Month: November 2008

What Josh said. What Halperin lacks is any perspective outside his own media wank-zone. The press is not supposed to be relentlessly in the middle of whatever two political parties at any moment in time represent. It’s also supposed to have its own understanding of reality. After the worst presidency since Buchanan, with a default Republican nominee who picked a deranged know-nothing fem-bot as veep, with two disastrous wars, the worst attack on the US homeland in history and an economic crisis of unparalleled proportions in the modern world, some reporters and journalists had a duty to subject the incumbent party to more skepticism than the challenger.

The McCain campaign was, historians will note, one of the worst in memory. It is not disusting bias for the media to reflect that at the time.

Ta-Nehisi gets on the Iman Crosson bandwagon.

Accountability is coming.

Greenwald rejoices and dissects the withdrawal letter, which you can read here.

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

The more you see what’s going on in the world, the more the historic fecklessness and incompetence of the past eight years comes into relief. George W. Bush’s legacy may not just be the evisceration of American power, but the collapse of the world economy. Which makes the Obama administration a form of political and economic triage. Fred Kaplan:

Looking over the list of top players on President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, one gets the sense that serious people are coming back to power. On the national-security team in particular, they’re professional, thoughtful, cognizant of the world’s complexities, engaged with cutting-edge ideas but not dogmatic about them. This may not sound exciting, but those who think it doesn’t constitute "change" haven’t paid enough attention to these last eight years of Jacobin zeal and blundering.

A twist worthy of Jack Sparrow:

There are very few people dying from [Somali] piracy. The areas that are being governed by the pirate companies are functioning and less violent than areas where piracy does not exist, indeed pirate cities are thriving. The pirates are not only commercial in nature, but they are enemies of the Islamic extremists that represent the enemy of the United States. It sounds crazy to say, but the pirates are essentially the secular, liberal capitalists of Somalia, and the United States would prefer to deal WITH not AGAINST those types of people. Know your history, the Europeans preferred dealing with the Brashaws of the Barbary states than the alternative, the Islamic militant armies. We are essentially allowing the pirates to build themselves as regional Brashaws of Somalia with the ransom money from piracy, while the Islamists who remain violent are struggling for funding.

Only a tiny bit better than that of gay Republicans (hey, at least they aren’t trying to divorce you). And some dealt with the last election with a modicum of self-respect:

Don Scoggins, 63, has been a Republican for nearly 40 years. Yet on Nov. 4, he voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time. Scoggins is president of the 1,000-member Republicans for Black Empowerment, a Washington-based group that primarily aims to mobilize black conservatives. For months, he struggled over whether to support John McCain. The selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice-presidential running mate "was the nail in the coffin. She didn’t exude any intellectual acuity," he says.

"Look, he wants to get things done, so he’s choosing a really terrific team. To me, it says that he’s choosing people who have great experience. He’s choosing people who are pragmatic and who realize the severity of the national problem we’re facing. They’re knowledgeable about markets, about the economy and the political process in Washington. These are the very best people he could have chosen. I can’t look too far, but it’s a very good signal of what he wants to do," – Nouriel Roubini, aka Dr Doom, on Obama’s economic team.

His letter: