The Poor Man Institute

Hilarious:

Republicans are up in arms over the possibility of the Democrats using a “deeming resolution” to pass health care reform “without a vote” …[W]hat “deeming” would do is allow Democrats to get around the political hurdles they’re facing in terms of passing the House bill before the Senate fixes, but they wouldn’t actually be “passing health care without a vote.” Deeming resolutions have been used several times in the past.

Well, that’s not the funny part. This is:

In any case, Republicans are really nervous health care is going to actually pass, so they’ve gotten a bit desperate. Matt Lewis and Michelle Malkin approvingly tweeted this post from David Freddoso quoting Georgia Congressman Tom Price, who says “We’re pretty sure there’s no verse about ‘deeming’ in Schoolhouse Rock.” [bold mine]

This isn’t bad either:

It doesn’t say anything about filibustering either. I guess the filibuster is unconstitutional. Or maybe you can’t fit everything there is to know about congressional procedure in a three-minute cartoon video for kids.

The thing is, the reductio ad schoolhouserockum probably resonates with the base.  Not to mention the fact-allergic media. 

It’s got a funky beat, and I can bug out to it!

Clearly, the Earth’s tilt off axis resulting from the Chile quake is begining to produce curious results.  Kevin Drum, the poster child for calm, fair-minded left-centrism, is as shrill as…K-thrug:

I’d just like to quickly sum up what we now know about conservative Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future”:

• It raises taxes on 90% of Americans.
• It doesn’t explain what spending it would cut.
• It doesn’t eliminate the deficit.

And remember, this comes from the guy who’s pretty much the best the GOP has to offer. Pretty impressive, no?

Yeah, the GOP can talk a good game, but they’re boxed into a corner.  They won’t really cut any federal spending programs – or announce a plan to do so – and they won’t try to get more revenue out of the people who can most afford to contribute more (read: Bush’s “base”). 

So what we are left with is this gibberish.  It’s not a failing particular to Ryan.  There is just no way to make Republican math work at either the federal or state level. 

Unfortunately, the American populace has developed an immature view of government based on that same Republican math: we want taxes to remain relatively low (especially for the super wealthy!), and we want the full suite of government services available in higher taxed, developed nations (European socialist hellholes).

On the state and municipal level, balanced budget requirements/tax aversions eventually expose the fallacy.  See, ie, California, Colorado Springs and Arizona. 

At least one state seems to have learned the lesson.  I’m not optimistic that it represents anything like a trend though.

Oh dear:

Conservatives had hopes that the now-former Democratic congressman from Upstate New York, who resigned abruptly under an ethics cloud, would deliver the goods about corruption and strong-arm tactics in the Obama White House and Congress. But instead, Massa served up an icky new confession.

“Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer,” he volunteered. “Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday.”

Beck looked aghast. “Was your wife at that one?” the Fox News Channel host asked.

“No, this was in a townhouse; we all lived together, all the bachelors and me,” Massa explained. “My chief of staff had a conniption and said, ‘You can’t live there, that’s not congressional.’ “

Beck tried to move the conversation in a different direction, but his guest resisted. “Let me show you something,” Massa proposed, proffering a book with photos of bawdy Navy rituals from the days when he was a sailor.

“You’re going to show me tickle fights?” Beck inquired.

“I’m going to show you a lot more than tickle fights,” Massa promised. Beck put on his reading glasses, then judged that the images should not be shown on television. “It looks like an orgy in ‘Caligula,’ ” Massa asserted

Although Mr. Beck would not show the evidence of these Navy rituals, we will not back down.  Behold the evidence of the Obama Jihadosocialist agenda!

I want to see that Indian’s birth certificate.

Peter Beinart:

[Thomas] Ricks[...] says the U.S. will need 30,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq for a long time if it wants to avoid a civil war that drags in the entire region.

My guess is that Ricks’ view will prevail. The military has invested epic quantities of money and blood in Iraq, and U.S. commanders don’t want it to be in vain.

That’s when you’re down big.  And when you’re winning, you can’t leave in the middle of a hot streak.  All these very good arguments evaporate when you leave the table.

The ACLU reviews the first year of Obama, and give him about an F+.  Maybe a D- if he whines to the professor.  So, another vote of meh.

The ACLU is a civil liberties organization, so their requests are a laundry list of civil liberties concerns.  Probably prudent: stick with what you know.  If one were to take a slightly more expansive view, one could accurately note that about 50% of the laundry listed is a direct result of our dirty little War On Terror.  From a strictly civil liberties point of view, Barack Obama has x discrete operational issues which he needs to resolve correctly, in a war context.  A better President might well get more boxes with ‘Yes’ in this context than Barack does – not FDR, probably, and perhaps not Lincoln, either, but one of those really great Presidents, like Washington or Voltron.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps the context is the problem.

“No justice, no peace!” they cry from the streets, and that is often, sadly, true.  Sometimes, you have to choose between pursuing justice and having peace.  People (Your Humble Editors included) often lament that Americans have no sense of history, that they forget how they got to where they are.  This is also true; a third true thing is that America has been a hugely successful nation over the course of the past 2+ centuries, a success due in no small part to domestic tranquility – not for the lack of grudges to hold, just for the lack of holding.  Abandoning the WOT would offend our sense of justice, and it would certainly be unjust for the perpetrators of 9/11 to escape punishment.  Our history tells us that this would not be the first time.  Living well, and free, may be a better revenge.

Matthew Alexander – an experienced military interrogator (he was part of the team that tracked down Zarqawi in Iraq using non-torture based interrogations) – subjected himself to waterboarding reading Marc Thiessen’s book defending the utility of torture and other Bush administration perfidy.  Now that that bit of unpleasantness is through with, Matthew Alexander has a question:

My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen’s new book, Courting Disaster, was: “Why is a speechwriter who’s never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?”

Here’s an even better question:

Why would one of the nation’s leading newspapers (at least in theory) treat said speechwriter as an expert on interrogation and national security?

Alexander continues:

Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush’s abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you’re not an expert on a subject, shouldn’t you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists. Not once does he cite Army Doctrine—which warns of the negative consequences of torture and abuse. Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense’s opening statement in a war crimes trial.

While many of Thiessen’s opinions are appalling from a moral perspective (he justifies torture and abuse through the religious writings of St. Thomas Aquinas), the book is comprised of errors, omissions, and a whopping dose of fear-mongering. I’ll concentrate here on his worst misstatements and why his conclusions ultimately make us less safe.

Despite the self-imposed limitations on Alexander’s review, the piece is still bursting at the seams with the stupid that Alexander dutifully goes about dismantling with some ease.  Perhaps “dismantling” is the wrong word in that it connotes a preceding construction of some heft.  This exercise better resembles breathing lightly on a tissue paper barrier and watching it sail away.  At least, if the tissue paper were concealing heinous and barbaric war crimes.

Here’s a taste:

Thiessen promulgates a theory that Islamic extremists are uniquely deserving of torture because they are doctrinally obligated to resist cooperating, after which they may disclose information.

Got it.  So, the standard is: It’s OK to torture suspects because the guilty in their midst are trained or obligated to resist.  But why stop there? What if the detainee isn’t (potentially) doctrinally obligated, but just really, really good at resisting (or just doesn’t know the desired answers, which could look the same)? 

Even if we stick to Thiessen’s more “humanitarian” standard, do any other groups/religions/organizations embrace such a code of resistance?  Why, yes in fact:

Of course this isn’t unique to Islamic extremists. The U.S. military’s own Code of Conduct and the resistance training given American soldiers impose the exact same requirements. Article V, pertaining to interrogations states: I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability.

F*cking moran. 

Oh, and Heckuva Job Fred Hiatt!  You could have at least hired the smart Thiessen.

Although we’re probably the last to take note of this tragic event, the blogger known as Jon Swift (actually Al Weisel) died last week in a sudden fashion.

He was a brilliant writer, to say the least. I can’t even imagine what his family and friends must be going through. More here and here.

Shit.

Wow.  Check out this conservative radio host spewing vicious anti-Semitism:

HOST: The reason you see more Jews now is because Bill Clinton flooded America with Jews, mostly of the throwback variety. Not the modern Jew, not the Jew who wants to come here and advance society. But the Jew who wants to come here and either live off the society or take us backwards two hundred years. That’s part of their diversity training. They don’t want the country to be too advanced, you get it?

CALLER: Right, and they come into our country and say, you bow down to me. You accept me, I don’t have to accept you.

HOST: I see the eyes behind those slits. I see hate and murder in most of their eyes, should I level with you?

CALLER: They’re not nice, they’re not cordial.

HOST: Whatever happened to when in Rome, do as the Romans do? I guess it didn’t make it Saudi Arabia.

OK, OK, I played fast and loose with some of the facts above.  The radio host in question is Michael Savage, and he isn’t actually talking about Jews (which would have been outrageous and likely ended his career), but rather Muslims (which is like, totally co0l). 

But seriously, the anti-Muslim bias in this country is so strong that you can get away with saying things about Islam and Muslims that you couldn’t come within ten yards of with respect to just about any other religion or its followers. 

Hell, even Scientology is treated with greater reverence (Peace Be Upon Xenu).

This is a fucked up state of affairs.

Dexter Filkins assesses the chance for “victory” in Afghanistan:

The Iraq analogy is useful again. There the military hung in, and got it right, and also got lucky. In some ways, really, they got a miracle. But strategies and policies generally do not deliver miracles. Can we expect a miracle in Afghanistan? Of course not. But it may take a miracle for us, and Afghanistan, to win.

So, it will take a miracle to win, where “win” is defined as “Iraq”.  Awesome.