Pufferfish

Memo To Whoopi

Okay, I'll bite. As best I can tell the Roman Polanski arrest is more about celebrity worship and treating a well-connected person with deference than it is about the international legal justice system. That the victim would prefer to see the matter dropped is noteworthy, but isn't of much legal importance:

If Mr Polanski had fled the United States before negotiating his plea bargain the case, presumably, would remain open and his victim's desire that it be dropped after all this time would hold greater weight. That is, if the case had not begun there'd be some point, even if this too might be distasteful, in letting it lapse thirty years later. But it did begin and a guilty plea was entered and so all this is a question of completing unfinished business. That's all.

The 'Obama Problem'

Earlier today, Thomas Friedman announced his concern:

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

Yesterday, Newsmax demonstrated why by publishing a chilling op-ed:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic...

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Warning signs are everywhere. But not a single elected official of consequence within GOP ranks is trying to calm down a base that has clearly lost grip with reality.

Bizarro Venture Capital

Here's a nice breakdown on how the right-wing puke funnel works and its recent success with Acorn:

The dynamics of the "Noise Machine" and the MSM are pretty familiar by now. Stories percolate and get repeated endlessly within the Noise Machine by people like Rush, Hannity, Beck, Fox News, Drudge, Malkin, Reynolds, and dozens of more activism-focused blogs (e.g., RedState). These daily outrages are virtually always absurd. But they keep getting repeated over and over, in the hopes that they will eventually break through into the MSM…

The genius of the strategy, though, is that the MSM's refusal to air these outrages itself becomes part of the attack...

It's like bizarro venture capital. You invest in a hundred absurd arguments, and hope that one or two "make it" to fund future absurd arguments.

There’s an added dimension to the noise machine that is crucial: the notion of being besieged by an internal threat. Despite dominating government for the last 40 years, Republicans have managed to convince themselves that they are a persecuted minority. It’s a neat trick. But looking at this from a demographic perspective, it’s prophetic. Which is how you end up with scenes like this:

In the halls and from the stages of the conference, there were constant warnings of fascist, anti-Christian campaigns to break down American morals and sovereignty. Rev. Rick Scarborough, a pastor who advised Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign, pounded the podium at his Friday afternoon speech, warning that the president’s pro-gay agenda was endangering Christians who spoke out against gay rights.

“The day the president put his hand on the bible,” said Scarborough, “his minions were changing official White House Website to reflect a whole new understanding of civil rights, to refer to homosexuals.” The Bible, said Scarborough, called these people “sodomites, which no one wants to talk about because it reminds them of their behavior.”

Some activists followed this up with a breakout session on “How to Counter the Homosexual Extremist Movement,” where they learned about transgender awareness days at public schools. And some went to “How to Stop Feminist and Gay Attacks on the Military,” where they were informed that upwards of 200,000 active duty members of the military might quit if “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is repealed.

All Mixed Up

For Republicans, military spending is now the third rail:

Unfortunately, the conservative movement's impulse is to afford military leaders too much deference. Take its stance on our nuclear arsenal. After the military presented a plan to reduce it, President Obama signaled his displeasure by demanding more ambitious cuts. "Obama knows more about weapons requirements than the military now?" conservative blogger Dan Riehl wrote, echoing many on the right. "I think it's time to start ringing the alarm bells with this guy, folks."

Conservatives respond quite differently when domestic-affairs bureaucrats claim special knowledge. Expertise in education, or welfare spending, or environmental stewardship is afforded some respect. Deference is tempered, however, by the understanding that people aren't very good at judging the relative importance of their own work, and that every institution is reflexively opposed to shrinking itself. Should our nuclear arsenal shrink? I haven't any idea, but a better counterargument is required than "the military knows best."

This is a good point about the GOP's genuflection before the alter of war. But where it goes off the rails is in the insinuation that the GOP's track record on government spending is even remotely sober. Sure, at the moment conservatives are apoplectic at the thought of Acorn misusing tax dollars. Or poor people getting access to cheaper health care. But it was only a few years ago when Republicans celebrated controlling all three branches of government by lighting giant piles of money on fire. Are we really supposed to ignore that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, Medicaid Part D was passed despite a plan to pay for it. Ditto for No Child Left Behind. And how about the wild-ass assertion that the Iraq war would pay for itself? Or, ahem, the stern lecturing from Dick Cheney that deficits don't matter? Which is why the conclusion from Friedersdorf made me laugh out loud:

The solution is simple enough—the right wing need only apply its core insights and healthy skepticism of government to defense spending, just as it does to every other part of the federal budget.

Wank on. Conservatives need to stop pretending that the Republican Party is even remotely interested in honest budgetary practices. With all this talk about the GOP losing its way, the recent record of fail really comes down to a simple issue: The party bosses started believing their own bullshit. The giveaways got bigger. The deficits got deeper. And accountability became a pet issue for the other party.

There Goes The Neighborhood

This rings true:

MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.” And even within the networks, black kids befriend other black kids, Latinos mix with Latinos, and the self-segregation often practiced in real life is rampant online. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, compares this dash from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight” from inner cities.

I joined MySpace when I was in grad school because all the undergrad kids were doing it. Then a couple years ago I was told by several friends that they were dumping MySpace in favor of Facebook because it was for kids who actually went to college. Almost overnight, MySpace was 'trashy.' At the time, it reminded me of the Chris Rock bit that goes something like: "Every town has the same two malls: the one white people go to and the one white people used to go to." Of course, that didn't stop me from deleting my MySpace page and signing up for Facebook. I followed the herd, because, well, that's where the herd was going. Call it White Flight 2.0. But what has apparently resulted in a division along racial lines I'd like to think wasn't caused by racial division, like White Flight of the 1960s. For my peers, class seemed to be the biggest factor. At least that's what we told ourselves. Though I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.

The Lie Machine Sputters

Rolling Stone has internal documents showing corporate-run right wing groups have been coordinating "in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings":

Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn't show up "because of some organized group," Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, told reporters. "They're mad about the stimulus bill, the bailout, the economy. Now they see that their health care is about to be taken over by the government."

In fact, Scott's own group had played an integral role in mobilizing the protesters. According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients' Rights had been working closely for weeks as a "coalition partner" with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings just like Doggett's. Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993.

Despite GOP efforts to wag the dog, the lack of wide-spread opposition to reform is now readily apparent. The Blue Dogs have backed down from their initial stance that a public option was a deal-breaker. As a result, the House is set to pass a bill with a strong public option, which in turn is working against Senator Olympia Snowe. A couple weeks ago it looked like Snowe and her trigger was the key player in the reform debate. But with Blue Dogs no longer clamoring against the public option the tide has turned. We're a long way from the fervor of August. It's beginning to look like the Republicans are punched-out, like an exhausted boxer in the late rounds of a fight. And reason, in the form of public options offered by Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller, appears to be winning the day. We'll know more soon.

Going Rogue

When you churn out 400 pages in four months it follows that it's not the quality of the prose (or ideas) that matters most:

The book was written by a hardcore Christianist; the speech by a hardcore neocon. She remains the hood ornament for a marketing campaign that now passes for the conservative movement.

The title is what caught my eye. It's a reference to an anonymous complaint from a McCain aide days before the election. Sarah Palin is reveling in her defiance of the McCain campaign. Politically, it's smart. No politician wants to be associated with a loser. The play is to disassociate herself with McCain while reminding the base that Palin is "anti-establishment," which is where the 2012 Republican primary will be fought. Of course, Palin is anything but anti-establishment. She's a cheap repackaging of Bush, a puppet disinterested in good governance.

I've  been assuming Palin would run in 2012. This book title makes me more confidant in that assumption. More than anything, Palin enjoys hand-to-hand political combat and the rush that comes while being in a stadium of adoring followers. Nothing but a presidential run will offer that. It's too bad for Palin that winning would mean having to accept the job being offered.

Wall St. Backs Socialism

From March 2, 2009:

Barack Obama so far has had the worst stock market performance of any new president in American history...

September 28, 2009:

No new president since Franklin Roosevelt has seen a bigger rally than Obama.

That's right. The market doesn't seem to mind Obama's brand of socialism, "just as the market didn't mind when Franklin Roosevelt pushed through the closest approximation of socialism that the United States has ever seen: The New Deal." The problem, however, is that at this point we have top-down "socialism." Six people are fighting over one job in Middle America, while banksters sleep easier in New York and London.

Values Voters

Someone has to stand up for this country's God-given right to electrocute a detainee's testicles:

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it. Liz Cheney's unequivocal support for torture methods gleaned from communist China has people begging her to run for office...

Reality, it seems, is a nemesis not only for the former vice president but for the entire Cheney family. But because torture is now a "values" issue for the right, it is, like abstinence-only sex education, unmoored from the necessities of proving its usefulness in the real world, which is why someone like Liz Cheney is finding herself where she is.

Donations Without Representation

Keep in mind that Max Baucus has raked in more than $4 million in campaign contributions from the health and insurance industries and then noodle this idea:

Why should it be legal to make a political contribution to a candidate who is not running for an office that represents you as a constituent?  I do not think it should be.  Imagine how different this senator's incentives would be if he could only raise money from the residents of Montana as individuals and not from organized interests.

As long as we're dreaming big, how about we just get rid of the stupid rule that allows a senator from a state of one million people to hold sway over the health care options of a state fifty times larger. But I doubt we're going to do away with the senate anytime soon.