My friend Neil says I am a comedy librarian. I know what he means. Maybe because my home does not ring with the laughter of children or supervillains, I have to fill the void with yuks of other sorts.

Or maybe I just know how to put myself in a good mood. When bummers abound, my collection of mood-altering movies (The Big Lebowski, Anchorman, Office Space, Evildead 2, Borat, Tropic Thunder, Superbad, Office Space, Talladega Nights) and TV shows (Seinfeld, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Futurama) are guaranteed to dunk my brain in a tank of comedy, faster than you can say "McLovin!" or "Zoidberg!"

And of course there are books. Many of them you already have, because they are justifiably famous: the George Carlin books, either of Bill Simmons' books, Michael Ian Black's My Custom Van, The Book of the Subgenius, John Hodgman's stuff, all those 'Onion' books, The Far Side collections, Shit My Dad Says, and Earth: The Book. But others are a little less well-known, yet no less laughter-inducing. Some have never been in the humor section at all, yet put to shame 98.3% of what we call humor. You should have these books. They will make you laugh. When we laugh, we are happy. Get these books and be happy.

Mark Peters is a language columnist for Good and Visual Thesaurus. He can be found on Twitter here.

It was an election so electrifying it seemed to unite the country more than divide it, turning the busiest of people and pop stars into volunteers, working for a reform-minded politician who stood for healing, unity, and greater liberalization. It had catchy songs and iconic fashion statements, and just like the Obama machine in 2008, it went on to disappoint the very people it promised to fight for.

In 2004, Ukraine experienced the Orange Revolution: protest camps filled the capital, Kyiv; millions peacefully demonstrated in the bitter winter months to overturn a corrupt, Kremlin-pressured election. Five years later, Viktor Yanukovych, a laughable presidential candidate and the Russian-backed foe of the Orange Revolution, is now president of Ukraine, due to the global economic collapse -- a tsunami for the country's already fragile economy -- and years of in-fighting that plagued the ruling liberals.

Why should we, here in America, who donned Shepard Fairey T-shirts and saved the posters for our grandchildren, care about a country with some of the worst luck in recent history? Because if we don't stand united for the "lesser evil" than the "straight-up evil" is coming for us.

In the 2010 Ukrainian election, outgoing president Victor Yushchenko couldn't put the disillusionment behind him and campaigned against his former Orange Revolution ally and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a fashion muse and fiery orator, urging Ukrainians to enter "against all" in the ballot box. (Alas, this is something I hear liberal friends fantasizing about writing come November, in the midterm election). The New York Times reported that, based on early exit polling, this may have influenced as much as six percent of the vote.

Now Yushchenko, once the great hero of the Orange Revolution, is now seeing his pro-NATO, pro-EU efforts dissolve, along with freedom for the press. Yanukovich, or Mini Putin, Ukraine's new president, is threatening to rewrite history to make the Soviet years seem less horrifying, so Ukrainians can feel better about going back to being a Russian satellite state. And we all know, from the assassination of journalists, political opponents, and police violence used to break up demonstrations for civil rights, Russia's leaders are still in a Soviet state of mind.

Here's just one example of the growing threat to free speech in Ukraine, (which includes the kidnapping of a journalist and the brutal beating of another):

On September 8, the Security Service in Ukraine arrested Ruslan Zabilyi, a young historian and director of a museum in L'viv, a nationalistic pro-West, pro-democracy city in Ukraine near the border of Poland. Tymothy Snyder in the blog of the New York Review of Books writes:

On September 8, the Security Service (SB), under new leadership appointed by the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, arrested in Kiev a young historian named Ruslan Zabilyi, the director of a museum in Lviv devoted to the occupation of Ukraine by the Nazis and the Soviets. He is charged with intending to pass state secrets to foreigners. On September 13 and 14, SB agents searched the offices of the museum's research staff, confiscating two laptops containing archival documents for a planned exhibition on Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule; authority over the museum has been transferred to the Institute of National Memory, which is now directed by a communist.

According to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Zabilyi was seized on the street by six plainclothes SB operatives, held without a warrant or an arrest order, interrogated for fourteen hours, and forced to surrender his computer and external hard drives. Though Ukrainian law is confusing on these issues, the basic case against Zabilyi seems to be that he was intending to transmit documents from archives to foreigners.

But that could never happen here. Right? Well, it depends on how much you pay them.

Who helped Mini Putin come to power and smooth out his messaging? Why a GOP lobbyist, of course; we cannot let the party of Reverse take control of Congress this Nov. 2. If you've seen Alex Gibney's brilliant and empowering documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, on the mega-lobbyist who put democracy up for sale, and you regularly read unbiased news, then you know that the leaders of the Republican Party, way more than the Blanche Lincoln's among us, are the party of unchecked greed, the party of fear, the party of business-above-all else, and guess who shared those values?

In 1932-33, Stalin raised funding to modernize the newly established Soviet Union by having his military seal the borders of Ukraine and export the country's grain abroad, to get the capital he needed. The result? An estimated 14 million of his own citizens, the majority Ukrainian, starved to death in an artificial famine. My grandfather survived Stalin's man-made famine as a child and many decades later, before his death, wrote about it in his memoir. Now Ukraine's new president is trying to downplay one of the largest mass murders in human history.

Not only did Stalin get to raise money, he could torture the nationalistic Ukrainians into submission. His legacy can continue in the form of Orwellian denials by the latest sworn in boot stomping on a human face. Ukraine's Kremlin and GOP-backed president dismisses the famine as old history, nothing to do with the Soviet legacy that's still squashing human rights in Russia, under Putin's KGB-like rule, and now threatens to undue democratic progress in Ukraine.

Progress takes time. As Matt Berninger, the lead singer of The National, and an obsessed fan of The West Wing, told me in our interview over the summer, "Seeing the consequences of apathy and being passive was very clear to everyone when Bush won twice. This is what happens if you're not constantly pushing for the things you believe in."

This midterm election is critical, and the Democrats, especially the passionate and fearless Barbara Boxer, are doing more in Washington, D.C., than is reported by the mainstream media. As an intern in Washington for Senator Boxer in 2002, I was nearly moved to tears watching her use her allotted time to verbally silly slap Paul Wolfowitz, a sloppy architect of the sloppy and needless war in Iraq, in a Senate hearing. Young interns for conservative representatives nearby me shook their heads and hissed under their breath at her pointed (and accurate) remarks; they obviously overlooked the fact that Bush's Wars have led to an increase of government and government spending, bloated the deficit, and that their anti-government Republican party had been hijacked by some weird hyper-greed brigade that pushes for absolutely worthless government spending just to pocket yacht-sized commissions.

For the next month, put aside that we didn't get medicare for all, that Howard Dean should have been the nominee in 2004, that Gore should have stuck up for Clinton in 2000 instead of distancing himself and choosing turncoat Lieberman as a running-mate, and all the other stupid Orange Revolution-like hangovers of the Democratic Party over the last couple decades.

Progress takes time, and we might as well enjoy the process. This fall, celebrate the courage of your convictions and grab a friend, and check out an event that gets your balls to the wall:

Rally to Restore Sanity

Vote2010

Laughing Liberally

Justin Kreb's Living Liberally Book Tour

Democrats Abroad

The war on drugs. We keep calling it that, it seems, because we like wars on abstract concepts. Like the war on terror, the war on drugs racks up one hell of a body count, and its victims are mostly innocent civilians with no more love for the corrupt regimes that rule them than we have.

Molly Molloy, who runs Frontera List, which focuses on border-related news and specifically Ciudad Juarez, and Charles Bowden, author of a new book on Ciudad Juarez, both call it not a war on drugs but a war on the poor.

Bowden noted in an interview with me in Marfa last week, "If you put people in a city where the police are not totally corrupted, where they're secure in their property, where they can get a job that pays a decent wage, they don't kill each other."

But the work that NAFTA started in Mexico the drug wars have sped up. There are no jobs that pay a living wage in Juarez, and its proximity to the border makes it valuable turf for all sorts of illicit activity, by all sorts of forces, from gangs, to cops, to big bosses, to the Mexican Army itself.

Politicians here like to talk about border security, but they refuse to acknowledge the demands of human security: living wages, a society of laws, schools, housing, healthcare. Instead of modeling lawfulness, our government's response is more lawlessness-- more arms to more armies, more privilege to the very rich and drug laws -- as well as immigration laws that make no sense.

The Juarez paper, El Diario, this week addressed the drug lords on its front page: "You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling."

It's a fair point to make about the legal authorities, and the rest of us. We're failing to stop the falling of our neighbors.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

Former President Bill Clinton said recently that he believes an Islamic cultural center proposed to be built near Ground Zero in New York City is an action that should go forward under the First Amendment.

"I have an almost radical view on the First Amendment, I believe that people should be free to practice their faith," Clinton said in a YouTube interview.

"It's clearly a decision for the city of New York to make," Clinton continued, adding, "I think they ought to be able to do it."

Clinton went on to acknowledge that the nature of the location makes the debate difficult and emotionally charged.

"We should be sensitive to the fact that a lot of Americans are still really hurting over what happened at Ground Zero, and that we still have security threats in the world," Clinton said, arguing that Al-Qaeda should be the real target, not moderate Muslims.

Though Clinton seemed to stand behind the legality and concept of the Park51 project, he did admit that its organizers may have stumbled in messaging the initiative.

"I think much, maybe even most of the controversy of this decision could have been avoided and perhaps still can be if the people who want to build this center were to simply say we are dedicating this center to all the Muslims who died on 9/11," Clinton said. "I think most Americans may still not know that there was a substantial number of Muslims killed on 9/11."

According to a Council on American-Islamic Relations analysis (.PDF link) of the 9/11 victims list, 32 Muslims perished on that day.

WATCH:

In two days I will be boarding yet another plane for New York, but this time is different. This time I won't be taking ten meetings a day, running to the FCancer office with every free second, and scarfing down street food when I realize I've only eaten the chocolate from my pillow last night and copious amounts of coffee today. This time, I will be attending the prestigious Clinton Global Initiative.

Can you hear that? It's my heart palpitating as fast as a bad 70's disco beat. I am nervous. I mean what do I say to the "heads of state, Nobel Peace Prize winners, leading global CEOs, major philanthropists and foundation heads, directors of the most effective non-governmental organizations, and prominent members of the media" that I will be rubbing elbows with? The FCancer movement has been growing quickly, but I still can't order an airstrike and I don't have a Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo Courtesy Of The Office Of The Prime Minister

Summit Series kicked it all off, and while at first my nerves ran wild, the experience was amazing and one that catalyzed FCancer into a whole new realm.

This was followed by an invitation to the White House for the Next Generation Leadership Conference. The first thing I asked was if they knew I was Canadian. "Yes." The second was if they knew that the name of my charity was F*ck Cancer. "Yes." "Great, see you Tuesday," I said.

This was followed by an invitation to TED , which I am anxiously awaiting.

Yet none of these have made my heart dance idiotically like the impending CGI . CGI is all about collaboration, with a results driven focus. Every member that attends must make a commitment. My commitment involves activating youth to take responsibility for teaching their parents about early detection of cancer; we're already teaching our parents about everything from Tivo to Wii Fit, so we might as well teach them something that could save their lives. We all know that the best way to learn something is by teaching it to someone else. My hope is that by teaching our parents about their risk factors and the (often seemingly benign and highly embarrassing) earliest warning signs of cancer that we really internalize the information, so that by the time we are in the highest risk demographic, we're looking for cancer instead of just finding it.

While I don't quite know what to expect of the Annual Meeting next week, I do know that I am excited and grateful for the opportunity to publicly commit to something that I am so passionate about. I hope to gain insight, knowledge, and some like minded partners to help me put an end to late stage cancer diagnosis.

Cross everything crossable for me and I'll let you know how it goes!

The Great American Stickup

Chapter 1
"It Was the Economy, Stupid"

Part II: The first half of this chapter was excerpted on the Huffington Post yesterday, here.

Since the collapse happened on the watch of President George W. Bush at the end of two full terms in office, many in the Democratic Party were only too eager to blame his administration. Yet while Bush did nothing to remedy the problem, and his response was to simply reward the culprits, the roots of this disaster go back much further, to the free-market propaganda of the Reagan years and, most damagingly, to the bipartisan deregulation of the banking industry undertaken with the full support of "liberal" President Clinton. Yes, Clinton. And if this debacle needs a name, it should most properly be called "the Clinton bubble," as difficult as it may be to accept for those of us who voted for him.

Clinton, being a smart person and an astute politician, did not use old ideological arguments to do away with New Deal restrictions on the banking system, which had been in place ever since the Great Depression threatened the survival of capitalism. His were the words of technocrats, arguing that modern technology, globalization, and the increased sophistication of traders meant the old concerns and restrictions were outdated. By "modernizing" the economy, so the promise went, we would free powerful creative energies and create new wealth for a broad spectrum of Americans -- not to mention boosting the Democratic Party enormously, both politically and financially.

And it worked: Traditional banks freed by the dissolution of New Deal regulations became much more aggressive in investing deposits, snapping up financial services companies in a binge of acquisitions. These giant conglomerates then bet long on a broad and limitless expansion of the economy, making credit easy and driving up the stock and real estate markets to unseen heights. Increasingly complicated yet wildly profitable securities--especially so-called over-the-counter derivatives (OTC), which, as their name suggests, are financial instruments derived from other assets or products -- proved irresistible to global investors, even though few really understood what they were buying. Those transactions in suspect derivatives were negotiated in markets that had been freed from the obligations of government regulation and would grow in the year 2009 to more than $600 trillion.

Beginning in the early '90s, this innovative system for buying and selling debt grew from a boutique, almost experimental, Wall Street business model to something so large that, when it collapsed a little more than a decade later, it would cause a global recession. Along the way, only a few people possessed enough knowledge and integrity to point out that the growth and profits it was generating were, in fact, too good to be true.

Until it all fell apart in such grand fashion, turning some of the most prestigious companies in the history of capitalism into bankrupt beggars, all the key players in the derivatives markets were happy as pigs in excrement. At the bottom, a plethora of aggressive lenders was only too happy to sign up folks for mortgages and other loans they could not afford because those loans could be bundled and sold in the market as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The investment banks were thrilled to have those new CDOs to sell, their clients liked the absurdly high returns being paid -- even if they really had no clear idea what they were buying -- and the "swap" sellers figured they were taking no risk at all, since the economy seemed to have entered a phase in which it had only one direction: up.

Of course, this was ridiculous on the face of it. Could it really be so easy? What was the catch? Never mind that, you spoiler! Not only were those making the millions and billions off the OTC derivatives market ecstatic, so were the politicians, bought off by Wall Street, who were sitting in the driver's seat while the bubble was inflating. With credit so easy, consumers went on a binge, buying everything in sight, which in turn was a boon to the bricks-and-mortar economy. Blown upward by all this "irrational exuberance," as then Federal Reserve Bank chair Alan Greenspan noted in one of his more honest moments, the stock market soared, creating the era of e-trade and a middle-class that eagerly awaited each quarterly 401(k) report.

Later, in the rubble, consumer borrowers would be scapegoated for the crash. This is the same logic as blaming passengers of a discount airline for their deaths if it turned out the plane had been flown by a monkey. Shouldn't they have known they should pay more? In reality, the gushing profits of the collateralized debt markets meant the original lenders had no motive to actually vet the recipients--they wouldn't be trying to collect the debt themselves anyway. Instead, they would do almost anything to entreat consumers to borrow far beyond their means, reassuring them in a booming economy they'd be suckers not to buy, buy, buy.
That this madness was allowed to develop without significant government supervision or critical media interest, despite the inherent instability and predictable future damage of a system of growth predicated on its own inevitability, is a tribute to the almost limitless power of Wall Street lobbyists and the corruption of political leaders who did their bidding while sacrificing the public's interest.

While much has been made of the baffling complexity of the new market structures at the heart of the banking meltdown, there were informed and prescient observers who in real time saw through these gimmicks. The potential for damage was thus known inside the halls of power to those who cared to know, if only because of heroines like gutsy regulator Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996 to 1999. When they attempted to sound the alarm, however, they were ignored, or worse. Simply put, the rewards in both financial remuneration and advanced careers were such that those in a position to profit went along with great enthusiasm. Those who objected, like Born, were summarily crushed.

Of the leaders responsible, five names come prominently to mind: Alan Greenspan, the longtime head of the Federal Reserve; Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; Lawrence Summers, who succeeded him in that capacity; and the two top Republicans in Congress back in the 1990s dealing with finance, Phil Gramm and James Leach.

Arrayed most prominently against them, far, far down the DC power ladder, were two female regulators, Born and Sheila Bair (an appointee of Bush I and II and retained as FDIC chair by Obama). They never had a chance, though; they were facing a juggernaut: The combined power of the Wall Street lobbyists allied with popular President Clinton, who staked his legacy on reassuring the titans of finance a Democrat could serve their interests better than any Republican.

Clinton's role was decisive in turning Ronald Reagan's obsession with an unfettered free market into law. Reagan, that fading actor recast so effectively as great propagandist for the unregulated market -- "get government off our backs" was his patented rallying cry -- was far more successful at deregulating smokestack industries than the financial markets. It would take a new breed of "triangulating" technocrat Democrats to really dismantle the carefully built net designed, after the last Great Depression, to restrain Wall Street from its pattern of periodic self-immolations.

Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest. The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse. The guardians of capitalism's survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers, who, in defiance of the pragmatic Adam Smith himself, want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals, at least those in the mode of FDR, who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it. Whether it was child labor in dark coal mines, the exploitation of racially segregated human beings to pick cotton, or the unfathomable devastation of the Great Depression, the brutal creativity of the pure profit motive has always posed a stark challenge to our belief that we are moral creatures. The modern bureaucratic governments of the developed world were built, unconsciously, as a bulwark, something big enough to occasionally stand up to the power of uncontrolled market forces, much as a referee must show the yellow card to a young headstrong athlete.

Excerpted from 'The Great American Stickup'

"It Was the Economy, Stupid"

"How did this happen?" ~ President George W. Bush

"It was a humbling question for someone from the financial sector to be asked--after all, we were the ones responsible." ~ Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., former Goldman Sachs CEO

They did it.

Yes, there is a "they": the captains of finance, their lobbyists, and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who together destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning splendidly for most of the six decades since it was enacted in the 1930s.
The big cop-out in much of what has been written about the banking meltdown has been the argument by those most complicit that there was "enough blame to go around" and that no institution or individual should be singled out for accountability. "How could we have known?" is the refrain of those who continue to pose as all-knowing experts. "Everybody made mistakes," they say.

Nonsense. This was a giant hustle that served the richest of the rich and left the rest of us holding the bag, a life-altering game of musical chairs in which the American public was the one forced out. Worst of all, legislators from both political parties we elect and pay to protect our interests from the pirates who assaulted us instead changed our laws to enable them.

The most pathetic of excuses is the one provided by Robert Rubin, who fathered "Rubinomics," the economy policy of President Clinton's two-term administration: The economy ran into a "perfect storm," a combination of unforeseen but disastrously interrelated events. This rationalization is all too readily accepted by the mass media, which is not surprising, given that it neatly absolves the majority of business reporters and editors who had missed the story for years until it was too late.

The facts are otherwise. It is not conspiratorial but rather accurate to suggest that blame can be assigned to those who consciously developed and implemented a policy of radical financial deregulation that led to a global recession. As President Clinton's Treasury secretary, Rubin, the former cochair of Goldman Sachs, led the fight to free the financial markets from regulation and then went on to a $15-million-a-year job with Citigroup, the company that had most energetically lobbied for that deregulation. He should remember the line from the old cartoon strip Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

For it was this Wall Street and Democratic Party darling, along with his clique of economist super-friends -- Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, and a few others -- who inflated a giant real estate bubble by purposely not regulating the derivatives market, resulting in oceans of money that was poured into bad loans sold as safe investments. In the process, they not only caused an avalanche of pain and misery when the bubble inevitably burst but also shredded the good reputation of the American banking system nurtured since the Great Depression.

If we accept a broad dispersal of blame or a sense of inevitability -- or simply ignore the details, since they can be so confusing -- we lose the opportunity to rearrange our institutions to prevent such disasters from happening again.

That this is true has only been reinforced by the tentative response of the Obama administration in its first year. Even after a crash that economists agree is the biggest since the granddaddy of 1929, the president's proposed reform legislation stops far short of reintroducing the kind of regulation of the markets that prevented such disasters in the intervening eighty years. We still see a persistent fear, stoked by the same folks that led us into this abyss, that regulation and scrutiny will kill the golden goose of Wall Street profits and, by extension, U.S. prosperity.

If we as a people learn anything from this crash, however, it should be that there are no adults watching the store, only a tiny elite of self-interested multimillionaires and billionaires making decisions for the rest of us. As long as we cede that power to them, we can expect to continue getting bilked.

Three key myths consistently propagated about the financial markets proved devastating in this event. The first is that buyers and sellers are all logical and well informed about what they are doing, so the markets will always be "corrected" to provide accurate price values. The second is that whatever happens in these "free markets," the general public will not be hurt -- only irresponsible gamblers will lose their shirts. The third is that whenever the government gets involved, it will only screw things up; even if regulators only ask questions, it will poison the pond and spook the fish, to everybody's detriment.

All of these assumptions were proven false; the brave new world order of super-rational high-tech derivative marketing based on a Nobel Prize-winning mathematical model turned out to be a prescription for financial madness. A win-win system too good to be true turned out to be a cruel hoax in which most suffered terribly -- and not just that majority of the world's population that suffers from the whims of the market, but even some who designed and sold the new financial gimmicks. Left to their own devices, freed of rational regulatory restraint by an army of lobbyists and the politicians who serve them, one after another of the very top financial conglomerates imploded from the weight of their uncontrolled greed. Or would have imploded, as in the examples of Citigroup and AIG, if the government had not used taxpayer dollars to bail out those "too big to fail" conglomerates.

Along the way, these companies -- including the privatized quasi-governmental Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac monstrosities -- were exposed as poorly run juggernauts, with top executives having embarrassingly little grasp of the chicanery and risk taking that was bolstering their bottom-lines. Worst of all, damage from this economic chain reaction didn't, of course, stop at the bank accounts of Saudi investors or American CEOs but led to soaring unemployment and federal debt, the acceleration of the home foreclosure epidemic, massive unemployment, and the wholesale destruction of pension plans and state education budgets.

As California voters prepare to vote on Proposition 19, which would bring a much-needed end to nearly 100 years of failed marijuana prohibition in that state, it's important to pay attention to the arguments that proponents use to persuade the electorate to vote in favor of taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol (T&R). How an issue is framed can make or break it, as seen by efforts to reduce penalties for crack cocaine and peyote.

On August 3, President Obama signed a bill into law that reduced the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. This was done by reducing the penalty for crack cocaine, not by increasing the penalty for powder cocaine.

Years in the making, this law was signed with barely a whimper from the usual prohibitionists. How can it be that Congress and the president reduced the penalty for crack in 2010, but it's inconceivable that they'd do the same for marijuana in 2010? The answer is that the lobbying campaign to reduce the crack disparity appealed to politicians' core values.

The crack penalty wasn't reduced by analogizing important arguments in the marijuana policy debate, such as "crack is safer than alcohol" or "crack has medicinal value." Rather, because people who have been sentenced to five-year, mandatory-minimum prison sentences for crack are overwhelmingly black, the debate was framed as one of racial justice. Then, once that ball got rolling, others joined in by saying that reducing the crack penalty was about fundamental fairness, e.g., let the punishment fit the crime (which meant reducing the crack-cocaine penalty rather than increasing the powder-cocaine penalty).

Regarding peyote -- a drug that can cause hallucinations far exceeding those of the best marijuana in the world -- Congress and President Clinton enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, which included an amendment that allowed people who have at least 25% Native-American blood to use peyote legally. The peyote amendment passed with a non-controversial, unanimous voice vote on the floor of the U.S. House, and by a vote of 97-3 on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The peyote vote wasn't won by arguing that "peyote is safer than alcohol" or "peyote has medicinal value" either. Rather, the argument was framed as being about religious freedom, as protected by the First Amendment.

And with medical marijuana, we have won and will continue to win our ballot-initiative campaigns not by running TV ads featuring a budding marijuana plant, but rather by featuring patients and family members of patients. This is because the debate isn't about a plant, but about compassion -- compassion for cancer patients, AIDS patients, MS patients, and chronic-pain patients who are being forced to choose between suffering without marijuana or breaking the law with marijuana.

Because no one has succeeded in enacting a T&R law in the history of the world (including in Holland, where wholesale cultivation of marijuana is still illegal), we don't yet know what "frame" we should be using to win the T&R debate.

Because a disproportionate number of the more than 800,000 people who are arrested for marijuana offenses each year are young men of color, it could be that the T&R issue should be framed as one of racial justice. In June, the Drug Policy Alliance released a report showing that in California's 25 largest counties, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at double, triple, or even quadruple the rate of whites.

Or, looking at the success of MPP's marijuana-decriminalization initiative in Massachusetts -- which passed with a stunning 65% of the vote in November 2008 -- it could be that the T&R issue should be framed as being about public safety (letting police focus on violent crimes) or fairness (we shouldn't be saddling young people with lifelong criminal records just for marijuana). Both of these arguments resonated with Massachusetts voters, as exemplified by these two TV ads we ran.

There are also people in our movement who believe we'll win the T&R debate by emphasizing that marijuana is safer than alcohol (which it is), and therefore, adults should be able to choose the safer substance.

And while the financial argument has been gaining a lot of traction since the U.S. began its "Great Recession" two years ago, we won't win the T&R debate solely by framing the issue around saving money on enforcement costs and generating new tax dollars. I got a sense of this when I debated Asa Hutchinson, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, on national TV on March 20, 2009.

In that debate, Hutchinson made an admission that I had never heard before from a leading prohibitionist. He said, "If your motivation is to bring revenue to the government, legalize, regulate it. But if your motivation is to reduce the usage, to save teenage lives, to reduce dependence, to strengthen our culture, then the cost is worth it and the revenue should not be a motivation." In other words, he said that when you're fighting a holy war, the financial cost of the war is irrelevant.

In the months and years ahead, those of us in the marijuana policy reform movement should aim to win the T&R debate by using some combination of the aforementioned five arguments -- racial justice, public safety, fairness, marijuana's relative safety, and the potential to generate tax revenues while reducing costs for law enforcement. As to which of these arguments will prove to be the most salient, perhaps the November 2 election in California will provide guidance.

MEXICO CITY — The third Mexican mayor in a month was slain by suspected drug gang hitmen on the same day the U.S. secretary of state raised hackles in Mexico by saying the country is "looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago."

Hillary Rodham Clinton and other U.S. officials pointed to Mexican drug cartels' use of three car bombs, a tool once favored by cartel-allied rebels in Colombia, as evidence that the gangs "are now showing more and more indices of insurgency."

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that plans by a small church in Florida to burn the Muslim holy book are "outrageous" and "aberrational" and do not represent America.

In remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton lamented that the tiny Dove World Outreach Center congregation in Gainesville had gotten so much attention for what she called a "distrustful and disgraceful" means of marking the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A new ad pitching a Hillary Clinton 2012 presidential campaign has been making the rounds on the web and in select TV markets recently, but it doesn't mean there's an inter-cabinet coup brewing to prevent Obama from running for a second term.

"She has more experience working in and with the White House than most living presidents. She is one of the most admired women in our nation's history. Let's make sure the president we should have elected in 2008 will be on the ballot in 2012. Hillary 2012: Hillary Clinton for President. Start now. Where there's a Hill there's a way," the ad, paid for by Chicago dentist William DeJean, reads.

According to an interview with CNN, DeJean's decision to produce the ad seems to be driven by a simple dissatisfaction with Obama and support of Clinton.

"I'm a dentist and I don't think this country is headed in the right direction," DeJean explained. "I think [Clinton] is the most qualified."

More from CNN on DeJean's motivation:

DeJean adds that he thinks people are having buyer's remorse about President Barack Obama and says the current administration is ruining the Democratic Party. He says he spent $5,000 to create the commercial and tells CNN that besides New Orleans, the ad will run in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and possible Houston. DeJean says he chose to first run the ad in New Orleans because he's a native of the city and because the city's in the news due to the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Clinton has said repeatedly that she has no plans to run for president again, much less as a primary challenger to Obama in 2012, but that hasn't stopped many from speculating that her sights remain on the top office, and that her aspirations can't wait until 2016.

Watch William DeJean's Hillary 2012 Ad:

ABC's Christiane Amanpour spent "a couple of hours" with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to talk about politics and friendships, the essential content of his recently released memoir, "A Journey."

"His book is a personal reflection of the many relationships he had with presidents, prime ministers and even princesses, like Diana," said Amanpour in an excerpt of the interview featured on "Good Morning America" yesterday.

On GMA, Amanpour explained that Blair "sees the key to breaking the impasse in the Middle East: 'No one has ever gripped it long enough or firmly enough. The gripping is intermittent and intermittent won't do'."

In his memoir, Blair writes about George W. Bush:

"George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world. Right or wrong, it led to decisive leadership."

And on the war, he writes:

"On the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him and that, terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse. ... I am unable to satisfy the desire even of some of my supporters, who would like me to say: it was a mistake but one made in good faith. Friends opposed to the war think I'm being obstinate; others, less friendly, think I'm delusional. To both I may say: keep an open mind."

About Blair's book, in his 3.5 star review in The Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten writes:

"As a book, it's unusual because he wrote it himself, which makes this volume unique among the English-speaking world's recent political autobiographies. It also gives "A Journey" a disarming frankness that a professional collaborator almost certainly would have manicured away, along with anecdotes that are unintentionally self-revealing."

Concerning the book's treatment of the Iraq war, Rutter writes:

"Given the donation of this memoir's royalties to Britain's Iraq war casualties, a great deal of attention is likely to focus on Blair's second thoughts concerning those conflicts. To put it concisely, he doesn't have any. 'I have often reflected as to whether I was wrong,' he writes. 'I ask you to reflect as to whether I may have been right'."

According to USA Today, despite praising many aspects of George W. Bush's personality and leadership, Blair ultimately writes:

"'It was more difficult, frankly,' to warm to Bush, said Blair, former leader of the liberal Labor Party. Clinton, he said, was his 'political soul mate'."

On the market for only two days, Blair's "A Journey" has become an instant bestseller.

Interested in all the hype? Find out what Blair has to say about the Iraq war, leadership and political friendships.

WATCH:

The battle looms. It is, in fact, right over a hill right in front of us. So, are Democrats girding their loins for the fight, and roaring their defiance at the opposition?

Um, well, not that I've noticed. Sigh. Instead, loins un-girded and roars muted to the level of squabbling jaybirds, Democrats are once again acting like Democrats.

The big fight this election season hasn't really dawned yet. And all the issues in the past will likely pale in comparison to the big fight that's just ahead of us. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (to his credit) set up this fight, right before the midterm election's homestretch. The big fight this year is going to be over extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent of American workers, and to the top three percent of American small businesses. On the other side are, respectively, ninety-eight percent of American workers, and ninety-seven percent of American small businesses. Not bad odds, even for Democrats.

But the big unanswered question is whether Democrats can effectively use the issue to their advantage. Reid certainly must think so, otherwise he wouldn't have scheduled this fight for September. But, looking around, I see and hear a lot of Republicans laying the ground work for their side of the battle, and Democrats not doing the same in forceful response.

As I said... sigh.

This is indeed a battle worth fighting, and a battle worth winning. It cuts to the heart of the contradiction of the Tea Party's stances -- you simply cannot be for lowering the deficit and for unneeded tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires at the same time. You can choose one or the other, but not both. Because the numbers just don't add up. But we'll get to that in a minute.

For Democrats unsure of how to proceed, there were two articles of note this week, one explaining how the Democrats could go on the offense on the Bush tax cut issue, and one explaining how to go on defense against the Republican ideas for the federal budget. Both are excellent suggestions, and both should be required reading up on Capitol Hill.

The first of these articles is from Robert Reich, who is well known for making all kinds of sense on the economy. He suggests a tactic similar to one I actually proposed in the last book I wrote: to raise taxes on the rich while -- at the same time -- lowering them for everyone else. Reich's idea is a bit different from the one I came up with (which dealt with Social Security taxes), but his idea is brilliantly-timed, with the debate looming:

Republicans understand the art of tax demagoguery: Put the other side on the defensive by forcing them to explain why a "tax increase" is warranted and they lose regardless.

So instead of playing defense, Democrats should go on the attack.

Accuse Republicans of being shills for the rich.

And don't stop there. Do tax jujitsu. In addition to ending the Bush tax cut for the rich, put forward another proposal for growing the economy that cuts taxes on lower-income Americans.

Democrats should propose eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of income, and making up the revenue loss by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000.

Read the entire article to see more details. This is the way to go on offense, Democrats. This is how you sell an idea to the public. This is how you get something good done -- and at the same time, paint the Republicans into a serious corner. Republicans voting against a tax cut for 97 percent, to hold firm on tax cuts for billionaires? The campaign ads just write themselves....

The second article shows how Democrats should be playing defense, and should be seen as a personal plea to Nancy Pelosi to force a vote on the Republican budget plan that has rightwing pundits all excited. Paul Abrams at The Huffington Post wrote an excellent battle plan for the House to follow, while the Senate is debating the Bush tax cuts. This plan consists of one brilliant idea: bring the "Ryan budget" to a vote.

Abrams explains:

Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the point person for House Republicans on the budget committee. He is considered to be a "rising star" in their ranks. He designed a budget proposal that he says would bring the nation's books into balance, without raising taxes, within 10 years. Contrary to Democrats' claims that Republicans have "no solutions", the Republicans will point to this budget proposal on the campaign trail as proof that they can do it -- this time. [Ryan's entire exercise, by the way, was to concoct a scheme so Republicans could preserve tax cuts for the wealthy -- that's their core value!].

Of course, they will not talk about the details of that proposal, such as privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher program with vouchers that will increasingly not meet the costs of medical care for the elderly. Instead, they will just assert "we did it", fend off Democrats' attempts to point out its failings as political sniping, and win the November elections with Tea Party, traditional Republican and "Independent" support.

That is, if the Democrats continue to let them get away with it by not getting them to vote for it.

He goes on to suggest multi-day hearings on the bill, to attract the media spotlight, and then to finish off in style:

Then, bring the Ryan budget to a vote. If Republicans vote for the Ryan Budget, they will be voting to do what Republican paymasters like the Koch brothers have always wanted, but the electorate has never been sucked into supporting -- privatize Social Security, scale down Medicare until it is worthless. Remember Newt Gingrich's reverie, "Social Security and Medicare will be left to wither on the vine"? Democrats have shown in the past that they can run successfully against privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare.

If Republicans vote against the Ryan Budget, however, they will infuriate the Tea Party. Indeed, being infuriated is what the Tea Party is all about. They are very good at it.

This is basic politics. The "in" party always schedules votes in the months before a campaign to make the "out" party look bad. Ryan's budget is much-beloved by pundits, but not so much among actual Republicans (it only has a relative handful of cosponsors). Many Republicans know that being forced to vote on it means they either vote to, in essence, kill Medicare (which they were making quite a bit of noise over last year, positioning themselves quite laughably as the defenders of Medicare)... or they have to vote against a Republican plan to balance the budget. That's a tough vote for a Republican to make, which is why they would really prefer not to have the vote in the first place -- because it is so lose-lose for many of them.

But nothing is stopping Pelosi from forcing the vote.

Which is exactly what she should do.

If Democrats were playing hardball offense over in the Senate, and playing brilliant defense over in the House, then they could completely change the tenor of this year's election debate. Nothing is stopping them from doing so, except a lack of political backbone.

Or ungirded loins, perhaps.

Sigh.

 

We're bending the rules a little bit (as we are often wont to do around here) and stretching the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to include last Thursday. Call it a long week, if you will.

We're doing so in order to award this week's MIDOTW to none other than Senator Al Franken, for his speech on net neutrality and the First Amendment last Thursday in Minneapolis. It's a humdinger of a speech, so we heartily encourage anyone interested in the issue to either watch the video or read the full transcript of Franken's speech. Or, at the very least, read Timothy Karr's review of the speech which appeared in The Huffington Post (where it caught our eye, initially).

Senator Franken grew up in a world where there were limits to media monopolies. Any one person or corporation could only own a limited number of media outlets -- something like [I'm doing this from memory, so correct me if I'm wrong] owning only (at any one time): seven AM stations, seven FM stations, seven television stations, and seven newspapers. Clear Channel didn't exist in the radio world, in other words. Because it wasn't allowed to.

Franken understands this perhaps as no other member of Congress does (having spent a few years in a media career himself), and he has recently been forcefully speaking his mind -- both on the concept of net neutrality and also on the dangers of media monopolies and the potential harm from allowing companies like Verizon, Comcast, and Google to set the net's rules on their own. Or, as Franken put it in his speech: "...we don't just have a competition problem. We have a First Amendment problem."

Franken's speech was directed at the two members of the Federal Communications Commission who were in the room. So, not only for standing up for the concept of net neutrality, but for doing so to exactly the people who need to hear it, this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is Senator Al Franken.

When contacted, Franken's office (before even being informed they'd won an award this week, as I didn't want to let the cat out of the proverbial bag) generously provided the following quote from Senator Franken:

"Today, a small Minnesota bookstore's website loads just as fast as Amazon.com. That's because right now Internet service providers don't discriminate between different kinds of content online. So if you have something to say or a product to sell, there is currently no limit to how influential or successful you can be. This is why I believe that net neutrality, and the preservation of a free and open Internet, is the First Amendment issue of our time."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Well done, Senator Franken.

[Congratulate Senator Al Franken on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

Picking a winner of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week was easy. Generally, this is not a good thing.

Specifically, what was said by ironically-named Representative Bobby Bright from the state of Alabama earned him the MDDOTW award, hands down. Congressman Bright this week stepped over a clear line, in an especially egregious fashion. There's a basic rule all politicians should follow all the time. This rule is: "Don't ever -- ever -- speak of the future death of another politician." It doesn't matter what the context. Pundits can speculate idly on "Well, if politician X were hit by a bus tomorrow," and average citizens may also indulge in this sort of thing, but once you take up the mantle of being a politician, you cannot ever say anything like this ever again -- at least not in public. This applies across the board -- whether the context is a sober hypothetical situation, making a joke, or taunting an opponent in a campaign. It even applies (perhaps even more so) to other politician's families. It applies to politicians of any party, too -- it's a universal rule.

What made Bright's comments so odious is that he wasn't talking about a Republican. Instead, this Blue Dog Democrat was making light of the Speaker of the House of his own party, Nancy Pelosi. Now, a Democrat trying to get re-elected in Alabama is certainly allowed a lot of slack in terms of distancing himself from Pelosi, who (I am just guessing here) may not be very popular among his constituents. But "distancing" is one thing. Speculating about her death, for a cheap laugh, is quite another.

The initial report was that Bright "joked that Pelosi might lose her own election, decide not to run for the speaker's job or otherwise not be available." Intrepid WashingtonPost.com blogger Greg Sargent called up the reporter in question, who provided the actual quote: "heck, she might even get sick and die."

No further commentary is necessary on Bright's disgraceful words. By unanimous consent, Bobby Bright is far and away the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

Have you no shame, Congressman Bright?

[Contact Representative Bobby Bright on his House contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]

 

Volume 136 (8/27/10)

I ran an informal and completely unscientific poll this week (if you haven't seen it, feel free to post a comment, as I'm still tallying results), on the subject of: "Why is the Left disappointed with Obama?" Read the article to see what brought this on, and the (too long) list of answers to that question.

The top two answers, almost by an order of magnitude, were the following:

Far too much emphasis on bipartisanship; far too little emphasis on standing up for core Democratic values and using his bully pulpit to give voice to the Democratic narrative.

...and....

Being too quick to bargain away the strongest and best part of legislation.

This should serve as a blueprint for both the White House and the Democrats actually out there fighting for their political lives on the campaign trail. The Democratic base is upset because nobody seems to be using a megaphone to broadcast the Democratic narrative (which Robert Reich also wrote a good article about this week, I should mention); and nobody seems to be standing up for strong legislation in the face of watered-down do-nothing incrementalism.

Remember this when girding those loins, Democrats. Stand up for something, tell the people what you're standing up for, and then stand firm and defend it against those who would callously trade it away for votes that are never going to materialize.

This week, we're providing some armor for the fight. Democrats need to get a jump on the battle in Congress, and start laying the narrative groundwork for the Bush tax cuts battle. Luckily, the public is on their side, as recent polls show around six out of ten Americans think raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy is a dandy idea right about now. So start to make your case!

 

   Billionaires' tax cuts

Robert Reich, in his tax cut article, makes this point crystal clear, so I'm just going to swipe his bullet point here. Democrats should start talking about the tax cuts using the following two terms: "millionaires' tax cuts," or, even better, "tax cuts for billionaires."

[E]xtending the Bush tax cut to the richest Americans would give them a $36 billion bonus next year. ($31 billion of this would go to billionaire households.) And that $36 billion would be added to the budget deficit.

 

   Tax cuts for billionaires, or deficit reduction?

Which brings us straight to the second point.

"I'd like to ask my Republican colleague what his highest priority is: tax cuts for billionaires, or deficit reduction? Because you simply cannot have both at the same time. Just one year of Bush billionaire tax cuts would cost the Treasury $36 billion. Is it more important to send $31 billion of that to people who are already billionaires, or is it more important to do something about the deficit? Because, once again, you cannot do both at once. So which is it?"

 

   Bank of China credit card

And let's not forget where that money's coming from.

"So you're arguing to put almost a trillion dollars over ten years onto the 'Bank of China credit card' so that rich folks don't have to pay the same tax rates they used to pay under Bill Clinton? Really? Is it really worth loading our children with a trillion extra dollars in debt, so that the ultra-rich need never sacrifice, when America is in the midst of two wars that Republicans refused to pay for and an economic crisis the last Republican president left us in? Because I don't think it's worth borrowing all that money from China to give billionaires a break on their taxes."

 

   Clinton actually raised taxes

Don't let Republicans get away with their historical revisionism, either.

"Let's see, Bush lowered taxes, and we had a stagnant economic decade. But Clinton raised taxes at the beginning of his term -- and the Republican Party freaked out with all of the same dire warnings you're hearing today. 'It'll kill jobs, it'll kill the economy,' and all the rest of it. Go back to the early 1990s, and read what they were saying then. But, as I recall, the rest of the 1990s turned out pretty good, and Clinton left with a balanced budget. So I guess raising taxes doesn't destroy the economy after all, does it?"

 

   It's not "either/or"

Another piece of Republican nonsense still occasionally rears its ugly head. Democrats need to reflexively stomp on this one, because it is so laughable.

"I'm sorry, but my Republican friend is talking about the Bush tax cuts as if we're going to have a vote on the entire package -- an 'either/or' vote, in other words. That's just simply false -- that's not the way Congress works. We can, quite easily, keep the president's promise not to raise income taxes on anyone making $250,000 a year, and still change the tax brackets for those above that line. That's what the committees are for, to examine things piece by piece. So I really wish the Republicans would talk some sense on this issue, instead of saying that all the Bush tax cuts have to be either extended or ended as a single package, because they don't. That's just not how it works, period."

 

   Existing tax law

Republicans have come up with yet another nonsensical term in this debate which really needs nothing more than a loud laugh in their face whenever they attempt to use it. They've been saying something about how the Bush tax cuts are "existing tax law" and therefore doing anything is "making new tax law" as if it made some sort of difference -- even if it weren't false. Yet another gremlin for Democrats to stomp on.

"I'm sorry, did you say 'existing tax law' to describe making a new tax law to extend the Bush tax cuts? That's funny. No, really, that's amusing. Existing tax law -- tax law that Republicans passed through reconciliation, I hasted to point out -- is that all the Bush tax cuts fully expire next year. That is 'existing tax law,' and it is the law which Republicans passed, and never made permanent even when they had control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. You know why they never did make the tax cuts permanent? Because they were afraid of exploding the deficit. Now they're no longer afraid of adding a trillion dollars to our deficit, apparently. But let's be clear on this -- existing tax law which Republicans passed states that the Bush tax cuts become a pumpkin next year. That is why Democrats are going to fight to make new tax law extending middle class tax cuts, but at the same time refuse to hand more billions over to billionaires who aren't exactly hurting right now."

 

   Business has lots of money right now

The Republican go-to argument in any tax-cuts-for-billionaires debate is nothing more than warmed-over "trickle down" from the Reagan days. It says that if we just allow rich folks not to pay so much in taxes, then rich folks will invest the money in business, which will create jobs. Except for an inconvenient truth.

"You say you want tax cuts for billionaires so they'll invest and provide money to businesses to hire people. But that ignores the fact that American business is right now sitting on a huge pile of money -- in the trillions of dollars -- and they still aren't hiring. Hiring is done when demand goes up, whether politicians want to admit it or not. And the best way to spur demand is to give all workers a break on payroll taxes -- up to the first $20,000 of income payroll-tax-free. This puts the money into consumers' pockets, and gives everyone a break on their tax load. This will spur the economy much more than boosting billionaires' bottom lines. And when people start spending this money, demand goes up and businesses will start to hire again to handle the increase."

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:

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Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground

 

Another general is working to undercut the president's prerogatives on Afghanistan. This time, it's U.S. Marine Corps General James Conway working to frame the July 2011 deadline to start troop withdrawals as something that can be essentially ignored by him and his subordinates. President Obama must ask swiftly and strongly to rein in this new runaway general and get our troops home.

Conway spent an afternoon at the Pentagon on Tuesday undermining the president's deadline for significant withdrawals starting in July 2011. He started by relaying the admonition of a lance corporal: "Sir, don't let our country go wobbly on us now." Then, he let it be known in no uncertain terms that none of "his" Marines would participate in a July 2011 drawdown:

"Finally, though I certainly believe some American units somewhere in Afghanistan will turn over responsibility to Afghan security forces in 2011, I do not think they will be Marines. ...I honestly think it will be few years before conditions on the ground are such that turnover will be possible for us."

The caveat given by Presidents Bush and Obama ad nauseum--"conditions on the ground"--has been widened so far that it threatens to totally neutralize the drawdown portion of the president's Afghanistan strategy. The entire general officer corps seems to be comfortable openly deriding or dismissing the idea of a significant drawdown in July 2011. President Obama has no one to blame but himself that this keeps happening.

By allowing a string of major administration officials, from General Petraeus to Secretaries Clinton and Gates, to equivocate about July 2011 on Sunday morning talk shows immediately after the West Point speech, Obama, intentionally or not, telegraphed a lack of enthusiasm for the deadline to every stakeholder paying attention. In so doing, he let a narrative develop that the reason he included a deadline was because he had to speak to "multiple audiences." Among military officials and Washington, D.C. power-holders, a interpretation took hold that the president was placating restless voters with assurances that we shouldn't take too seriously.

Now, generals under his command openly deride the deadline as a political move. Conway is only able to show such open contempt for a meaningful deadline because Obama sat back and watched while this process took place. The general went so far as to say that the deadline is giving the insurgents "sustenance," but that's okay, because they'll be shocked and demoralized when he and "his" Marines don't go anywhere.

Just who is running the show here?

President Obama needs to come out right now and reiterate that there will be a drawdown that begins no later than July 2011 and that it will involve significant numbers of U.S. troops. In fact, he should go further: He should set a hard end-date for the combat mission that occurs no later than December 2011.

Right now, there are at least three generals--Petraeus, Conway, and Caldwell--working hard to frame the president's July 2011 drawdown as something they can essentially ignore when it comes to extending a brutal, costly war that's not making us safer. If the president doesn't take the situation in hand and counter the Pentagon's in-your-face campaign to neuter the drawdown component of the time-limited escalation plan, he risks getting outmaneuvered in the press just like he did when General McChrystal played hardball on last year's strategy review.

Worse, he'll have demonstrated to the generals that they, not he, run the show in Afghanistan. If the president doesn't want this war to devour his legacy and corrode civilian control of the military further, he needs to act swiftly and decisively to get his generals back in line and get our troops home.

If you're with the almost 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Afghanistan, join the tens of thousands of others fighting to end it at Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook.