Month: January 2009

Robert Frank:

…the most important reason for the death of the “Death Tax” movement is what might be called the Paris Hilton affect. In 2001, with inequality mostly a buzzword among a few left-wing professors, it was easier to get public support for killing a tax on the wealthy. Many Americans felt they could become wealthy someday, too, so they opposed any punitive tax on their imagined futures. That was especially true in 2006, when Congress took up repeal again and Americans felt newly wealthy because of rising home values.

But in the intervening eight years, the nonwealthy actually became less wealthy and Americans realized they would be lucky to retire at all, let alone get rich enough to become the target of an estate tax. They also resented the rich Wall Streeters and corporate chiefs who lost so much of other people’s money and publicly paraded their wealth.

Capping it off was a populist branding campaign that was just as clever as the “death tax” brand. The term was “The Paris Hilton Relief Act,” suggesting that abolishing the estate tax would merely give more money to wasteful, dog-and-diamond-toting heirs such as Ms. Hilton. Mr. Obama used the term in 2006 when he said the “Paris Hilton tax break” would give “billions of dollars to billionaire heirs and heiresses.”

Dreher finds a Google map that shows where prop 8 donors live:

Here is a Google map that allows you to find your way to the homes of people who donated money to Prop 8 in California. It’s damn creepy, is what it is. What could possibly be the use of this kind of information, presented in this way? It’s intended to intimidate people into not participating in politics by donating money. Do that, and you’ll end up on some activist group’s map, with hotheads being able to find your street address on their iPhones.

The second anyone does anything inappropriate with this information Dreher has a right to complain. Until then, it’s public information. And Prop 8 donors and anti-Prop 8 donors knew that before they donated.

Bill Kristol gets to dine with Obama. Hugh Hewitt wasn’t available? Moulitsas is bemused. Crowley sees the logic.

How did I forget South Park’s expose?

Hubris, and all – from Dave Weigel.

Protestors set a picture of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on fire as they demonstrate outside the Egyptian Embassy in Amman on January 13, 2009 against the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Jordanians urged Egypt today to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. AFP/Getty Images.

Matthew Levitt, who has studied terrorist finances, explains the connections between Iran and Hamas:

Iranian support for Hamas is extremely significant – to the point that Hamas could not function as it does today were it not for Iranian financial and material support. I expected Mann Leverett to argue that while Iran does support Hamas it could be convinced to terminate such support if the right incentives were offered. I think that unlikely, but at least that would have been grounded in reality.

A reader writes:

I watched it through twice.  It was extremely revealing. When discussing his "mistakes," Bush focused on whether to land his plane in Baton Rouge and the press coverage of Abu Ghraib.  So he understood his role not as a decision maker and allocator of resources, but as a television personality–a media interface.  That really has been his role, I think.  It suggests at minimum a superficiality about his job, a failure to connect to the deeper importance of policy.  Everything is understood in the Rovian terms of advancing an electoral agenda.  But then also the lack of compassion for victims–the mocking looks–it all suggested a frat boy arrogance to me.  This needs to be preserved for posterity.  Bush showed his true self.  And it was extremely ugly.

Bush also confessed, it seems to me, to torture. And he defended it as necessary. Cut through the euphemisms and legalisms and the meaning is clear:

Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences, in opinion pieces and in stories that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces, people were saying, "How come they didn’t see it? How come they didn’t connect the dots?"

Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington — I do — when people were hauled in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, "How come you didn’t know this that or the other?"

And then we start putting, you know, policy in place — legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all the sudden, people were saying, "How come you’re connecting the dots?"

This is what happened. 9/11 occurred. Cheney and Bush decided that to get the intelligence they wanted and didn’t have, they would start torturing prisoners for information. They told their legal people to provide legal defenses, however strained and bizarre, and talked themselves into believing that it wasn’t torture. They set up a major torture camp in Gitmo and many smaller ones around the world; they told their military and CIA to take all the gloves off. They did this consciously and with clear pre-meditation. They stuck with their policy even after its essence was exposed so painfully at Abu Ghraib. They were in too deep to go back then. And they deeply believed that the constitution allowed the president unlimited powers in wartime – and that war time was now for ever. The Constitution, in Cheney views, empowers the presidency to permanent near-dictatorial status for the indefinite future. The dictatorial powers – unencumbered by no law and no treaty – extend to American citizens and on American soil.

This is what they believed. And this is what they did. It was and is illegal. And immoral. And deeply destructive of the need to garner reliable intelligence and to protect American soldiers from future torture at the hands of the enemy. And the dreadful truth is: Bush clearly had no qualms or conflict in this. But he won’t own it. History must make him own it. And the rule of law should make him accountable.

A former guard, with first-hand knowledge, recalls the sadism, abuse and torture at Gitmo, endorsed and approved by the president of the United States.

Michael Yon threatens to sue Michael Moore for using one of his photographs:

My attorney may have to file a lawsuit against Mr. Michael Moore.  In May we contacted Mr. Moore, through his counsel, about Mr. Moore’s unauthorized use of my work on his website.  He did not respond.  My attorney has written again.  If Mr. Moore and his counsel continue to ignore our correspondence, we will proceed with a lawsuit.

It’s not about intellectual property as such. Yon allows his work to be used for free by others. It’s about ideology. I think Yon should relent. Bloggers should not be filing lawsuits against other media types. Blast him; don’t sue him.