bothering them about President Obama.
In fact, some of these voters talked about feeling some pride at his election.
So, what’s eating the RNRs? In a nutshell, it’s Obama’s policies and words. The following sound like pretty substantive arguments to me; compare and contrast to Chait’s 2004 rant:
These conservative Republican base voters were not just shooting off half-cocked theories about conspiracies. They actively believe President Obama is purposely lying about his plans for the country and what his policies would do, and that he is exaggerating the threats America faces in order to create support for his policies. A key component to this deception is a pattern of always telling people what they want to hear, regardless of the truth…
They believe this strategy has been particularly successful in seducing younger voters, who they believe swung the election to Obama because they were taken in by his charisma and idealistic appeals to ”˜change’ and ”˜hope.’
We find further evidence of this pattern of deception in questions they believe have not been adequately answered or investigated about Obama’s background, including his place of birth, his education, the authorship of his books, the degree of his associations with controversial figures including William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, his work as a community organizer, his links to ACORN, and his service in the Illinois legislature. Again, they see a unique pattern of secrecy and subterfuge, abetted by either incompetence or willful neglect by the mainstream media…
They believe Obama is pushing his agenda at record pace because he does not want the American people to know what he is doing. The decision to tackle so many major issues at once early in his term is born not out of necessity, but out of secrecy and political calculation…When they look at the totality of his agenda, they see a deliberate effort to drive our country so deep into debt, to make the majority of Americans so dependent on the government, and to strip away so many basic constitutional rights that we are too weak to fight back and have to accept whatever solution he proposes.
It goes on—and on and on—with a fairly straightforward description of the basis of the RNR argument, point by point. The reasoning involved as well as the tone of the RNRs could not be more different from that of Chait in his 2004 piece. In fact, the RNRs seem to have a pronounced lack of personal animosity for Obama—it’s all about his policies, stupid [emphasis mine]:
Fear of government control is at the heart of virtually all of the concerns raised by these voters about Obama’s agenda, and it is literally a fear of two things ”“ government and control. They see government as inefficient, ineffective, and corrupt and believe it preys on the middle class and ”˜hard-working Americans.’…They exhaustively cite examples of this strategy at work, starting with the bank bailouts, the takeovers of Chrysler and GM, and foreclosure assistance making homeowners dependent on government for their homes…
In conclusion I say—as Chait’s piece asks in its apt title—just who are you calling deranged?
Robert Reich’s September Songs: on health care reform, what a difference two years makes
Please watch both of these videos in their entirety.
First we have Robert Reich on health care reform, September 2007:
Now we have Robert Reich on health care reform, September 2009:
Compare and contrast.
[NOTE: If you’re not familiar with the lyrics to “September Song,” here they are. And here’s the original 1938 version by Walter Huston:
Health insurance death spiral
Here’s another piece to read, and then send to everyone you know.
If they’re anything like my (almost universally liberal) friends, they won’t read it. Or if they do, they won’t believe it. Or if they read it and believe it, they’ll think it’s a small price to pay because it will inevitably lead to a public option and universal, although more costly, coverage.
Way back in the early days of this blog, when health care reform was barely a gleam in Obama’s eye, I wrote a piece called “The health care is always greener on the other side.” I think some of it bears repeating:
Socializing anything, including health care, tends to lead inexorably to wider availability of a more mediocre service. I am reminded of the drab high-rises of eastern Europe under the Soviets, the norm of tiny apartments shared by multiple families, the hackneyed art, the lack of variety in the stores, the dullness of reduced expectations for everyone. Everyone, that is, except the elites…
In the US, we don’t lack for proposals to solve our health care system’s problems, but my guess is that all of them are flawed because they all involve difficult choices about allocating resources. I think most people would agree (although not the most extreme Social Darwinists) that we need to have some sort of bottom line health care for everyone, although we don’t agree on how to provide it, how much is enough, or at what point it would kick in (at death’s door, or preventatively, or somewhere in between?). The answers to these questions depend on the answers to the larger questions: how far are we willing to go towards health care equality, and how low will our standards of general health care have to dive in order to attain it?
So, how low we will go?
Another tarty tattoo
I was in Macy’s last night and could not help but notice, as I made my purchase, that the salesgirl manning (or rather, womanning) the register had a tattoo of a type I’d not seen before.
I know, of course, that all parts of the human body have now become fair game for this sort of adornment. But this young woman was wearing a blouse designed to amply reveal that she had a small tattoo tucked away for safekeeping as a “now you see me now you don’t” teaser, smack dab in the chasm right between her breasts. It turns out THAT this is some sort of fad.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s a related post.]
About those attacks on Rush Limbaugh: “orchestrated” or not?
There was a discussion in the comments section here about whether the current campaign to use fabricated quotes to shout “Racist!!!” at Rush Limbaugh was “orchestrated” or not.
I think the word “orchestrated” is a bit strong. It implies a centralized planning committee, a real Left-wing conspiracy like Hillary’s vast Right-wing conspiracy, that one that was so intent on doing in her husband.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t think that groups of influential people—Left and/or Right—ever get together to plan things. They certainly do, at times (for instance, I’d certainly like to be a fly—or a house centipede—on George Soros’s wall; and then there’s this, for Hillary). But although orchestration is possible in the Limbaugh/racist case, it’s hardly necessary.
The mechanism by which such attacks tend to happen all at once is through the “follow-the-leader” effect. It works this way: in this case Obama, and various spokespeople for him, declared unequivocally quite some time ago that the press and pundits on the Right were an enemy most foul and underhanded, rather than honest opponents who merely disagree. Certain targets were mentioned by name. Rush was an early one, Fox News another.
So Rush is one of the people who already have been fingered by the Leader as ripe for attack. It doesn’t take a direct order, either; supporters understand that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the enemy of my friend is my enemy, so he is their enemy too. It helps, of course, that most Obama supporters already hate Rush and consider him the media devil incarnate, whether they’ve ever listened to him or not.
Therefore, there’s a race for the honor of being the person credited for destroying Limbaugh, or at least cutting into his power. And the race card—race baiting in particular—has long been the favored tool in the kit of Obama and supporters. During the campaign, for example, Obama only had to hint, and the minions eagerly took up the cause. Now it’s automatic; Obama doesn’t have to do a thing, and he knows that his followers will cry “racist!” at any criticism. It is very telling that he has not come down hard on them for this.
The “releaser” for the current campaign against Rush was the leak of the news that he was interested in an NFL purchase. I don’t know who was responsible for letting this out (the articles I’ve seen use the passive voice—“news broke”—without identifying the breaker). All that was necessary after that was to put two and two together, go to the files, and trot out the bogus racist quotes that were waiting on Wiki and several other cites. After that, there is no shortage of so-called journalists willing to suspend whatever lingering devotion they might have to the antiquated practice of fact-checking (what’s that, you ask?) if it will help the Left and liberal cause. All’s fair in love for Obama and war against the Right.
So let’s review. And remember, this isn’t primarily about Rush Limbaugh. It’s a generalized several-step process:
(a) the target is identified by the leader and/or his spokespeople
(b) the preferred method is demonstrated
(c) an event is reported that seems ripe for the application of the method
(d) the bogus history is trotted out
(e) others pile on
Is this an orchestra, or a jazz group with each member taking a turn for a solo in the spotlight, or a group of street musicians each on a different corner? Whatever it may be, no proof is necessary—and of course, since all of Limbaugh’s shows are recorded, it should be easy enough to dig up proof if there was any. But believers don’t need proof—after all, everyone knows that all people on the Right are racists. That’s the higher truth.
Resetting Russia
Resetting Russia? Never mind.