Fables of the reconstruction

Department of Corrections

Oops:

WASHINGTON – In the headline on a Nov. 26 story about controlling the dog population in Baghdad, The Associated Press erroneously described recommendations from Humane Society International. The animal rights group suggested how to control the dog population, not ways to kill dogs.

Sirota Bashes Krugman - Oops, Post Disappeared

[Update: Now it's been reposted in slightly edited form. Update again: Why do I care? But Sirota has now edited the post a lot.]

This showed up in Google Reader, but it was taken down by the time I clicked through:

Why Is Krugman Trying to Move the Goalposts?

from Open Left - Front Page by David Sirota

Lately, I really haven't been able to understand Paul Krugman. He went back and forth on the bailout, in a weird attempt to claim to an angry public he was against it, but to fellow economists he was for it, but then take credit for supposedly leading the bailout opposition after it miserably failed. Now we get this truly odd statement:

A thought I've had: there have been some complaints from movement progressives about the centrism/orthodoxy of Obama's economics appointments. To some extent this was unavoidable, I think: someone like the Treasury secretary has to be an experienced hand who can deal with Wall Street, and I haven't heard anyone proposing particular individuals with clearer progressive credentials to hold that position.

Now say what you will about Geithner - whether you like him or not, the idea that there is nobody other than him that has both the qualifications and more clear progressive credentials is utterly silly. In These Times proposed Harvard's Elizabeth Warren. What about progressive businessman Leo Hindery, of the Horizon Project? How about Chris Dodd or Barney Frank or Robert Reich? Hell, what about George Soros?

Again, I like Krugman a lot. But the claim that there are no candidates with "clearer progressive credentials" than Geithner, a former Republican who has been intimately involved in the policies that led to this meltdown - well, it's just absurd on its face.

And again, I say that not making a particular judgment about whether Geithner will do a good job - he may well do a great job, whether he's a progressive or not. The point here is that Krugman's attempt to move the basic, obvious and undebatable ideological goalposts is straight-up bizzarre.

This is amusing on several levels: First, Krugman's pique over Obama's health care proposal in the primary gave oxygen to the PUMAs who now think Sirota and Bowers are geniuses. Do these guys understand why they've been invited on Hardball to rip Obama from the left? If they don't, they're stupid, and if they do, they're hypocrites. Funnier still is that the same people mocking Obama supporters who knew all along that he is a moderate now are shocked to discover that Krugman is not an ideologue, either. Apparently they did not read their autographed copies of Conscience of a Liberal. Best of all is the little dance that's been going on among these A-listers, as they tiptoe to the line of calling each other out and then retreat in a competition to be cable news's official lefty blogger of the first Obama term. I would love to eavesdrop on their backchannel emails - strike that, no I wouldn't. I don't really care. It's just funny.

Iraqi Parliament Ratifies SOFA

149-49. 126 legislators didn't even bother to show up. The Sadrists banged on the table and chanted, "No agreement", as the document was being read aloud. What a zoo.

My Advice to the "Next Right": Ideology -> Strategy -> Message

[A front pager at The Next Right asked a leading question, "What comes first - the ideas or the message?", and I left the following as a comment.]

I'm a liberal, so take my input for what you think it's worth:

You all are focusing on the wrong dichotomy of ideas v. message. The progression has to be ideas (or more accurately, ideology, which is not a dirty word), followed by designing a strategy to vindicate that ideology, which then leads you to craft a message to execute that strategy.

Movement conservatism did this very well until recently. Here's my rundown of that history with my "harsh lefty tilt": You had disparate groups of people who regarded themselves as conservatives milling about with no direction in the 60s. These included racists who were appalled at the federal government protecting the civil rights of African-Americans, cold warriors with Maoist-like beliefs that constant conflict and perhaps even nuclear war with Communist Russia was inevitable and even desirable, religious fundamentalists enraged and baffled at the sexual revolution and the liberation of gays and women from traditional norms, and the wealthy who were convinced that the New Deal and the Great Society would bankrupt the country (and them).

The ideology of conservatism is based on the idea that people are basically evil, and that a successful society creates traditional norms and institutions in spite of and in order to control that evil. In this view, good people were obligated to use power in order to keep everyone else in line and prevent social changes that almost certainly would lead to bad results. The strategy that developed was to sell this idea to the various conservative factions on the theme of virtuous strength v. degenerate weakness.

To the racists, conservatism could say, "You're right. You are the noble white people who built Western Civilization and the United States, the greatest country on Earth. Now these darkies want to take it all away." To the fanatical anti-communists, conservatism could say, "You're right. Capitalism is the highest form of human virtue because it requires people to compete for resources and demonstrate their skill and intelligence in a true meritocracy. Anything that hinders that competition is evil, and Communism is the quintessence of evil - it is an international conspiracy solely meant to destroy capitalism." To the religious wackos, conservatism could say, "You're right. God the Father preordained the natural state of things that should be reflected in human society, but Satan is leading these sluts and sodomites astray. You are the good people who are doing God's work in fighting their evil ways." To the rich, conservatism could say, "You're right. The mob of poor have discovered that they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury, from your pocket, and if they succeed they'll never work again and society will collapse. We have to stop them."

From there, you could cross-market. The obvious thing would be to unite the messages aimed at the anti-communists and the rich, inspiring the anti-communists to venerate wealth (even if they weren't wealthy themselves) and the rich to provide funding for the cold war infrastructure (even if they thought the Pentagon and CIA examples of bloated, big-spending government). It was also easy to get the religious and the anti-communists together over the subject of atheism both at home and abroad. For another example, you could sell the idea to both the racists and the religious that the worst sexual degenerates were blacks.

But the real genius was discovering a focal point for all these positions. Uniting all of these ideas was that the evil people used government to effect the changes that each conservative group was trying to oppose. Thus, the party of small government was born. Even an anti-communism in the form of a large military was a doctrine of small government - if you think of International Communism as the ultimate form of big government.

Armed with an ideological strategy that could appeal to various groups, movement conservatism then turned to crafting an electoral strategy. The key, of course, was the South. That had the largest concentration of votes in each of the racist, religious and anti-communist blocs. (The rich are there for their money, not their votes, since there aren't enough of them.) The putrid heart of this regional strategy was racism and the regional paranoia that remained from the Civil War. Southern conservatives viewed themselves as a separate, more noble society under constant attack from the outside. This feeling of being under siege solidified the South for the GOP for decades. From this base of North-South conflict, conservatism then aimed at pitting the suburbs (the rich and the anticommunists) and the rural areas (racists and the religious) against the cities (blacks, the poor, homosexuals, and feminists).

The rest is uncontroversial. The right used the money of the rich and the troops provided by the churches to create what liberals called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", which is:

a propaganda machine that can hone a fact or a lie, broadcast it, and have it echoed and recycled in Fox News commentary, in Washington Times news stories, in Wall Street Journal editorials, by myriad right-wing pundits, by Heritage seminars and briefing papers, and in congressional hearings and speeches. Privatization of Social Security, vouchers for school, Vince Foster's supposed murder, Hillary's secret sex life, you name it -- the right's mighty Wurlitzer can ensure that a message is broadcast across the county, echoed in national and local news, and reverberated in the speeches of respectable academics as well as rabid politicians.

This propelled Reagan to power, but the plan began to fall apart in the 90s when Gingrich and the Congressional Republicans overreached and shut down the government. Like the Beer Hall Putsch, like the Tet Offensive, the revolutionaries thought their bold act would result in a glorious uprising of the people! And it turned out, the people hated it. Oops. Anti-government conservatives running government is like the dog who chases cars but when he finally catches one, he doesn't know what to do with it.

People, it turned out, wanted efficient but effective government, and while they bought into the strength v. weakness rhetoric, weakness was to them always exemplified by the government program someone else liked, not the one they liked. The capstone was Bush's hands-off approach, which resulted in nightmares like Katrina and now the financial crisis.

It gets worse: The demographics are against you. The hardcore racists, religious bigots and anti-communists are all old now. (See the exit polls for any of the successful anti-gay marriage referenda - the young people hated them.)  Old people like big government programs like Medicare and Social Security, so what's left to cut? The former communists are our buddies now, and the Muslims aren't scary enough to take their place, it turns out. Finally, the South is no longer Solid. Yankees are moving in. Blacks got their act together and are in political control across large swaths of the region.

The linkage between conservative thought, an ideological strategy aimed at various unaffiliated and disaffected groups, and an electoral strategy aimed at a winning number of states and Congressional districts, is broken. You need to forge a new one. The important step is to identify the current or emerging unaffiliated and disaffected groups, and determine if by uniting them you could seize power again. If so, then craft the message that will unite them. Who those groups are, I really don't know. I think you're just going to have to effectively hang out for a decade or two and see what develops that you can run on.

If I could help you, I wouldn't, of course. You're all pretty evil in both your purpose and in effect. Movement conservatism is a theology of hate that has perpetuated some of the worst aspects of the American character. I've been as honest in this post as I can be, but maybe the fact that I think you're bad people colored my analysis and made it seem more hopeless for you in the short run than it really is. Perhaps you can get the old gang back together by, say, convincing religious blacks and Hispanics that gays and sluts are the real menace. I don't think it will work, but please - go ahead and try.

Public Displays

Via The Economist:

Caption ideas?

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Philly @ Triumph Brewing, 117 Chestnut

Tonight's Drinking Liberally will be held at Triumph Brewing Co., 117 Chestnut St. It starts at 6 p.m. and ends whenever, as usual.

45% of Existing Home Sales Are Foreclosures

Lovely:

[D]istress sales [-] being foreclosures or short sales - have risen from what they [the National Association of Realtors] thought was 35% to 40% of all existing home sales, now they are saying it is 45% of all existing home sales.

They also are saying they are seeing further softening toward the November numbers. And they are hearing from the Realtors they talk to that the re-default rate on a lot of these loan modifications are running at 50% - that is half those of modifications aren't working.

The reason the loan modifications aren't working, probably, is that they're not loan writeoffs, but adjustments to interest rates. What's needed here is to write off principal, because the value of the underlying asset is not coming back within any reasonable time frame.

From the press release:

There remains a significant downward distortion in the current price from a large number of distress sales at discounted prices ....

It's the Realtor front group, so they have to put a positive spin on it, but their "distortion" is what I call "violent market correction". Foreclosure sales are involuntary sales. That means people who want to sell their house are looking at a market where they have to compete with prices set at sheriff sales. So they're stuck. As Duncan wrote:

[T]he housing bust ... makes homeowners less mobile than they otherwise would be given the difficult of selling their houses/loss of equity which could be used to roll over into new house. Throw in a local recession and they're trapped in a place with no jobs.

This creates a pent-up, invisible supply, because those houses aren't even being listed for sale, so they're not part of the unsold inventory. The supply overhang is worse than the numbers indicate. As soon as there is any upward price movement, these "frozen homeowners" will dump their places and move to where better jobs are, further depressing prices.

That's Catchy: "A New New Deal"

The first semi-official estimate of the stimulus that I've heard:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday that he thinks the economic stimulus package should be between $500 billion and $700 billion.

In an interview with ABC's "This Week," Schumer said, "I believe we need a pretty big package here." He added that Congress is working on getting the economic package to President-elect Barack Obama by Inauguration Day. "I think it has to be deep. In my view, it has to be between $500 and $700 billion, and that's because our economy is in serious, serious trouble."

"It's a little like having a new New Deal, but you have to do it before the Depression. Not after," Schumer added.

Just because I dislike Chuck Schumer: So we'll do the stimulus, and have the Depression anyway?

Headline Writer Fail

Um, no:

"Obama Aides Signal Higher Spending, Deeper Tax Cuts" = yes. It's Keynesian stimulus. We're trying to head off a catastrophe here.

"How Obama Won" Roundup

Firefox is starting to hate me for all the tabs I have open, so let me clear a few.

Where the "O" symbol came from:

When we received the assignment, we immediately read both of Senator Obama’s books. We were struck by the ideas of hope, change and a new perspective on red and blue (not red and blue states, but one country). There was also a strong sense, from the start, that his campaign represented something entirely new in American politics — “a new day,” so to speak. ...

Various vendors needed to reproduce the mark on signs, banners, and they needed some rules. So our initial concern was compliance and consistency. Having said that, we did think it was a strong mark — strong marks have the potential for broad successful application and viral growth — and we were cognizant of its possibilities. We saw (and visualized as part of the creative process) buttons, billboards, ads, Web banners, T-shirts and hats. We did not foresee the scope of the variations and the personal “ownership” that emerged, though.

We handed the logo and design assets off to the campaign in the summer of 2007. From that point on, everything that you’ve seen was done by the campaign, including the “demographic” variations of the logo. They also evolved the typography to uppercase, incorporated Joe Biden’s name and added a white line around the mark.

The campaign's design team made sure that the logo and fonts were consistently applied, which was a major benefit. The initial design was an epic win, but the addition of Biden's name was handled less well. Still, it's light years ahead of the "Kerry/Edwards" typography disaster.

The field strategy:

It was a huge risk for the national field program to have paid staff take the time to methodically build volunteer teams instead of rushing directly to spend all their time running voter contact activities themselves. From the point of view of the conventional wisdom of much of the pre-Obama field organizing world, the campaign is actually taking two big risks: first they are risking everything on the effectiveness of masses of volunteers, then they are risking everything again by relying on volunteer teams to lead those masses. What if teams was just a bunch of hippy nonsense? What if it turned out there just weren't that many unpaid activists capable of running high-quality canvasses?

Jeremy Bird, the Ohio general election director and one of the driving forces behind making teams a national strategy, said, "We decided in terms of timeline that [our organizers] would not be measured by the amount of voter contacts they made in the summer—but instead by the number of volunteers that they were recruiting, training and testing. It was much more an infrastructure focus. So there would be no calls from Chicago saying, 'Why haven't you made more calls?!' Instead there would be calls saying, 'Where are your neighborhood team volunteers?' Or, if the numbers seemed high, 'Are they real?' It was a whole shift in mentality that was really, really good." ...

Both staff and volunteers are unusually reflective and analytical regarding the team model and the organizing philosophy of "Respect. Empower. Include." Those words were plastered in hugh [sic] letters around almost every office I visited, and organizers will get carried away talking about those principles and how they are supported by various details of the organizing model they're practicing.

I think this is partly because the model is working, and so people are excited about it, and excited to think about it. But it's also because the leadership models this methodological introspection in all the trainings they do in in their daily management of organizers.

(Via.)

Summary of Ambinder's summary:

1. Practice what you preach. The preach: the neighborhood precinct captains are the linchpins of the ground effort. The practice: let them do the job.  ...
2. Scale / Force Of Numbers:  No matter how you measure this election, the Obama campaign was able to do so much because it had so much. ...
3. Win Bigger / Lose Smaller. [Run up the score where you're strong, but also hold down the score where you're weak - which requires you being in both places.]
4. African Americans and the early vote. Problem: black voters habitually, historically distrusted in-person early voting.  The solution: fix the problem. ...
5. Finding new voters. This one's obvious, but the campaign spent its entire summer finding out who wasn't registered and registering them ....
6. Technology (and Google):  beyond the obvious, beyond MyBarackObama.com, it was the advances in technology that increased the efficiency of Democratic turnout efforts. [This includes Votebuilder, Catalist and Voter Activation Network.]

You can see how all of this hangs together. The Volunteer Team Leaders, who Ambinder calls precinct captains but were in fact more wide-ranging geographically than that name implies, were tasked to recruit, train and manage volunteers. That produced the scale of volunteer power. Another thing: Everyone who volunteered was asked to donate. Everyone who donated was asked to volunteer. Donors who volunteer and enjoy it give more and more frequently. But you can't ask all your donors to volunteer unless you have something substantive for them to do. The only way to do that is ... empower your volunteers. See how that works?

Ambinder again:

The Obama campaign took the DNC's toolset, tricked it out, and integrated into one database its donor data (managed by Synetech), its Facebook user data, the Blue State Digital (i.e, MyBarackObama.com) data, the VoteBuilder/state party/VAN data and Catalist's own data. Volunteer data flowed by MyBo into the VAN VoteBuilder systems, a translation made possible by Catalist.

Howard Dean's DNC brought the party in the 21st century. Under his direction, the party was able to create what the Republican Party already had -- a single national voter file interface. The DNC struck data-sharing agreements with state parties, got everything uniform (more or less.) It spent tens of millions of dollars in 2005 and 2006 building this. ....

The Obama campaign took the original DNC's toolset and ran away with it, building reams of functionality and adding new tools and data sources, creating a system with a high degree of interoperability.

I can't speak to how all this stuff worked in the background. I can say that the campaign data people improved their volunteer management markedly from the time of the Pennsylvania primary on April 22nd and the kickoff of the general election campaign in Philly on August 7th. Also, the system was very volunteer-friendly in terms of data entry, cutting turf and producing walklists.

As good as the technology was, the volunteers wanted more. Next time I predict that team leaders will have the ability to generate lists of supporters and volunteers by geographical area, demographics, policy interest and level of campaign involvement. If I could identify and reach the people I want to work with me, it will be a huge improvement over waiting for them to respond to an email solicitation from the campaign to sign up for a myBO event.

"Next time" will come sooner rather than later. The volunteer organization is part of the transition. Field organizers I worked with are in D.C. now.  The transition has surveyed all of the volunteers to gauge both level of commitment and the desired direction.
 

What form the Obama administration's volunteer team will take isn't defined yet, but I believe the system will be in place by January. Remember how  we worked the huge crowds that came to every public appearance by the candidate, signing them up to volunteer or asking them to use their own mobile phones to call supporters on the spot? The estimate is that there will be 4 million people at the inauguration. If all 2 million volunteers from the campaign show up, they can recruit the other 2 million people there. There will be State of the Union watch parties across the country which will be used as organizing and recruiting tools, too. There is a lot of work to do, and we're all ready to pitch in again.

Interesting Times: 25% of U.S. Home Mortgages Are Underwater, Could Go to 40% in 2009

The consequences of financial deregulation:

"There are now 12 million homes in the United States with a loan-to-value ratio greater than 100 percent. That's one mortgage in four. The aggregate amount of that is some $2 trillion," said Feldstein. "If you look at the median (midpoint) loan-to-value ratio in that 12 million group of underwater mortgages — mortgages with negative equity — the median loan-to-value ratio is 120 percent."

That means about 25 percent of all U.S. mortgages are exceed [sic] the value of the homes the mortgages are financing. In the case of half the homes that are underwater, homeowners are paying a mortgage that's now 20 percent higher than the value of the home.

That's bad — but it's likely to get worse.

A recent report by First American Core Logic, a real-estate data firm in Santa Ana, Calif., estimated that as of Sept. 30, 7.5 million mortgages, or 18 percent of all properties with a mortgage, had negative equity. The group thinks there are another 2.1 million mortgages that are within 5 percent of going underwater.

Together, these two categories account for 23 percent of all properties with a mortgage. Nevada led all states with 48 percent of homes with negative equity. Florida and Arizona each had 29 percent of homes with underwater mortgages, while 27 percent of mortgages in California were upside-down, the group said.

If home prices fall another 10 to 15 percent, as measured by the Case/Shiller Home Price Index, then four out of every 10 mortgages in the U.S. could be underwater, Feldstein said.

"At those levels, it's hard to see how many people are going to be willing to keep up with their mortgages," Feldstein said.

The Case-Shiller Index that Feldstein refers to is one that Calculated Risk and Paul Krugman have been talking about for some time. It indicates that house prices have to fall about another 15% to return to year 2000 levels, which is the last time they were sane. But it gets worse: Sanity is not a floor since it never was a ceiling. As Calculated Risk notes:

Of course there is nothing magical about 2000 prices, and prices could fall more or less than to 100 on the graph. I don't have much to add, but I think real prices are a better gauge than nominal prices as to how far prices will probably fall. I expect these real indices to decline for some time.

The year-over-year change in house prices as of January 2009 is predicted to be somewhere around 17%. In other words, in the period from January 2009 to January 2010 we could easily see housing prices fall more than 17%, which exceeds the upper end of the range Feldstein was talking about that would put 40% of all house mortgages underwater nationwide.

Please note from the main article that this phenomenon has a regional component. Phoenix, Las Vegas, Southern California, South Florida, and a couple of other places have it particularly bad.  The effect of concentrating the problem in those states means really bad things about unemployment there. I expect net migration to those places to stop, if it hasn't already. This puts further downward pressure on house prices, which leads to more negative equity, which ... .

This is what Obama means by a "deflationary spiral."

Why did I start off by saying this was the consequence of financial deregulation? The part about mortgage-backed securities you already know about. But check out this chart from Krugman. It shows that the money that was created in the last bubble - the tech boom of the 1990s - washed into the real estate market in the 2000s. The failure on the part of people like Alan Greenspan to put restraints on what was clearly out-of-control asset price inflation not once, but twice, put us where we are today.

When does it all end? It seems we're well into the capitulation phase. Next stop: Despair.

Obama Healthcare Reform Plan Will Be Center of Ideological Battle

James Pethokoukos in U.S. News & World Report:

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute ... puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

Paul Krugman expressed something slightly different in his recent book, Conscience of a Liberal. He thinks that a popular health care reform plan would destroy the GOP as it is currently constituted:

The central fact of modern American political life is the control of the Republican Party by movement conservatives, whose vision of what America should be is completely antithetical to that of the progressive movement. Because of that control, the notion, beloved by political pundits, that we can make progress through bipartisan consensus is simply foolish. On health care reform, which is the first domestic priority for progressives, there’s no way to achieve a bipartisan compromise between Republicans who want to strangle Medicare and Democrats who want guaranteed health insurance for all. When a health care reform plan is actually presented to Congress, the leaders of movement conservatism will do what they did in 1993 – urge Republicans to oppose the plan in any form, lest successful health reform undermine the movement conservative agenda. And most Republicans will probably go along. ...

In the 1950s you could support Social Security and unions and yet still vote for Eisenhower in good conscience, because the Republican Part had eventually (and temporarily) accepted the New Deal's achievements. In the long run we can hope for a return to that kind of politics: two reasonable parties that accept all that is best  in our country but compete over their ability to deliver a decent life to all Americans, and keep each other honest.

(Conscience of a Liberal, pp. 272-3.) I think he's absolutely right, but people shouldn't read this to mean that Democrats can't or shouldn't win over some moderate Republicans to pass a health care reform package. It will be bipartisan, just not broadly bipartisan.

On the movement conservatives' determination to prevent universal coverage, Hilary Bok notes acidly:

Pethokoukis and Cannon claim that if Obama succeeds in passing health care, then people who might have been conservatives will like it, and will be more likely to vote for the people who passed it. This is unexceptional. An honest conservative might accept this claim and say: well, I guess our ideas are unpopular, so we'll just have to make our case more persuasively.

But that's not the conclusion they draw. Pethokoukis and Cannon say: because people will like health care reform, if we do not block it, our party will lose support. So precisely because people would like it if they tried it, we need to make sure that it fails.

At least they're honest about it.

Of course a conservative would respond that just because people like something is no reason to give it to them. But remember, America is a center-right nation. If you can believe both of those contradictory ideas simultaneously, you're intellectually fit to be a movement conservative.

2.5 Million New Jobs in 2 Years is a Lot

I hope people are paying attention. Obama's saying he's going to dump a whole bunch of money into creating blue-collar jobs that will (a) help get us out of the recession and (b) improve conditions for economic growth down the road and people's quality of life.

That's ambitious.

Update: Robert Reich estimates spending of $600-700 billion to achieve this goal. I assume he means this figure will be the total over two years, rather than annually. During the campaign, Obama proposed a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that sounded like it was meant to do much of what he proposes now. Total planned spending for that initiative was $60 billion over ten years, which candidate Obama said would "multiply into almost half a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending and generate nearly two million new jobs—many of them in the construction industry that’s been hit hard by the housing crisis.” If Reich's estimate is correct, we now are considering a program with at least fifty times the annual cost aimed at producing 2.5 million jobs.

I asked Reich in his comments to show how he came up with that estimate, but I don't know if he will respond.

Update 11/22/08:

[C]ongressional aides who have been involved in developing stimulus proposals said that any plan to create 2.5 million jobs is likely to be significantly larger -- probably well over $200 billion, or between 1 and 2 percent of the gross domestic product.

Obama Weekly Address: November 22nd

Via, text:

Good morning.

The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions. Financial markets faced more turmoil. New home purchases in October were the lowest in half a century. Five-hundred-forty-thousand more jobless claims were filed last week, the highest in 18 years. And we now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.

While I’m pleased that Congress passed a long-overdue extension of unemployment benefits this week, we must do more to put people back to work and get our economy moving again. We have now lost 1.2 million jobs this year, and if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year.

There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. But January 20th is our chance to begin anew — with a new direction, new ideas, and new reforms that will create jobs and fuel long-term economic growth.

I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011 — a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office. We’ll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.

These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long. And they represent an early down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington — a government that spends wisely, focuses on what works, and puts the public interest ahead of the same special interests that have come to dominate our politics.

I know that passing this plan won’t be easy. I will need and seek support from Republicans and Democrats, and I’ll be welcome to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle.

But what is not negotiable is the need for immediate action. Right now, there are millions of mothers and fathers who are lying awake at night wondering if next week’s paycheck will cover next month’s bills. There are Americans showing up to work in the morning only to have cleared out their desks by the afternoon. Retirees are watching their life savings disappear and students are seeing their college dreams deferred. These Americans need help, and they need it now.

The survival of the American Dream for over two centuries is not only a testament to its enduring power, but to the great effort, sacrifice, and courage of the American people. It has thrived because in our darkest hours, we have risen above the smallness of our divisions to forge a path towards a new and brighter day. We have acted boldly, bravely, and above all, together. That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come. It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will. Thank you.

Vicious Circle Department: Oil Companies Exploit Arctic as Global Warming Melts Ice

I read this sort of thing and it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:

With global warming melting the Arctic's eons-old ice at an alarming rate, shipping and oil companies are looking ahead at how to exploit the new open waters. ...

Oil companies have been looking at Alaska's arctic waters as a new frontier. 

And in the past two years, the Bush administration has leased large parts of those waters — the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. 

Shell was the main buyer of the Chukchi leases in February, spending $2.1 billion. 

"Shell, like many other national and international oil companies, is actively assessing Arctic opportunities," said Shell spokeswoman Darci Sinclair.

I say, let's do a two-fer: We offer the Somali pirates immunity if they move to the Bering Strait.

Obama's Treasury Pick Rumored; Stocks Ascend 500 Points

As the man says, "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

Tomorrow, depression sets in as the rumor spreads that Geithner will inherit a shit sandwich created by the same people who are sending the market up and down like a drunk sorostitute's shirt at Mardi Gras.

The Complete Guide to Blogging

This is a great reaction to an invitation to attend a "blogging expo":

Let me save you the trip to Vegas for this Festival of Nonsense.

Blog. Do it daily. Link to other blogs. Make comments on other blogs that link back to your blog. Ask other bloggers for link exchanges. Write interesting posts that have a unique voice. Don't just be a link farm to a bunch of bullshit that you didn't have anything to do with. Be original. Use technorati or any of the other tag services you prefer. Create interesting titles for your posts. Use pictures - they're fun. Use relevant labels. Don't be a corporate voice. Allow comments. Moderate them when they start to get offensive. (This is the "conversation" part you will hear so much about at your conference.) Try a podcast. Give up on it. Try a webcast. Give up on it. Give up on creating a viral video before you even try it. Viral happens naturally - you don't unleash it with a marketing plan. MySpace is NoPlace for your business and you will gain nothing from it other than people hating you. Same goes for Facebook, Second Life and Livejournal. Twit if you want, but the Twitter backlash is coming. For now, it's a good monitoring tool. Oh, one other thing: Customer Service is not a phrase to be tossed about in your Mission Statement. It's a practice. When you suck at it, expect your business to suck.

You can call yourself a Social Media Guru, New Media Maverick or Thought Leader. You can even print it on your business cards. But I don't need to pay a bunch of money to hear you say in two days what I just said in one minute. It's common sense. It doesn't really need to be an industry.

Oh, I also love that the Twitter backlash is coming.

(Via Ripley at Whiskey Fire.)

Local Programming: South Street Bridge Will Close December 8th

Via Ray:

[T]he South Street Bridge will close for reconstruction beginning Monday, December 8, 2008.

The demolition and rebuilding of the bridge requires the complete closure of the structure between Convention Avenue and 27th Street, including the on-and-off-ramps connecting South Street and I-76.

Here's a map of the affected area:

View Larger Map

Given that there are a total of seven bridges over the river as well as the Vine Street Expressway, closing just one of the bridges over the Schuylkill may not seem like a big deal. The University of Pennsylvania is like a small city of its own, and the South Street bridge is the main access point for most people going to Penn. This not only includes the students and faculty, but also the patients, doctors and support personnel at the two major medical centers, HUP and CHOP. 

Getting from the Schuylkill Expressway to Penn and back will require people to use either University Ave. or (gulp) 30th Street, one of the worst laid-out and consistently jammed interchanges you'll ever see. Just as bad, the South Street bridge supports foot, and bicycle and bus traffic [update: see comments] between West Philly and Center City/South Philly. All the people who walk and many of the people who now bicycle will have to go around the blockage, further packing buses that are already crowded and which will run more slowly because of the increased vehicle traffic over the remaining bridges. The entertainment businesses on both sides of the river that depend on people being able to freely move between neighborhoods will suffer.

Obama v. Osama

Is Osama bin Laden alive? Whether or not he is, does Barack Obama believe he is?

These are important questions because Obama made Bush's failure to catch bin Laden an issue in the campaign. People rightly mocked John McCain's "secret plan" to get the al-Qaeda leader, while Obama was specific about what he'd do:

"You know John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell,” Mr. Obama said, "but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.”

The assumption being that the cave in question was located in the Pakistan border region with Afghanistan.

I'll take my two questions in reverse order: If Obama doesn't believe bin Laden is alive, then he's committed a very foolish error by making the issue a centerpiece of his criticism of the way Bush has protected the nation's security. If he doesn't believe it, then he is open to the same attack down the road: "You said you'd follow bin Laden to the cave where he lives. What's the holdup, Mr. President?" The only response to which would be to adopt the Bushian tactics of stalling and changing the subject.

So let's assume Obama believes bin Laden is alive. If that's right, then I don't think this is just a bit of campaign rhetoric that will fall by the wayside. I believe that Obama will make it one of his top national-security priorities to find bin Laden, wherever he is. Intelligence types who want to talk about other issues will find that the President will start off briefings with a question like, "Are you any closer to locating that motherfucker?", something I assume Bush did not do, at the urging of thugs like Musharraf who he hired to do our bidding. And if bin Laden is found, Obama will order the use of military force to take him, no matter what country he is in. I expect that he will launch the attack without warning, and will only inform national leaders and the American people after it has succeeded or failed.

Obama, it seems to me, likes to combine politically attractive positions with good policy. Take, for example, his recent linking of job promotion, green energy research, and economic intervention. I think he'll do the same with the hunt for bin Laden, the protection of the nation's security, and the improvement of America's standing in the world.

One of the ways that Bush blundered in foreign policy was by going outside the narrative frame of the 9/11 attacks to launch the invasion of Iraq as well as the more bellicose rhetoric toward Iran. The world understood why we invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban. They saw it as morally just that we would go after the people who attacked us, as well as the people who harbored the attackers. Most of the American people supported it, too. But by invading an oil-producing country that had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush did worse than undermine the notion that America was being morally just: He confirmed the jihadists' worldview of American foreign policy as one that seeks to dominate the Middle East by controlling its natural resources.

The effect of this was to undermine popular support for American foreign policy both at home and abroad. It harmed American national security by, among other things, creating the most effective recruiting and training tool possible for the jihadists: The Iraq insurgency. People from all over the Middle East region were radicalized into sympathy, at least, for the jihadis. Militants flocked to Iraq to fight the "Crusaders". The commanders of the insurgency now have long experience in fighting the Americans in exactly the type of urban warfare we're likely to face in the future. They know American tactics and doctrine, and the exact limits of U.S. power. In addition, they have troops who survived the conflict who can apply the lessons learned to future ones.

Bush's popularity tanked for many good reasons, but mostly they all revolve around the theme of incompetence. The report warning that al Qaeda was determined to strike in the U.S. was ignored. The invasion of Iraq was underplanned and under-resourced. The response to Hurricane Katrina was reckless and inexcusable. One of the most damning was the idea that Bush had taken his eye off the ball by neglecting the hunt for bin Laden to pursue PNAC pipe dreams and depose Saddam. The question, "Why are we in Iraq?" inevitably was twinned with, "Why haven't we caught bin Laden?" 

Obama is going to try to rectify these mistakes in the obvious way, by withdrawing from Iraq. But he also will try to reframe the conflict around our legitimate response to being attacked. Unlike the Bush excuse that "9/11 changed everything", Obama will assert that 9/11 calls for a strong and focused response, and that he will deliver it. The U.S. is going to recenter its military effort on Afghanistan. And it's going to capture or kill bin Laden. If he's alive.

Important Questions Answered Long Ago

Benjamin Wittes op-ed:

Solving the Guantanamo problem means making important decisions about detention policy in combating terrorism more generally: When, if ever, should the United States engage in preventive detention of terrorism suspects? If and when it does, should it treat them as enemy combatants under the laws of war or under some other body of law, perhaps a new detention statute? What rights should they have? What should the government have to prove about them, to what standard of proof, and in what sort of forum?

Notwithstanding the idea projected by some members of his camp that closing Guantanamo is simply a matter of will, Obama cannot just wish these questions away. Indeed, they defy answers in the absence of a systematic and rigorous review of the detainee population itself, including the classified information about each prisoner.

It's remarkable to me that anyone would say that the law should proceed from "a systematic and rigorous review of the detainee population itself." That presumes a process - a review - that would in turn establish the level of process - a trial - that the prisoners would receive.

This isn't how we do it in America.

In this country, we start with the law - specifically, the law contained in the United States Constitution. From that law, we derive a set of principles and practices that are then applied to individual prisoners. In that application, we determine whether a specific individual is guilty or not guilty, and if guilty, what punishment they should receive.

Mr. Wittes wants to interpose a review that would determine what process - what law - should apply to each prisoner. This presumes the review would be a wider-ranging inquiry than a trial would be. It also presumes that this review would be more accurate in discerning the truth. But the reason the legal principles we uphold in the Constitution are the law is that we as a society believe they are the best way to arrive at the truth in a legal proceeding.

Mr. Wittes is quoted elsewhere as saying:

"There will be a sobering moment for enthusiasts of a 'try and release' regime when people start looking at the contents of those detainee files," said Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution fellow and the author of "Law and the Long War," which advocates preventive detention backed by a national security court.

He assumes that the assertions contained in detainee files will be as impressive others as they apparently were to him. This just what Duncan calls the "GOP Daddies" tactic, in which somber men in suits presume to tell others that their judgment is better than theirs, and "that Something Very Serious Was Happening and Something Needs To Be Done." Note the phrase "try and release", a parallel to "catch and release" - a fishing term, but also an expression of futility in law enforcement and illegal immigration circles.  To Mr. Wittes, trying someone and finding them not guilty equals doing nothing at all.

By proposing this standardless review as a means of allocating the amount of process that is due each prisoner, Mr. Wittes is suggesting that we undermine our system of justice. If we mean to throw out the rules in these cases, it begs the question why we ever follow the rules that are already established in our legal system. These people are dangerous - even though no proof has yet been presented - this line of argument goes, so we have to allow government officials to say whether they should receive a fair trial, something less than a fair trial, or no trial at all. But government officials always say a defendant is dangerous before the trial happens, but we presume the defendant is innocent and make the government prove its case. If we abandon that principle in these cases, why have the principle at all?

Apply the law to the facts. If the government can't make its case, then the government should not be holding the prisoner. This is how we do it in this country, and that's how we should go about closing Gitmo.

A.G. Mukasey Collapses During Speech

Not good:

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed while giving a speech Thursday at the Federalist Society dinner at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington.

While Mukasey, 67, was talking, his speech began to slur and he then became rigid.

Two people grabbed him and laid him on the ground behind the podium, where he was given medical attention before he was rushed to George Washington Medical Center.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said Mukasey was breathing when he was transported to the hospital and was being evaluated in the hospital's emergency room. His condition was not immediately known.

I hope he's okay.

Second Verse, Same as the First: Another Judge Orders Gitmo Prisoners Released

At least it's the semblance of legal process:

In the first hearing on the government’s evidence for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp for nearly seven years, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that five prisoners were being held an unlawfully [sic] and ordered their release. ...

Ruling from the bench, Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.

I think the decision will be stayed pending appeal, just as the order to release the Uighurs was. While the odds are a little better than before the election, on balance I find it unlikely that anyone will be released until Obama takes office, no matter what the evidence is.

Please note that these prisoners were not detained in a war zone, much less captured on a battlefield. They were detained - note the passive voice - in Bosnia in 2001 and never got a hearing until now. Seven years.

Leading Economic Indicators Say: Homebrew

Frank at From Pine View Farm got to talking with the owner of his local liquor store:

He told me that, for the first time in the 17 years he’s owned the store, he is having to roll and deposit loose change in his daily bank deposits.

People are now buying their beer with loose change, rather than bills.

Suffer the Freshmen to Come Unto Me

One for the anals of spellcheck history:

Obama Wants a Weakened Lieberman to Remain Chair of HSC

A theory passed along by Ambinder:

One of the most important points about winning poker is counting your opponents' chips. Joe Lieberman is "small stacked" in chips and that's why Obama wants him at the table. How so? Because Obama will win those chips later on in the "game." Obama is a poker-player (and I'm sure that Lieberman is not). He knows "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em." Trust me, he will call Lieberman's bluffing (actually, he'll have someone else call it) when it's time, when he needs the votes for important legislation, for example. And if Saint Joe starts to feel comfortable and begins to "bully the table" again, he'll get called and show his weak hand against, undoubtedly, Obama's winning hand. The President-elect hasn't missed a "read" yet; he knows he can play Lieberman for as long (or as short) as he wants to.

Sounds a little too pat to me.

Al-Qaeda Calls Obama "House Negro"

I find this bizarrely funny:

[Ayman] Al-Zawahri says in an audio message, which appeared on militant Web sites Wednesday, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X. He calls Obama a "house negro."

The audio plays over still pictures of al-Zawahri, Malcolm X praying, and Obama with Jewish leaders.

Update from John "Not a Cultist" Cole:

Interesting use of terms, and it made me wonder. We don’t really know who these folks are, just what we see on videotapes. I propose we shoot Ralph Nader and see if these tapes stop.

Transition and After

David Plouffe, in a message to volunteers:

The inauguration is just 63 days away, and as President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden prepare to take office, they'll need your support more than ever.

You've built an organization in your community and across the country that will continue to work for change -- whether it's by building grassroots support for legislation, backing state and local candidates, or sharing organizing techniques to effect change in your neighborhood.

Your hard work built this movement. Now it's up to you to decide how we move forward.

Take this short survey and share your ideas.

It's an interesting survey. They're once again letting people fire themselves up by reminding them of all the work that went into the campaign, and what could be accomplished next. It's a very effective piece of psychology. It's also interesting that one of the questions they ask is, "Would you like to run for elected office?" I have to admit, it never occurred to me before, but: The Obama '08 volunteers are the farm team. There are 2 million of us. There have to be some decent potential candidates in a group of 2 million dedicated people.

At the end of the survey, you're sent to obamabidentransitionproject.org - a completely different location from change.gov - and asked for a transition donation. One of the interesting legal questions is how the list of volunteers and donors from the campaign can be transferred to the administration. It may be the survey or the donation ask has some role in that.

"I’d Consider Myself Extremely Well-Informed."

Any interview that ends this way is just fine by me:

NS: Thank you, have a good day.
JZ: Go fuck yourself.

The rest of it is pretty good, too.

Quite Possibly Just a Decent Human Being

A heart-warming tale from an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago:

We have a cleaner in our building -- 70-something-year-old African American guy; sweet, sweet guy. And every evening he comes into our office about six and takes our garbage and stuff. ... He didn't come in on Tuesday -- I was up late, working until I went to see election results.

Of course, Hyde Park was abuzz. Hyde Park thinks of this election as its own. And the fact that the Obama kids were at school on Tuesday and Wednesday, and we all had to ride around the TV cameras to get to our parking, was the kind of masochistic pleasure that we're having in Hyde Park, which after all has always been told it's the fringe of the nation. We've always been told that nothing we do or say counts anywhere else, especially not across the border in Indiana. So to suddenly find ourselves at the center of the political process is interesting.

So [on Wednesday] the guy comes into my office and I say "So, where were you yesterday?" "Ah," he says, "I was in Grant Park [where Obama gave his victory speech]." "Grant Park?" "Yeah, right near the front -- I could have touched Barack Obama." "How did you get there? It's tough to get tickets."

He said "You don't understand. A few years back, I worked Law School, I cleaned the Law School. And Obama's office was on my run. He worked late many nights and he was really interested. I'd come by cleaning and he'd always stop me for a chat. Sometimes he'd share food with me -- he always brought food in -- and the thing was, he sat down and he talked to me. He said 'Tell me about your community. Tell me what's going on out there. I wanna know. I wanna know what's out there on the streets. I wanna know how America is living.'"

And one got the sense that this guy, alienated from the political process, alienated from the work process, found in Obama a real human being.

It would be nice to think so.

(Via Oliver Willis.)

Local Programming: P.Z. Myers in Philly This Week

For all you scientifical, atheistic types, the good and great P.Z. Myers is coming to town:

• I'm flying in on Wednesday morning, 19 November. At 5pm, I'm giving a talk on science blogging at the Kelly Writers house on the U Penn campus.

• Thursday, 20 November, is the big event: Janet Browne will be lecturing at 6pm. I'll be there in the audience, enjoying myself. You should be there, too. You've all read her magnificent two-volume biography of Darwin, right?

• Sometime after that, the evening of the 20th, I'm going to aim to attend Drinking Skeptically, at Tattooed Mom's, 530 South Street.

• On Friday, the 21st, I'll be presenting at a symposium between 11 and 5. I don't think this is open to the public, but I could be wrong — I'll let you know. I'll be talking about abuses of embryology by creationists and by some legitimate scientists.

It Covers the Garbage

The first snow of the season is falling in Philadelphia.

Liberals Unaccustomed to Winning

Armbinder:

Reporters, and I can't exempt myself from this, have been salivating somewhat voyueristically for a round of public fighting between the Left, broadly represented by the Netroots, and the Obama transition entity.

It will be interesting to see whether the press plays up Obama's influence on lawmakers, or if anti-Lieberman Democrats blame Harry Reid, or blame weak-kneed Senate Democrats instead of Obama.

It's not just the Lieberman thing that will produce plenty of fireworks for the media to play up, of course. The pace of the closure of Gitmo, the disposition of the detainees from Gitmo and the secret prisons, the pace of the withdrawal from Iraq, and the most currently, whether or not Obama will investigate and try Bush administration officials for war crimes.

About that, Paul Campos says:

From the standpoint of both the demands of justice and the politically intelligent thing to do, giving off signals that criminals in the Bush administration will simply be let off the hook is a terrible idea.

Prof. Campos believes it's "politically intelligent" to move full speed ahead with planning for war crimes investigations because that would force Bush to pardon his co-conspirators.

Hilary Bok:

It is enormously important that we establish the principle that members of the government cannot break the law with impunity, and we cannot do that without being willing to prosecute them when, as in this case, there is overwhelming evidence that they violated the law. This is especially true of the most senior members of government, like the Vice President.

Prof. Bok proposes an independent counsel "with an unimpeachable reputation for wisdom, rectitude, and non-partisanship."

As a lawyer, as a human being, of course I think Campos and Bok are right: Bush administration officials - including the President himself- are likely guilty of the war crime of torturing prisoners. (Also, officials involved in the planning and deceptive marketing of the invasion of Iraq also probably committed crimes against peace.) Normatively, I say, frogmarch!

So what do Democratic leaders think of the idea of Obama trying Bush officials for war crimes?

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no."

"These things are not going to happen," said Leahy, D-Vt.

Descriptively, I agree with that, too. It's an accurate prediction of what is going to happen. Our government committed the kind of crimes that we gave out life sentences for at Nuremburg, and our government is going to not punish those who committed them. Why not?

First of all, both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in the crimes Bush committed. Congress would be a fact witness. If Obama investigates administration officials, one of the first questions that will come up is what the members of Congress on key oversight committees knew and when they knew it. If the acts of those Bush officials were criminal, then the Congress is an accessory, to the extent that it knew what was going on.

You might say, good. Let the chips fall where they may. If investigations into Bush-era war crimes reveal a conspiracy of silence (at least) throughout Washington, then Obama will have done us all a service.

There are a number of responses to this: Even on its own merits, Obama pursuing war-crimes trials would not have the effect that we'd like. It is unlikely to deter future war criminals. There will be no convictions, not least because Bush is likely to issue a blanket pardon prior to his leaving office, but also even in the absence of pardons because proving the requisite intent would be a frustrating undertaking. It's also unlikely, with the threat of life imprisonment hanging over their heads, that targets of the investigation will tell what really happened. There will be some revelations proven, but mainly what we'll end up with are many, many allegations being made that end in acquittals. Is that worth it?

Speaking of whether its worth it, what are the opportunity costs of Obama pursuing this? It would make Clinton's focus on gays in the military look like sheer genius by comparison. Literally nothing else on Obama's agenda would get done in the first year, perhaps ever. Congressional cooperation on a whole host of initiatives would evaporate. The media would focus on the investigation of charges against uniformed military personnel, which Republicans would seize on to paint Democrats as being zealously anti-military. The fight would cause Obama's public support to drop like a rock, as people asked why he was spending all this time looking at things in the past. Congressional Democrats would be slaughtered in the midterms. Pursuing a fruitless quest for legal punishment would be an enormous gift to the people lining up to oppose the eventual rollout of universal health care. It would be fatal to the broader liberal economic, social and foreign policy agenda. Is that worth it?

A larger point: What we're really talking about here is not holding specific individuals criminally liable for Bush's policies. What we're really talking about is an indictment of the political class generally. While I'd love it if a popular, crusading President could ride into the White House and successfully hold the entire crowd responsible, it's not realistic. It's not the President's job to reform the entire mindset of D.C. That is the people's job. That's our job. It's not a question of whether Obama is up for the task, because it won't matter if he is if we're not. And guess what? We're not.

The liberals who are screaming now about the priorities of the incoming administration are just exposing what incompetents they are at politics. The fact that they can't express their outrage over things we can't change in the short term and then acknowledge them as such and move on to things we can demonstrates their uselessness. The problem again is that liberals have built up a self-concept during the years Bush was in the White House. That self-image is one of principle above politics. Liberals never had to engage in the thinking about priorities and capabilities when discussing the White House because Bush was so bad. That atrophied the reflexive understanding that something being good didn't automatically make it your policy goal, because with a supine Congress there was no opportunity to make the trade-offs necessary to accomplish policy goals.

Now that Lieberman has been allowed to retain his chairmanship (supported by Chris Dodd - remember "Respect the Dodd"?), here's a key quote to focus on:

Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."

Absolutely. Descriptively, this is exactly right. No one fears liberal bloggers, except in marginal cases, because they're ineffective. If you want to change things, you need to get organized and become effective. And to do that, you have to understand what is possible and what is not in politics. Otherwise, you're useless.

Personnel Decisions

I'd guess that for the average American, it really doesn't matter whether Joe Lieberman retains the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee or whether he leaves the Democratic caucus. I would also guess the average American doesn't care whether Hillary Clinton remains a Senator or takes the job of Secretary of State (or some other cabinet- or high-level post).

Not unrelatedly, these things don't matter much to me, either.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Philly in a New Location

Tonight at 6 p.m., the Drinking Liberally Center City Philadelphia chapter meets at The Plough & the Stars, 2nd Street between Market & Chestnut (123 Chestnut St.). It's a bigger venue than the old place, which is what I care about, since at 6:05 we used to run out of chairs.

Anyway, show up.

And You Thought the Primaries Were Bad

It's still 9 weeks until inauguration day, and you'd think Democrats would be able to hold off getting all crazy again. You'd be wrong. Digby:

It sounds like he really means to have a real bipartisan government from top to bottom. Combined with the Republican operatives the Bush administration salted throughout the civil service, there will be many, many Republicans still running things, so the villagers should be able to relax a little bit and enjoy their holidays. (Too bad for all you Democrats who thought you'd be getting jobs in a Democratic government, though. Maybe when the Republicans take over again, they'll hire you as a gesture of similar good will. They're very fair that way.)

Shorter Digby:

Oh no! Obama appears to mean what he says! It's a disaster. Clearly, I can't trust him to do any of the other things he's promised to do.

Seriously, it's as if the man hadn't just finished trouncing both the Clintons and McCain in the same year. It's really curious. Do people not think he's actually a good politician, in the sense of very capable? He must have gotten lucky with the economy and with the press hating Hillary, is that it? I see. If I didn't know better, I'd say people just can't believe some young black guy figured out how to win all by himself.

Look, the election is over. Liberal bloggers had very little to do with how it all came out and we'll have even less to do with what happens from here on out, mainly because bloggers don't do anything other than type and occasionally organize some contributions and phone calling efforts. Even if the members of the PUMA-sphere got off their asses and tried to affect personnel decisions during the transition, the odds are pretty low it would have an impact.

Whatever decisions are going to be made by the new administration are going to be the result of careful planning by the Obama team, whether the plan works or not. The running of the Obama White House is in the hands of the people who were elected to run it. Until their actions have a result that we can measure, there's really nothing we can do about it. I'm not saying give up and lie down. I'm saying that before you can react rationally to something, you have to have something to react to.

Meanwhile, if you have a lot of extra energy that you're thinking about putting into wild blog comments about how what we need is a revolution because this Obama guy is such a sellout, man, don't. Instead, get all of your wanker friends together and come up with a plan to lobby your members of Congress on healthcare, or the war, or whatever issue(s) you consider most crucial. Do something positive. Not that it will work, but at least you won't be cluttering up my feed reader with drivel.

The Bright Line

What Digby said:

I'm not trying to get ahead of myself. But Brennan is being talked up as the replacement for Michael McConnell and that's potentially problematic. If Obama comes out and explicitly says that there will be no more use of the techniques Greenwald lists, or anything else that can be construed as torture, and makes sure that his subordinates know he means exactly that, then I'm not quite as worried about the effects of this on foreign policy. But if he tries to split the baby or compromise on it, then he will automatically lose a huge portion of his moral authority both at home and abroad.

They could just go back to secretly torturing and spying as the government did in the past, but after all this --- and the political ramifications if it got out --- let's hope not. And anyway, that's not what the intelligence types want. They want immunity for torture (excuse me, "enhanced interrogation") and they want it to be public. I don't think there's any going back.

Torture is not negotiable and it can't be redefined or "smoothed out" or anything else. This one is a bright line. I give Obama the benefit of the doubt at this point, of course --- nothing's been announced. But I'm nervous. The institutional pressure is going to be acute and I'm not reassured by the presence of people like John Brennan. The fact that he isn't as bad as Dick Cheney just isn't good enough.

What Obama said, on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General:

I did not hear Mr. Gonzales repudiate two and a half years of official U.S. policy which has defined torture so narrowly that only organ failure and death would qualify. A policy that he himself appears to have helped develop the dubious legal rationale for. Imagine that. If the entire world accepted the definition contained in the Department of Justice memos, we can only imagine what atrocities might befall our American POWs. How, in a world without such basic constraints would we feel about sending our sons and daughters to war? How, if we are willing to rationalize torture through legalisms and semantics, can we claim to our children, and the children of the world, that America is different, and represents a higher moral standard?

This policy isn't just a moral failure, it's a violation of half a century of international law. Yet while Mr. Gonzales' job was White House Counsel, he said nothing to the President.

He showed no ability to speak with responsible moral clarity then, and he's indicated that he still has no intention to speak such truths now. During his recent testimony, he refused to refute a conclusion of the torture memo which stated that the President has the power to override our laws when acting as Commander-in-Chief. Think about that -- the nation's top law enforcement officer telling its most powerful citizen that if the situation warrants, he can break the law from time to time.

The truth is, Mr. Gonzales has raised serious doubts about whether, given the choice between the Constitution and the President's political agenda, he would put our Constitution first. And that is why I simply cannot support his nomination for Attorney General.

I tend to believe someone who (a) taught Con Law and (b) made such a sweeping declaration about international law means what he says. The fact that the people with the relevant experience necessary to the transition are tainted by association with the prior regime's policies is not surprising or overly worrying to me. The question is, does the President-elect maintain the position he took as a candidate, or not? I'm betting yes.

U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq Inches Forward

Maliki's cabinet approved the Status of Forces Agreement today. Next it goes to the Iraqi parliament, where it probably, but not definitely, will pass. The largest Sunni party wants a national referendum on it first.  Sadr opposes it on the grounds that it validates the occupation. Sistani, Maliki's allies and the Kurds favor it.

Caveat: I can't find an English-language version of the agreement online, so I have to go off the news reports. If approved, the agreement would require U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities and towns by next summer, and withdraw from the country fully by the next of 2011. A new agreement is necessary because the U.N. mandate under which the U.S. occupation continues expires at the end of the year. The Iraqi parliament adjourns for the year on November 24th, so it must pass by then.

In addition:

It strengthens Iraqi controls over U.S. forces by:

• Requiring the U.S. to get Iraqi consent before searching homes.
• Giving Iraqis authority over the international zone that houses the centers of American power in Baghdad.
• Enabling Iraqis to search U.S. cargo.
• Prohibiting Americans from conducting raids in other countries from Iraqi soil.
• Eliminating the judicial immunity that applies to foreign contractors and U.S. soldiers working in Iraq under the occupation's current mandate.

It's an interesting list. I assume that Iraqi consent will never be withheld, Iraqi authority over the Green Zone ends exactly where whatever American on the scene says it ends, and that the U.S. will tell the Iraqis which cargo they have the power to search and which they don't.  The ban on cross-border raids piqued my interest, until I remembered that as with any agreement, it's all about how you define the terms. I assume that "raid" for these purposes will not be a raid as is used in the English language, but a tiny, cramped subset of all possible raids. In other words, it's all for domestic consumption and not to be taken seriously.

The last point is misleading but has some actual substance to it. Immunity for soldiers has not been eliminated, just modified:

U.S. soldiers are still guaranteed immunity except in cases of serious felonies committed while off duty outside their bases.

The real target here is the Private Military Contractors. As far as I can tell from the news coverage, immunity has been eliminated for them. If an Iraqi police officer can make the arrest, they're screwed. If he can't, then it's a question of whether they'll give him up or fly him out. If I were a PMC, I'd be asking for a rider to the employment agreement on that issue right about now.

Clearly, though, withdrawal from Iraq is a done deal as far as U.S. politics go. Even Saint Petraeus wants us out.

Obama Weekly Address

On the economy:

Update:

Today, the leaders of the G-20 nations – a group that includes the world’s largest economies – are gathering in Washington to seek solutions to the ongoing turmoil in our financial markets. I’m glad President Bush has initiated this process because our global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response.

And yet, as we act in concert with other nations, we must also act immediately here at home to address America’s own economic crisis. This week, amid continued volatility in our markets, we learned that unemployment insurance claims rose to their highest levels since September 11, 2001. We’ve lost jobs for ten straight months – nearly 1.2 million jobs this year, many of them in our struggling auto industry. And millions of our fellow citizens lie awake each night wondering how they’re going to pay their bills, stay in their homes, and save for retirement.

Make no mistake: this is the greatest economic challenge of our times. And while the road ahead will be long, and the work will be hard, I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis – because here in America we always rise to the moment, no matter how hard. And I am more hopeful than ever that America will rise once again.

But we must act right now. Next week, Congress will meet to address the spreading impact of the economic crisis. I urge them to pass at least a down-payment on a rescue plan that will create jobs, relieve the squeeze on families, and help get the economy growing again. In particular, we cannot afford to delay providing help for the more than one million Americans who will have exhausted their unemployment insurance by the end of this year. If Congress does not pass an immediate plan that gives the economy the boost it needs, I will make it my first order of business as President.

Even as we dig ourselves out of this recession, we must also recognize that out of this economic crisis comes an opportunity to create new jobs, strengthen our middle class, and keep our economy competitive in the 21st century.

That starts with the kinds of long-term investments that we’ve neglected for too long. That means putting two million Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools. It means investing $150 billion to build an American green energy economy that will create five million new jobs, while freeing our nation from the tyranny of foreign oil, and saving our planet for our children. It means making health care affordable for anyone who has it, accessible for anyone who wants it, and reducing costs for small businesses. And it also means giving every child the world-class education they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world.

Doing all this will require not just new policies, but a new spirit of service and sacrifice, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. And that’s how we will meet the challenges of this time – together. Thank you.

Electoral Explorer

Map of the presidential election results with demographics you can vary. Coolness.

The Longest Fight I've Ever Started

Thirteen months and 46,929 comments later.

We're All Wrong About Something

John Cole gives in to the same impulse that I frequently have, to engage the PUMAs and assorted Democratic Obama-haters. My advice to him is the same advice I give to myself on those occasions: Don't.  These people don't matter. They don't do anything other than type, and they clearly don't think about what they type very much, so they're like a self-limiting virus: Drink lots of fluids, get your sleep, and do your best to ignore it.

The PUMAs developed their shtick attacking Obama and praising Hillary to the sky, but now they have dropped everything but suspicion and disdain for the President-elect. It's a strange and untenable position to take, as Cole points out, when they themselves occasionally admitted back in the throes of the primary that the policy differences between the candidates were minimal. (They're just projecting their former hero-worship onto Obama supporters like Cole, calling him a "cultist".) They had selected their champion, and when they felt thwarted, they reacted like all adolescents do, by lashing out. A teenage-style temper tantrum online produces hits, which just keeps the angry sulk going, which is why I advise people to not add to the attention.

The PUMAs' flaw is the inability to recognize that they might be wrong, rendering them as ridiculous as any wingnut. They are unwilling to admit still that they were wrong about their central prediction: Only Hillary can win. Now, they predict, Obama can't or won't try to accomplish any of the many policy goals that liberals support.

But if making bad predictions gets you points off, then I am doing no better than a C-, myself:

• In August, 2004 , I thought Barack Obama gave a nice speech at the DNC, but dismissed the idea that he could get the backing to make a serious run for President, much less win.

• Four years ago at this time, I was in despair that the Democrats could ever get their shit together enough to win Congress or the White House again.

• This time last year, I was sure Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party's nominee for President.

The point being: Don't be so sure that you can predict the future that you're willing to call others "cultists" when they disagree with your crystal ball.

Thinking about all the things I was wrong about makes me absolutely confident that I don't know what individual people are going to decide to do in the future. It may very well be that Obama will make bad or dumb moves as President. What does picking Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff mean about Obama's intentions? I have no freaking clue. I can read the same analyses that everyone else does, but the fact is, no one outside of the parties involved really knows.

Predictions involving mass events are easier to get right. This is the core of the criticism of the "Nobody could have predicted ..." excuse. The outcome of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam would be bad. The outcome of deregulating the credit markets would be bad. American voters would support a woman or African-American for President, and the victory of either in a particular Democratic primary tells you nothing about those voters' preference for the general election. That either Hillary or Obama could beat McCain seemed blindingly obvious, so long as whoever the nominee was ran a competent campaign. One of the main reasons people began swinging to Obama after Super Tuesday was that his campaign demonstrated competence and Hillary's did not, which was clear to everyone except the PUMAs, since common sense is not part of their skill set. The majority of the members of the reality-based community are liberals, but any particular liberal may not be a member. 

Bloggers are not oracles. Political bloggers are unrepresentative of their parties as a whole. Keep that in mind when you're making predictions, and you're less likely to look ridiculous. And when your predictions turn out to be crap, try to learn from it rather than digging in your heels and doubling down on stupid.

Time to Gloat

Back in the bad old days (meaning before the '06 midterms), I once told Josh Trevino that I would take my party's political judgment over his any day. He clearly thought this was absurd, because his side was winning at that moment. But I meant that two ways: Liberals have better judgment about the policies that are good for the country, whether or not we're winning particular races. And eventually, the voters will reward better judgment and punish the incompetent and the corrupt.

Which is why the Democrats now control Congress and the White House.

Looking Forward to January 20th

Benefits of an Obama Administration: Part III

It's called the Department of Justice for a reason again.

This is Not a Lost and Found Post

Someone left this on the table at DL tonight:

Frank? Simon? Bueller?

Obama Plans for Closing Gitmo; No Word on Other Secret Prisons

Good, Obama will close Gitmo:

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some [Guantánamo Bay] detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

Potentially bad:

A third group of detainees -- the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information -- might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The protections built into such a new court will be the key to whether these people get treated fairly.

Obama has said the civilian and military court-martial systems provide ''a framework for dealing with the terrorists,'' and [Obama legal adviser Prof. Laurence] Tribe said the administration would look to those venues before creating a new legal system. But discussions of what a new system would look like have already started.

''It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts,'' Tribe said. ''It will have to both be and appear to be fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances. I think people are going to give an Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in that regard.''

Though a hybrid court may be unpopular, other advisers and Democrats involved in the Guantanamo Bay discussions say Obama has few other options.

I'd just note that long before 9/11, Tribe was no doctrinaire liberal on national security trial policy. Although conservatives like to portray him cartoonishly, he's been thinking about these issues for some time. When he says "fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances", he means it.

This hybrid system sounds like the Orwellian "National Security Courts" that I thought back in May Bush would spring on us:

The key issues, as I see it, are truly impartial juries and viable avenues of appeal against questionable evidence, like hearsay. Clearly, it's not possible politically to argue for full trial rights, but we can make the case that enabling defendants to vigorously defend themselves on the facts will produce better decisions and raise our standing in the eyes of the world.

The ACLU has a stronger stance:

On the first day in office, the president should order the shutdown of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and restoration of the rule of law for the detainees now held there. Specifically, the president should order the prompt shutdown of the detention facility, the transfer of any prisoners charged with a crime to a facility within the continental United States for trial in a federal criminal court or before a military court-martial, and the transfer of all uncharged detainees to countries where they will not be abused or imprisoned without charge.

Court-martial or federal criminal trial, or nothing. They're not happy about the hybrid system idea:

"I think that creating a new alternative court system in response to the abject failure of Guantanamo would be a profound mistake,'' said Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents detainees. ''We do not need a new court system. The last eight years are a testament to the problems of trying to create new systems.''

I think this is a fine negotiating position but there is little chance we will end up there. The entire third group of prisoners - which probably includes some incredibly dangerous people - would have to be released because none of the evidence against them would be admissible. No one would take them except countries that sponsor terrorism, and once released, they'd go right back to attacking U.S. forces or civilians around the world. Congress and President Obama would be rightly pilloried by the public for letting them out.

There are several areas that I see that have to be worked out:

• The biggest problem is how to deal with evidence that is inadmissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence, because it is inadmissible hearsay, or because testimony or confessions were obtained through torture, or because the chain of custody is considered reliable for intelligence-gathering purposes but would not satisfy an Article III judge. The goal here has to be the reliability of the evidence and the ability of the jury to assess how credible it is.
• Next is the right of the defendants to confront witnesses and see the evidence against them. Can spies and informants be cross-examined without putting their lives in danger? Methods of gathering signals intelligence might have to be revealed to jurors as well as the defendants. Will defendants be given the time and resources necessary to conduct their own investigations?
• Who will be the jurors? It has to be civilians, in my view. Military juries are for courts martial.
• Appeal rights: Specifically, to which court may an appeal be made, what bases for appeal will be available and what level of scrutiny will they be given?
• Sentencing: Will the death penalty be an option? For lengthy prison terms, will there be any process by which a defendant could seek release down the road if circumstances change?

To be honest, I can imagine so many insoluble scenarios here that I couldn't even suggest what to do. It's yet another area that Bush has royally screwed us. The best thing I can hope for is that most of the prisoners are people who we can just let go or give normal federal criminal trials to, and the number of prisoners in the third category is small.

Also, the article only mentions Gitmo. Although Gitmo is large and symbolically important, we reportedly have secret prisons all over the world. Is Obama going to include people being held there for long periods of time in this program?

Obama Plans Web Tools For Lobbying and Mid-Term Races

As I had hoped, in addition to the volunteer organizing site, the Obama administration will use its web presence as a tool to lobby Congress on important issues and to affect the mid-term elections:

Obama aides and allies are preparing a major expansion of the White House communications operation, enabling them to reach out directly to the supporters they have collected over 21 months without having to go through the mainstream media. ...

The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. ... At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama. ...

After Obama declared victory, his campaign sent a text message announcing that his supporters hadn't heard the last from the president-elect. Obama conveyed a similar message to his staff in a campaignwide conference call Wednesday, signaling that his election was the beginning, and not the culmination, of a political movement.

If this is successful, it really will change the face of politics. Organizations like MoveOn have been playing in this space for over four years, and finally the White House is going to catch up. Liberal web-based groups are going to have to re-think their strategies for fundraising and gaining the attention of people on their email list. How do you succeed as an agent of change when the people wielding power offer supporters the chance to work with them directly?

Also, the Democrats are years ahead of what the Republicans have in online organization. If you're a Republican, how do you energize and motivate your supporters, when they are characterized by their disdain for volunteering, disinterest in informing themselves about policy, and inability to be stirred by anything except hate and fear? A GOP equivalent to myBO would read like RedState on crack, which is not going to help.

Of course, Obama has to decide how much user content his site will allow, which is a key factor in its success:

Accordingly, the president-elect's http://www.change.gov transition Web site features a blog and a suggestion form, signaling the kinds of direct and instantaneous interaction that the Obama administration will encourage, perhaps with an eye toward turning its following into the biggest special-interest group in Washington.

It's not really a blog - there are no comments. A suggestion form? How 20th century. Reading press releases in blog format is not the change we seek. The important part would be something like myBO, where supporters can communicate with each other and organize themselves. A top-down approach is not going to keep people engaged, because it disempowers them and prevents them from getting excited about working with others like themselves.

If they manage to leave the crucial element of self-organizing in place, this could be possible:

Once Obama is sworn in, those backers may be summoned to push reluctant members of Congress to support legislation, to offer feedback on initiatives and to enlist in administration-supported causes in local communities. Obama would also be positioned to ask his supporters to back his favored candidates with fundraising and turnout support in the 2010 midterm elections.

I was also wondering about this:

The process is just beginning, and many questions remain unanswered. The simplest approach might be to convert the campaign organization into an incarnation aimed at 2012 and an anticipated run for reelection, but some inside the Obama team are concerned about appearing too overtly political. Another course could be to create a nonprofit organization. Obama officials said all options would be examined over the coming weeks.

So, they want to keep the tool, but they may need to keep it at arm's length. It would be an exciting change if the Obama administration took ownership of the community organizing site and allowed people to use it the same way they did during the campaign. I don't hold out a lot of hope for such a move, because the media would use the opportunity to make up controversies every time some nut put up a crazy blog post and the right would spend half its time trying to monkey-wrench the thing.

Over the course of the campaign, Obama's e-mail list gathered not only names and contact information, but also details about issues important to those supporters.

In past years, such lists were considered useful tools for political campaigns but not particularly helpful for governing. But Peter Greenberger, manager of political advertising for Google, said such information could be a boon for Obama in building public support for policy proposals.

The White House could "geo-target" ads so they appear online in congressional districts where members remain undecided. Obama could use Internet ads to solicit signatures for petitions, or he could place display and video ads contextually -- so they would appear on the screen next to news coverage of his proposals.

This last bit about web advertisements is coming from Google, which would benefit from such an ad campaign, but it still is a very interesting idea. Hey Barack! I know a few blogs that are very influential with a tiny number of people. 

All in all, a good and exciting possibility from the incoming administration. I guess we'll have to wait to see what develops during the transition.

Benefits of an Obama Administration: Part II

The end of abstinence-only education.

The First 100 Hours

Ready, set ...:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

Specific executive orders mentioned in the article:

• "Reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research...."
• "[L]ift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal...."
• "[R]everse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles."
• "[A]ddress the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement...."

The most important of these, I think, is the gag rule, because it has the most direct effect on the life or death of many poor women around the world.

A related issue I now wonder about: Bush's signing statements. These are published in the Federal Register but are mainly declarations of Presidential intent, not themselves sources of law for courts. Bush has used them as a platform to air his radical version of executive power, by declaring certain parts of various laws inapplicable to him. For those that amount to an unconstitutional line-item veto, I would guess the best way to address them is in additional executive orders, also published in the Federal Register.

The Unbearable Lightness of Friedman

From a profile of Thomas Friedman in November 10th's New Yorker (subscription required):

Friedman can at times sound confounded by his Iraq-war critics, some of whom, scornful of his ability to always to see at least a glimmer of future hope, began referring in 2006 to a "Friedman Unit": a period of six months, starting at the present, during which events in Iraq would prove decisive. In his dressing room at the Letterman show, he said, "My first column in Iraq was 'Hold Your Applause.' It's not like I've been sitting there on Fox News, saying it's all going great. I've basically been a critic since Day One." Indeed, in April, 2003, the journalist Andrew Sullivan, who was at the time largely supportive of the Bush Administration, criticized Friedman, saying, "You have to ask yourselves what it would take to get Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd to say anything, anything, positive about this administration and the military force they have just wielded so expertly."

Tom Friedman's self-concept as Iraq war critic validated by Andrew Sullivan circa Spring, 2003: The piece largely consists of such uncritical analysis. Friedman disclaims responsibility for anything that happens because his intentions are good:

Should Friedman have foreseen that the war would be waged incompetently? "To that extent, yes, I really screwed up," he said. "Because you can't believe in the war and not believe in the people who carried it out." ... Friedman seemed to see himself in two roles, as a reporter and as an actor in the policy process: "I was walking a really fine line between saying, 'This is not working, O.K., and you guys need to change and we need more troops,' and not wanting to say, 'It's all your fault.' I was part of the discussion, part of the idea - where my ideas stopped and theirs started, I don't know. I felt responsible and I felt terrible about what was happening. I feel responsible. But I don't feel sorry for believing that we need to find a way to collaborate with people to give birth to a different politics in that part of the world."

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions displaced, and U.S. national security has been irreparably harmed. Friedman feels responsible, but he's not sorry. How can anyone take this man seriously?