Month: January 2009

Ackerman explains why rank matters:

The point isn’t just that Obama hugged Brennan. ("A close advisor… experience, vision and integrity.") Assistant to the President is the highest rank that any White House staffer can hold. Anyone with that rank has the right to walk into the Oval Office and get a sit-down with the president. At the beginning of the Bush administration, Dick Cheney fought to ensure that Scooter Libby held that rank.

Now, what’ll that mean?

At a minimum, it’ll mean that when Obama is unsure of something he’s hearing from CIA, or from Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence, he’ll turn to Brennan for a second or third opinion. It’s way too early to know — not that that’ll stop me — but one wonders if Brennan at the White House and Kappes at CIA might be the actual centers of power for the intelligence community.

There’s no way of knowing, especially in secret areas like intelligence. That’s why we elect a president, a human being, to deal with this. You either trust him or you don’t. My view with Obama is going to be the same as with Bush: trust but verify. Bush broke that trust early by lying and breaking the law and violating core moral standards. Obama has done nothing yet to prompt a similar response. Au contraire. But trust is merely the beginning. The rest is vigilance and open eyes.

"I’m more traditional; he’s the one in the couple that, I think, is the less traditional individual. You can probably tell from the photographs—he’s just more out there, more flamboyant. I’m more, like, ‘Well, let’s wait and see. What did that look like? How much does it weigh?’" – Michelle Obama, 1996.

Fallows dissects Anthony Cordesman’s analysis:

Gee, if only there were a popular saying that conveyed the idea that you could win many battles and still lose the war.

Let us check some of the effects of the Krauthammer-style offensive: a greater association in the Arab-Muslim mind that the US is on the side of corrupt and brutal Arab autocracies; widespread global revulsion at the sight of a vastly superior army causing, even unintentionally, horrifying civilian casualties; a greater identification with Hamas among Gazans; a weakening of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank; growing sympathy from the Sunni Arab street toward the Tehran theocracy.

And this is without a last-minute rocket volley from Hamas after an Israeli withdrawal. At this point, one hopes that this was a misguided attempt to forestall Iranian influence in Gaza before the Obama administration ends the Bush policy toward Tehran. Maybe it buys Israel time. Maybe that time is worth the costs. Or maybe Cordesman is onto something:

One strong warning of the level of anger in the region comes from Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki has been the Saudi ambassador in both London and Washington. He has always been a leading voice of moderation. For years he has been a supporter of the Saudi peace process and an advocate of Jewish-Christian-Islamic dialog. Few Arab voices deserve more to be taken seriously, and Prince Turki described the conflict as follows in a speech at the opening of the 6th Gulf Forum on January 6th, “The Bush administration has left you (with) a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza…Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza.” Neither Israel nor the US can gain from a war that produces this reaction from one of the wisest and most moderate voices in the Arab world.

Meanwhile, the regional struggle between Egypt and Iran continues. Hamas is currently in the middle. But so is Israel. And America.

(Photo: Artillery shells explode in the air to lay down smoke cover over Palestinian homes as the Israeli army battles Hamas militants in the central Gaza Strip January 12, 2009 as seen from Israel’s border with the Palestinian territory. By David Silverman/Getty.)

Ezra Klein explains the lesson to be learned from Obama picking Rev. Gene Robinson to speak:

Politicians respond to incentives. To noise. To anger. Warren, on some level, was a response to the loud protestations of evangelicals who believed the Democratic Party had no place for them. It’s hard to see Robinson is anything but a response to progressive activists who sense that Obama was more willing to risk cross those who supported him than those who opposed him. Erase the anger from either side and it’s not worth Obama — or any president — taking the risk to placate them. But this is a step in the right direction. This is genuinely inclusive. If it was the plan all along, the Obama administration sure did a good job keeping the secret. And if it wasn’t, then equality activists have something to be proud of this morning. They changed the incentives.

The Obama stimulus plan for Washington DC next week falls to earth.

A most cool visual depiction from the Atlantic. Article here. The numbers that leapt out at me: From 2000 to 2008, the personal savings rate went from 2.3 percent to 0.6 percent, defense spending went from $381 billion to $671 billion, and the number of tummy-tucks tripled.

Honolulu, Hawaii, 12.15 pm.

Well, it’s Joe The Plumber, but the spirit is the same:

"I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for ’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer, ah, down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, "Well look at this atrocity," well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it."

The conservative blogosphere began as a way to ask more questions, to get more scrutiny out there, to add new perspectives to the cocoon of the MSM, to crack the silly professional smugness that infected many newsrooms. It is ending in the dissemination of propaganda in the defense of war and an attack on journalism itself. Say it ain’t so, Glenn.

This is something the gay rights movement should focus on as much as the Warren pick: Obama’s understanding that American Christianity is not a monolith on the question of the sacredness of gay marriage.

A mathematical smack-down.