From Timothy Noah in Slate: Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess:

Here’s a rule I would like every political reporter, campaign official, TV talking head, and politician in the United States to follow. Go ahead and say, if you like, that Hillary Clinton retains a serious chance of winning the Democratic nomination. If you say this, however, you must describe a set of circumstances whereby this could happen. Try not to make it sound like a fairy tale.

He goes on to explore this in detail. For an Obama supporter, it’s a reassuring exercise.

So, after watching a ton of citizen-produced 30-second Obama ads at MoveOn, I think this is my favorite:

The same pattern has repeated itself throughout the primary campaign: Hillary’s people look for whatever they think they can hit Obama over the head with, no matter how logically suspect it is, no matter how weak an argument it amounts to, no matter how hypocritical it makes them. Their attitude appears to be: You can’t go wrong by underestimating the intelligence of the American electorate.

Obama’s approach has been the exact opposite. Like in this speech:

Barring a catastrophe for the Democratic Party, Obama will be the nominee. Barring a catastrophe for the country, he’ll be the next president. And you know what? He deserves it. Not because of any sort of entitlement rooted in race, or gender, or personal history. Not because he’s willing to say anything, do anything, to get elected. Not because he’s been bought and paid for by monied interests used to getting their way in Washington.

That’s why Hillary and McCain think they deserve it. Obama deserves it for a very different reason: because he’s earned it. He’s earned it by the way he has conducted himself in office and during the campaign, by the things he’s said and the actions he’s taken. He’s earned it by being, hands down, the best choice to lead the country. Not based on identity politics. Not based on who he is, but on what he has done.

In that sense, as I’ve said before, Obama is the anti-Bush. If there’s anything I’ve seen happen over and over again in this country’s presidential politics, it’s that when the nation is confronted by the failings of a particular kind of president, we will lurch in the opposite direction. The venality of Nixon gave way to the moralizing of Jimmy Carter. The hand-wringing of Carter gave way to the optimism of Reagan. The out-of-touch George H.W. Bush gave way to the feel-your-pain Clinton.

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the national revulsion at the failings of George W. Bush. And Obama, in every conceivable sense, embodies the opposite of those failings. George W. Bush won the presidency because of who he was, in spite of what he’d done. Obama will win because of what he’s done, in spite of who he is.

Here’s a YouTube video of Barack Obama questioning Condoleeza Rice during her Senate confirmation hearing in January 2005:

It does a good job of demonstrating that aspect of Obama that I got from listening to his podcasts: That he’s smart, and thinking on his feet, and that three years ago he already had the judgement and the temperament that put him light-years beyond McCain (or Hillary) as a presidential candidate.

Experience is over-rated. George W. Bush has seven years’ experience in the White House — doesn’t seem to have changed the essential fact that he’s profoundly unqualified to be president of the United States. Barack Obama arrived on the national political stage a better candidate than Hillary or McCain, and he’s only gotten better since. I offer this video as Exhibit A of that fact.

Spencer Ackerman has a good article in The American Prospect on the likely direction that a President Obama would take in terms of US foreign policy: The Obama Doctrine. An excerpt:

“There is a popular notion that Democrats have to try to appear like Republicans to pass some test on national security. The fact that that’s still the case after Iraq is absurd,” says one of Obama’s closest advisers. “So you break from that orthodoxy and say ‘I don’t care if the Republicans attack me because I’m willing to meet with the leadership in Iran. We haven’t for 25 years, and it’s not gotten us anywhere.’”

Most of the members of Obama’s foreign-policy team expressed frustration that they had taken a well-considered and seemingly anodyne position on Iraq and suffered for it. Obama had something similar happen to him in the spring and summer of 2007. He was attacked from the left and the right for saying three things that should not have been controversial: that if he had actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan but no cooperation from the Pakistani government, he would take out the jihadists; that he wouldn’t use nuclear weapons on terrorist training camps; and that he would be willing to meet with leaders of rogue states in his first year as president. “No one [of Obama’s critics] had thought through the policy because that was the quote-unquote naïve and weak position, so they said it was a bad position to take,” recalls Ben Rhodes, the adviser who writes Obama’s foreign-policy speeches. “And it was a seminal moment, because Obama himself said, ‘No, I’m right about this!’”

Instead of backing down, Obama asked his foreign-policy team to double down. Rhodes wrote a speech that Obama delivered at DePaul University on Oct. 2, which criticized the boundaries of acceptable discourse set by the same establishment that backed the war. “This election is about ending the Iraq War, but even more it’s about moving beyond it. And we’re not going to be safe in a world of unconventional threats with the same old conventional thinking that got us into Iraq,” Obama said. One of his advisers, recalling the fallout from Obama’s comments about pursuing al-Qaeda in Pakistan, says, “He takes policy positions that are a break from both rigid orthodoxy and the Bush administration. And everyone says it’s a gaffe! That just encapsulates everything that’s wrong about the foreign-policy debate in Washington and in Democratic politics.”

The whole article is really interesting. I also liked this part, where the foreign-policy aspects of an Obama-vs.-McCain fall matchup were discussed:

The Obama foreign-affairs brain trust balks at the suggestion that what it’s proposing is radical. “He said we’d take out al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas if Pakistan will not. That’s not, to me, a revolutionary policy,” Rhodes says. “Watching him get attacked on the right is absurd. You’ve got guys who argued for a massive invasion and occupation of a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 criticizing him for advocating the use of highly targeted force to kill Osama bin Laden!”

Rhodes is referring, of course, to John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who recently asked of Obama, “Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan?” It’s no secret that McCain, a war hero who is to the right of Bush when it comes to Iraq, hopes to make this a foreign-policy election. Conventional wisdom holds this would give him an advantage over Obama. A Feb. 28 Pew Research Center poll found 43 percent of respondents believe Obama is “not tough enough” on foreign policy. Thirty-nine percent believe Obama’s foreign policy is “just right,” while 47 percent say the same of McCain.

Even so, Obama’s foreign-policy advisers are thrilled at the prospect of facing McCain. Had the GOP nomination gone to Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, politicians who don’t particularly care about foreign policy, an Obama victory would not provide a mandate for the sweeping foreign-affairs overhaul his campaign proposes. November’s election could be, for the first time in a very long time, a choice between two radically different visions of U.S. global engagement. “We want to have this debate with John McCain,” a close Obama adviser says. “[Obama] will offer this clear contrast.”

I’ve been challenged a few times recently about my support for Obama. “It’s just an infatuation,” people assert. “You just want change for its own sake. What do you really know about the guy?” What these people are doing, though, is projecting. They have no way of knowing how much research I’ve done into Obama’s ideas and positions, his past experience and what it reveals about his leadership ability and his likely actions in office. What they are really talking about is the shallowness of their own understanding of Obama.

That’s why it’s really over for Hillary at this point. That’s why I believe, in contrast to some people I know who believe that McCain will “crush” Obama in the fall, that in fact it will go the other way. The reality is, Obama’s support is not just coming from people who are blindly seeking change for its own sake, and have latched onto the first candidate who gives a pretty speech. The bedrock of his support comes from people who are deeply dissatisfied with the sorts of mainstream political choices that have been offered lately, who have taken the time to really look at Obama, and like what they see.

When people do that, when they examine the evidence of his character and integrity (as opposed to just watching the same 10-second clips of Jeremiah Wright over and over, with inane voiceovers from Fox News), when they honestly seek to answer the questions, “Who is this guy? What kind of president would he be?” — when people do that, a lot of them conclude that he’d make a really good one. Not just because they want someone to fill that role, but because he actually is that good.

Obama rings true. When people check him out, a substantial portion of them conclude that he’s the genuine article. That’s why, if you look at the polling in pretty much every state that’s held a primary so far, Hillary’s support has climbed steadily in the months before election day, while Barack Obama’s support, after starting well below hers, rises with a much steeper slope. It’s happening now in Pennsylvania (though Obama’s rise has been slower there than in some earlier contests, reflecting Hillary’s relative strength in Pennsylvania):

In terms of support numbers, both in these state-by-state primary contests and in the general election against McCain, Obama has real upside potential. There exists a pool of rational, open-minded voters who haven’t yet made up their minds. When those people look at the available choices, they’re not very likely to learn good things they didn’t already know about Hillary or McCain. Hillary and McCain have years on the national stage; if you don’t support them already, the chances that you’re going to switch to them now are relatively small.

Obama is different. Outside the pool of politics junkies who have been following these races obsessively (ahem), many voter haven’t tuned in yet. When those voters do tune in, and check out Obama, a substantial portion of them are going to conclude, “Whoa; I must vote for this man.” That’s where that steep slope in his support graph comes from.

Those of you accusing me of irrational Obamamania, take this test: Go research the guy yourself. Watch his campaign speeches on YouTube. Listen to his podcasts. Read what hilzoy had to say about Obama’s first two years in the Senate, or what Charles Peters had to say about Obama’s actions in the Illinois state legislature.

That’s the kind of research I did before falling in love with the guy. That’s where my Obamamania comes from. It’s not irrational. Just the opposite.

Yesterday was the Collin County Democratic caucus — ours was held a day after most Texas counties held their caucuses as Collin County, without exaggeration, did not contain a venue large enough for the expected turnout on the scheduled March 29th date. And turn out we did: about 4000 people packed into the convention hall at the Embassy Suites in Frisco, Texas.

It was an incredibly drawn out process, made worse by the unprecedented turn-out: 1660 delegates compared with the previous county record of about 400, plus nearly that many alternates and observers. Starting yesterday morning, simply signing everyone in took upwards of 4 hours and the caucus itself stretched on to midnight. The process itself was comprised of twenty steps, conducted in parliamentary fashion (if you can imagine a parliament of 1660 members). Process was explained; preliminary delegate counts tabulated; delegate challenges resolved; rules reviewed; chairpersons and vice chairpersons at multiple levels nominated, elected, and confirmed; objections were raised, considered, and resolved; and finally district caucuses selected their delegates before a number of other bookkeeping steps were attended to, which I somewhat ashamedly did not stay for.

The final count was 1078 delegates for Obama, 582 for Hillary. After 12 hours of waiting, the announcement of this, the preliminary tabulation, was met with rock concert-level applause. I don’t know how many actual national delegates this will lead to for Obama, but it’s certainly a resounding victory for Obama from this county and the numbers are similar in others.

I’m left with a weird mix of emotions after the experience — even more than the “watching the sausage get made” ambivalence I expected. The curious thing about caucuses is that they take a normally anonymous election process and make it very personal. When an election is as highly-pitched as this one, putting that much exposed personal sentiment in one room is, for good or ill, revealing. My doubts about the utility of the caucus process are even greater now, but it was a fascinating process to take part in.

The most exciting part of participating for me was of a personal kind. I went into this caucus as as one of a few alternate delegates, there only as backups for the 11 Obama delegates from our precinct. As it happened, 2 delegates failed to show, and I and another man were the only alternates who came. We were both “elevated” to full delegate status, and so I had the pleasure to cast a meaningful vote to ensure my precinct’s single delegate to the state caucus would be for Obama. This really was a bit of a thrill for me (well, maybe less so after around 11pm) and a happy bit of closure to my whole experience.

My personal victory aside, I have to say that a lot of what I saw yesterday — taking my first step inside the outermost ring of insider politics — was pretty ugly. I’ve never been a big fan of the Democratic Party, but I think recently the glow of Obama has burnished the party’s image in my mind. The caucus reminded me of what I dislike: videos instructing supporters how to play Republicans’ own word games against them to make the Democratic platform more appealing (they’re not taxes, they’re “investments”); lobbying by slimy local politicians appealing for a “new blue majority”; and being surrounded by simple-minded trust in the government to solve all problems all made me a bit ill. In-fighting ran throughout the proceedings. Delegates engaged in childish wranglings on the floor to subvert process for slight political advantage, and more disappointingly my own precinct was nearly split by internal suspicion of a type that was so disgusting that I don’t think I can write about it.

Do I still have faith in the process? Although Texas’ particular process is flawed to say the least, absolutely I do. Gathering and distilling the will of millions of people with as many opinions is a messy business and our system does it as well as any. I’m not sure I want to put my hands so deeply into the mess next time, but I’ll consider it a bargain if it helps launch a presidency that is as historic as I hope it will be.

Honestly I wasn’t expecting much from Obama’s speech today on race, assuming that he would attempt to distance himself and Clinton from their respective supporters that have been trying to turn this into a racial election, in one direction or another.

As it turns out, Obama takes this moment — at the height and final stretch of an incredibly unpredictable nomination race — to speak substantively, expansively, and somewhat confrontationally on race and how it influences the opinions and opportunities of a broad swath of Americans today. Here’s the transcript.

Some continue to insist that Obama is all talk. Looking at what he has accomplished, they couldn’t be more wrong. But even if it were true, I think a President who is able and willing to speak words like these at politically inopportune times may do more to change the way business is done than any amount of political triangulation.

I don’t want to get pigeonholed as a Hillary hater. But the following just happens to be the thematically-connected material that strikes me as lies.com-significant lately:

From my hero, Mark Kleiman: Too late, the truth about NAFTAgate. Short version: score one for Hillary, as a false-to-fact smear against Obama gets cemented in the popular consciousness and the mainstream media, just in time to help her win Ohio.

From another of my heroes, Joshua Micah Marshall: Say It Ain’t So. So, is Geraldine Ferraro factually correct to argue that if he weren’t black, Barack Obama wouldn’t be where he is today? Not so much, it turns out. Or, more succinctly, as still yet another of my heroes, Adam of Mighty Forces, put it (in Geraldine Ferraro can bite my shiny metal ass):

Hey Geri: FUCK. YOU.

But the best comment on Hillary’s recent race-based campaigning comes courtesy of this video from the droll subversives of Election08 (also pointed out to me by the aforementioned Adam):

Okay. Back to work.

I like Jonathon Schwarz a lot. Here he is talking about Hillary’s 2002 speech condemning Saddam Hussein (delivered in the run-up to her Sure, George, Go To War vote in the Senate), but talking in a larger sense about politicians’ lying and the social underpinnings of it: The Monster(s) Speak(s).

In any case, the older I get, the less I blame people like Clinton for lying. Politicians will always lie as much as their society allows. The problem here isn’t Clinton, but the layers of America underneath her. In particular I blame the upper middle professional class from whose loins I sprang. Their entire societal power derives from them - ie, doctors, scientists, managers - purportedly caring about reality. But it turns out they don’t, as long as they themselves don’t suffer.

Intelligence is sometimes overrated. Stupidity can be a great source of truth, not to mention (black) comedy. In that vein I give you the Michael Scott of US television “journalists”: Tucker Carlson.

You have to sit through a commercial to view the video at that site (which is why I didn’t embed the video here; I will not let my teency piece of the web be degraded in that particular way, at least not yet), but I think it’s actually worth sitting through, because Carlson exposes so clearly what is wrong with US journalism, and the response of The Scotsman reporter Gerri Peev (who did the interview with former Obama advisor Samantha Power where Power called Hillary Clinton “a monster”) is so awesome.

This is coming courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, who has lots more insightful things to say about the issue, including a round-up of several YouTube clips of non-US journalists asking questions of US politicians. All highly recommended.

To sum things up, here’s an excerpt from Greenwald’s piece at Salon (Tucker Carlson unintentionally reveals the role of the American press), which also requires viewing an ad (sigh), though at least it’s not a TV ad.

Credit to Tucker Carlson for being so (unintentionally) candid about the lowly, subservient role of the American press with regard to “the relationship between the press and the powerful.” A journalist should never do anything that “hurts” the powerful, otherwise the powerful won’t give access to the press any longer. Presumably, the press should only do things that please the powerful so that the powerful keep talking to the press, so that the press in turn can keep pleasing the powerful, in an endless, symbiotic, mutually beneficial cycle. Rarely does someone who plays the role of a “journalist” on TV so candidly describe their real function.

Over time I’ve become less and less interested in fisking (which I’m using here to mean the process of dissecting a dishonest online argument by posting a response that plows through it a sentence or two at a time, interjecting criticisms), but with that said, this piece by libertarian Julian Sanchez on something Matt Continetti wrote recently in the Weekly Standard regarding Congressional actions on FISA is worth reading: Substandard.

Sigh. So much crap; so little time.

Just submitted via the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund’s contact page:

I really liked your youtube video featuring the audio of the Oklahoma state legislator making the homophobic comments. (Well, I was appalled by it. But I like that you’re helping to publicize it.)

I’m trying to figure out why you would fail to identify the person making the remarks. It seems to me that if posting the audio is justified, then identifying the person speaking is also justified. I mean, she’s a politician, and should be held accountable for her remarks. If identifying the person speaking is not justified, then posting the audio isn’t justified, either. I mean, it’s trivially easy for someone who is active in Oklahoma state politics to identify her based on the recording, so you’re not actually protecting her identity in any meaningful way, right?

The best I can come up with for a rationale is this: Something about the recording itself might have been illegal, or unethical. The video indicates that she was recorded without her knowledge. Maybe that’s actually a violation of Oklahoma law? Or maybe the editing of the audio omits remarks by others questioning her that would cast the people making the recording in a less-than-flattering light?

If that’s the case, then I can see a rationale for leaving her unidentified in the video. By not identifying her, you avoid the side issue that would be raised if she were to challenge the authenticity, completeness, or legality of the recording. In the meantime, you still get the benefit of shocking people with what she said (which probably translates into fundraising, or at least awareness-raising, for your organization). If she’s not identified, then she would have to “out” herself (so to speak) to raise an objection to the recording, which she might be unwilling to do.

But here’s the thing: If that’s the explanation, it strikes me as a shady ethical approach for your organization to take. I come back to the same position I felt when I first heard the audio: It’s shocking, and it makes me want her identity to be known so she’ll pay whatever price her constituents think is appropriate. Not identifying her may make some sort of tactical sense in terms of the rough-and-tumble of politics, but for me, it doesn’t pass the smell test. I’d be more inclined to support your organization if I believed that you were being scrupulously ethical in your actions.

She sounds like a homophobe, and a hate-monger. But she’s also a human being. She deserves to be exposed for having made those comments. But she also deserves an opportunity to give her side of the story, to the extent she wants to give one.

If you’re concealing her identity in order to prevent your audience from knowing the full story behind the recording, I’m not sure that’s ethically cool. It’s a pretty minor ethical lapse compared to denigrating and discriminating against a whole class of people based on their sexual orientation, granted. But it’s still uncool.

I wish you would be more cool.

John Callender
jbc@lies.com

Update: Apparently the Oklahoma state legislator whose voice is heard in the recording is Sally Kern. GayPolitics.com, which appears to be operated by the same people as the Victory Fund, posted the following comment yesterday:

One of the primary questions people have had after hearing her hateful speech was why no one ever mentioned her name. If the audio was worthy of being publicized, why not single out the person responsible?

There are a couple reasons.

First, we don’t want to make her a hero in anti-gay circles. Running a name and a picture would merely serve as a feather in her cap.

Also, while this speech is remarkable in its statements, it’s not unique. For every bit of hateful rhetoric we hear, scores of other anti-gay statements go unchallenged.

It is not our intention to make this individual the target of animosity and hostility. It is, however, our intention to let her know that we heard what she said, we do not approve and that we support public officials who recognize people in the LGBT community as equal, ordinary citizens.

I appreciate their providing the explanation, and I don’t doubt that that was the intention behind not mentioning her name. At the same time, I think their logic was muddled. By publishing the clip, they guaranteed that she would be identified and would receive the responses (both pro and anti) that they say it was not their intention to promote. This is a fish-or-cut-bait kind of situation. They can’t have it both ways. If they didn’t want to publicize her actions, then the appropriate course of action was… not to publicize her actions. If they were willing to publicize her actions, then I don’t think they’re really carving out any sort of moral high ground by letting others take the predictable next step of tracking down and sharing her identity.

Two district conventions were held together in the fire station a mile or so from my house this evening at 7pm. This isn’t the kind of event I would have predicted I would be spending an evening on a couple years ago even, but having spent so much time bemoaning a combination of disappointing candidates and meaningless votes in Texas, I felt I owed it to my self-respect to make the most of this day when neither were true for me. And apparently I’m not done yet.

Driving up at 6:55, I was stunned to see people lined up outside in the chilly night, and I was lucky to get one of the last places to park around the firehouse. While I waited outside, cars would begin streaming into the church parking lot down the street, and people would build until a crowd of a couple hundred or so were milling about, chuckling about how much worse it would have been if it were during yesterday evening’s ice storm, asking each other about Texas caucusing arcana, and having a look at what exactly Texas Democrats look like.

The doors opened at 7:15 and it was over an hour for everyone to get inside the door, and have them put their names down for one candidate or another. The question was constantly asked if we had to stay or if we could go once we had signed in. The answer was the latter and by far most people left, although I stayed just to satiate my curiosity. The caucus was called to order, a temporary chairperson and secretary were selected, who then presided over the nomination and voting in of a permanent chairperson and secretary.

The names were counted, and the proportion used to split the district’s delegates to the county convention (where delegates will be selected in similar fashion for the state convention… where the delegates to the national convention will be selected, also in kind). My district was assigned 18 total delegates, 1 delegate per 15 people who voted democratic in the last gubernatorial election — curiously that’s only about 270 which seems a small number compared with the number caucusing tonight. Here, Obama won 11 to Clinton’s 7. I heard from the next room that their district fell in similar proportion.

We were sectioned off into two corners of the room to select our 11 delegates, plus 11 backups, to attend the county convention on March 29th. Only 17 remained so the Obama camp had to settle for 6 backups.

One of which seems to be me.

The Texas Democratic primary is a pretty strange hybrid of general voting and caucusing — and it’s not even that simple. But Texas Democrats — normally drowned in either red-statedom or late-primary irrelevancy — should take note that not only has the close Clinton/Obama race put them in a decisive position, but the quirks of Texas’ primary offer a singular opportunity to Make Your Vote Count. The short story is you get to vote twice… if you know how.

I do not generally affiliate myself with the Democratic party (or any party), but as an ardent Texan Obama supporter, I am thrilled that I might make a difference tomorrow. So for all of you intending to vote in the Democratic party primary in Texas tomorrow, I’ve collected some information on how to make the most of tomorrow:

• Texas does not register voters by party affiliation. This means that as long as you are registered to vote, you can vote in the Democratic (or Republican) primary tomorrow. The act of voting in the primary affiliates you with that party for the rest of the year (and for the precinct conventions notably).
• Texas has a two part method for assigning its 168 pledged delegates (a Texas two-step if you will, ahem). 126 will be chosen in the primary election, assigned proportionally by precinct, as opposed to the state-wide proportion as in most states. The remaining 42 delegates will be chosen in conventions that will be held on election day in each voting district, and again assigned proportionally per precinct based on those who choose to attend and vote at these precinct conventions. (For more information on how the precinct dynamics change the expected results, read this excellent article.)
• Anybody who voted in the Democratic primary election may vote in their precinct convention, to be held at 7:00pm election day, March 4th. You only need to bring proof that you voted (either on election day, or in early voting) to your precinct convention to participate.
• To be clear, the precinct conventions are a huge extra opportunity for you to sway more delegates in favor of your candidate. It’s like voting, but amplified. Do it and bring your friends!

To summarize, here’s what you do tomorrow:

• Step 1 - Vote in the primary election. To find your polling location, enter your address here. Yes, it’s Obama’s site, but honestly it’s the best statewide polling location finder I’ve found. Every vote counts here, as small changes in vote count can shift single delegates within the individual districts.
• Step 2 - Caucus! Show up at your precinct convention location (also available at that Obama link above), which is probably the same as your voting location, with proof you voted in the Democratic primary and commit your support for your chosen candidate. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the format for the convention minutes, which should give you an idea of what to expect. The precinct conventions are extra important, as you will be part of a small number of people with the ability to directly influence delegates.

I’m looking forward to taking part in this whole process tomorrow — I hope it will be taking part in history in the making.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or, when your elevation of an incompetent tool who de-emphasizes counterterrorism and surrounds himself with people whose main qualification is that their sense of personal loyalty is absolute, even if their intellectual gifts and track record of past accomplishments leave something to be desired, leads to an unprecedented security failure and the death of thousands of Americans on US soil; when a botched decision to go to war, sold dishonestly and then revealed to have been so sold, is followed by an equally botched occupation that leaves (again) thousands of Americans (along with the odd million or so innocent foreigners) dead, while draining the national coffers to the tune of half a trillion (with a “T”) dollars and counting; when pretty much everything your guy has accomplished in the last eight years demonstrates that your particular approach to governance has been (at least in practice) an unmitigated disaster for the nation generally and for its citizens’ physical security in particular; how then do you respond when it looks like things are turning against you politically?

Why, by putting out a commercial that is a direct ripoff of the trailer for the upcoming season of 24, attempting to stoke even higher the public fear that has been engendered precisely because of your guy’s failures, and use it as an argument that really, these times are so scary that it is only the Republicans who can possibly save us:

To which I can only say, bring it on. If at this point in time the United States can, in fact, be swayed by that particular message delivered in that particular manner by those particular people, then we deserve four more years of Bush-style leadership.

But it does raise an interesting question, which Matthew Yglesias muses about in The Party of Terror:

In essence, the Republicans are placing a heavy political bet on the idea of a terrorist attack happening some time while their “danger” clock is running. If Americans die, they’ll be in a position to clean up. Conversely, if we still have some semblance of legal protections against government surveillance months from now and that clock’s still ticking even though al-Qaeda hasn’t slaughtered any innocents here in the U.S., they’re going to look mighty silly.

A conspiracy theorist would move easily from this fact (which I think is pretty much indisputable) to the (much harder to demonstrate) belief that the Republican Party would actually work to bring about such an attack here in the US. Maybe I’m naive in my faith in humanity, but I believe that even our current crop of Republican leaders are not such awful people that they’d stoop to that. Unfortunately, it’s not necessary to assume that degree of evil on their part; simple incompetence, dishonesty, and a fucked-up decision-making process are demonstrably sufficient to bring it about. So yeah, I’m afraid. Just not in the particular way that that commercial wants me to be.

Ymatt was kind enough to remind me of how awesome this speech on faith by Barack Obama (which I previously posted about back when he gave it, in 2006) was:

And in a tangentially related vein, Janus pointed out this from Friendly Atheist: Gods We Don’t Believe In.

Enjoy.

In signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008 into law, President Bush issued a signing statement stating that he would not enforce four sections of the law, citing that they would “inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations”. These sections were:

• Forbidding use of taxpayer money to build permanent military bases in Iraq
• Strengthening protections for whistle-blowers within government contractors
• Requiring intelligence agencies respond to Congressional requests for information within 45 days
• Establishment of a “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” to investigate contractor wrong-doing

All four of these seem to me imminently reasonable — necessary even — things to put into law, and I find it outrageous that the President would refuse to execute them. But setting that aside, I’d like to look at the legality of this signing statement from a couple points of view.

First, some would argue that the division of war-related powers between Congress and the President are unclear, so it is within reason for the President to assert that these would unconstitutionally limit his powers. If you take that point of view however, the correct response would be for the President to either veto the bill, or sign it and challenge the sections he believes unconstitutional in court. Of course he won’t do this because he wants to sign the bill to get the bits he wants, and I suspect he refuses to take his challenge to court because he fears he would lose; I certainly believe he would, as the above provisions seem well within Congress’ funding and oversight powers to me. The President is essentially exercising powers reserved for the Supreme Court by making judgments on constitutionality, and it is this Congress’ responsibility to check him.

Second, some would argue that signing statements are an executive tool with a historical precedent, used when the President’s duty to the Constitution runs afoul of Congress’ wishes, and so it is reasonable for the President to use this tool. If you take this point of view however, then even as the President suspends execution of the law, I believe it is again his responsibility to immediately take his challenge to the courts to ensure he himself is acting constitutionally. Since he is not (again I believe for the same reasons stated above), then it falls to the Congress to check him.

Both arguments lead to one conclusion: when the Executive branch is actively avoiding legal rulings on policies being pursued (as they have repeatedly done — here, as well as in cases such as FISA), the only Constitutional recourse is impeachment, and I mean this is a very concrete legal sense, not an “impeach the bastard!” sense.

So to get back to the topic at hand, can anybody defend Bush refusing to execute sections of law that I believe most people would agree make sense, and supporting this refusal on very questionable legal grounds? I certainly can’t, and Congress should be ashamed for running out the clock rather than doing their job.

Hilzoy has some interesting commentary (that I basically agree with) about what it means that Hillary (and/or Bill) have chosen over the last few weeks to make what are essentially dishonest attacks on Barack Obama: Lies And Democracy.

When politicians lie… they raise the amount of time it takes to do one’s job as a citizen adequately, and they raise it dramatically. It’s as though they walked up to people and said: if I weren’t around, you might be able to fulfill your civic obligations by reading the papers, but thanks to my lies, in order to exercise your right to vote responsibly, you will have to spend hours Googling and going over long-forgotten articles in order to find out the most basic facts. If you don’t, I’ll be able to deceive you. Ha ha ha!

People who do that have no respect for voters, no respect for their right to make up their own minds, and no respect for our democratic system. The only way they will stop is if we stop tolerating it. In a democracy, we get the leaders we deserve. I very much hope we deserve better than the Clintons.

It seems kind of ironic, given the prominent role Bill Clinton has been playing in the Democratic primary lately, but apparently it was 10 years ago yesterday that he gave the nation the finger-waggle while declaring, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

For your viewing pleasure:

Interesting commentary by Mark Kleiman on Kevin Drum’s recent statements about Barack Obama (who Drum apparently sees as either naively being truly willing to deal with conservatives, or dishonestly saying he’ll practice kumbaya while secretly planning to be as nasty to conservatives as Hillary would be). According to Kleiman, that gets it wrong: Obama is just being honest, while Hillary is being the sort of politician we have every reason to expect her to be. Anyway, I think I’m with Kleiman on this one. I was paying attention when the Iraq War vote happened, and I know how Hillary was talking then. And I know how she’s been talking lately (to the extent she’s been willing to, which isn’t much) on the subject of torture. And that’s enough to put me firmly in the Obama camp.

Anyway: Style, substance, and “kumbaya”.

I still like Philosoraptor, even if he’s a bit too rah-rah about blowing things up for my taste sometimes. But I really enjoyed reading his take on the recent McGovern article calling for Bush to be impeached: McGovern: Impeach Bush.

It’s always struck me as peculiar that the very people who have the most pronounced tendency to wave the flag and extol the virtues of America also seem to have the least actual respect for the Constitution and the institutions of our government. That brand of patriotism–if patriotism it even is–is of a tribalistic, sophomoric variety. Actual patriotism, however, requires a commitment to the principles of the Consitution, and an ability to take an objective view of matters of this kind by transcending partisan commitments. There may be legal arguments that show that impeachment is not, in fact, called for, but if those arguments exist they have not been made public. From the perspective of the well-informed layperson, given the available evidence and arguments, impeachment must at least be seriously considered.

If you’ve already decided that it was a conspiracy, in which Hillary got her friend Ray Buckley to rig the New Hampshire voting machines, you probably don’t care about this. (And you’ll probably want to avoid it, because it mentions something that seems like a pretty big hole in your argument: that exit polling showed the same Hillary win that the machines did.) But for the rest of us obsessives, this article in the Columbia Journalism Review is kind of interesting: The Polls: What the #$!% Happened?

No real answers, but some informed musing about what was and wasn’t a factor.

Update: Oh, and immediately after posting this, I came across the following Joshua Micah Marshall item at TPM: Enough.

There is also something perverse about the quick knee-jerk reaction to assume that any election that dramatically doesn’t go your way was stolen. It stems from the same fidelity to assumption and desire over fact that so many of us have excoriated in the present administration. There is a sullen childishness at work in this thinking that no robust political movement can ever be built on.

What he said.

One of the better things I’ve read on Barack Obama’s candidacy lately is this piece by Jim Sleeper: If I Vote for Obama, It’ll Be Because…

The newest podcast is available: Lies.com Podcast 26. This one features the following:

• Bush’s December 4, 2007, press conference on the Iran NIE
• Dana Perino’s December 6, 2007, press briefing
• Lux Toilet Soap commercial, from the 1947 radio broadcast of It’s A Wonderful Life
• Dana Perino’s December 19, 2007, press briefing
• Music: Sneaker Pimps - “Post-modern Sleaze”
• Barack Obama’s Iowa caucus victory speech
• Music: The Weepies - “Stars”
• Bill Moyers interviews Desmond Tutu in 1999
• Music: Tears for Fears - “Secrets”
• Jill Wolfson’s story of Sarah, a 10-year-old heart-transplant recipient, from This American Life episode 345, “Ties That Bind”
• Music: The Cinematic Orchestra - “That Home”

I really like how this one turned out, especially the part where I followed (sort of) listener pelonpelon’s suggestion and played around with mixing in a little Bush at the beginning of “Post-modern Sleaze”. Anyway, check it out.

This is worth reading: Andy Olmsted.

If there is any hope for the long term success of democracy, it will be if people agree to listen to and try to understand their political opponents rather than simply seeking to crush them.

Bet I get some folks’ attention with that headline. But it turns out it’s not CIA videotaping, but police videotaping in Illinois, that the story refers to. Apparently Barack Obama was a key player in passing legislation requiring law enforcement in Illinois to videotape interrogations and confessions. At least in Charles Peters’ view, the story says something about Obama’s skills, and (by extension) how he might lead as President: Judge Him by His Laws.

A better-than-usual (which is saying a lot) Glenn Greenwald column that touches on what I believe to be a key part of the destroyed-torture-tapes story: The fact that the top legal advisors of the president and vice president were present at a meeting where an act of obstruction of justice was apparently discussed (an act that subsequently came to pass), and the public is being kept in the dark as to what action they advised: Oligarchical decay.

In case after case, our political establishment has adopted the “principle” that our most powerful actors are immune from the rule of law. And they’ve adopted the enabling supplemental “principle” that any information which our political leaders want to keep suppressed is — by definition, for that reason alone — information that is “classified” and should not be disclosed.

I think I’ll be making another one of my periodic calls to the office of my congressional representative, the otherwise-awesome Lois Capps, to encourage her to break with Nancy Pelosi on the subject of impeachment. Because loyalty to one’s party is one thing. But complicity with torture is the sort of thing that tends to look bad when reflects on it later in life.

Next up, health care. This is far from a new issue, but it has come into focus this year with the quorum of democratic candidates pushing openly for various flavors of “universal” health insurance, and republicans staunchly against anything with the stench of government-run health care.

Like trade, there are a range of plans from our candidates here. As a start, I’d like to ask all of you — no matter where on the spectrum you are — two direct questions:

• Do you believe that the goal should be to cover every American or are you willing to accept a system that allows some to be uninsured? The unemployed who can’t afford it? The very poor without employer insurance? Where do you draw the line on who should be left uninsured and why?
• Whether you favor free-market insurance, government-run insurance, or a mix; how do you believe your preferred solution best serves the interests of the public?

I think I’m inclined to think that Larry Johnson knows what he’s talking about here: Who Obstructed Justice?

The key question surrounding torture tape gate is not who authorized the destruction of the tapes in 2005. Nope. The real priority is who in the Bush Administration knowingly lied to a Federal Judge in the spring of 2003. Either the CIA told DOJ the truth and DOJ lied or the CIA lied to DOJ or the White House directed DOJ to lie. It is that simple.

And it’s a felony. And it’s grounds for impeachment. Start the hearings already.

Dan Froomkin does a good job of summing up the last few days’ hijinks from White House press secretary Dana Perino regarding what the White House did, and didn’t, know and do back in the day regarding the CIA torture videos: The Tell-Tale Stall.

Perino’s currently stuck in trying-to-have-it-both-ways mode: She doesn’t want to talk about the subject (because talking about it threatens to reveal the truth, which is almost certainly that folks like Addington were up to their eyeballs in pushing the CIA to ignore judicial orders and destroy the evidence of the torture they’d been committing). But at the same time, she wants to push back against the New York Times reporting that in the first few days after the story broke, the White House was peddling (via anonymous leaks) that Harriet Miers had been telling the CIA that the agency should not destroy the tapes.

There’s a constitutional provision specifically designed for handling situations like this. It’s called impeachment. And Nancy Pelosi needs to get off her skinny ass and start that process.

In the meantime, here are the highlights of yesterday’s White House press briefing. I know she doesn’t know what the Bay of Pigs was. And she’s defending torturers. But I have to admit: I’ve kinda got a crush on Dana.

Sorry for not keeping my promise to follow up the original reader platform post with some debate posts in a timely manner.

Rather than open this up to a free-for-all, I’d like to start with a specific topic for which we had a pretty wide span of opinions and policy, but is perhaps more pressing even than the typical topics of argument here: trade. To summarize:

Here are a couple starter question for the candidates:

Steve, NorthernLite, and shcb, are you concerned that transnational corporations may be often be pursuing business strategies that optimize their profits at the expense of nation-specific interests, as typified by America’s drift toward a service/consumer economy and widening economic gap?

JAYSON and Knarlyknight, strong economic ties between nations may the be the most effective base on which to build lasting good diplomatic relations; wouldn’t a more nationalistic US economic policy further isolate the US on the world stage, and embolden competing economic unions in the EU and Asia?

This makes me happy: ABC News: Gotcha! Teen’s MP3 Catches Cop in a Lie.

I note that the officer in question is one Detective Christopher Perino. Which makes me wonder: any relation?

Here are the updated graphs for October and November, 2007, with 38 and 37 US military deaths, respectively. It definitely looks like a real downward trend to me, which is a good thing, certainly. Here’s hoping that trend continues.

As always, I’m comparing the US military casualties in Iraq to those from the Vietnam war at a similar point in each war’s political lifetime (which some have charged is misleading; see disclaimer below). The data come from the advanced search tool at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, and from Lunaville’s page on Iraq coalition casualties. The figures are for the number of US dead per month, without regard to whether the deaths were combat-related.

The first graph shows the comparison for the extent of the Iraq war to-date. (Click on any image for a larger version.)

Next, the chart that gives the US death toll for the entire Vietnam war:

Disclaimer: I’ve been accused of comparing apples to oranges in these graphs. For the record, here’s what I am not arguing:

• I’m not saying that Iraq is somehow deadlier per soldier-on-the-ground than Vietnam. For both wars, the number of fatalities in any given month tracks pretty closely with the number of troops deployed (along with the intensity of the combat operations being conducted). There were more troops in Iraq in the early going than were in Vietnam during the “corresponding” parts of the graphs. Similarly, for later years in Vietnam, when the monthly death toll exceeds the current Iraq numbers, there were many more troops in place.
• I am not saying that Iraq is somehow “worse” than Vietnam. I include the first graph mainly because I wanted a zoomed-in view of the Iraq data. And I include the second graph, which shows the entire span of the Vietnam war, because I want to be clear about what the data show about overall death tolls — where any rational assessment would have to conclude that, at least so far, Iraq has been far less significant (at least in terms of US combat fatalities) than Vietnam.

I was just curious how the “death profile” of the two wars compared, and how those deaths played out in terms of their political impact inside the US. For that reason, I chose as the starting point for each graph the first fatality that a US president acknowledged (belatedly, in the case of the Vietnam graph, since US involvement in the war “began” under Kennedy, but the acknowledgement was made only later by Johnson) as having resulted from the war in question.

As ever, you are free to draw your own conclusions. And for that matter, you’re free to draw your own graphs, if you have a way of presenting the information that you believe would be better. In that case, feel free to post a comment with a URL to your own version. Thanks.

I’d like to take a moment to get a cross-section of the lies.com readership (yes even you quiet ones), but rather than gather uninteresting lists of pro-this/anti-that stances, let’s have a little fun.

Responding to public outcry, you have declared your candidacy for the President of the United States in 2008. You have the cult of personality on your side, but the American public wants to know where you stand on the issues and where your priorities lie. Lies.com, the undisputed and unbiased voice of the people, has asked you to answer the people’s call in the comments of this post.

I’ll get the format started with my response including a some general and hot-button issues. You must include your stance on all of the issues listed, although you may reorder based on your priorities and your stances may be as brief or lengthy as you wish (but keep it within reason — I’m looking at you, knarly). If you’re not sure or you don’t have an opinion on an issue, say so. Oh, and pretend that you would rather stick to your convictions than get elected.

I admit I found reference to this in a Glenn Greenwald post, but rather than link to that, I’ll link directly to the original speech Bush recently gave before the Federalist Society. Go read it in its un-spun, un-commented-on form, as I believe it speaks entirely for itself.