Month: May 2009

How Deep Is The Dem Bench?

E.D. Kain opines:

To me, Pelosi’s denial (and accusation against the CIA) lays bare a deeper truth about the Democrats.  Without Obama they’d be nearly as big a mess as the Republicans.  Most of them are complicit in the Bush torture program and the wars.  The party is almost headless without Obama – led by the fickle and hardly inspiring Reid/Pelosi duo.  After Obama, if conservatives learn anything over the next eight years – yes, I’m predicting it will be eight – unless the Democrats get some sort of order and discipline and more importantly, some grander vision, then I think the GOP should have no trouble at all coming in and cleaning up.

He's got a point. Reid and Pelosi really do make me want to change channels whenever they appear on TV. But eight years is a long time; and talent can rise in Washington and state capitals from time to time.

Two Reynolds Nits

He is right, of course, about long-term fiscal crisis. But he's surely wrong to blame Obama for the debt in 2009  – "I wonder how things could have come to such a pass?" – and the huge unfunded liabilities that loom in the future because of Bush's entitlement spending spree. For good measure, he offers only one option to save money – stop sending stimulus checks to dead people (well, one, actually). Yeah, that will do it. I mean: really.

Then he plays a neat little trick by accusing critics of Carrie Prejean's and Sarah Palin's opposition to civil marriage equality of inconsistency: "When Obama believes it, it’s not bigotry." Again, he's not wrong in decrying some of the nasty stuff thrown at a beauty queen for a political/moral position; and he's not wrong in saying that Obama opposes civil marriage for gay couples. But there is surely a difference between supporting a federal marriage amendment to strip gay couples of all formal rights, as Palin does, and Obama's position in supporting full civil unions with all the state and federal benefits of civil marriage.

Nits duly picked.

Splitting Social Security

Free Exchange wants to overhaul the entitlement:

Social Security was meant as a national saving scheme that would prevent old-age poverty and ensure the middle class a reasonable retirement income. It would better achieve those objectives by addressing them separately. Ideally we would have a two-pronged system: one to provide explicit welfare, the other a transparent saving vehicle.

The Obama Straddle

Marc reports on the military commission tribunals:

This point has been overlooked in the first round of coverage about President Obama's decision to use military commission tribunals for some of the Gitmo detainees: according to an administration official, most of the remaining 241 detainees will be afford Article III trials — that is,  fully-fledged, regular trials, unless they're released without trial. Some of them might be shunted to a newly-created national security court, if the administration and Congress team up to create one. The remaining detainees — presumably dangerous folks who the administration wants to detain but who haven't had the right type of evidence accumulated against them — will be tried by the military. The AP says about 20 military commissions will be held.

He asks some important questions here. Greenwald is on the case. I'm much more sympathetic to Obama's compromise than Glenn. Once you remove torture, and allow for real legal defenses, and avoid hearsay, the worst of the Bush-Cheney system is eliminated. And it remains my belief that the conflict with al Qaeda is much more like war than criminal enforcement. Finding a way to provide some of the nimbleness and expedition of war-powers without the inhumane dimension of the Cheney era is not easy. But it strikes me that the president is making a thoughtful effort to get the balance right.

Gates’ Struggle For More Sanity On Defense

Defensechart

Fred Kaplan covers the Pentagon budget battle:

In the coming weeks, the debate over the defense budget is bound to intensify. Passions will flare. The fight may seem surreal, but that's because it is unusually primordial; it's stripped down to basic institutional interests. The battle, waged behind the scenes in the Pentagon, is fiercer still in Congress, because there, it's conjoined with the struggle for contracts and jobs. (It is no coincidence that pieces of the F-22 are manufactured in 46 states; for more than a half-century, the services have been subcontracting out their most cherished weapons to as many congressional districts as possible in order to maximize political support.)

This is why the budget debate will be worth watching. Gates' proposals aren't particularly radical by most objective measures, but they're deeply threatening to the inside players. He's trying to change the culture in the Pentagon, and that's like shifting the building's foundations. It's going to be a great fight.

(Chart via Yglesias)

You Ask, We Deliver

A reader writes:

I love your blog. I love the fact that you aren’t letting Obama off the hook. I love (and appreciate and respect) the focus on torture. And, the focus on the recession. And, the economy. And marriage and queers in the military. I love all that.

But, I need more gay. It’s May. It’s been a long year already, at the end of another long year. I need ABBA or something FABULOUS or SICK or even a freakin’ show tune. I need more gay please, especially on a Friday.

Hmm. How about glamour bear Azis, "Bulgaria’s answer to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Liberace, and Marilyn Manson all rolled into one colossal glitter-dusted, KY-oozing jelly roll"?

Music video after the jump: