Mitt's Deflated Foreign Policy

Hey look, it's giant metaphor for Mitt Romney's foreign policy positions ahead of tonight's presidential debate:

An airship promoting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in Florida drew attention for other reasons Sunday when it was forced to make an emergency landing just north of Miami.

According to WSVN-TV, the blimp, bearing the banner, “America Needs Romney,” was caught in high winds on its way back to a local airport, forcing it to the ground near a residential area in Davie, Florida.

“It was getting lower and lower,” one resident said. “It was totally going down, it was just losing altitude. The wind was just taking it and taking it.”

Team Romney took a double-whammy this weekend, as the Obama administration announced a major diplomatic breakthrough with Iran and the Republican version of the Benghazi attack collapsed under the weight of reality. Their foreign policy blimp went crashing down. Team Romney is furiously trying to spin good news into bad, but I seriously doubt anyone other than the base will bite. As is so often the case, good news for America is bad news for the GOP -- which means this weekend was a disaster for them.

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Democrats for Santorum

I have a confession to make; in 2004, I engaged in voter mischief. I didn't vote for the candidate I most wanted to win the Wisconsin primary, but rather to extend the primary season. In my case, I didn't vote for a candidate from the other party, but John Edwards. See, the candidate who best fit my worldview was Dennis Kucinich. But, by the time Wisconsin's primary rolled around, it was pretty clear that Kucinich was a lost cause. I would only be casting a protest vote. I wanted it to count for something.

The reason I chose Edwards was a strategic one. I really didn't care much whether it was Edwards or Kerry in the end; both were fine with me, if not ideal (we didn't know what we know now). But I'd noticed that President Bush was dropping in the polls. Edwards and Kerry weren't spending much time attacking each other, but were instead engaged in a contest for the status as the one who thought Bush sucked more. Bush was the one taking the beating in the Democratic primary, not the candidates. Kerry was ahead in the delegate count, so Edwards was the logical choice. Bush didn't win by much in 2004 and I still believe to this day that had that Democratic primary gone on longer, Bush would not have been reelected -- assuming the primary had stayed so Bush-negative. In the end Wisconsin was a close one, but my single, strategically placed vote wasn't enough. Kerry extended his delegate count lead, effectively shortening the nomination process. And you know the tragic end to this story.

I say I was engaging in voter mischief because I didn't vote for the person I thought was best suited for the job. I didn't even vote for the man I thought had the best chance of beating George W. Bush (I thought it was about equal), I voted for the man most likely to keep the Democratic primaries going. It wasn't what the Athenians had in mind when they invented democracy and it probably wasn't what the founders intended either. My vote was based on math. But it was my vote, protected and defended by over two hundred years of heated debate and cold bloodshed, and I felt I could do whatever the hell I wanted with my tiny shred of responsibility in American government. I still do.

Of course, the problem with voter mischief is that it very rarely works. This is because -- unlike in my situation -- it requires you to vote for someone you absolutely do not want to win. Which means someone from the opposing party.

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Reducing the Price of Gas, the Republican Way

Say what you like about George W. Bush, but his policies -- with the aid of Republicans and feckless Democrats who followed him blindly -- managed to bring gas prices down to $1.81 a gallon. We could do it again if you want. Here's how: you just blow a great big smoking hole in the global economy. It's that simple. It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that I don't recommend going this route.

The price of gas, like all things retail, is the product of supply and demand. When demand is high -- i.e., a good or recovering economy -- the price is high. But when demand is low -- i.e., a Bush-style global economic meltdown -- the price of gas is low. It's not just consumers at the pump that drive the demand for oil, but consumers everywhere in the retail chain. Those Fritos don't climb up on the shelf all on their own, you know. When you start buying more of pretty much anything, you're increasing demand for oil. Goods travel.

It's hard to argue that rising gas prices are a good thing, but they are a good sign. And that's a difficult argument to make. Which probably explains why President Obama didn't make it when he was speaking about energy yesterday.

But the truth is that, even if we could somehow sustain a static, unchanging economy where the needle on the demand meter never so much as quivered, the price of gas would never go down. Ever. It would only rise. Again, it's supply and demand. Supply is shrinking. If you doubt that, consider the XL pipeline and the Canadian tar sands. We're now so desperate for oil that we'll literally squeeze it out of rocks. This isn't the sort of thing you do when there's plenty of the stuff lying around. The Oil Age is winding down, whether we want it to or not

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Why Won't Santorum be President?

Shortest post ever: because he's a ridiculous boob.

OK, so maybe not the shortest post ever. That's an accusation that requires a bit of explanation. You see, back in 2006, Rick was in a tough reelection race against Bob Casey. Things weren't going very well -- Santorum would later lose that election in a landslide -- and he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. So Santorum teamed up with Rep. Pete Hoekstra to declare that WMD had been found in Iraq.

Fox News:

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

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DNC to Tea Party; 'Please Vote for Newt!'

After the last GOP debate, the Democratic National Committee released this web ad calling Newt Gingrich "the original Tea Partier." In it, he says a lot of things that would concern liberals, but not much that would bother conservatives. In fact, many in the rightwing blogosphere took the ad as a pathetic attempt to smear Gingrich for being correct. "[T]he fact that anyone would want to limit government spending horrifies democrats," wrote the perpetually-wrong Jim Hoft.

That Gingrich is an awful person is not something lefties need to be convinced of. A Gingrich presidency would make George W. Bush's terms look like a smashing success story, as an imperious egomaniac formed policy based on perceived personal slights and formed positions that respond to petty grievances. He would be a disaster and every liberal and Democrat knows it. The ad is clearly not aimed at the Democratic base.

And it's not aimed at the general electorate, either. For the most part, people do have a poor opinion of the Tea Party. But I don't think it's poor enough to be a handicap at the ballot box.

No, the ad is -- in my opinion -- a thinly disguised pro-Gingrich ad aimed at the 'baggers.

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Poll: 99-Percenters' Argument Gains Traction

The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency. The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.

The block of text above was not lifted from an Occupy Wall Street protester's overly verbose sign, as much as it expresses common sentiment among the occupiers. No, that text was taken from an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last night. Respondents were asked if they "strongly agree, mildly agree, feel neutral about, mildly disagree, or strongly disagree" with the statement and the majority agreed -- overwhelmingly. 76% said they agreed with the statement, with 60% agreeing strongly.

In the same poll, respondents were asked if they agreed with a more tea-flavored statement; "The national debt must be cut significantly by reducing spending and the size of government,including eliminating some federal agencies and programs. Regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control. The government should not raise taxes on anyone."

53% agreed, with 33% agreeing strongly. Obviously, there's some overlap here of those who want to be able to have their cake and eat it too. After all, you can't "reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency," while saying that "regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control." It really has to be one or the other.

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Generals in the Class War Decry Class Warfare

It's not class warfare. It's math.
-President Barack Obama

That quote was from the president's speech announcing a plan to reduce the deficit. Included in the plan is a choice -- either close tax loopholes that allow the rich and corporations to dodge their fair share of the tax burden or end the high end Bush tax cuts which, as the president rightly pointed out, were intended to be temporary anyway. In fact, when Bush asked congress to make them permanent after the fact, congress refused.

There's no reason that Obama couldn't have demanded both the closure of the loopholes and the end to the bottom heavy tax structure -- none other than Barack Obama being Barack Obama and leading with a concession. But that's another post. This post is about the claims by Republicans that asking the wealthy to pay their fair share is "class warfare."

Los Angeles Times:

Top congressional Republicans on Sunday accused President Obama of trying to incite class warfare with his proposal for a new tax on millionaires and said they would not support the measure because it would hurt economic growth.

"Class warfare … may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said on "Fox News Sunday." "We don't need a system that seeks to prey on people's fear, envy and anxiety. We need a system that creates jobs and innovation and removes these barriers for entrepreneurs to go out and rehire people."

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Given the Opportunity, the Right Can Offer No Defense for Politicizing 9/11

Conservatives own 9/11. No liberals died that day in that famously liberal city; no Muslims, no gays, no feminists, no environmentalists. The first responders who ran into those burning buildings, while everyone else ran for safety, had all burned their union cards. No union thugs died that day. Only rock-ribbed Republicans -- the only true Americans -- died on 9/11, because it's impossible for liberals to be heroes or patriots. Conservatives own 9/11.

Which explains why this post by New York liberal Paul Krugman was the worst thing ever:

What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits -- people who should have understood very well what was happening -- took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

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It's Come to This: Republicans Want to Raise Taxes on Consumers

The overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi is the important story of the day, to be sure. Foreign policy wonk Steve Clemons calls it a "huge win" for both the Libyan people and President Obama, while showing some understandable trepidation over what happens next. Juan Cole breaks down what the event means through the process of elimination, shooting down myths we're sure to see crop up again and again in the coming days and weeks. For once, the story of the day deserves to be the story of the day.

But the problem with the big stories is that they tend to crowd out other stories. With a 24/7 news media, this should not be the case, but it is. It's rational in a sort of televised car chase way; even if nothing's happening right now, it's inevitable that something will -- the chase will end one way or another -- and if you cut away to cover something else, you may miss the big crack up (or, as is more often the case, the anticlimactic peaceful arrest). In this case, if network cameras take their viewfinders off Libya, they may miss the money shot of Qaddafi himself being arrested or gunned down or blown up or even fleeing.

But the real world doesn't cooperate with the media world's programming decisions. Things are scheduled to happen linearly; people in the world aren't waiting for Qaddafi's last hour as dictator to run out before moving on to other things. It all goes on simultaneously, with stories overlapping. If one story becomes the story, other stories get sidelined. Take, for example, the fact that Republicans want to raise taxes on nearly half of Americans:

Associated Press:

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

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There's Only One Pledge that Should Matter to House GOP -- And It's Not Grover Norquist's

The head of the anti-tax taliban, Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, just blinked.

Washington Post:

WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.

In other words, according to Mr. Norquist's interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue -- the cost of extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts for another decade -- without being accused of breaking their promise. "Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase," Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn't violate the pledge? "We wouldn't hold it that way," he said.

Norquist later walked his statement back a hair. "Any changes in taxes should be kept separate from the budget deal," he said on MSNBC this morning. It's not extremely clear why it should be kept separate from debt limit negotiations, other than the fact that Norquist sensed he'd given away too much. Still, if doing away with Bush's high-end tax cuts doesn't violate the pledge, it doesn't violate the pledge.

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GOP Eating Their Own Again

David Frum is not happy with media coverage of the GOP presidential campaign. Writing for CNN, the former George W. Bush speechwriter complains that everyone but the party's current frontrunner are getting all the coverage. Turn on the TV and we see Sarah Palin zipping around on the back of a motorcycle or talking heads wondering "when Texas Gov. Rick Perry will join the presidential race and when Newt Gingrich will quit," he says.

Meanwhile, the man who was and is the actual front-runner in the Republican presidential race rates barely a mention in the media commentary.

I'm talking about Mitt Romney of course, the former governor of Massachusetts who has polled first in almost every Republican presidential preference poll since January 2009. Yet somehow the commentariat will not believe it.

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The Obama Photo-Op Scandal That Wasn't

It was a case of excessive celebration. A "victory lap" around the body of Osama bin Laden. Announcing that the most wanted terrorist leader in the world had been killed by US forces, the Obama administration released this photo:





Danged fumble-fingers -- wrong photo. That's George W. Bush in 2003, announcing the huge success of winning the war in Iraq. He later stood under a banner that read "Mission accomplished." A little premature, perhaps -- the vast majority of both US and civilian casualties in that war occurred after Bush declared it a tremendous victory for himself America.

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The Right's Increasing Desperation to Take Credit for Bin Laden's Downfall

It's a case of hearing what you want to hear. The right is so intent on giving Bush all the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden that they're trying (and, perhaps, succeeding) on reopening the debate about torture. And, in doing so, they're practicing selective listening.

The Daily Caller:

CIA Director Leon Panetta stomped on the White House's political script when he told Tuesday night's broadcast of NBC Nightly News that the waterboarding of jihadi detainees contributed information that led to the location and killing of Osama bin Laden.

"We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation… clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees," he told NBC anchor Brian Williams.

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Right Thanks Bush for Killing Bin Laden

George W. Bush, who is perfect in every way, finally killed Osama Bin Laden. You'd think that the killing of America's most wanted terrorist under the supervision of President Obama -- who the farthest right would have you believe is a terrorist mastermind himself -- would present a bit of a problem for wingnuts. I know I did, but I underestimated their creativity.

The comment above comes from Jim Hoft's unfortunate Gateway Pundit blog, which announced the death of Bin Laden with as little mention of President Obama as possible. "How long till Obama takes credit...5, 4,3,2,..." asks another commenter. "I think it took a week to confirm and for Obama to stop crying that his homey is dead."

Not to be outdone, rightwing nutjob Hugh Hewitt manages to report the death of Osama Bin Laden without mentioning that Obama guy at all, other than a reference to the "White House" in a blockquote from the New York Times. GWB makes an appearance, though.

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Auction House Democracy

You've probably heard the name, now meet the Koch Brothers, as introduced by Jane Mayer on NPR's Fresh Air (Video courtesy of Crooks and Liars):



OK, so a couple of rightwing nutjobs are giving money to the GOP -- who else would these days? There are two possible intentions in giving a political donation and it always pays to keep this in mind. People will give to candidates or parties because they agree with them, which only makes sense. If candidate Bob believes what you believe, you're going to want him to win. So you're going to do what you can to help him.

The other intention is as a legal bribe. If candidate Bob is sort of squishy on your issues, then maybe a big campaign contribution will give him an incentive to be a little more solidly on your side. Where the first intention is the political system as it was meant to operate, the second is corruption -- and there's a very fine line between the two. Unfortunately, both are legal. Which only makes sense, since it would be nearly impossible to distinguish between the two with any level of certainty.

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Voting Against the Fat Cats

If you follow this blog even occasionally, you're probably familiar with the truism that people don't vote for things, they vote against things. Like all simple rules, it's probably not 100% correct 100% of the time, but it's true enough to help understand what would otherwise be confusing behavior on the part of the electorate. In fact, if you need some way to understand the way voters are behaving in this cycle, you really don't need to look any farther. People are voting against Democrats, not for Republicans; it's just that this is a two party system and voting against one requires casting your vote for the other.

For example, a new New York Times poll [pdf] shows that 51% disapprove of President Obama's performance on the economy and 55% would vote out (i.e., against) incumbents. And then it gets interesting.

Greg Sargent, The Plum Line:

But the internals show the public disapproves of the GOP even more (68 percent), overwhelmingly thinks the GOP lacks a clear plan to solve our problems (72 percent), and opposes GOP policies like extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich (53 percent).

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Two Parties, Big Differences

One thing I've been seeing a lot in comment threads lately is the idea that there's no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. On too many issues, you could legitimately argue that there isn't enough of a difference between the two, but to say there's no difference is just plain wrong. Part of what's driving the perception is the fact that Democrats made big gains in the last few election cycles, which practically guaranteed that Democratic incumbents would make up a wider band of the political spectrum. In a two party system, both parties have to be coalition parties and, as a result, the larger party will have more centrists. It will also have more people who would normally belong to the other party, but either couldn't get elected in that party in their districts or differ from party orthodoxy on a key issue -- say, abortion or environmentalism.

But I suppose I should've said that "in a two party system, both parties have to be coalition parties most of the time." Republicans did so poorly in recent elections that candidates in all but the most conservative districts lost, for the most part. It acted as a party purge, driving out the ideologically impure and leaving a party where all members are in agreement on almost everything. In short, Democrats look like a lot like the Republicans used to, because the political middle had swung so far toward the Democratic pole that it took some of the Republican coalition with it. And that's what's swinging back again. Check the results in November; you'll see that very few actual progressives have lost, but that many centrists and Blue Dogs will be joining the ranks of the unemployed. A lot of those centrists and Blue Dogs will be replaced by extremely conservative candidates, but that's because the GOP and the Tea Party are only allowing the most ideologically pure wingnuts to run and win their primaries. They're getting way ahead of that swinging middle and I wouldn't expect those gains to hold. In fact, if the gains are as great as some believe, the House of Representatives will become gridlock central -- at the worst possible time -- and the GOP will take most of the blame. While the economy burns, House Republicans will be fiddling with doomed bills to allow guns in churches, declare global warming a hoax, and privatize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and -- oh, I don't know -- national parks or something.

But if you really need convincing that there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats, here ya go:


Click for full size

Tell me -- with a straight face -- that the stimulus would've passed in a Republican-controlled congress.

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Right Still Defending Their Pointless War

Barack Obama can't do anything right. It's simply not possible. There are times when the negativity toward the President has some validity, times when it's a bit of a stretch, and times when it's just stupid. This is one of the latter times. In commenting on Barack Obama's formal announcement of the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, the right wing's jerking knees are on full display.

"In 'turning the page' on Iraq, the Great Speechifier could find no words with which to give meaning to our epic struggle there," writes Powerline's Paul Mirengoff. "Let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume this is because he thinks the struggle had no meaning, except as it related to domestic politics in the U.S. But then why give a speech about it?"

Our "epic struggle" was a long quagmire of a war in search of a reason for being. When Obama said we had to "turn the page," he was giving people like Mirengoff an out. "I'm mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home," the President said. "Here, too, it's time to turn the page." This is an argument these people had lost long ago. If you guys want to trot out non-existent WMD and fabricated ties to al Qaeda and the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud, it's your funeral. President Obama basically said, "Look, what's done is done. It's over with now and we can't change the past. We could talk about the lies and the incompetence and the brainlessness of the Bush administration and their neoconservative allies in the media, but that won't change anything. We've got bigger fish to fry right now."

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A War that Broke Two Nations

The war in Iraq is over -- except that it's not. Last night, the last combat troops rolled out of Iraq, entering Kuwait on their way home. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has come to a close, even if our presence in the country is ongoing and active. "The remaining 50,000 troops are viewed as trainers and logistics support to the Iraqi government," writes Juan Cole. "But they include special operations units, helicopter gunship crews, and other war fighters who are still going to be engaged in combat but will not be categorized as being in Iraq for that purpose. Iraq has no air force to speak of, and the US will be providing the air support until at least 2018." This time, no one's being stupid about it; no "Mission Accomplished" banners hang anywhere, there are no "WAR OVER!" headlines in newspapers or crawling along on cable under the chins of talking heads. It's just a quiet, orderly, incomplete withdrawal from a nation we had no business occupying in the first place. Cole writes of the "true significance of Thursday's last convoy":

...It is a symbol of a turnaround in US policy, a repudiation of the Bush administration doctrine of preemptive war. "Preemptive war" is a euphemism for the rehabilitation of aggressive war, which the world community attempted to abolish in the United Nations charter. While many blame Obama for escalating the Afghanistan War, that war at least grew out of the al-Qaeda attack on US soil, which was planned out in Khost and Qandahar, and it has the backing of the UN and of NATO, which invoked article 5 of its charter (an attack on one is an attack on all).

In contrast, the Iraq War was virtually without legal foundation. In the United Nations order, there are only two legitimate preconditions for going to war. One is clear self-defense, in response to an aggressive attack. (The Gulf War, responding to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, is a case in point). The other is authorization by the UN Security Council. But W. had neither precondition on his side when he invaded Iraq, and so he acted lawlessly, as Obama saw clearly at the time.

The US Republican Party has increasingly become the party of fear. Shock and awe was designed to scare the international community. At home, the party sought to rule on behalf of the super-wealthy and of White nationalists and the Christian Right by making the public afraid -– of terrorism, of Muslims, implicitly of minorities. Fear as a tool of statecraft has no place in an Enlightenment republic.

As obvious as Cole's statement is, there are some who'd disagree. While Bush at least tried to make a distinction between Islam and terrorism, it'd be hard to argue that he tried hard enough or enjoyed any success on that front. Our current situation, where the right has become a pack of cowards afraid of religious liberty, demonstrates that well enough. The War on Terror has become a War on Islam. And Bush's statement that "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" has many concluding that President Obama is with the terrorists, since he supports the Constitutional principle of religious freedom. One in five now believe the president is a Muslim -- an increase driven mostly by Republican responses to a new Pew poll. Islam is the enemy, the president is siding with Islam, therefore the president is the enemy. A decade of neoconservative fearmongering as produced a nation of lunatic cowards who wave the flag and talk about liberty a lot, but whose only real issues are safety from various and sundry international conspiracies that exist mostly in their imaginations.

But of course, the rehabilitation of George W. Bush and his catastrophically stupid invasion has been underway for a long time. And, for some, now is the time to step up the effort.

The Hill:

...McCain criticized President Obama's approach to the Iraq War as a senator, saying if he and congressional Democrats had their way, the war would have been lost.

"If Barack Obama had his way as a United States senator," U.S. troops would have had to withdraw early and "over time radical Islamic extremists would have taken over that country," the senator said on KFYI Radio in Arizona.

"We would have surrendered -- waved the white flag of surrender and lost," he said, adding that "none of those people [Democrats] are being held accountable."

Actually, if Barack Obama had had his way, we would never have even been in Iraq. In 2002, as an Illinois state senator, Obama said, "What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income -- to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression... That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics... I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history."

Beat that, Senator McCain.

Yesterday's withdrawal was not the end. Not by a longshot. But it was an important step toward peace. It was also a step that no sane nation should ever have had to take. There was no reason to invade Iraq and, having made that mistake, the only reason to stay was to try to limit the damage from that idiotic action. The war became a self-justifying thing, a monster put together from the remaining shreds of our sense of responsibility and our conscience. As Colin Powell warned would be the case, we broke it, so we bought it. And we're supposed to forget we broke it on purpose. We're also supposed to ignore the fact that we've turned into a nation of pansies, afraid of our own shadows and the mosque down the street. We mistake bluster for strength and belligerence for courage and we believe that hate is a virtue, so long as that hatred is pure and passionate enough. If the hatred is of high enough quality, we call it "patriotism."

I'm tempted to say that we may have done as much damage to America as we did to Iraq, but that would be insanely hyperbolic. Still, it'd be hard to argue that the long period of hate and fear and lies and idiocy that was the Bush administration and their wars have left us unscathed. This isn't the country we used to be. This is a stupid country, a fearful country, a reactionary and gullible country, poorer now both morally and materially.

But last night, we took one step down a long road, back in the right direction. It's going to be a real hike, but we don't have any choice but to take it.

-Wisco


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For Republicans, Anything Less Than Instant, Complete Success is Total Failure

Two weeks ago, Ana Campoverde was driving through St. Louis with her mother when a text-messaging driver blew through a stop sign and hit her. "We spun. The car spun," she told local TV station KSDK. "All of a sudden I can see all these airbags around me. I think I lost consciousness... Then I couldn't move. I go, 'My gosh this wasn't in our plans.'"

Campoverde credits the airbags with saving her life. But she did suffer a broken arm, so by Republican standards, the airbag was a failure. If it didn't protect her from any injury, then it didn't protect her at all. Period. End of story.

At least, that's what we're forced to assume from their talk about the stimulus. Searching for the exact term "failed stimulus" returns 122,000 results, with 177 on GOP.com alone. When Republicans aren't taking credit for the economic stimulus, they're attacking it.

RNC Chair Michael Steele, Daily Caller:

Over a year ago, the American people placed an enormous amount of trust in President Obama to make good on his promises of renewed responsibility and a new era of political bipartisanship. However, when faced with an extreme economic downturn he used the crisis as a means to his liberal ends and with the help of his Congressional allies forced his failed $862 billion stimulus package on America.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this failed stimulus package, something the president still claims as one of his signature achievements and which he proclaimed would "create or save" 3.5 million jobs and keep unemployment below 8 percent. Since those early heady days of the Obama administration the American people have seen behind the curtain of rhetoric and watched as millions of jobs were lost and unemployment rose into the double digits.

So Obama's airbag left us alive, but with a broken arm. A total failure...

A more realistic view of the effect of the economic stimulus comes from two economists who actually bothered to look at the facts objectively.

Kansas City Star:

The Great Recession wasn't a depression, thanks to federal stimulus efforts.

That conclusion flows from the first major, independent analysis of recent fiscal and monetary policies — such as the bank bailouts, the home-buyers tax credit and Cash for Clunkers stimulus program.

"The stimulus has done what it was supposed to do: end the Great Recession and spur recovery," wrote Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University, and Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

Blinder and Zandi note that "almost every one of these policy initiatives remains controversial to this day, with critics calling them misguided, ineffective, or both."

Washington Post's Ezra Klein interviewed Zandi and asked if the stimulus was "basically, if not totally, successful."

"Any individual aspect could've been a failure, or not very effective," he answered. "But the totality was successful. It ended the recession much sooner than otherwise would've been the case and it forestalled a much larger decline in our output. And at the end of the day, it saved taxpayers money. it would've cost us a lot more if we had not responded." It left us with a broken arm, instead of a broken neck. And people like Paul Krugman argue that our arm would be OK if we'd put in a bigger airbag. The Nobel Prize-winning economist has argued that the stimulus was too small since day one.

But here's the thing; Republicans aren't arguing that the airbag should've been bigger, they're arguing that -- other than another round of tax cuts -- there shouldn't have been any airbags at all. This ignores both history and common sense. "The link between the demand and supply side runs through prices and wages and other costs," Zandi told Klein. "If demand falls relative to the economy's potential, you have rising unemployment and lower utilization. Fiscal and monetary policy plays a key role in trying to mitigate recessions. I've gone back to every recession and depression and looked at the policy efforts to address the downturn and try to at least capture the different ways in which policymakers have tried to generate a recovery. And what we've done in the Great Recession, some of it is unique, but most of it has been done many times before. Tax cuts, emergency unemployment benefits, aid to state government, these are things we've done every single time."

But Republicans like to live in a world without history. If direct Keynesian stimulus has worked every time in the past, it won't work this time. Why? Who knows? All we know is that they say they have a better idea -- cut taxes and reduce the deficit. Never mind that those two goals are contradictory, reality is no roadblock to the dedicated supply-sider. In fact, we've tried this all before too -- and it didn't work. Bush's tax cuts have increased the deficit. And even if they could hit that imaginary sweet spot they seem to believe exists where tax cuts increase revenues, balancing the budget was one of the first things Herbert Hoover did in response to the Great Depression -- the long story short on that one is that it didn't help any. Turns out the market doesn't give much of a crap about the deficit, it's all about supply and demand and we're really short on demand right now. Government spending doesn't just spur demand; it is demand, by definition. When you get into talk about sending messages and the emotional well-being of investors, you're just making things way more complicated than they need to be. When there isn't enough demand, you increase demand -- the end.

Republicans are trying to sell you a car without any airbags, because airbags still allow you to be injured -- so, by their reasoning, they don't work at all. Personally, I don't think that's a very good deal.

-Wisco


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