Mark Kirk: Stupid AND Ironic

Mark Kirk is a Republican Representative from Illinois who is caught up in a minor scandal about lying about his military record. Not a huge deal, except that he's running for Senate, and lying about your military record is the kind of thing that raises questions. It's more an issue of stupidity than out-and-out venality.

The specific issue is whether or not he was recognized as "Intelligence Officer of the Year." He wasn't, but his unit was. Sort of a fine distinction, but also something that anyone who has ever written a resume should get right.

Here's the irony: it's a stupid mistake about being "Intelligence Officer of the Year." So the fact of the scandal kind of repudiates the fact of the award.

The moral of the story is: don't make stupid mistakes about awards that have the word "intelligence" in the name of the award.

Another Shot of Weirdness From Sarah Palin

Well, that's weird. Just in time to make everyone's Fourth of July really interesting, Sarah Palin resigns as governor of Alaska. Her resignation speech, at least what I've read of it so far, is just bizarre. Here's a taste;

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow".

Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".

"[O]nly dead fish 'go with the flow.'" OK, first of all, somewhere Taoists and Buddhists are screaming, but I suppose Sarah Palin isn't worried about losing that constituency. But what is this nonsense about keeping your head down and plodding along being a "worthless, easy path?" Huh? I was under the impression that meeting your commitments was a fundamental part of "being responsible."

Speculation is flying as to why she's doing this. So she can spend more time campaigning for president? Maybe, but quitting your job as governor is not a great way to demonstrate effective leadership. I think there might be a clue in one line in her speech:

Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight.

She's referring to all of the ethics investigations that she is going through. That's a chunk of change. I think that might be part of it; she needs to make more money in the private sector to be able to pay all of these legal bills. But doesn't she have some kind of legal defense fund?

The speech is just riddled with the kind of boilerplate nonsense that is too stale to even pass off as cliched. But I love this euphemism:

In the words of General MacArthur said, "We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction."

Then there are lines that just befuddle:

I cannot stand here as your Governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of Governor.

Millions of dollars will go to waste if you hold the title of governor? She's found a way to sound noble and proud about the fact that she is quitting her job well before it's done. How does this woman stay sane?

Josh Marshall and his crew are having a field day with this. I'm having fun just reading the headlines of their posts. My favorite so far is "Surreality Only Beginning."

Andrew Sullivan, who has made chronicling her lies (he's up to #30) a mainstay of his blog, had this comment, which sums it up pretty well:

I'm too stunned to say anything else, to tell you the truth. And yet not surprised at all.

Sully also gets some style points for quoting Wittgenstein. The quote is in German, which I don't know at all, but there is really one line from Wittgenstein that is a famous quote, and is somehow appropo for today: "Beyond that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent."

Oh, no. There's a lot we can say about this. And will.

Daily Kos has a great poll about why she's quitting. The number #1 answer, with 70%, is "There's another shoe left to drop." There is something else going on here. Maybe it's another good sex scandal!!! Let's not think about that. It's tacky. Funny and potentially very entertaining, but tacky. Also possibly sexist.

I think the person who may come out of this the best is David Letterman. I don't know this, but my guess is that he has felt somewhat chastised by his unfortunate encounter with her when he made that crack about her daughter. Not anymore! Now that she is, once again, proving herself to be a soap opera all by herself.

I think the best quote to sum all this up is from Hunter S. Thompson:

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Daily Kos hate mail: a classic

Kos has a great feature that he's been running for a couple of months. Every Saturday, he collects the most abusive hate mail that he has received that week, and posts it, thereby holding up various conservative idiots for ridicule. I think it's a brilliant strategy. One of Kos' great virtues as an activist is that he makes it clear that he thinks progressives/liberals/Democrats should not be afraid of conservatives/Republicans, and he makes it equally clear that he has nothing but disdain for liberals who ARE afraid of conservatives. I strongly agree with him on this, and am very thankful that he makes this effort. Every now and then I think he's a tad intemperate, but that's trivial.

In these posts, he usually has a solid collection of incoherent screeds, riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, almost always including some gay bashing. The last couple of weeks have been a little thin - apparently word has gotten out that sending Kos this kind of garbage does not do the Fox News causes a lot of good. But this week he got a classic. It reminds me of a contest I heard about years ago. The idea was to create the ultimate tabloid newspaper headline. I think the winner said something about an alien having Elvis's baby on the moon (plus other elements) - they managed to work in just about every National Enquirer cliche. This email works in just about every hate mail cliche possible. Great entertainment value. Kos also includes a poll about this email, just for added fun.

In praise of romance novels

Interesting post at DailyKos, somehow appropos for Mother's Day: why progressives should pay attention to romance novels. I can't begin to explain it, but this grabbed my attention:

romance itself is a fundamentally progressive activity.

So Valentine's Day is for liberals! Who knew? And the writer doesn't even mention the cliche of hopeless romantics and starry-eyed idealists!

I know next to nothing about romance novels, but I'm open to the idea that there's more there than what I suspect. I'm also open to the idea that lots of liberal/progressive men don't want to have anything to do with romance novels because they are already worried about seeming too effeminate or less macho than their conservative counterparts.

Sarah Palin vs. Mitt Romney

This is too bizarre for words. My words, anyways; read the post at DailyKos to figure out what this is all about.

What the hell, I'll take a stab at making some kind of sense of this:

(long pause)

You have got to be kidding me.

Impeach Bybee

One of the authors of the OLC memos laying down the legal justification for torture was Jay Bybee, who is now on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was confirmed by the Senate long before anyone had any idea that he had written these memos.

A movement has been building to impeach him. Jerrold Nadler, a Representative from New York (and my old Congressman), is one of the people leading the charge. Good for him. I strongly support this. Nadler is in a position to do something about this. He is chair of the Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee. This is one of those moments that I am supremely thankful that the Democrats control Congress. It is also one of those moments that I am thankful that there are Democrats in Congress who are willing to disagree with the Obama administration on this. Daily Kos has, as usual, an excellent post about this, including what is being done at the grassroots level in California.

I do not know whether or not Jay Bybee should be removed from office, because he is innocent until proven guilty. I am not in a position to pass that judgment. But I believe that Congress has an obligation to investigate this issue to the fullest extent possible. The NY Times agrees with me:

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

One of the best things that an impeachment will provide is an opportunity to force legislators to make their positions clear: do you or do you not support the use of torture? I sincerely welcome that debate and that opportunity. There are many good Republicans and conservatives who oppose the use of torture. It needs to be made clear who in the GOP stands where on this issue, so that those who believe in the humane treatment of prisoners can separate themselves from those who believe in vengeance and despicable, unnecessary violence as a legitimate purpose of the government.

Impeach Bybee. It is the very least we can do.

Did they have Darjeeling at the tea parties?

There were tea parties across the country today. Not the kind with scones and raspberry jam. These tea parties were supposed to remind people of the original Boston Tea Party, the one that started the American Revolution. Except that these people have taxation WITH representation, so it's not clear what the parallel is.

The big liberal blogs have been all over the story all day. Daily Kos provides a comparison with the original. TPM has a great photo gallery of some of the protests. HuffPost had several posts.

The point of all these is to protest taxes and the government in general and Obama. From some of the pictures, these protests attracted a fair people from the fringe of the radical right.

Andrew Sullivan tried to take these protesters seriously. He linked to an incredibly cool graphic of exactly how and on what the federal government spends money. He summed up the salient point well:

it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's.
. . .
All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

It's almost trivial to describe these protesters as whackjobs. Obama is a fascist/socialist? Huh? There were people on the left who used that kind of language to describe Bush. Both Bushes. And they were ignored, particularly the second time around, even though W. was a much worse president than his father. They were ignored because the vast majority of liberals and Democrats - the 99% who are sane, rational people - realized that the crazies tainted the movement. Apparently the right did not learn this lesson.

I'm going to imagine for a moment that these folks are serious about cutting spending. Where have they been for the last 8 years? One of the largest items in the budget is interest on the debt. At the end of the Clinton administration, we were running a surplus. If we had kept doing that, we would have eliminated a huge chunk of the interest we pay on our debt, which would have made cutting taxes or dealing with this financial crisis even easier. Somehow this never comes up.

If these folks really wanted to cut the budget, they would have protested against Bush. But of course they didn't. And now that Obama is in office, with the horrendous problems he inherited from Bush, they're blaming him? Please.

They're angry about government spending, but of course they couldn't protest Bush, because they somehow see themselves as agreeing with him, even though he did the opposite of what they believe in. So Bush pissed them off, but they couldn't protest against him, so they are taking all their anger that was inspired by Bush, and aiming it at Obama.

Can you say dysfunctional?

This feels like one of those moments at a party when someone does something really embarrassing but doesn't realize it, so everyone else pastes uncomfortable smiles on their faces, waits for the moment to pass, and then doesn't say anything. Until maybe a few days later, when there is a hushed whisper here and there. And eventually the person somehow doesn't get invited to quite as many parties. Right now, many, many Republicans are incredibly embarrassed by this spectacle, but they're not saying anything, and they won't for a while. At least not in public. But this will have a strong impact on how many people vote.

What's unfortunate for those mainstream Republicans is that events like the ones today are great networking events. Thousands and thousands of business cards and phone numbers and emails were exchanged at these parties today. Which means that we have not heard the end of the tea partiers. It took many years and several devastating electoral defeats before the Democrats finally dealt with their nutcases. As Sullivan keeps writing, it is going to get worse before it gets better.

Newspapers and the "unique content" problem

Newspapers are in trouble. This we all know. Today, Kos, in his latest post on the topic, looked at how many links to newspapers Daily Kos had over the course of a week. Maureen Dowd interviewed Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. She's a little nervous about her job.

One problem newspapers face is that they used to (emphasis on the past tense) have a semi-monopoly on news in their geographic area just by virtue of their format. Megan McArdle once pointed out (I think it was Megan) that the NY Times used to know at least two things about their customers. 1, they lived in the NY area. 2, they could afford a daily newspaper. Now the Times reader could be in Bangkok.

Newspapers used to have a huge advantage because they were the only source of news in a particular geographic area that was available almost whenever you wanted it. If you wanted to know if your team won last night, you could listen to the radio, watch TV, talk to someone else, or read the newspaper. Of those sources, newspapers are the only one that is available at any time after you picked it up. Radio and TV broadcast news at a specific time. If you missed any of that day's broadcasts, you were out of luck.

Newspapers also provided a great deal of content for a very cheap price. A newspaper has a lot of content, particularly compared to a radio or TV broadcast. And that content was not available anywhere else. Providing it gave newspapers a sort of monopoly. The only way to avoid that monopolization was for there to be multiple newspapers in a given city.

My grandfather, a small-town lawyer in the Midwest in the 1950's, used to subscribe to the Sunday NY Times. It would arrive on Thursday (even though NY was less than 1,000 miles away) because it took that long for the mail to deliver it. But he still read it, presumably because there was content in there that he couldn't get from any other source (I never talked to him about it, I heard this from my mother).

What newspapers have to do is figure out a way to provide unique content. I subscribe to the LA Times and the Financial Times. The LA Times is convenient (I can read it on the bus into work), but there isn't a lot of unique content. I like some of their columnists, particularly Meghan Daum, but I rarely read the articles on the front page, because I usually already know the story. The LA Times has done a fair amount of innovating in the last few years, but there is still much to do.

But the FT has a nice amount of unique content during the week. At least it's unique for me, because I don't subscribe to another business periodical, like the Wall Street Journal. And it's got global news, which I like.

Where the FT really shines is on the weekend (again, particularly for me), and most newspapers could learn some things about unique content from the FT Weekend. They have columnists that I can't read anywhere else, but who I read religiously. I don't have any particular interest in real estate in London, but I read Secret Agent religiously. I have learned a fair amount about wine from Jancis Robinson. On the back page is Fast Lane, by Tyler Brule, the ultimate jetsetter, and Slow Lane, by Harry Eyres, one of the few people alive who can write about Madonna and Nietzsche at the same time.

The NY Times, of course, has a fair amount of unique content, starting with its columnists. The LA Times has some unique content, like Dan Neil's car column, which is a great read. But it needs better unique content. Which, if you think about it, really should not be a problem. LA is one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. There are 88 cities in Los Angeles County. There are multiple mountain ranges in this county. We have a National Forest that has 650,000 acres. This is the world headquarters of the entertainment industry. There are something like 130 institutions of higher education just in LA County. There's no lack of material. Plus, there are several thousand writers who are all on a constant lookout for work.

So here's a new buzzword that will hopefully enter the zeitgest: "unique content." It's not hard to understand. Once upon a time, all newspapers provided it, just by virtue of being what they were. That is no longer the case.

Oh, and that unique content has to be in interesting formats, it can't just be text. The LA Times is doing more interesting things with photo essays, but I still don't think they're doing enough with video, particularly since some of the best cinematographers in the world (and many aspiring camerapeople) live and work here.

A reason to see Harold & Kumar

I didn't see Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, but it's been on my radar screen, particularly since I loved the title of the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Now I have a reason to see both: the guy who plays Kumar, Kal Penn, now works at the White House. He will be the associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison. Great Hollywood-Washington connection! Apparently politics runs in the family - his grandparents marched with Gandhi.

h/t: Daily Kos.

Idiotic idea of the day: Geithner = Rumsfeld

Someone had to say it. Turns out it was Kos. Geithner is Obama's Rumsfeld? Apparently he floated that on a Tweet, so it's just that idea, not fleshed out (I didn't see it on Daily Kos). The man is a provocateur.

I'm glad Kos floated this idea, so I can shoot it down. I think this may be the stupidest idea I've heard all year. Let's see where this takes us, shall we?

Rumsfeld: Started a war that has cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars; repeatedly lied to the American public; tortured prisoners; ignored the Constitution when he wasn't shredding it; stained America's reputation around the world; and, last but not least, caused serious damage to the cause of upholding the rule of law, both within this country, and between countries. All of which was totally unnecessary.

Geithner: Missed the political ramifications of a few contracts in one company of the many that are in trouble; did not manage expectations perfectly when proposing how to solve one of the greatest crises in the history of the world.

Rumsfeld: Arrogant, tempermental, disliked even by ideological soulmates. Known to be a vicious bureaucratic fighter.

Geithner: Highly respected for his intelligence, work ethic, integrity, and character. I haven't heard any complaints about how he gets along with the rest of the Obama administration.

Geithner is attracting attention because of his job, not because of who he is. Pretty much anyone other than the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln would be a lightning rod as Treasury Secretary right now. This is what I call the "problem of unfocused anger." Many, many people are angry about our economic situation. They can blame Bush all day, but he's gone from office. So are Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson. This unfocused anger needs a target. Desperately. It's like a hungry lion. A very, very hungry lion. It will find a target, regardless of how appropriate that target is. The anger is unfocused because it is combined with confusion. Theories and opinions about the source of this crisis abound; so do solutions. But the topic is so vast that no one person can begin to comprehend it. We need rules of thumb, heuristics, intellectual short cuts. We need something to argue about, and, ideally, someone to argue with. Whoever holds the job of Treasury Secretary is going to be that person for many people involved in the debate.

The comparison of Geithner with Rumsfeld is utterly superficial. Both were controversial and extremely powerful Secretaries. Other than that, they have almost nothing in common. One botched everything, pissed off millions of people, and left office in disgrace. The other is attempting the impossible. Geithner is like a man juggling torches. And knives and chainsaws at the same time.

I do not know if Tim Geithner will solve our financial problems. I do know he is one hell of a lot more qualified than me. There's a reason he has the support of Obama: he deserves it.

Obama Adjustment Syndrome and the OLC memos

I think I am suffering from Obama Adjustment Syndrome. The primary symptom of this syndrome is an inability to react to major policy initiatives from the Obama Administration in real time, because they come at you fast and furious. This was particularly acute last week, when I was sort of chilling after the Oscars. I blinked, and suddenly I missed Obama's major address to Congress, the not-quite-SOTU. So I started watching the video of that online.

Then all of a sudden there was the budget. OK, let me get a grip . . . Wham! We're pulling out of Iraq. Wow, that's great, can I get some details? . . . Bling! We're bailing out another one of the financial companies.

Plus there were a few other things that I'm sure were hugely important and that I have been waiting years for but that I can't quite recall.

Today it's the release of the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos. On this issue, attentoin must be paid to mcjoan at DailyKos, and Andrew Sullivan. And I must pay attention.

We cannot be thankful enough that the Obama Administration has begun to expose the criminal wrongdoings of the Bush Administration, and we cannot be too harsh in our condemnation of the crimes that were perpetuated by the Bushies, particularly Dick Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo.

I have heard many calls for various levels of investigation into what happened under Bush. I have to admit that I have been somewhat reluctant to join the chorus, because I think there is a real temptation to "criminalize political differences," i.e. to make prosecutorial mountains out of the molehills of differences of opinion.

But when the conduct in question is criminal, then we have not just the right, but the responsibility to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute. We have done so before, during Watergate, and our democracy survived.

We are responsible in this respect not to ourselves or our constituents, but to our system of justice. We have certain responsibilities to democracy.

Democracy gives us the freedom to experiment with our politics, but then holds us accountable when those experiments fail. We are in such a moment right now.

In this democracy, we all have equal opportunities within this system, and we are all considered equal before the law. The problem with this is that we don't know how to ensure that all are equal before the law, and we have different opinions about what that means. Those in power tend to have very different ideas about what constitutes justice than those who are not in power.

The system works as long as enough of us believe that the system itself, despite all its flaws, is still better than any other system for giving us the closest we can come to equal opportunities. Essential to that ideal is the system of checks and balances. As long as most people have at least some voice within the system, they have an incentive to try and make the system work.

I have written before that the American system of democracy was designed to withstand the maximum damage that can be inflicted on it, either from outside, or from within. The Bush Administration's misdeeds have been one of the attempts to inflict severe damage on the system of American democracy. The release of these OLC memos demonstrates that. Unlike almost every other politician in our system, Bush and his cronies did not believe in the system of checks and balances. They did not believe that all people are equal before the law. They believed that the President, and, by extension, those who worked for him, was above the law. Perhaps the hideous implication of this idea is that it grants to the president the right to decide who is outside the law, who does not deserve the protection of the law. That is the definition of a dictatorship.

Investigating the abuses of the Bush Administration does not constitute "criminalizing political differences."

Criminalizing political differences is what the Bush Administration did.

Tax problems for Hilda Solis

Another Obama nominee has tax problems. Hilda Solis' husband has a body shop that apparently had some old liens against it. This could be a problem, but it sounds manageable. This is, hopefully, qualitatively different from Daschle's problem of being driven around in a limo and forgetting to pay taxes for it. A body shop in LA is not exactly an elitist accoutrement. You don't get much more blue collar than a body shop in LA. It's also a trivial amount of money, $6,400. It also sounds like it was an honest mistake on his part. Some of these liens date back to the early '90's. It sounds like something that could happen to a business in the normal course of things. It doesn't sound like a deliberate effort to evade taxes. Also, it's her husband's business, not hers.

Trapper John at Daily Kos thinks this is no big deal, and Republican efforts to make it so "ought to be mocked." I wouldn't go that far. I think this should be taken seriously. If Obama decides that she should stay, and I think he should, he should also explain exactly why, and what is different about her case, as opposed to Daschle's. We can't expect every public servant to have a perfectly unblemished record. There has to be room for forgiveness. I think some is in order here. Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle were members of the elite who made egregiously stupid errors that they really should not have made, and from which they clearly benefited financially (at least until they got caught). Their mistakes gave the impression that the elites were being treated differently.

Solis' husband's problems are more of the down-to-earth, could-happen-to-anybody variety. The total value of his business is apparently between $50,000 and $100,000. That's a small business. This sounds like a paperwork snafu, rather than elitists gaming the system. Solis should be confirmed as Secretary of Labor.

Panetta v. DiFi; a spot of trouble?

When I wrote my post yesterday about Leon Panetta at the CIA, I mentioned that he is from California, and would presumably get along with the Congressional Dems from here. I didn't mention that Dianne Feinstein is incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee because that didn't seem like an important detail.

Oops. The LA Times reported that Feinstein was not notified of the choice. She would like an intelligence professional in that job. My reaction is that it was a somewhat surprising mistake on the part of the Obama team. Seems like fairly standard protocol. Marc Ambinder thinks Panetta's name was leaked, and that the Obama team had every intention of notifying Feinstein. Which makes sense.

On the other hand, TPM, which is covering this thoroughly, is reporting that the Obama did consult with Ron Wyden (D-OR), but not Feinstein. So there is still some mystery.

It's an odd little rift between Feinstein (and Jay Rockefeller, outgoing chair) and the Obama team. But the choice is playing well among liberals. Mcjoan at Daily Kos, who followed the FISA debate closely, is dismissive of the two Senators' concerns:

Of course, anybody with a score card who actually paid attention to the FISA debate knows that putting surveillance authority exclusively in the hands of the court was pretty much the whole point of the original FISA legislation, and that Feinstein is continuing to be either overwhelmingly obtuse or profoundly dishonest on that count; it's her inadequate cover for capitulating to the Bush administration and eroding the Constitution.

Josh Marshall has a good take:

[M]y very preliminary impression is that the people whose opinions I respect most seem open to or in favor of the pick, whereas those opposing it strike me as more motivated by turf and power struggles.

Change we can believe in? Sounds like it. Obama is, after all, serious about this whole "making government work" thing. Policy over personalities.

Andrew Sullivan concurs. He agrees with mcjoan:

The more I think about this, the more it seems to me that the snub of these two [Feinstein and Rockefeller] was a deliberate signal. Their oversight of Bush's war crimes was pathetic.

He links to a great interview at the National Review - of all places - by - of all people - Kathryn Jean Lopez. The interviewee, "Ishmael Jones," (I assume a pseudonym), an ex-CIA officer, loves Panetta in this job.

He’s an excellent choice because he will be loyal to the president first, not to the CIA. Mr. Obama needs someone who can be trusted, a person who will support him when the going gets tough.

A “safe” choice, viewed as inoffensive by the CIA’s top bureaucrats, would have been dangerous. Directors Tenet and Hayden were placid Washington civil servants of neutral loyalties, quickly coopted by the CIA’s bureaucracy. A military officer might have had good leadership experience but would have lacked sound partisan political connections.

The choice is a brave one because it can open Mr. Obama to charges of appointing a loyalist to a crucial post. But that is exactly what is needed at this time.

My initial impression seems to be confirmed; Obama wants a great manager, and that's what he is getting. He wants to make sure the CIA actually works as it is supposed to. I'm not sure how having an old hand, an experienced intel pro, would do that. Obama is letting people know that a fresh perspective is needed.

It also looks like Feinstein doesn't have a lot of support, at least on first blush. Of course, the absolutely last thing she wants to do is embarrass Obama on something like this. I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell she will really oppose Panetta. It's the President's perogative to choose his cabinet. Not informing Feinstein may or may not have been intentional; I'm still leaning towards it being a leak that hit the press too early. There will, I assume, be some kind of minor face-saving moment, when DiFi meets with Obama personally, he apologizes for the oversight, she accepts his apology, and then they both issue statements about how much they are looking forward to working together, blah blah blah.

Of course, then she and Panetta will have to figure out how to work together, but I don't think that will be an issue. Whether or not Feinstein and Obama agree on policy questions about intelligence reform is a big deal, but we can't tell much about that at this point.

A short history of the UAW

Trapper John has an excellent post over at Daily Kos about the history of the UAW. His basic point is something that I have long suspected: that the UAW is one of the institutions primarily responsible for the creation of the middle class in the mid-20th century. He writes extensively about Walter Reuther, who was president of the UAW for 24 years, until his death in a plane crash in 1970. I know something about Walter Reuther; he was my grandfather's roommate in the 1920's. Gramps was very conservative, and hated unions with a passion. But he always said that the most honest man he ever met was Walter Reuther.

Rick Warren and Obama

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, is giving the invocation at Obama's Inaugural. Many liberals are upset about this. Gays in particular aren't happy about it; Andrew Sullivan has been struggling with it all day.

I can obviously appreciate why many of my compadres are not pleased with this choice. I don't know much about Rick Warren, but I clearly disagree with him on a fair number of issues, particularly gay marriage.

The fact that this is coming in the wake of the passage of Prop. 8 has colored much of the reaction. If Prop. 8 had failed, the tone of the debate would be very different; triumphant liberals would be a lot less angry. There is still a great deal of unfocused anger lingering in the political air around the issue of gay marriage. Unfocused anger is the worst kind, because it means that whoever is carrying it around inside themselves is looking for an excuse to be angry at someone, for almost any reason. Obama gave people a reason to focus their anger both on Rick Warren, and on him. I'm not sure he was expecting quite this reaction, but I doubt he was surprised.

My reaction is simple: this is exactly what I was expecting from Barack Obama, and I'm fine with it. If you're outraged at Obama about this choice, get ready to be pissed off once a week or so for the next four to eight years.

Barack is the President-elect of the United States of America. Emphasis on United. He is not the President-elect of the Liberal States of America or the Democratic States of America. If anyone missed Obama's emphasis on reaching out to people he disagreed with, then they weren't listening. This has been his message since that historic keynote address in 2004. Lee Stranahan put it well today in the Huffpost:

There's something bigger at play here and you can't say Obama didn't warn you. He talked about reaching out, about expanding our politics and that crazy bastard actually meant it. Nobody on the left or right quite knows what to make of it. We want to cram Obama into our old, divisive, two toned ideological and political frame and if he doesn't fit, we'll attack him too. Attacking is what we're used to doing.

But in the long run this new politics benefits us all. Ironically, it benefits the minorities and marginalized and ill-treated the most. I know this may be hard for many to see right now but the truth is that this sort of symbol is what America needs. Not seeing just Warren on stage or just Lowery but seeing both of them of there at once.

Obama said it in the abstract time and again during the campaign. Now he's showing us. Seeing the things that Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joseph Lowery have in common is more important than seeing the things that separate them. America needs to see that. It's a step down the road where a majority of us see the things that straight Americans in love want are the same things that gay Americans in love want, too.

I think part of the problem that many liberals have is that they are used to Bush, who used occasions like this for the exact opposite reasons that Obama is using them. If Bush invited someone to give the invocation at his inaugural, you knew darn well that he was sending a message that he agreed with that person's politics, and he was using the occasion to send the message that he considered that person's politics correct and superior to anyone who disagreed with him.

Obama has listened to Rick Warren. He knows him personally. He believes that he is a good man, with whom he has many disagreements. He is not sending a message that this is a man who the rest of us must agree with. He is sending a message that the rest of us should respect, listen to, and engage him in dialogue, not despite the fact that we disagree with him, but precisely because we disagree with him.

Joseph Lowery, the "dean of the civil rights movement," is also going to be at the Inaugural, giving the benediction. I'm not sure what the difference is between the benediction and invocation, but they both sound very important.

I found out that Lowery was going to be giving the benediction when I read the second-to-last paragraph of this NY Times article. I don't know much more about Lowery than I do about Warren, except that the former founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the fact there has been far more emphasis on Rick Warren than on Joseph Lowery says something unfortunate about the debate. The fact that someone of Joseph Lowery's stature is part of this celebration is something that liberals should be very happy about. Concentrating on Warren slights Lowery, at a moment that is the culmination of what Dr. Rev. Joseph Lowery has been fighting for his entire life.

By far the stupidest comment of the day on this controversy came from the normally very astute Kos:

If we shut up, [Obama]'ll take the path of least resistance. And that path of least resistance is kowtowing to the conservative media, the clueless punditocracy, and bigots like Warren.

I understand what Kos means: it's up to liberals to keep the pressure on Obama to fight for equality for gays and lesbians (and all other sexual minorities).

But I can't believe that Kos actually used the phrase "path of least resistance" and "Barack Obama" in the same sentence. There are many things that can be said about Barack Obama. But taking the past of least resistance is really not his style. Really, really not his style. I do believe that this is a man who enjoys a good challenge. Like, say, running for President.

Obama has pissed off lots of liberals with this move. I'm glad that he did. This will make things more interesting. Overcoming this anger will be a challenge for Obama. Which is exactly what he wants, and which is exactly what I want him to have.

Quote of the day

From a Daily Kos post about George Bush's response to the shoe-throwing incident:

Bush's opinions about "democracy" and "freedom" have always been on the far side of odd.

My version of this is "the wrong side of enlightened," but this works for me as well.

Taking Nader seriously one last time

A friend of mine who is a Ralph Nader supporter (he and his wife are the only Nader supporters I know) called me yesterday. He's committed to supporting a noble but hopeless cause. I told him I would blog one last time about Nader, because there is just one last thing that I would like to say about him.

Nader's relationship with the Democratic party is a classic example of the insider-outsider dynamic. The outsider accuses the insider of selling out to a corrupt system; the insider regards the outsider as a naive, pretentious, self-righteous nag, lacking either the ability or the fortitude to participate in the game of politics. There's some truth in both allegations.

Nader and others of his ilk make the argument that one reason they are not more popular is that the mainstream media exclude them from their coverage. Again, there's an element of truth in that. The mainstream media replies that their readers are not interested in fringe candidates, and they have only so many resources.

But new media should have solved that problem for Nader. The fact that he has a Website means that his message is available to anyone. More voices on the radio, like Air America, mean more opportunities for him to be interviewed in person. God knows there is a wealth of airtime on cable news channels and talk shows.

To say nothing of all the political blogs out there with all the bandwidth they want to let the world know about third party candidates.

And yet, Nader is much less of a phenomenon than he was in 2000. I think part of this is his fault; when you tell most of your supporters that they need to get a grip, they tend to no longer be your supporters.

But a big part of Nader and others' problem is that new media has, if anything, rendered him even less important than he was before, because it has opened up both the mainstream media, and, in particular, the Democratic party, to a much wider range of voices and influences. Daily Kos is both a source of analysis and commentary, and a clearinghouse of information about specific candidates. It also fundraises for some of those candidates. The party itself does not control Daily Kos or sites like it. Nor does the party want to. The DNC is perfectly happy to let a thousand (or a million) Websites bloom, if it means more opportunities for people to get involved, and yet less work for them.

Nor do corporations control Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo. Both are for-profit, which I think is a good thing. Their relationships with large news organizations is symbiotic; they rely on the NY Times and Washington Post for stories, but they also criticize them, and occasionally scoop them.

So Nader's campaign is one of those odd success stories of politics; his message has been so successful that other people have taken it and created organizations that address the problem. He'll never admit that. I think he has too much ego invested in his status as outsider to let himself take credit for actually changing the system.

The Centripetal Web - working for me

Nick Carr has some concerns about the status of the Web. He's worried that, as opposed to the good old wide-open, anything-goes days of the 90's, more and more of us are sticking to what we know:

for most of us, most of the time, the World Wide Web has become a small and comfortable place. Indeed, statistics indicate that web traffic is becoming more concentrated at the largest sites, even as the overall number of sites continues to increase, and one recent study found that as people's use of the web increases, they become "more likely to concentrate most of their online activities on a small set of core, anchoring Websites."

It's a legitimate concern - the days when I would just surf and surf and surf to see what came up are long gone. It was a great deal of fun finding new Web sites just to see what they were about. I remember checking out the "Cool Site Of The Day." Wow, you can actually BUY BOOKS at Amazon? How cool is that?!? At the time, it was a thrill. Now, not so much. I distinctly remember a conservation, around 1997, when someone told me something to the effect of "I don't just surf for fun anymore." I rarely do that anymore. Except on YouTube.

Looking back is looking backwards. Those good old days were sort of like the good old days of getting your driver's license, or going off to college, or moving to a new city. You spend some time exploring just for the thrill of experiencing the new. But eventually the new isn't new anymore, and you settle down and start being more productive.

I surf differently these days because the Web is structured very differently, but it's also structured much more according to my needs. I use four blogs on a regular basis: Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and Huffington Post. I use two newspaper sites: nytimes.com, and washingtonpost.com. I use those sites for two reasons. 1, I trust the analysis, and 2, they are great aggregators of content from around the Web. They surf so I don't have to. Andrew Sullivan posts constantly, and on a wide variety of topics, not just politics. He's a one-man aggregator. I also surf to some of his compadres at The Atlantic, like Marc Ambinder and Megan McArdle, because I am already at theatlantic.com. TPM, Daily Kos, and HuffPost aggregate a fair chunk of content within their own sites. The NY Times and Washington Post are old-fashioned aggregators, with their people out in the field.

One reason I am concentrating on those sites right now is that I am, like most of the rest of the country, not to mention large slices of the rest of the world, focusing on the very big picture of who will be the next president. There are lots of issues that I would like to following in greater depth, but for the next couple of weeks, I am going to ignore them. Partially because I know they will be there when I come back to them.

Carr's cynicism runs throughout his post. One negative development of the conglomeration that we are witnessing, according to him, is that

people began to demonstrate their innate laziness, retreating from the wilds and following the increasingly well-worn paths of least resistance.

Reading Daily Kos is about the farthest thing from "the path of least resistance" I can imagine. We're talking about a Web site which practically screams at its readers about donating to and working for the latest great progressive candidates, and generates far more content in one day than any single person can read in their spare time. Some people are naturally lazy and will make very little effort to go outside their comfort zone. I would argue the opposite of Carr: on the Web, it's almost absurdly easy to go outside your comfort zone. On the Web, you can be both lazy and ridiculously well-informed at the same time. Whether or not any one person goes outside their comfort zone says far more about them than it does about the Web.

One thing Carr ignores is that it's not just the amount of information that is categorically different these days, but the kind. Outside of politics, I follow the movie industry. I play the Hollywood Stock Exchange. I am currently following about 1,400 different movies. Talk about content aggregation. That would not have been physically possible for someone outside of a movie studio to do before the Web. HSX has also inspired a number of fan sites that provide additional content. Project Genome follows every single movie on HSX. That's my favorite starting place for doing movie research. Once again, they are doing the aggregating for me, and I trust them to keep doing it.

Carr uses Wikipedia as an example of a content aggregator that fails to inspire, because it is usually "good enough." I would agree with that, but I would disagree about whether or not it is a problem. I use Wikipedia all the time, even though I know it's not necessarily the best site for any particular given topic. But I don't necessarily want the best site for any given topic. For many topics, I want a brief overview, a quick synopsis. This is because there are many things that I have a passing, but not deep, interest in. I don't have the time or inclination to study in great detail everything that I am curious about. Wikipedia works for me because I would like to know a little bit about a wide range of topics, and a great deal about a few. Wikipedia is absurdly good for five-minute conversations with a coworker about something that both of you have heard of, and that you would like to know a little more about. But not a lot.

Speaking of curiosity, Carr bemoans the impact making searches much easier:

When convenience meets curiosity, convenience usually wins.

I could not disagree more. Convenience and curiosity are, if anything, complementary, rather than contradictory. If it's much easier to find satisfy an intellectual itch, you are much more likely to scratch.

Part of the reason for certain sites being better at aggregating is simply the nature of community. I check out Daily Kos because they cover topics that I am interested in. That is also true for thousands of other people, so we all check it out. And then Daily Kos makes more money from its ads, and gets better at what it does. At this point, it's getting pretty darn good. This is the same reason amost everyone I know can recite the lyrics for dozens of Beatles songs: we all like them.

If we all gravitate towards the same content, that's because it says something to lots of us. Carr claims that the centripetal forces of the Web means "The center holds." I would switch one letter in that sentence: I would move the "s" from the end of "holds" to the end of "center," so that it would read "The centers hold." There is no one center of the Web. There are thousands. I'm sure there are dominant, aggregating Web sites for knitting, poodle owners, water skiers, and Dead Kennedy fans. Mr. Carr would do well to update his metaphors.

Visually mapping the VP debate

I found this from Daily Kos: a map of one question from the VP debate. Really gives a good idea of how complicated their answers were. This is all from bCisive. I'm going to be checking back on this stuff.

Oops.

Time for a redo; the House did not pass the bailout.

I admit to some relief. Paul Krugman was in favor of it, but just barely (like pretty much everyone who was in favor of it, I think). He was tolerant of the policy, and recognized the politcal reality; this was the best the Democrats could do and expect any kind of Republican support at all.

Kos didn't like it, although he recognizes the need to do SOMETHING.

I'm torn between Krugman and Kos; I don't always agree with either, but I trust Krugman on economics, and I respect Kos on the politics.

All of that, of course, is irrelevant right now. The thing is dead. It won't come back up for at least a couple of days. I don't expect opinions to soften in the interim. The people back home are not going to discover a new love for Wall Street.

It's becoming clear that, for all his ability to manage the crisis day-to-day, Henry Paulson didn't play the politics of this well. That's not really his fault; he's not a politician. But his initial power grab didn't go over well, and springing the "$700 billion" figure out of the blue, immediately after the Merrill Lynch-Lehman-AIG few days of terror, didn't help. That's a huge chunk of change to start talking about all of a sudden.

I'm sure Paulson didn't calculate the politics of how the House and Senate would react; first, he didn't really have time, second, it's not his background. SOMEONE in the Bush White House should have realized that this was not going to play in Peoria. Of course, that would be assuming that someone in the White House would have a clue how this is going to play in Peoria. Which, obviously, no one, least of all Bush, does.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: George Bush's biggest problem isn't that he isn't very bright or isn't intellectually curious or even that he's a stubborn SOB. George W. Bush's problem - and now, our problem - is that he simply isn't a very good politician. He just doesn't know how to read other people very well, particularly when they potentially disagree with him. Which means that he does not anticipate problems like the House Republicans not going all with him. Which means that he has no idea how to GET them to go along with him. He just does not have the empathetic imagination: he cannot imagine another person's perspective very well.

Bill Clinton, of course, was an absolute genius at that. And I mean genius in the literal sense: he was not brilliant at it, he was a genius at it. He could imagine how all the other parties in a particular situation would react, not merely to a policy proposal, but to each other. Bush has no idea that that is even an important thing to try to do.

So now we're stuck with a broken deal and a financial system in crisis. We know what the minuses are: an incompetent, powerless president; a furious electorate; raging uncertainty in the financial markets; a fractured GOP, with open revolt among members.

Are there any pluses? The Democratic leadership seems to be united. Henry Paulson presumably now has a better sense of how to play the politics; he seems to learn fast. The rank and file Republicans in the House have now had their chance to make themselves heard; maybe that was enough for some of them.

Maybe Congress will come up with a better bill. It will come up with a different one, that's for sure. Maybe it will be dramatically different; maybe it will just be tweaked.

One variable I can't predict is how John Boehner and the rest of the House leadership will react. They may very well be furious at Bush for not playing this well; at the very least, they can't be happy with Bush. But if this goes down again, Wall Street is going to hold them accountable.

There's one wild variable: the VP debate is on Thursday. Ain't no way in hell this is going to be postponed. If Sarah Palin holds her own, maybe Republicans will be more confident of victory for McCain in November. But if, as seems more likely, she tanks, they may be ever-closer to panic mode. How that will play is anyone's guess.