Bill Kristol on The Huffington Post

Julie Farby: Liz Cheney's Solution To Bow-Gate: Choose Dick In 2012!

2009-11-23T11:00:18Z

Dick Cheney's golden-haired spawn Liz Cheney is full of great
ideas. Like how if Obama really wanted to do the honorable thing, he'd
take his farce of a peace prize
and shove it right down the stupid Nobel committee members' throats. Or
send the mother of a fallen American soldier to accept the prize just
to remind those Nobel ingrates who exactly keeps them safe and snug
every night.

Unlike NObama, Liz also knows the best way to keep America safe
isn't through silly diplomacy or cultivating strong international
allies or anything pussy like that. I mean who are we, France or
something??

Like anyone's gonna take us seriously if we stop randomly invading
sovereign nations, start adhering to international law, and suddenly
stop pissing the whole world off just because it's fun.

Perhaps that's fine for "community organizers" in Chicago, but out in the real world, Barry's way just ain't gonna cut it. The O-man is in for a big surprise!

Take his recent trip to Asia for instance, where Comrade Barry made
the unforgivable mistake of greeting Japanese Emperor Akihito with the
traditional custom of bowing respectfully while shaking hands as a sign
of honor. Gasp!

How dare he? Start with a bow and the next thing you know Obama's
thanking them for Pearl Harbor and apologizing for that whole A-bomb
thing. I mean, the past is the past people!

Liz, for one, would never endanger America by treating an important
world leader and key global ally with respect and deference. And you
know who else wouldn't? Dick, that's who!

In fact, when Dick met the emperor back in 2007, not only did
Akihito not get a bow, the little man's lucky he didn't get a swift
kick in the balls to go with it. Let alone dither around with any of this "bowgate" crap.

"You could also look at the comparison and think, Cheney 2012," Liz chimed in during a roundtable discussion on Fox News Sunday.

Which made the rest of the panelists hoot with delight!

Barely managing to contain his hysterical laughter at such sheer
brilliance (and wit!), Bill Kristol quipped that, "Sarah Palin would
never bow to the emperor of Japan. She wouldn't even curtsy to him."

Don't be silly, Bill. She doesn't even know what a curtsy is.
Besides everyone knows Japan isn't a real country. It's just a faraway
fantasy island they used for that giant gorilla movie. Donkey Kong or
whatever.

Bob Cesca: Famous for Being Famous: The Sarah Palin Show Is On the Air

2009-11-18T17:58:50Z

I'm not sure what I have more contempt for. Sarah Palin's pathological lying or the people who can say with a straight face that Sarah Palin is qualified for anything other than a reality show contestant or the the Edie McClurg role in a remake of Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

What's even more alarming is the constant reporting from the cable news people this week: Sarah Palin is famous! Wow! But no one is digging into exactly why she's famous.

And that's the heart of the matter here. She's nothing more than an overrated celebudoof. She's the equivalent of an ex-reality show star that's somehow tricked enough people into believing that a convention speech and a series of embarrassing winks qualifies her to be a national political leader -- even president -- when, in fact, she's only really qualified to be famous. She's famous for being famous.

I have yet to hear a pitch from her supporters that elevates her in any substantive way to a level beyond that of the other Republicans in the current field of potential candidates. She's famous. And. Hmm. She's famous. That's about it. Oh, and she can repeat hard-right ideology without swallowing her own tongue in the process.

It's very possible that Bill Kristol and whoever Palin's ghost-handlers happen to be are cynical enough to believe that Sarah Palin could ride a celebreality rocket ship into the White House.

They've taken a hard look at the present climate of celebrity gossip and reality television ratings and they've identified an opening in America's obvious infatuation with chewing-gum superficiality -- and they're ready to exploit it for political power. Where Ronald Reagan was a celebrity in the old-Hollywood framework, Palin is a celebrity in the talentless, Balloon Boy, reality show, Prejean, new-Hollywood framework.

Suffice to say, this strategy further devalues what it means to be considered "presidential." It chips away at all of the basic but necessary prerequisites for the gig, replacing them with nothing but the base notion of fame. Not even popularity as it applies to fame, but merely the quality of being known.

Consequently, this can only contribute to a future when we choose a president based solely upon his or her ability to achieve the most real life drama, irrespective of any sort of inherent talent for leadership, natural intelligence or any notable skills whatsoever.

A reality show president.

So it's not difficult to imagine a blurring of the line between the quality of being famous and the quality of being presidential -- an eventual time when these traits become totally interchangeable. It's already happened in Hollywood with the rise of unscripted reality and game show personalities slowly replacing actors and filmmakers, and the calculation coming from the Palin camp seems to be that this programming formula can be applied to presidential politics.

Here's how it works: Take a not unattractive rube with a screwy family and mix in some drama. Add cameras and POOF! We have a candidate/show.

Is there any other formula to explain the obsession with, say, Jon & Kate? Or the Balloon Boy family? The Sarah Palin Show is nothing more than a confessional interview with poorly articulated politics tossed into the mix.

Speaking of the confessional interview, she hasn't proved herself to be especially articulate, bright or well-informed. Even after a year on the air. Which is alarming because being on television is supposed to be her strong suit. See, Palin's most glaring inadequacy isn't necessarily her lack of work experience. There's just nothing else concrete enough to compensate for her weak resume. It's not like her supporters can say, "Yeah, well, she's only been a small town mayor, and she resigned before her first term as governor was over. But damn! She's crazy smart when it comes to economy and foreign relations -- you know, because of her education and travels abroad." There's not even that. She comes up empty on everything.

And what makes this utter lack of substance far worse is that she can't even articulate her very simplistic thoughts without using staccato sentence fragments strung together as if she's reciting abbreviated notes illegibly scrawled on the backs of barroom napkins, and selected on-the-fly using a dart board.

Even on the question about the role of the vice president last year, she failed to properly articulate an answer, and, instead babbled incoherently about something to do with "position flexible."

Fact: When a job applicant at any level is given repeated chances to explain the job for which he or she is applying, and, even after several tries, still can't nail the answer, that person is unqualified for that job. But her inability to explain the vice presidency (even after several tries) underscored that it's not just about her lack of experience or leadership or general knowledge, it's that she was (and remains) simply incapable of grasping the basics. In this case: grade school level civics, and a description of the job for which she was nominated.

Again, what does that leave us with? A reality show novelty. A tabloid hero. Not a world leader.

Somewhere along the line, her advisers recognized her ineptitude and twisted the "going rogue" description into a positive way to explain it all. Rewinding again to the vice presidential debate last year, she made it very clear that she didn't intend to directly answer the questions. She just plowed forward and answered the questions that she prepared for, even if they were totally unrelated to the topic. Why? She explained that she was, in essence, going rogue.

Early in the debate she said, "And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also."

But it was clearly just an excuse for the fact that she's a policy nincompoop and could only recite from the script she memorized. This rogue mantra lives on with the theme of her book, along with her ongoing refusal to confront the growing syllabus of unexplained inconsistencies on even the most basic of details -- like whether or not she held a family vote before she accepted Senator McCain's kneejerk offer. Even on this very simple question, she refuses to correct the record.

In Sarah Palin's defense, there's no doubt that she's relatable to a certain demographic of Americans who are unconcerned with advanced education and the subtleties of policy. But if you dig down into the reasons why Palin people like her, it's obvious that they're simply "fans" who can, perhaps, relate to Palin's ordinary background and easy-to-repeat ideology.

Ultimately, there's a certain element of the Republican Party that's excited to have yet another stab at the Bush 43 idea, and, to that end, they've certainly found their empty vessel. But this time, they've tapped into an American obsession that goes beyond cowboy swagger and plainspoken southern twangery. They've identified and are cultivating one of our most addictive opiates: a genuine made-for-TV spectacle. And it's dangerous for America. Idiocracy dangerous.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!

PS. On the healthcare front, check out these nightmarish videos from real people who have been devoured by the status quo.

Rove, Cheney, Gingrich and Kristol Fail To Rally 9/11 Trial Foes

2009-11-18T12:29:18Z

On Monday, Karl Rove sent a tweet to his 92,000 followers: "Don't sit out: 9:30am 11/18 Dirksen Senate Bldg Rm G-50 to oppose Atty Gen's testimony on trying terrorists on U.S. soil." On Tuesday, Newt Gingrich dispatched a similar message to his 1.2 million Twitter devotees: "Join @keepamericasafe at 9:30am Wed at Dirksen Senate Bldg to protest Holder's testimony on bringing terrorists to US." Keep America Safe is Elizabeth Cheney's new hawkish group--neocon godfather Bill Kristol is one of its three board members--and on Tuesday it tweeted followers:

Lesley Stern: How to Live on $0 a Day: Assuaging Rage, One Prick at a Time

2009-11-12T10:53:50Z

If you've lived your life believing that hard work, ethics, observing the golden rule and fiscal responsibility will be rewarded, you're probably a little ticked off right now. Okay, you're probably roiling with rage (especially if you stopped taking your anti-depressants because your insurance company canceled you for being depressed).

A lot of that anger comes from a sense of betrayal and helplessness at seeing people who broke every law of decency living high on the hog while the rest of us are hard pressed to afford a swine flu shot (if we could find one).

The logical recourse is to seek justice. You've appealed to their non-existent sense of decency. You've written your elected officials, attorney general, chamber of commerce and better business bureau. Clearly, you can't afford a lawyer. Crank calls and Internet heckling bring no relief. And while sending offenders cat poop in the mail is satisfying, the postage is costly--there are no bulk media rates for mass poop mailings (which REALLY pisses you off). And try as you might, you can't seem to get your friends interested in storming Wall Street or the Capitol because pitchforks are too expensive.

If you're quivering with rage just thinking about it, it's time to take action. I've discovered a way to calm my ire and achieve a semblance of inner peace without costly aids like therapists, tranquilizers, a masseuse or weapons.

Whether your anger is directed at a TARP recipient harassing you for an overdue $69, a vile CEO, pundit or politician, someone who screwed you over, the neighbor's dog, or the waiter who lied when he told you the chef's special chicken was all white meat, my methods ensure that all bad behavior is met with swift and decisive punishment (finally!). I can't tell you how much better you'll feel. Here's how it works:

Frank Rich On Scozzafava Fallout: The GOP Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

2009-10-31T19:47:03Z

Barack Obama's most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week's election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war.

Naomi Wolf: "Friending" Binyam Mohamed

2009-10-29T16:52:38Z

For four years now, I have been following the fates of the hundreds of men who have been -- and the 200 plus men who still are -- being held at Guantánamo Bay, and, the record is now clear, most of whom have been tortured. But until this week I had never actually heard such a single man's actual voice.

When I went to the prison in June of this year, we journalists were brought to view the prisoners from afar -- exactly as if they were dangerous animals in a cage. They called to us, anguishedly, in a voice that still haunts me. "Can I talk to them?" I asked. Many of them speak English. No; no, no, was the answer. No one is permitted to talk to them. Prisoners in the US have many rights to speak, even from prison; but silencing the Guantánamo detainees has been a key to maintaining a working injustice, as well as a key to manipulating US popular opinion. Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney have started a new organization to spin the torture at Guantánamo and elsewhere: 'Keep America Safe.' (Or: 'Keep Daddy Out of Prison.') But if the perpetrators are to continue to spin America, the prisoners' voices have to continue to be silenced.

Even those who empathize with the detainees tend to speak 'for' them -- casting them as faceless, voiceless victims, just as the opposite 'side' casts them as faceless, voiceless monsters.

Recently I have been in touch with Binyam Mohamed, who is the UK resident who was released from Guantánamo in February -- after seven years' captivity without charges -- and who last Friday won a major victory when a British court ruled that the US and the UK could not continue to conceal from the public seven paragraphs in documents that describe the horrific torture of Mr Mohamed in 'black sites' and at Guantánamo. He is also suing Boeing for its part in rendering him to 'black sites.'

The UK government is appealing the ruling, so we still can't know what happened to him; but officials have told reporters that one action that the paragraphs describe is the cutting of genitals with a razor; waterboarding, this official said dryly, is well down on the list of atrocities Mr. Mohamed suffered.

President Obama has sought to keep these seven paragraphs under seal. Hillary Clinton has also. Joe Lieberman drafted an amendment to a bill to conceal photographs relating to this abuse.

Why are our leaders still trying so desperately to cover up what Mr. Mohamed's record will show?

I have written here on the Huffington Post before now about the sexual nature of many forms of now fully documented cases of US abuse and torture at Guantánamo and Baghram (as well as the better-known cases at Abu Ghraib.) Physicians for Human Rights have fully confirmed that prisoners were often violated anally with objects. To these forms of sexual torture, Binyam Mohamed's seven paragraphs and the photographic evidence Lieberman wishes a law to suppress would add, it appears, the cutting of a man's genitals with a razor.

As Mr Mohamed told the UK Daily Mail, "they cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was totally naked.... One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction.

"I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming.... They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours.... They cut all over my private parts."

This form of torture, Mr. Mohamed told David Cole of the Daily Mail, was repeated many times over the next 15 months.

Mr Mohamed said further that when he was later taken into direct US custody, a female official was sent in daily to photograph his intimate wounds, saying that the photos were "for Washington." These photos are almost certainly among the images that President Obama, Lieberman and Mrs Clinton are seeking to suppress. Such an image -- as you and every man in America, if not around the world, would agree -- would not be survivable, politically.

His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the UK rights organization Reprieve, was threatened with six months in prison by the US -- Obama's team -- for writing a letter to President Obama describing what had happened to his client.

In a masterpiece of perversity, the US classified the torture used against the prisoners -- so that in America, if US lawyers tell their clients' own stories -- IF THEY TELL THEIR OWN STORIES they are illegally releasing 'classified information.' It is like someone saying to a woman: I raped you, and now I will classify how I raped you, so if you tell anyone you were raped -- I can send you to prison.

(Right now, thinking about how the truth got out in Soviet societies before 1989, I am asking lawyers at rights organizations if I can legally tell these stories through allegory, as in Animal Farm. "Once there was an island...")

The Obama administration shocked those of us working on human rights issues by threatening the UK's intelligence service with refusing to cooperate in intelligence-sharing about terrorist threats if the UK did not continue to conceal these seven paragraphs. President Obama was willing to put the thirty million innocent UK citizens at grave risk in order to keep secret what happened to Mr Mohamed. Hillary Clinton, to her shame, sought to do so again as the trial
unfolded. I believe Mrs Clinton's female supporters in particular should think about the fact that America's self-styled premiere role model for feminism has lent her voice and influence to the cover-up of torture that took this form of a sexual assault.

I reached out to to Mr. Mohamed because he had known Mohamed al-Hanashi, the thirty-one-year-old Yemenite detainee, the prisoners' representative -- the man who knew all the crimes committed against his fellows -- who was declared an "apparent suicide" in Guantánamo in June. (He had been called into a meeting with the admiral and the head of the Guard Force three days before the inauguration -- never returned to his cell -- and was taken straight from that meeting to the psych ward, where it is impossible to kill yourself, until his death). Mr. Mohamed had said Mr. al Hanashi was an upbeat person with no mental problems and would never have considered suicide.

Lt. Commander Brook DeWalt, spokesman for Guantánamo, has confirmed now after four months of my asking the status of the investigation into Mr al-Hanashi's death that it is now a Naval criminal investigation -- meaning that he is no longer considered a suicide but a victim of a murder or a negligent homicide. Obama's Gitmo is still refusing to release to me any more information -- despite this secretive internal investigation being a violation of Geneva Conventions' strictures on what you must do -- hold an independent transparent investigation -- when there is a death in custody.

In the course of seeking Mr. Mohamed out, I received his email -- and had that odd sense of unreality to see this little piece of normality; not monster, not 'victim' alone; a guy with an email address.

We corresponded; and I read an Op-ed piece he is writing, which makes the case that America's actions in torturing people, and denying them due process, did more to inflate al Qaida's numbers than any other factor; and that America can regain hearts and minds around the world by prosecuting rather than concealing war crimes. He also points out that the US lumped all kinds of groups that were critical of the US but not wishing to take up any violent action against us under the "logo" of Al Qaida -- and, he said, terrified the Muslim world by saying "you are either with us or against us" -- meaning, you could not be anywhere in the middle.

This idea bears a great deal more elucidation. I was also shocked when he referred to US military as 'our kidnappers' -- but that is of course the literal truth from his perspective. Uncomfortable as it made me, it was good to be shocked by his voice; Jefferson knew that the power of free speech is that it forces you to face another human being's version of truth. (Jefferson's beliefs have been having a tough time; even as we emailed, though, I was aware that that very action could have gotten me too into legal trouble during the Bush era.)

I spoke to Mr. Mohamed by phone, a brief, unremarkable conversation about
logistics; but in speaking directly, human to human, for the first time, I had an existential shock. It is one thing when these names are abstract; another when you hear a voice, just like the voices of anyone you know, but with layers and layers of unspeakable sorrow resonating underneath and you think: this is one man here on the other end of the line who was tortured in my name, in our names.

I asked if I could interview him about his own story and I felt the closing-down: he explained that he is unable to tell me what was done to him, since his case is ongoing, and, I presumed, because of the issues of classification. This silencing still seemed to me as painful - painful on both sides -- as other kinds of pain.

The right to speak is a powerful one. The US offered to release Mr. Mohamed from Guantánamo years ago -- in exchange for his silence about what happened to him -- and he refused the deal. He chose to stay in rather than leave under a charge of silence.

President Obama wants to try some remaining prisoners in real trials; to release some; and he wants a third category, the devil's own category -- of people who will be held forever because of `problems with evidence.' What are the problems with evidence? The problems are political: it will be problematic that what was done to these men will emerge into light and will be so horrific -- say, like the seven paragraphs about the cutting of a prisoner's genitals -- that a continued cover-up and legal impunity will be unsustainable.

The US's argument has been that if the paragraphs and photos of this particular torture emerge, it will inflame Muslim anger against us. It is no secret in the Muslim world, though, what happened to Mr. Mohamed and others situated like him. And as for here in the West? Well, that argument doesn't hold water any more: I just told a million people what is in the seven paragraphs, and in at least some of the photos.

Next excuse?

Mr Mohamed let me know he had 'friended' me on Facebook. I 'friended' him back. I may agree with him or not as we and other former detainees and I communicate directly, and as I seek to bring their voices through my websites and interviews to American ears. But, in agreement or not, there are voices I -- we -- need to hear. In a democracy, you supposed to be allowed to do that.

Ironically, European media has given a lot of space to the former prisoners' direct voices and stories; but we almost never hear them in our media bubble in the US. It is we Americans who are being kept, intellectually, in a soundproof, padded room. Only our hearing these voices can begin our long arduous path to our own sense of regained self-respect -- hearing, listening, facing, grieving, and owning the fact that this, this, is what we have done.

Kristol: GOP's Future "Center Of Gravity" Lies With Beck, Limbaugh

2009-10-27T11:13:34Z

In his Washington Post column Tuesday, Bill Kristol predicted that the "center of gravity" in the GOP going into 2012 will not be its leaders in Congress but rather "media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh" (as well as Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich).

Obviously, many Republicans and conservatives -- and lots of moderates and independents -- will be grateful to Mitch McConnell if he can stop ObamaCare, and to Jon Kyl if he can induce the president to embrace a stronger foreign policy. But it's unlikely that the minority party in Congress will be the source of bold new conservative leadership over the next three years. Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill.

The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.

Meanwhile, Beck and Palin had turned on Gingrich for supporting a moderate Republican in a New York House race.

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Tom Andrews: The Company You Keep

2009-10-23T14:18:39Z

As the saying goes, you can tell a lot about people by the company that they keep.

Yesterday's announcement by nationally acclaimed musicians that they were signing onto our National Campaign to Close Guantanamo Bay generated a harsh response from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's new right-wing organization "Keep America Safe".

The neo-con group that wants to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open for business and defends the torture policies of the Bush-Cheney administration called the musician's support for the closure of Gitmo and an end to torture "pathetic".

Today, a former senior military interrogator who led the team that found Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (the former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq) hit back in a statement released by VoteVets.org - an organization of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Matthew Alexander literally wrote the book on interrogating terrorist suspects - How to Break a Terrorist. He has conducted more than 300 interrogations himself and supervised 1,000 more. Here is what he had to say today:

"Guantanamo Bay remains an effective recruiting tool for Al Qaida to this day. The longer it remains open, the longer we'll fail to do all we can to protect ourselves from terrorist attacks. It is the epitome of everything we could have done wrong in the fight against Islamic extremism -- unlawful detentions without charge and torture and abuse. We can only defeat ourselves in this battle, and Guantanamo Bay was, and remains, a big step in that direction."

Alexander explained the key to his success in his role as an interrogator in Iraq in a piece published last summer in the Huffington Post: "The point that is most absent is that our greatest success in this conflict was achieved without torture or abuse."

Jay Bagwell, a VoteVets.org member who served in Afghanistan was also quoted in their news release: "Veterans Stand With Musicians on Call to Close Guantanamo". In a video recording, Bagwell said: "Torture makes our troops less safe. Torture creates terrorists."

Alexander, Bagwell and VoteVets.org understand through personal experience why closing Gitmo is so important not only to our nation's moral standing in the world, but to the men and women who we put into harm's way.

I'm proud to be in their company, grateful for their service to our nation and thrilled to have them - and the musicians who they stood up for today - on board this campaign.

Join them and sign the Open Letter to Congress. You'll be in great company.

Cross-posted at www.closegitmonow.org

Rob Diamond: Afghanistan: The Re-"Right" of History ... or ... Let's Not Forget Who Got Us Here

2009-10-22T17:04:14Z

The debate over the strategy and size of America's military and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan/Pakistan is in full swing. As we approach a major presidential decision on the future of the military force structure in Afghanistan, the only consensus there seems to be among serious experts on this region is that few "good" options exist for the president -- only a choice between unclear paths to success.

But one thing is obvious in this debate. There is now a blatant and breathtaking attempt underway by conservatives, neoconservatives and the political right in general to obscure the failed history of America's last eight years in Afghanistan -- the one that they are personally responsible for.

Whether it is the public comments of former Vice President Dick Cheney (the most thoroughly discredited high-ranking public official in my lifetime), his now prime-time, neoconservative, neostarlet daughter Liz Cheney (aka, Sarah Palin with credentials), or any other utterly discredited far-right "thinker" like Bill Kristol or Frank Gaffney (a man who I must remind you said that he was "delighted" that 4,000+ American servicemen and women had died in Iraq -- see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdEtTZk3yCc at the 4:00 minute mark ... ), a harpies' chorus of discredited Bushies have emerged from their bunkers to launch a full frontal assault on reason and history with the goal of pinning blame for "failure" in Afghanistan on President Obama.

Combine this attempt at revisionist history with one part "let's scare the American people," add in a healthy dose of both "Obama is weak" and "torture works" and -- voila -- there you have the new Republican national security strategy.

What is so astonishing about this is not just who is delivering this message -- the very people responsible for our failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- but that it is not even a strategy to begin with. Just like their current lack of anything approaching a domestic policy, Republicans and conservatives have made a conscious decision not to find ways to fix their foreign policy blunders of the past. They have no interest in trying to help this country and its new President (its only been 9 months, remember?) stabilize, regroup and win the current overseas disasters that they left us.

Rather, Cheney, his daughter and the entire Conservative band of amateur revisionist historians have arrived at a blatant political calculation that the best strategy is to rewrite history -- to try and hide the fact that since 2001 they grossly mismanaged not one but two wars; that they tortured prisoners and think we still should; that they disregarded the Constitution, civil liberties and the rule of law; that they lied to the American people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; that they failed in regards to Iran and North Korea; that practically the entire free world despised our foreign policy; and, worst of all, to obscure their failure to adequately plan for their war of choice in Iraq -- the direct cause of why we find ourselves today losing the war of necessity in Afghanistan.

President Obama is about to make the most important national security decision of his young Presidency. He is weighing a choice that will undoubtedly cost American servicemen and women their lives, as well as cost this nation untold sums of money. He should -- and is -- making this decision slowly, carefully and with as much debate about the right course of action as is humanly possible. He is attempting to put in place a strategy for Afghanistan for the first time since the Russian invasion ended in the 1980s. Those are not my words, they are Secretary of Defense Bob Gates'.

We've seen the rush to war before -- in Iraq in 2003. That cost me 4,351 (and counting) of my fellow brothers and sisters-in-arms, all for a false threat the Bush Administration sold to a fearful country. I will not forget that. We, as informed citizens, must not allow those responsible for the past eight years of failure to re-enter a debate they no longer deserve to be a part of. I hold them accountable for the mess we are in today -- that is the real history.

Lorelei Kelly: Commander in Chief: Yes He Is

2009-10-22T09:48:30Z

It has long been lamented that national security no longer stops at the water's edge. This expression derives from a Cold War consensus that pitted democratic capitalism against communism. It bound elected leaders and most of the American public together in a common cause. It disappeared in 1991, and has yet to be replaced by a compelling new framework. Simplicity is no easy task in a world of blurred boundaries and rapid communication. Lacking clarity, "security" has become vulnerable to fear profiteers who depend on an "us versus them" mindset. A glance through recent attacks against President Obama for exercising his commander-in-chief prerogative bears proof: Today, national security doesn't even stop at the gutter's edge.

It's like a bad dream "Groundhog Day" repeat: the Cheneys, Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove. They have been all over the place lately, criticizing President Obama's decision making style, even starting a new organization to carry the cudgel, (get the critical scoop on it at National Security Network). They are suggesting that he doesn't respect the military, is too deferential, lacks resolve.

The biggest jaw-bender, however, is that he's taking too much time to review our policy in Afghanistan. WHAT?!! This from the very same people who scorned in-depth analysis in 2003--during the run up to the Iraq war. In fact, back then they ignored military advice. I remember the last briefing I went to in 2003, just before the US invasion. It was with Army strategists--who laid out 140 tasks that were obligations for any occupying nation. Ignored. Like the rest of the credible information that was based on experience and reflection. I don't think I'm alone in believing that a roomful of toddlers with a typewriter could have written better memos in 2003 than this same gang of hectoring neoconservatives.

Today, America has a commander-in-chief who shows respect for the military by understanding the accurate division of labor in security policy. He and his team (and an increasing number of voices on Capitol Hill) know that, in today's world, security problems are beyond the purview of the military acting alone. Afghanistan is emblematic of this new situation. The worst thing the neocons can do to the military is to ignore the message being sent about the dramatic shifts on the ground--and the full complement of resources needed. Or by framing our challenge and our major commitment to that country in military terms alone. Conservatives need to stop picking a bogus fight between General McChrystal and the Administration over troop levels. Troops are just one of many possible contributions. And any troops sent must fit into a comprehensive strategy.

Important context: Keep in mind that--lacking capacity in our other agencies--the Pentagon has by default become the institutional memory of American post Cold War foreign policy. General McChrystal is part of a generation of officers whose understanding of security is both broad and deep. If his comments in London touched a nerve, it is a sign of a much bigger American civics issue about how to inform and educate ourselves in today's world, and who we are equipping to be the messengers of change. The bright-lines of military participation in public policy discussions have blurred because it is the institution disproportionately burdened with this task today. It happens that the Army and Marines have some pretty compelling knowledge and lessons. Evening out this responsibility is a vital longterm task for all Americans.

It still kills me that so many neoconservatives claim to value the military, yet demonstrate so few military values. Like: looking after the general welfare, shared risk, sacrifice for common goals and longterm planning. And here's the kicker: public service. Here are some other reminders of how progressive the military can be:

International human rights law: U.S. military lawyers have been human rights champions for Guantánamo prisoners and for the Geneva Conventions.

International treaties: The U.S. Navy is one of the strongest advocates for the Law of the Sea.

Nuclear arms control: The military generally finds nuclear weapons unusable.

Conflict resolution: The Air Force has a prize-winning office of dispute resolution.

Renewable energy: The U.S. military is the largest renewable consumer in the country.

AIDS prevention: The Defense Department has an extensive program to help foreign militaries.

The American military's changing worldview has resulted in identity conflicts within the institution. This tension will likely continue until younger generations move into leadership and bring with them very different notions of national security. This should be encouraged as much as possible. It should also involve all of us.

The idea that power comes not from dominance, but from the ability to influence change, is a lesson learned from recent experience. Contrast the tea-drinking and negotiating experience of Afghanistan with the linear, engineering mindset of the Cold War--where a rigid worldview fit nicely with hardware-heavy solutions. Low-tech is our future. Afghanistan is the test. Finally, we have a President who hears what the military has been saying for nearly twenty years now: Security is about people.

Jim Wallis: A Nobel Prayer

2009-10-13T15:48:59Z

I got the first call at 6:30 a.m. from a reporter: "What's your reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize?" "What?" I answered, and then had the presence of mind to say, "Call me back when I'm awake." My surprise sounded much like Obama's, when he was awakened with the news a half hour earlier than I was. Given what my Friday was like, I didn't get a chance to do a post or interviews about it all. But over the weekend, in the midst of my usual baseball coaching and full-scale family activities, I did keep my eyes and ears open to the responses of other people. "WOW" is all I can say to the cavalcade of abuse heaped on the new president, whom they said so far had "accomplished nothing!"

Martin Luther King Jr. won this award, along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and an array of courageous heroes for peace, justice, and human rights. Most suffered greatly, all sacrificed a great deal, and some were eventually killed for their witness to a different kind of world. The committee has sometimes slipped -- never giving the award to Gandhi, but once to Henry Kissinger. But the collection of people who have been honored with the world's most notable prize for peace is pretty impressive company to be in.

President Obama was actually appropriately humble in admitting in his statement that he didn't "deserve" to be in such company. Instead he said that he would accept the honor as "a call to action." May it be so, I say. To state that the award was "premature," as many did, is not an unreasonable opinion; thus far, the very early stages of this new presidency have been characterized, quite reasonably, by more expressions of commitment and intent than by the results of those words.

But those words, intents, and commitments have already struck a very hopeful tone that the rest of the world has noticed -- and that was the real reason for the award. It is a quite welcome and quite different tone than the world has seen and heard from the U.S. for some time. And the award says very clearly that most of the world is glad for the change -- even if it's mostly just a change in words so far.

It is the offer to engage rather than the threat to dominate, the desire to work together rather than to dictate terms, a multinational approach rather than a go it alone foreign policy, a whole new approach to the Muslim world rather than fulfillment of the prophecy of a "clash of civilizations," a willingness to challenge both sides in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and apparently even a deep personal commitment to move us toward "a world without nuclear weapons." Even if those are all just words so far, they are very hopeful and very welcome words to most of the world.

But ah -- not to Obama's critics! You see, it's not that they just think the award is premature, because he has only offered words and not many deeds; it is that they are totally against the intent and commitments of Obama's words. That's the issue. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Lynne Cheney, Christopher Hitchens, and all the other apologists of the old order that I heard raging against Obama this weekend, want the opposite of all the things the new president says he is for. They want the opposite of all the new tone and directions cited above, and the re-assertion of a world dominated by the military might of one superpower, which they unabashedly claim is the only way to "peace."

The vitriol against Obama's peace prize and "those Norwegians" who gave it to him is much deeper than the president's lack of achievements thus far; it is based on a fundamental clash of worldviews. But the bad news for the old order advocates is that more and more Americans are rejecting their view of the world, embracing new global realities and possibilities, and are glad that much of the world is now viewing their country in a more positive light.

The best description I read of what the Nobel Peace Prize might mean for Obama and the U.S. was embedded in a long article in The New York Times which called it "a prayer." Indeed, may the granting of this prize not just be an award to a young and yet unaccomplished president; may it also be a prayer for the U.S. itself, to lead in a new way and to seek a fundamentally different approach to the many global decisions that this new president will now have to make.

Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com.

Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

Rick Horowitz: The Rio Games -- And Those GOP Games

2009-10-07T17:47:08Z

MILWAUKEE -- I'm fine with Rio.

Really. A great city, by all accounts, in a rising star of a country that deserves to be better known and better loved. And that's even before you factor in some of the world's greatest music, and the beaches, and Carnaval, and ...

So absolutely -- give the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro. To Brazil. To a part of the planet that's never hosted the Olympics. I'm fine with it, even if it means that our neighbor just down the road, Chicago, takes a gold-medal hit to the ego.

I'm happy for Rio. But it never would have occurred to me to gloat over Chicago's loss. As a fellow American, I mean.

Being a gracious competitor is one thing. Being a Republican apparatchik is something else again.

You'd have thought, from the paroxysms of glee that greeted the news in certain GOP quarters, that Chicago's first-round elimination by the IOC was the greatest thing that had happened to the country in decades. To this country, I mean.

How do you explain it? Was the delighted-in-defeat crowd overjoyed at avoiding the inevitable cost overruns? The crowds? The security concerns? The traffic jams? The construction dust?

Or was it enough that Barack Obama had tried, and Barack Obama had failed?

Tried to bring the Olympics to his adopted home town, that is. To Chicago, one of America's own great cities.

He made the effort. It wasn't sufficient.

"LET'S PARTY!!!"

These folks need to find some hobbies. Some better hobbies. Spending their days reveling in presidential humiliations (real or imagined) is no way for grown-up boys and girls to get normal people to take them seriously. On the other hand, it's a perfect way to convince normal people, whatever they might think about the current president and his policies, that these folks who keep flailing at him, who set their "north" by wherever Barack Obama sets his "south," are still not ready for prime time.

And it's not just the Olympics, of course.

Most famously, it's been health-care reform, and one of the GOP's leading lights caught saying out loud what his colleagues had only been whispering: Defeat reform because it'll "break" Obama. It'll be his "Waterloo."

Not that health-care reform was a bad idea, necessarily. Or even if they did think it was a bad idea, it still wasn't the best reason to take it down. The best reason to take it down was to stick it to Obama.

I swear -- if Barack Obama were a construction engineer, these guys would be rooting for a bridge collapse.

If Barack Obama were a race-car driver, these guys would be cheering for the oil slick.

If Obama were a librarian, they'd be rooting for illiteracy.

If Obama were a farmer, they'd be praying for drought.

If Obama were an immunologist, they'd be rooting for the plague.

If Obama were a pilot, they'd be hoping for wind shear.

If Obama were a priest, they'd be singing the praises of atheism.

If Obama owned a cruise ship, they'd be wishing for a tsunami.

If Obama were a power grid, they'd be hoping for a blackout.

If Obama were hamburger, they'd be cheering for e coli.

If --

Congratulations, Rio. Condolences, Chicago.

Delighted-in-Defeaters? Get a life.

# # #

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.

Paul Abrams: New Rule Suggestion for Bill Maher: Afghan War Supporters Must Walk the Walk to Be Heard

2009-10-07T03:25:36Z

Last time, we were not only lied into war, but those who did the cheerleading and lying neither volunteered themselves nor did any of their children.

So, this time, before Michelle Malkin, or Eric Cantor, or Liz Cheney, or Rich Lowry, get a nanosecond on any other network but Fox to plump for escalating the Afghan War, let them demonstrate their belief in its importance, and rightness, by first volunteering to fight it. And, if (and let's be honest, there is no chance they would risk their own lives, so it is really "when") they have not demonstrated their own commitment, shut them out, they have no credibility even to give 'balance' to opposing views. (Liz and Rich are just over 40, but I am sure the Commander-in-Chief could get the military to make exceptions for them; and Michelle and Eric are just the right age to volunteer).

Are you listening Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, the networks news hours, 60 minutes, CNN and the MSNBC cable shows? Do not let these people have the microphone until they demonstrate their commitment to their cause by their actions.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, whose sons have volunteered, have earned the right to be heard on this matter.

But not Bill Kristol if his sons have not volunteered, just as Bill sat out the Vietnam war vigorously promoting it in his late teens and early twenties; and nor Mitt Romney if some of his 5 sons have not enlisted--during the Vietnam War, Mitt himself avoided service by going on a mission for the Mormon Church in the dangerous jungles of Paris, and returned to the US, according to his own account, 'waiting to be called and disappointed he was not', somehow never realizing for 6 years that he could, like Lyndon Johnson's sons-in-law, volunteer. Dagnabbit--he had to spend his time hunting varmints. And, do not forget his comment in the '07 primaries that his sons were being more patriotic by driving around Iowa in a Winnebago to help not make Mitt President than they would have been by volunteering. Similarly, for Bill O'Reilly, and Dick Armey, and Jeb Bush, and Dick Cheney himself.

Because it is just too easy to sound macho while other people and other peoples' children die and are maimed for your vanity. During the disastrous Bush-Cheney Administration, not a single member of either the Bush or Cheney families--who were all of military age--volunteered. If they had had to, would Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Feith-Pearle-Wolfowitz have lied us into war, and then not provided the troops with body armor? If the media (or the Democrats!) had called them on it, how much support for that war would have melted as they stumbled through disingenuous 'explanations"/

While we are at it, it seems as if there are many patriots showing up at rallies these days, including those of the President, with guns. Most of them, one would presume from their comments on other policy matters, would consider the President a traitor if he does not send all the troops McChrystal wants. Perhaps at subsequent events, the Army and Marines can send some recruiters and give these people a chance to use those guns where they could really help? [Bill Maher--why not add that to the 'New Rule" suggestion?].

Let me say that I would like to hear the arguments directly, both for and against, the McChrystal position presented soberly, and with the alternatives completely analyzed and discussed. But, we should all be damned if we allow a group of cowards to cheerlead other peoples' children to their deaths or permanent injuries again without first putting themselves, or their close families, in the thick of battle.

Once was too much.

Ed Schultz Slams Bill Kristol, GOP For Cheering Chicago's Defeat: "Flat-Out Anti-American" (VIDEO)

2009-10-05T18:59:02Z

Conservatives have been reveling in the defeat of Chicago's Olympic bid this weekend, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol was right there with them, crowing about Obama's failure to secure the bid on Fox News Sunday. For this, he made MSNBC's Ed Schult's segment "Psycho Talk." Schultz blasted Kristol and the rest of the GOP: "The GOP's joy in the failure of Chicago's Olympic bid is flat-out anti-American."

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Bill Kristol Revels In Olympic Failure: Obama Acted Like A Bully (VIDEO)

2009-10-04T10:02:21Z

Conservatives have let forth a torrent of glee over President Obama's failure to secure the Olympic games for Chicago despite a personal pitch in Copenhagen.

But on Sunday the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol took the revelry to a different and odder place -- arguing that Obama's natural disposition should have had him rooting for Brazil to get the bid, before claiming that the president had acted like an imperialist "bully" in making his Copenhagen jaunt.

"There are so many ironies in this," Kristol said, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "By Barack Obama's view of the world, he should have been routing for Brazil to get the Olympics."

"'South America has never gotten them, Brazil has never gotten them. It is a rising power, it would help Brazil. We don't need the Olympics, we have had them a million times. Our economy doesn't need the boost of the Olympics,'" Kristol added, mimicking the president. "And then [Obama] in a sort of George W. Bush like way goes and tries to bully the International Olympic Committee... 'Come walk with us. I'm here for America.'"

"Could you imagine if Bush had done this and we hadn't gotten it?" He went on. "'Typical Bush heavy handedness, cowboy unilateralist, hegemonic imperialist action.' Obama falls into that trap and they run for it. So I must say, you couldn't help by being amused by it."

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Derrick Crowe: Gen. McChrystal's Assessment Ignores COIN Doctrine, Reality

2009-09-23T14:14:30Z

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

General McChrystal's "new strategy" has been leaked to press in what looks to me like a continued effort to box in the President on troop increases. Here's the core of the document:

The New Strategy: Focus on the Population

...To accomplish the mission and defeat the insurgency we also require a properly resourced strategy built on four main pillars:

Improve effectiveness through greater partnering with ANSF. We will increase the size and accelerate the growth of the ANSF, with a radically improved partnership at every level, to improve effectiveness and prepare them to take the lead in security operations.

Prioritize responsive and accountable governance. We must assist in improving governance at all levels through both formal and traditional mechanisms.

Gain the initiative. Our first imperative, in a series of operational stages, is to gain the initiative and reverse the insurgency's momentum.

Focus resources. We will prioritize available resources to those critical areas where vulnerable populations are most threatened.

The first two pillars seem to have been written while someone was smoking hashish. Let's take them one at a time. First:

1. Improve effectiveness through greater partnering with ANSF. We will increase the size and accelerate the growth of the ANSF, with a radically improved partnership at every level, to improve effectiveness and prepare them to take the lead in security operations.

While this pillar may look like it's following the guidance of the COIN manual, when we consider the Afghans' inability to sustain such a force, it clearly ignores many of the manual's warnings.Here's a sample:

Make only commitments that can be fulfilled in the foreseeable future. (p. 172) Establishing activities that the HN government is unable to sustain may be counterproductive. (p. 170)...[Host nation] security forces should...[b]e sustainable by the host nation after U.S. and multinational forces depart. (p. 208)

As has been pointed out many times, even the current ANSF force levels cannot be sustained by the Afghan economy. From a January 2009 CRS report (p. 71):

Senior Afghan and international officials estimate that it will cost approximately $3.5 billion per year to increase ANSF force structure, and then $2.2 billion per year to sustain it. ...GIRoA, which contributed $320 million to the ANSF in 2008, is not a realistic source of ANSF funding in the near term.

In addition to the warnings about sustainability, the COIN manual also warns against trying to recreate the ANSF in our own image:

Avoid mirror-imaging (trying to make the host-nation forces look like the U.S. military). That solution fits few cultures or situations. (p. 168)

Once again, the counterinsurgency we have in Afghanistan throws out the doctrine's manual.

If we left Afghanistan tomorrow, lock stock and barrel...the ANA and ANP would completely evaporate as functioning institutions in much of the country, probably in a matter of days if not hours. They are still very much artificial constructs that we've imposed on the country, and wholly dependent on our technology for their survival so long as they continue to use the tactics we've taught them....

We've taught them to fight the way we do. They're not as good at it as we are, of course, in part because of issues like illiteracy. We've suppressed any way of fighting we cannot support and participate in fully, because to do so could, frankly, end up with more dead Afghan soldiers due to friendly fire and deconfliction problems than dead enemy. And so here we are. What wouldn't seem to be a profitable strategy right now, in that light, is accelerating the expansion of the ANA even further, which some are advocating.

Ann Jones wrote a great article detailing our mirror-imaging over at TomDispatch:

Their American trainers spoke of "upper body strength deficiency" and prescribed pushups because their [ANSF] trainees buckle under the backpacks filled with 50 pounds of equipment and ammo they are expected to carry. All this material must seem absurd to men whose fathers and brothers, wearing only the old cotton shirts and baggy pants of everyday life and carrying battered Russian Kalashnikov rifles, defeated the Red Army two decades ago. American trainers marvel that, freed from heavy equipment and uniforms, Afghan soldiers can run through the mountains all day -- as the Taliban guerrillas in fact do with great effect -- but the U.S. military is determined to train them for another style of war.

In other words, we're training them to be like us, COIN manual guidelines be damned.

Conformity to the COIN manual should not be conflated with good policy, but when a commander justifies the investment of blood and resources because of the supposed absolute necessity of implementing a given strategy, his failure to conform to the guidelines of that strategy should be a warning that we wander in the wilderness. We're being asked to invest heavily for the foreseeable future in a program that will not deliver a self-sufficient, effective ANSF. Why should we be expected to do so when the official rationale--counterinsurgency doctrine--warns us against taking this path?

Second:

2. Prioritize responsive and accountable governance. We must assist in improving governance at all levels through both formal and traditional mechanisms.

On which planet is the good general living? I've never seen a person whose allegedly been in charge of assassination squads play Pollyanna. His own document does a pretty good job illustrating how unrealistic his second pillar is:

The second threat, of a very different kind, is the crisis of popular confidence that springs from the weakness of GIRoA institutions, the unpunished abuse of power by corrupt officials and power-brokers, a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement and a longstanding lack of economic opportunity.

...There are no clear lines separating insurgent groups, criminal networds (including the narcotics networks), and corrupt GIRoA officials. Malign actors within GIRoA support insurgent groups directly, support criminal networks that are linked to insurgents, and support corruption that helps feed the insurgency.

These GoIRA qualities are bad enough, but the above doesn't even touch on the potentially explosive political dynamic set up by Karzai's massive and transparent attempt to steal the election, nor the vows of Abdullah followers to take to the streets "with Kalashnikovs" (you know, the one's they've apparently been stockpiling for a while now) should Karzai declare victory. Afghanistan ranks 176th out of 180 countries on the Corruption Perception Index. How exactly does McChrystal, as someone outside of the Afghan government and without authority to excise corrupt cadres from the GoIRA, expect to adequately take this off the table as a strategic factor within the 12-month window he's established in which major progress must be made?

I could go on and on about the internal contradictions of this document (for example, how does Stan the Man plan to "decentralize" and "Improve Unity of Effort and Command?"), but the simple fact is that you don't have to go past pillars 1 and 2 to realize that this isn't a credible strategy. It's a wish list of desired pre-existing conditions and a proposed action plan whose success is predicated on those desired pre-existing conditions. That makes it even more distasteful that the military would attempt to use this junk "strategy" to bully the president into sending more troops. For example:

But Obama's deliberative pace -- he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal's report so far -- is a source of growing consternation within the military. "Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let's have a discussion," one Pentagon official said. "Will you read it and tell us what you think?" Within the military, this official said, "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration."

Add to that anonymous posturing, the leak of a conveniently redacted and declassified version of McChrystal's memo and Mullen's remarks to Congress, and you've got the rough outline of an information op being directed at the American people with the purpose of forcing the President's hand.

If the president was looking for a signal that the situation had progressed to a stage in which the military could not offer a credible plan to deal with it, this is it.

Jeanne Devon ("AKMuckraker"): Foiled eBay Bidder Challenges Palin to $100,000 'On the Record' Dinner for Veterans' Charities

2009-09-22T04:38:03Z

Think of it as a second chance. Or a second course in the "Dinner with Sarah Palin" eBay auction that you thought was already history.

Here's a quick recap for those of you who haven't been playing along at home.

Sarah Palin decides to auction off dinner with herself with proceeds going to benefit the veterans' charity Ride2Recovery. Nice.

Bidding ensues. The end of the auction nears, and one of the bidders is revealed as former Wall Street Executive Ken Morris (more on that later), and another is outed as author Joe McGinniss who is currently working on a book about Sarah Palin. As soon as his identity is revealed, he is no longer allowed to bid. He is cut off at $60,101.01, although he wanted to bid higher. No more bids allowed from him. Not so nice.

The winner of the auction is one Ms. Cathy Maples, an Alabaman, owner of a defense contracting company, self-described conservative, and big Sarah Palin fan.

Despite Ms. Maples claim on FOX & Friends that she was willing to raise her bid so that Palin "wouldn't have to go through that" (meaning dinner with McGinniss), it's likely that neither he, nor Morris would have passed the final test on the way to the dinner table, even if they had been the winning bidder.

The auction rules state in no uncertain terms that:

Governor Palin reserves the right to refuse dinner with a winning bidder if, in her sole discretion, the winning bidder is not a suitable bidder based on her subjective standards of suitability, professionalism, background and other factors. In the event the high bidder is rejected for this reason, the high bidder's bid will be refunded, if paid, and the next highest bidder shall be notified, and thereafter, until a suitable match is determined.

Palin had no intention of sitting down and breaking bread with anyone who disagreed with her on anything. The whole idea of this rankled Morris, who had hoped to engage in genuine substantive conversation with the ex-governor. There are those who would say he was already being optimistic in that regard. But be that as it may, Morris is prepared to make an offer; an offer he hopes the governor can't refuse. Here's his proposal.

*******************************

Dinner Part Two?

The "Dinner With Sarah Palin" eBay auction came and went with Ms. Cathy Maples, a grandmother who happens to be a military contractor, winning with a bid of $63,500. Good for her. That I participated is a good thing, even though I didn't win. As there were only seven bidders, each of us played a role in advancing the final tally for the benefit of Ride2Recovery.

However, I remain concerned over issues I raised when earlier explaining my participation:

There exists an emotional divide in this country that I've not experienced since I attended the University of California near the end of the Vietnam War. While leaving scars that thickened the hearts of many from that era, the ending of the war allowed for a healing to begin. Painful, but now mostly a distant memory.

Today's rancor, however, troubles me more profoundly. Why? Maybe it's because I don't see a catalyst -- like the end to a tragic war -- that will magically lead us to end this political divide. This period has more the odor of the Civil Rights debate that ripped apart the South during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; a rift that has never been bridged.

How, I'll ask Ms. Palin, can we work together ("we" meaning not just her and me, but all people on both sides of the political fence) to begin to fix this? I'll ask her a few questions that might seem harsh, but aren't intended to offend--after all, we must be honest, no? Do you regret saying several hundred times that our president "palled around with terrorists?" Do you really believe that providing health insurance to all Americans is socialism or fascism or Nazism, or that there are truly 'death panels' in these proposals? I'll likely feel compelled to suggest that she doesn't, in her heart of hearts, actually believe any of these things (if she does, then this will give her a chance to educate and win me over). In any event, doesn't she think we should all tone down the rhetoric? Angry mobs and gun-toting advocates can't be in anyone's best interests.

As the auction never was designed to provide intellectual meat as its main course, I'd have either been turned down under the rules of engagement or disappointed in the discourse. However, 'what-if' notions continue to nag me. What if it were possible to have meaningful dialogue with this woman who leads her party? What if intelligent minds that happen to disagree could meet over dinner and explore political ideology?

In the great American spirit of never say die, here's my challenge: I will donate $100,000 to veterans' charities for a second dinner with Sarah Palin and four guests, this one on-the-record and taped so as to minimize misrepresentations. In the name of fair play, my list of invitees will include a subset of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Thom Hartmann, Oprah Winfrey, James Carville, Randi Rhodes, Arianna Huffington, Frank Rich, Mudflats' Jeanne Devon, Jane Hamsher and Shannyn Moore. On her side, Sarah Palin may invite guests as well (how about Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck?). The only additional conditions are that the dinner/event last the entire four hours and questions asked are answered and discussed civilly. No filibustering, no third party prompts, just face-to-face honesty. Hostility by any invitee will be cause for removal. No discussion of children, Vogue, Katie Couric, The Enquirer, or Levi Johnston permitted.

This could become a win/win for everyone: Sarah Palin gains political chops and has a launching pad for her ideas while dispelling suggestions that she fixed the first auction to avoid debate; progressives and conservatives finally gain an in-depth understanding of her intellect; and veterans' charities benefit from some much-needed support..

As for me, I get to be an observer to one of the greatest meetings of the minds the twenty-first century has yet to assemble. Tres cool.

~Ken Morris

Ken Morris, a former Wall Street Executive turned novelist (financial thrillers Man in the Middle and The Deadly Trade), founded Morgan Stanley's International Equity Department in the mid-1980's. As a senior capital markets executive, he traveled the world and managed operations in New York, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney. His third novel, Evil Shall Break, is currently being shopped to New York publishers. Ken's offer goes out to Ms. Palin sincerely and in the hopes that dialogue might begin to replace rancor and name-calling.

David Fiderer: David Brooks' Lies on Health Care Reform: An Incomplete List

2009-09-12T10:06:19Z

David Brooks is very
slick. His lies and deceptions are embedded into parenthetical asides or
subordinate clauses, and frequently couched in the jargon of the social sciences. His
affect on television is neither doctrinaire nor mean-spirited, like that of his
former colleagues, Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. Brooks’ dishonesty is more subtle and insidious.

A lot of people buy in
to Brooks’ pseudo-intellectual shtick for making grand pronouncements that presume
to define reality. In the ultimate tribute to Washington’s groupthink, George
Stephanopoulos invited Brooks on to his show to present a video clip of Katie Couric
asking Barack Obama to respond to a Brooks column that could have been dictated
by Roger Ailes: “The [Democratic] party is led by insular liberals from big
cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates.
They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist
cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.”

Before he attacked Obama as a liberal elitist, Brooks
touted
Sarah Palin as the embodiment of reform. Brooks designated the Alaska
governor as, “the
rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as [John
McCain]
does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing
philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not
pushed
that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with
liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party. Instead, she
seems to
get up in the morning to root out corruption.” Only a fool would
believe that
Brooks had scrutinized Palin’s record; he was simply parroting the same
crap as
Bill Kristol.

For a couple of months now, Brooks has been pushing two
fraudulent claims lifted out straight out of the Republican playbook:

Obama's proposals on health care reform do nothing to cut costs; and

He wants to impose punitive taxation on the middle class.

His latest New York Times column encapsulates his disinformation
campaign. True to form, Brooks opened on a positive note. “On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the
finest speech of his presidency,” he wrote, and began his deceptions a few
paragraphs later:

First, Obama rested the credibility of his presidency on what you might call the Dime
Standard. He was flexible about many things, but not this: “I will not sign a
plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period.”

This sound bite kills
the House health care bill. That bill would add $220 billion (that’s 2.2
trillion dimes) to the deficit over the first 10 years and another $1 trillion
(10 trillion dimes) to the deficit over the next 10 years.

Brooks turned the President’s rhetorical device into a bogus
financial analysis. No one can measure the
financial impact of new federal legislation within one dime, or within $1
billion, over the span of one year, much less one decade. Of the $39 trillion spent
by the federal government over the next decade, per C.B.O. estimates, the purported $220 billion cost
equals less than half of one percent of that amount, a rounding error. Brooks keeps insinuating that the 10-year forecast can be
tallied with the precision of a balanced checkbook.

[For some context, consider what the Bush White House budgeted
for the cost of keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in years 2010 and later.
The C.B.O. revealed the exact dollar amount to be zero. Of course, didn’t stop Brooks’
guy, presidential candidate John McCain, from proposing that we double down on
the Bush tax cuts.]

There are a number of ways to tweak the House bill to reduce the
$220 billion cost, but Brooks, like most Republican shills, seeks to preempt an
honest give-and-take discussion. He writes:

There
is no way to get from the House bill to deficit neutrality. The
president’s speech guarantees that the more moderate Senate Finance Committee
bill will be the basis for the
negotiations to come.

No, Brooks is pulling out the stops to preclude a reasoned consideration of the public option.

To back up his points, Brooks makes a pretty audacious lie
– in the subordinate clause - about C.B.O. estimates. He writes:

Since the Congressional Budget Office is the
universally accepted arbiter in such matters, the Democrats have to produce a
bill that the C.B.O. says is deficit-neutral, now and forever.

Brooks knows that the opposite is true. The C.B.O. is not
the universally accepted arbiter, because its forecasting methodology on cost
savings benefits has been shown to be highly arbitrary. The C.B.O. contends
that cost savings from Obama’s proposals, which are hard to estimate, must be assumed to equal
zero.

Paul Krugman explained this point directly to Brooks as
they sat across the table with Stephanopolous. If you assume that the actual
costs savings in the first year are slightly less than $20 billion - below the cost
of two months of the Iraq/Afghanistan occupations - then the current House bill is deficit-neutral.
(The 10 years add to up $220 billion because of inflation.) You can argue whether
the potential cost savings of Obama’s proposals total $220 billion over the
next decade. But no one can
honestly assert, like Brooks does, that the C.B.O. approach is the only
legitimate method for estimating the net impact on the budget, and no one can
honestly say that the C.B.O. methodology is manifestly more precise.

Krugman’s explanation did not stop Brooks from doubling
down on his lies or on smearing Obama’s veracity. Here’s his little riff on The
NewsHour:

The other thing is, [Obama]
just tells a lot of whoppers now. Now, believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah
Palin are saying some things that are extremely off the charts untrue about the
plan, but I just wrote down some of the things Obama said today which are
whoppers.

He said everyone can keep their
health care plan. Well, the CBO doesn't say that. Six million people are going
to lose their plan. Preventive care saves money. That's not true. It's going to
cost $90 billion a year. That's not true. It's probably going to cost twice as
much when it's fully implemented. Government will be out of health care
decisions.

He tells one thing after
another, making it seem so easy. Well, believe me: This is not easy. It's going
to take some sacrifices and some really painful cuts for people to get this
system under control.

In other words, Brooks is a lot
like the congressman who, when he yells out, “You lie!” is actually lying.

Let’s go through Brooks’ lies
about what the C.B.O. actually said.

First: “He said everyone
can keep their health care plan. Well, the CBO doesn't say that. Six million
people are going to lose their plan.”

Obama said that the proposal
would compel no one - no individual, no employer, no employee - to change
his insurance coverage arrangements. The C.B.O. never suggested otherwise. Instead,
it estimated there would be a rational response to a “significant feature of the insurance exchanges [which] is that
they would include a public plan that largely pays Medicare-based rates for
medical goods and services. CBO estimates that the premiums for that plan would
generally be lower than the premiums of the private plans against which it
would be competing.”

As a result, the C.B.O. estimates that about three million
people, including large numbers of part-time workers who would be
eligible
for subsidies in the exchanges, would choose to
leave the plan offered by employers. In addition, the C.B.O. estimates
that
employers who currently offer coverage to about three million employees
may
elect to stop offering coverage. “Firms that would choose not
to offer coverage as a result of the proposal would tend to be smaller
employers and those that predominantly employ lower-wage workers.” In
other words, those who can least afford to pay for private insurance
will very likely have a better alternative.

Second: "Preventive care
saves money. That's not true."

The C.B.O. said something else
entirely. It said that the scorekeeping rules prohibit it from measuring cost
savings in Medicaid and Medicare until Congress passes specific legislation
with designating specific appropriations for such cost saving measures.

The C.B.O. also
expressed skepticism about the cost benefits of preventative medical care, but
it relied heavily on a study
that has been slammed for its flawed sampling and methodology. The
study's authors claimed that, "opportunities for efficient investment
in health care programs are
roughly equal for prevention and treatment.” But, as other experts
have noted, “The flaw in this argument is that what the authors
classified as
preventive services included not only recommended practices but also
interventions that no major guideline recommends." Whereas a broad
array of economic studies, "consistently report that evidence-based
clinical preventive services offer high economic value."

Third: “It's going to cost $90
billion a year. That's not true. It's probably going to cost twice as much when
it's fully implemented. Government will be out of health care decisions. He
tells one thing after another, making it seem so easy.”

I have no idea what Brooks is
referring to here, though I know the effect he was going for. He wants viewers
to come away with a general impression, that Obama and proponents of health
care reform are less than honest, and not much better than the Republicans who
lie about death panels.

It’s a favorite stunt of
Brooks, setting up a specious equivalency to absolve Republicans of blame. He
opened his column on Obama’s liberal elitism with a comparison to the Republicans’
right-wing insularity. Here he is on a different NewsHour, making the same
bogus claims that Obama’s plan does nothing about costs, and also claiming that
the pull-the-plug-on-granny stuff is no less mendacious than the criticism of
the neocons who scammed us into the Iraq war.

BROOKS: There's a lot of
misinformation out there...that they're going to cut off Granny and all that
stuff, which is mystifying to me. I mean, there's a real -- I mean, my concern is, which is backed up by the CBO
and everything else, that we need health care reform. This does nothing to reduce costs. That is not the argument they're
making, maybe because it's not an emotional hot-button argument, "They're
going to kill your granny." So there's a ton of misinformation going out
there…Let's not pretend this just started. I mean, every time we have a major
issue, this happens. I mean, just go back to the Iraq war. There were people
claiming there was the Project for the New American Century and Richard Perle
was part of a big neocon conspiracy. There's ugliness that goes on. There's
ugliness that went on in those rallies. And...

JUDY WOODRUFF: You're saying
it's the same kind of thing?

BROOKS: I'm saying -- I think every time, if you look
through American history, every time there's a major issue -- and this a major
issue -- you get people who are totally over the line and spreading
misinformation. And that doesn't justify it -- believe me -- but we shouldn't
pretend it just started from one group.

Brooks never stops lying about the origins of the Iraq war.
Frequently, as he did above, he injects these falsehoods as a digression
from the topic at hand. Here are few other examples, from an earlier NewsHour:

"Larry Wilkerson himself said that everything that was in Colin
Powell's speech, he believed, the French believed, the Germans
believed, the British believed. These were things that were believed."

In fact, the French and the Germans rejected everything
in Colin Powell's speech, and three weeks afterward wrote that "no
evidence [not inconculsive evidence or fragmentary evidence, but no evidence] has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field."

"Are they guilty of manipulating intelligence on WMD? That, I think,
is the thing they are least guilty of. .. the Robb report, which showed
there was no political pressure; there was a Senate intelligence
report; there was a Butler report. There were all of these reports.
None of them found manipulation of intelligence."

Actually, all of those investigations were circumscribed to avoid
looking at the political pressure brought to bear. The bottom line is
that after the inspectors revealed there was no evidence of WMD, the
flawed U.S. intelligence no longer remained as a valid excuse. Yet Bush
ignored the evidence and invaded anyway.

But getting back to Brooks' latest Times column, where he continues to imputes the Republican agenda onto Congress and the President:

Fourth, the president
introduced the public option to its own exclusive Death Panel. As Max Baucus
has said, the public option cannot pass the Senate. On Wednesday, the president
praised it, then effectively buried it. White House officials no longer mask
their exasperation with the liberal obsession on this issue.

Fifth, the president
also buried the soak-the-rich approach. The House Ways and Means Committee came
up with a plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for health reform. That’s
dead, too. Health reform will be paid for by changes within the health care
system. The president underlined his resolve to cut $500 billion from Medicare
and Medicaid. This is a courageous move that moderates appreciate.

Brooks' "soak the rich" scam is a polite version of the teabagging
nonsense. A 5.4% surcharge on someone's second million in annual income
hardly brings tax burden of the rich back to the socialist days of the
Clinton adminsnitration. He's already misrepresented the tax proposals on yet another Sunday morning talk show. On The NewsHour he said that health care reform would trigger tax increases, "And
not only on the top 2 percent, further down."

John Neffinger: The 3 Lost Lessons of Healthcare History: Will Obama Re-Learn Them in Time?

2009-09-06T14:42:57Z

Lesson 1: The Center Does Not Hold Without the Left

Not long after Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal went down to defeat in the Senate, Bill ran into Bernie Sanders, Congress's only avowed socialist. Bernie approached him with a grave look on his face. "Mr. President, I am so sorry. I failed you on health care."

Clinton was puzzled. Sanders had supported his reforms. "What do you mean, Bernie?" said Clinton. "You were with me every step of the way!"

"Exactly," replied Sanders. "I should have been burning you in effigy on the steps of the Capitol. Then people would have understood how moderate your plan really was."

The policy now known as the "public option" began life as a middle-of-the-road compromise proposal between the right's preferred option - keeping all private health insurance - and the left's preferred option - switching from private insurers to a "single-payer" plan like Medicare, which would take the profit motive out of health coverage and save $300+ billion that private insurers spend on administrative costs every year. It is a market-based, "third way" approach rather than a government-imposed solution, and its main purpose would be to use competition to hold down costs in the health insurance industry as a whole.

Yet today the "public option" is seen as a dangerously liberal idea, so much so that self-styled "budget hawks" criticize it as a big-spending plan even though cost containment is its primary virtue. Why? Because in today's debate, it literally is the most liberal thing imaginable - there is nothing to the left of it. The more liberal, "single-payer" approach was seen as not politically feasible, so Obama did not bother to make sure it was on the table, and the few people trying to explain and promote it have been marginalized from the start. Like Sanders in 1994, liberals have embraced the moderate third-way "public option" approach. But liberals' support does not strengthen the moderate position, it weakens it. Think about it: if liberals all give up their own way for the moderate third way, then there are not three ways anymore. There are just two: the conservative way and the moderate way. The "third way" becomes the new liberal position, just shifted further to the right.

Obama has re-learned this lesson the hard way. The "public option" that was at the core of all three Democratic candidates' health plans is now on political life support, a free-market policy tarred as a government takeover.

Lesson 2: For the Right, Compromise is Death

On December 2nd, 1993, as Bill Clinton was gearing up to pass his healthcare reform proposal, Bill Kristol sent his fellow Republican leaders a memo. It read, in relevant part:

"... [T]he long-term political effects of a successful... health care bill will be even worse - much worse... It will revive the reputation of ... the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class..."

In short, Kristol urged his follow Republicans to oppose any health care reform, not because they thought the policy would not work, but because they knew it would work, and Americans would like it, and they would reward Democrats with their political loyalty the way Depression-era voters voted Democratic forever out of gratitude for the New Deal and Social Security. Healthcare reform became an existential battle for the Republicans: lose it, and they would be banished to the political wilderness for generation or more. At the time, Republicans were already in the wilderness, having just lost the White House and controlling neither house of Congress. But by following Kristol's recommendation, successfully demonizing and defeating healthcare reform, they staged a great political comeback and seized control of Congress in the 1994 elections.

If Kristol's advice was spot-on in 1993, it is even moreso today. Ronald Reagan is a distant memory, and George W. Bush has badly tarnished what was left of his legacy. Barack Obama was ushered into office as a historic and potentially transformative figure. If he delivers on sweeping health insurance reform, the Republican party could be utterly discredited. Do not look to Republicans to help pass a healthcare reform bill. It would be political suicide, and they know it.

Obama has re-learned this lesson the hard way too. His incredible patience with the Senate's dithering bipartisan "Gang of Six" has sapped the momentum not only of health reform, but of his Presidency as a whole: his approval numbers have steadily sunk as Americans have become increasingly frustrated and unnerved by what they see out of Washington. A few weeks ago, Republican Senators finally admitted in public what Kristol had recommended in private: that they have no intention of supporting the kind of moderate bi-partisan compromise they've supposedly spent the last few months trying to craft. But they only gave up the game because they think the damage has already been done.

Lesson 3: To Win the Middle, Go Left

In July 1964, Ronald Reagan stood before the Republican National Convention to discuss Democrats' "Medicare" proposal to provide guaranteed health insurance for the elderly. "Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?" Reagan asked. "Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business." He didn't mention any death panels, but Reagan and his fellow Republicans were every bit as adamant in their opposition to Medicare as conservatives are in their opposition to health insurance reform today.

A year later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson guided the original Medicare bill through the Congress despite all those Republican objections. But a curious thing happened as the bill neared passage. Once Congressional Republicans saw that Democrats were going to make Medicare a reality despite their scare tactics, many of them quietly switched their votes and supported the bill. In fact, more than 40% of Republican Senators and more than half of the Republicans in the House voted for the bill in the end, despite all the earlier Republican opposition.

If this inconsistency surprises you, go read Kristol's memo again: Republicans oppose health insurance reform not because they think it won't work, but because they know it will. And they are right: Medicare recipients report much higher satisfaction with their health care than privately insured Americans do, and independent studies find that they receive better care. Faced with a reform that is going to pass with or without them, and which they know their constituents will like, any Republican who might ever have to fight to get re-elected is going to support it, because they don't want to have to explain to their constituents why they voted against their favorite policy. That's how Medicare was passed as a bi-partisan bill: Democrats came together and presented it to Republicans as a done deal, and Republicans got smart and came around.

Today, the political situation is ideal for Democrats to use the same strategy again. The electorate has not only demanded change, it has given Obama Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress to make it happen. Obama has made his preference for a bi-partisan outcome very clear, and that's exactly what LBJ got.

But it is not clear whether Obama has learned this last lesson. Instead, he has seemed to seek bi-partisan compromise in the center, where Kristol's memo makes clear he will never find it.

The Choice: Pivot or Capitulate

So what do these history lessons suggest to Democrats today? First and foremost, Obama should do what LBJ did to pass Medicare in the first place and forge a Democratic bill that Republicans will be forced to support. His speech on Wednesday is the perfect occasion to pivot to this new strategy, starting by re-telling our story so far: Democrats have made every effort to accommodate Republican ideas, but Republicans have shown themselves to be opposed to any change in the system and willing to deliberately mislead and scare their fellow citizens to get their way. With that understood, Obama can explain that he has no choice but to work with Democrats alone to do the work he was sent to Washington to do. This would finally show strong leadership: Democrats would be overjoyed, and the independents who voted Obama into office would be greatly reassured to know that their guy was finally taking charge in Washington.

Obama should also act on Bernie Sanders' lesson, however belatedly. When Obama explains that it is time to forge a Democratic plan, he opens the door to consider the full range of Democratic proposals, including ones to the left of anything currently under discussion. For instance, Teddy Kennedy's recent passing offers a perfect opportunity to spotlight his Medicare-for-all approach, which would just replace all private insurers with a Medicare-like system - the "public option" without the option, basically. Democrats could also suggest consumers should be able to choose a government-run health plan with care providers on government salary, like at the Veterans' Administration health system (rather than a Medicare-style plan where government-run insurance pays private care providers). Both of these policies are significantly more liberal than a Medicare choice/"public option," and both have strong policy arguments behind them. By bringing these ideas into the public discussion, Obama would make the "public option" moderate and palatable again.

(Obama might also seize the opportunity to rechristen the "public option" with a less unappealing term. Recent polling found that using the word "choice" to describe the policy pushed its public approval numbers from 43% to 77%. Just calling it a "Public Choice" or a "Medicare Choice" or something more lively could do wonders for this effort.)

The happy ending is right there waiting for us, but it's not clear that that's where we are going to end up. The danger now is that Obama will not heed LBJ's lesson to pursue a Democratic plan. Instead, Obama may apply Bernie Sanders' lesson against himself, and drop the "public option" policy that has become tarred as an extreme liberal measure so he can portray the remainder of his reforms as a moderate, acceptable compromise and just pass those. The New York Times recently reported that the Obama Administration is heeding a list of six lessons from previous efforts to reform health care. Unfortunately, the three most crucial lessons (above) were left off the list. Instead, their lesson 6 counsels "Take what you can get" - in other words, "Drop the public option."

Dropping the "public option" may seem like the path of least resistance, but it's actually much riskier than just getting Democrats together to pass their own plan. Liberals who gave up Medicare-for-all for the compromise of just giving people a choice of a Medicare-like plan are in no mood to support a watered-down bill that leaves that out too, as that would leave private health insurers in place un-threatened, able to continue to raise costs at will. And as Kristol makes clear, when push comes to shove no Republican will support any bill they think will be effective enough to win any middle-class gratitude. If Obama tries to force a bill without the "public option," there is a real possibility that no bill will pass at all. That would be a political catastrophe for Obama, and leave his Presidency and his party looking impotent. Remember where we were left after President Clinton's reform effort went down, with the President of the United States reduced to asserting that he was still relevant?

We will not repeat the history of failed reforms if we just heed history's lessons. This administration is run by a lot of smart people and students of history. I still have hope. We will see on Wednesday night.

Conservatives Back Obama On Afghanistan

2009-09-04T13:17:49Z

Prominent conservative foreign policy thinkers and activists who backed the Iraq war are circulating a letter to President Obama supporting his engagement in Afghanistan against criticism from left and right, and urging him to stay the course.

Michael Wolff: Afghanistan Could Ruin Everything--Soon!

2009-09-02T13:24:17Z

No, really, what are they going to do about Afghanistan?

And how much time do they have left to do it?

I figure a month. Summer's over, the Afghanistan election is coming to its fraudulent conclusion, the military has apparently just issued its bleakest report yet (still secret, but it will begin to leak out), and, shortly, there will be the inevitable request for ever-more troops.

The formal debate got underway yesterday, starting with the conservatives. George Will made the obvious case for getting the hell out of there; Bill Kristol accused him of being a lily-livered traitor.

If the conservatives are divided over this war, it's going to be murder among the Democrats. That's the real timetable, or ticking bomb: When do the Democrats, heretofore necessarily patient with the White House, blow?

Continue reading on newser.com

Bennet Kelley: Your Town Hall Screamfest Handbook

2009-08-17T12:10:48Z

Thank you for your commitment to be part of the 2009 Town-Hall-ScreamFestpalooza. Who wouldn't want to scream at a party that hates America or which not only gave us the largest tax increase in history but opposed the largest tax cut in history? The party which nominated a foreigner for President, now want us to support a health system in which we pay more and more for less coverage, where bureaucrats make medical decisions for us and "death panels" decide when to pull the plug on granny -- not because it is good for America but because its maximizes their political power.

Before you scream "I want my country back" or "where's his birth certificate", you might want to know that I am talking about the Republican Party.

This is the party that openly admits that they hope the ship of state runs aground under President Obama, just as they once said that Bill Clinton was not their President. Apparently, they only love America when they are misleading it.

The Presidential election featured two candidates -- one born in a western state and the other in a foreign country. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, while John McCain was born in Panama (but within the Panama Canal Zone which was a territory of the U.S..) Democrats passed a resolution to quash any dispute over Senator McCain's citizenship, while Republicans have egged on the knuckleheads known as "birthers" to the point that nearly half of the party does not believe that Obama was born in the U.S.

If you think the Republicans are the party that is looking out for your wallet -- guess again. It is true that Ronald Reagan cut taxes upon coming into office in 1981, but he followed it by raising taxes six years in a row including signing the largest peacetime tax increase in 1982 -- which was substantially larger than Clinton's 1993 tax increase as a percentage of GDP. The Republicans also opposed President Obama's stimulus package which contained the largest tax cut in history, reducing taxes for 98.6 percent of taxpayers, because it increased taxes on the wealthiest a mere 3 percent (restoring Clinton-era tax rates).

Now they are using brazen lies to advocate a solution on health care that is equivalent to a 129% tax increase over eight years for a family of four at the median income level to benefit their supporters. Under the Republican do-nothing approach, what you pay for employer provided family health insurance will jump from $12,680 to $24,291 over eight years.

Even worse is the fact that every week we delay action 420 Americans die prematurely due to lack of adequate health insurance and nearly 12,000 Americans lose their homes to foreclosure due to medical causes. This is a far greater price than any American would pay under health care reform, but Republicans are silent on this because it benefits their donors.

They also want you to believe that they are fighting health reform because they don't want bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor. Hello -- does this sound vaguely familiar?: "Thank you for calling . . . all of our representatives are busy. If you are dying please press one, otherwise please leave a message and if you are lucky and behave we will call you back . . . someday."

Rather than offer a meaningful alternative to address these issues, the Republicans instead are resorting to distortion and distraction just as they did in opposing Social Security and Medicare. Sarah Palin and other Republicans are proving the Old Testament proverb that "the wise man looks ahead. The fool attempts to fool himself and won't face facts;" with ludicrous claims that the legislation will create "death panels" with bureaucrats playing god with the fate of senior citizens (distorting a provision drafted by Republican Senator Isakson) or that there is no health care crisis.

The real reason Republicans are opposing health care was articulated by William Kristol in 1993, when he gave the Clinton health plan a death sentence due to fear that it would revive Democrats image "as the generous protector of middle-class interests." Kristol may be right because what does it say to working Americans if President Obama can pass such a bill in his first year in office, when the Republicans never lifted a finger on this issue during the 20 years they held the White House?

The sad reality is that the current town-hall screamers are being embraced by Republicans not as champions of free speech, but rather as cannon fodder in their fight to block any bill. I suspect most of them do not understand that defeating health care reform would be a pyrrhic victory since ultimately they will pay substantially more for less coverage.

Finally, be sure to remind your Congressman that they need to follow the will of the people. In America the will of the people is expressed at the ballot box and not by shouting down other views or talk radio buffoons. The fact is that in the last two elections the people have spoken far louder than any of us can shout -- nearly 70 million Americans in 2008 alone -- for Barack Obama and health care reform. Those are the voices that Congress should listen to.

Matthew Filipowicz: Republicans Work To Sweep The Leg Of Health Care Reform (VIDEO)

2009-08-07T16:20:00Z

It's been reported that the rash of Republican operatives loudly interrupting town hall meetings is being organized and funded by right wing groups such as Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity. They have also, of course, received glowing coverage by the "reporters" on Fox News.

But, what hasn't been revealed, is that there are actual facilities where right wingers can go to practice and hone their yelling and disrupting skills. We have obtained footage from one such facility. Take a look.

Bill Kristol Admits Public Health Care Sometimes Better On 'Daily Show' (VIDEO)

2009-07-28T10:21:55Z

Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol returned to The Daily Show last night to have another one of his affable-yet-contentious tete-a-tetes with host Jon Stewart. On the one hand, it's pretty clear that the thought of sparring with Kristol sharpens Stewart's interviewing game. On the other hand, I've long suspected that Kristol willingly gives up a little ground to Stewart. Maybe he takes perverse pleasure in getting abused by the Daily Show's audience, or maybe beating up on the glass-jawed Fox News colleague Juan Williams on a weekly basis just gets ridiculously old. At any rate, last night's highlight was the way Stewart managed to steer Kristol into complimenting government-run health care.

STEWART: So you believe no public option, so even though that's good enough for the military, not good enough for the people of America.

KRISTOL: Well, the military has a different health system than the rest of Americans.

STEWART: It's a public system, no?

KRISTOL: Yeah, they don't have an option, they're all in military health care.

STEWART: Why don't we go with that?

KRISTOL: I don't know. Is military health care really what you -- first of all, it's expensive. I think they deserve it, the military--

STEWART: But the American public do not.

KRISTOL: No. The American public do not deserve the same quality health care as our soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve, and they need all kinds of things that the rest of us don't need.

STEWART: Well, no, they can have that level of care, but are you saying that the American public shouldn't have access to the same quality health care that we give to our better citizens?

KRISTOL: Yes. To our soldiers? Absolutely. The American public--

STEWART: Really?

KRISTOL: I think that if you become a soldier, you deserve--

[crosstalk]

KRISTOL: One of the ways we make it up to the soldiers, since they're risking their lives, we give them first-class health care. The rest of us can go out and buy insurance--

STEWART: So you said that the public--

[crosstalk]

STEWART: Get this on the record. Bill Kristol said that the government can run a "first class health care system." And a government-run health care system is better than the private health care system.

KRISTOL: I don't know if it's better.

STEWART: You just said that.

KRISTOL: I don't know if it's better.

STEWART: You said it was better! You said it's the best. It's a little more expensive...

KRISTOL: The military needs different kinds of health care...

STEWART: I just want to get this down: "The government runs the best health care."

Earlier in the interview, Stewart commended Kristol for correctly predicting that Sarah Palin would end up on the ticket with McCain. Kristol averred that Palin's plan was to spend the next few years in deep study: "She has a couple years to make her case, educate herself more on national and international issues." Kristol also promised to get Palin booked on the Daily Show. "I have no clout," he said, "but I'm going to email her and say do Jon Stewart."

I am not going to hold my breath on that one. Here's the complete, unedited interview:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Bill Kristol Extended Interview

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

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Bill Kristol: Obama "Is An Arrogant Man" (VIDEO)

2009-07-26T13:47:25Z

During the panel discussion on "Fox News Sunday" the topic turned to President Obama and the controversy surrounding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. Unsurprisingly, Bill Kristol had a negative reaction to Obama's admission that he could have calibrated his words differently in his initial statement that the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly":

The President could have said, you know that was a stupid thing for me to say. But he didn't say that for some reason. You know, that would be too self-deprecating. And I think he is an arrogant man. And he feels entitled to pass judgment on Cambridge cops or on pediatricians.

Think Progress has more.

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