Month: September 2009

A plea:

Renard Sexton lays it out:

Figures from January to May 2009 indicate that China, the remaining major adversary to sanctions, relies on Iran for more than a half a million barrels of oil per day – about 15 percent of their portfolio.

Tom Schaller questions the wisdom of the GOP's entitlement fear-mongering:

Are there not risks to this strategy? Specifically, does it not further cement the GOP's image as an aged, out-of-touch coalition? Also, how is the GOP defense of cuts to Medicare not creating at least some dissonance with the very protesters who turned out for town halls and the recent march on Washington complaining about a too-big government getting bigger? (I suppose I'm presuming that people complaining about big government are, in fact, able to identify such contradictions; surely, some are not.)

This was also something the Tories did as they reeled from the first term of Blair. They actually opposed any real cuts or reform in the welfare state in a desperate bid for some, any, votes. They were obsessed with tactics and forgot even a smidgen of strategy. It took them twelve years to have a shot at governing – and largely because of Labour's failure. The GOP is now defined entirely by opposition to Obama – regardless of the merits of his policies. If you want evidence that the tea-party message is pure phony, look no further. Even Mark "Freedom Or Tyranny" Levin won't risk offending seniors. (Leave it to Pareene.)

That's Sarah Palin's achievement for Jonathan Burnham, who runs the marketing company, Harper Collins. Several questions naturally arise. Did she actually write those 400 pages? Please. Her peregrinations in the  couple of months since she quit her "day-job" do not exactly reflect a period of personal reflection and diligence. She wrote that book as thoroughly as she wrote her speech in Hong Kong. The book was written by a hardcore Christianist; the speech by a hardcore neocon. She remains the hood ornament for a marketing campaign that now passes for the conservative movement.

The title itself lets us know that if anyone harbored any doubts about her own view of that disastrous campaign, she is immensely proud of it.

And by "it", I mean her refusal to cooperate with the McCain campaign, hijacking it for her own delusions of grandeur, generating immense drama and refusing to answer salient questions. Someone in her position with a decent sense of perspective and self-knowledge might have said no to John McCain in August of 2008. Or taken the pick as an opportunity to get boned up on policy. But we see now that she came to see her nomination as an entrepreneurial opportunity – for wealth, fame and irresponsibility. The notion of public service, divorced from reality show culture, clearly bored her and bores her still. She has now found her niche.

But why the rush? It couldn't be that she's trying to beat any other account of her bizarre career and surreal private life, could it?

Fallows passes along some new information:

[R]evelations late last week by Tim Dickinson, of Rolling Stone, are at face value so important that they deserve to be underscored. It’s worth reading Dickinson’s whole dispatch and studying the on-line scans of the documents he has found. But to me the real news is the evidence that tobacco lobbyists secretly worked with McCaughey to prepare her infamous 1994 New Republic article “No Exit.” 

As I argued back in 1995 in “A Triumph of Misinformation,” everything about McCaughey’s role in the debate depended on her pose as a scrupulous, impartial, independent scholar who, after leafing through the endless pages of the Clinton health proposals, had been shocked by what she found. If it had been known at the time that she was secretly collaborating with one of the main interest-group enemies of the plan, perhaps the article would never had been published; at a minimum, her standing to speak would have been different.

From Dickinson’s piece:

“What has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

‘ “Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan.” ‘

“McCaughey did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for an interview.”

The Manhattan Institute is denying the charge. I certainly had no idea about any of this at the time. I take responsibility for publishing the piece, and feel that airing some of the internal fight over it would violate confidences. But at no point was I aware of a three-part series, claimed by the tobacco lobbyist. But I did not commission the piece as the Manhattan Institute notes.

DiA is on point:

The best America can do is to treat Iran the way it treated South Africa or Communist Eastern Europe, building an international consensus among democracies on isolating them while offering an olive branch to keep local populations yearning for change. Already, America's recent conciliatory stance on Iran, and Iran's aggressive responses, have put us in a stronger diplomatic position. The question is whether Americans can muster the patience to support this kind of policy, or whether we will view it as "weak". The policy itself—isolation, containment, deterrence, offers of friendship if freedom breaks out—is little different from the way America treated the Soviet bloc in the 1980s; Ronald Reagan never called for air strikes on Poland. But in the current political alignment, the temptation for the opposition to slam the president for "losing Iran" if sanctions don't produce quick results may be too strong to resist.

Today on the Dish the debate over Iran continued; Jim Walsh wondered whether new sanctions would work, Roger Cohen and Gary Sick doubted it, Juan Cole showed how Iraq could interfere, and Larison countered Andrew's claim of a Russian "breakthrough." Meanwhile, Iranian students took to the streets again.

Among the more moving posts of the day, a Gitmo general lamented the loss of higher ground while Andrew spotlighted the ascension of a gay foreign minister in Germany (with celebratory follow up from a reader). We also observed the passing of William Safire.

In crazy right watch, Weigel reported a doozy, Bartlett called out Ron Paul, Paulites heckled Bachmann, and Gerson played the anti-semitism card – on Ezra Klein. Also, Rauch lampooned the insanity of the healthcare system while Steve Chapman tackled the tobacco ban.

Rounding out the wrap, Jonah Lehrer talked science over Girl Talk, someone said a four-letter word at midnight, Hollywood officially ran out of ideas, and Andrew couldn't help himself.

— C.B.

Obama's approval rating on the economy:

Among Independents:

Retiring Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, charged with setting up Gitmo in 2001, speaks out:

"Once they were out of the fight, I felt we had a moral responsibility to care for them in a humane fashion," Lehnert said. "I think it's extremely important how we treat prisoners." Lehnert recalled talking to young Marines who thought the detainees were being treated too well. "They said, 'They wouldn't treat us this way,' " Lehnert said. "I said 'You're correct, and that is entirely irrelevant. If we treat them that way [as they might treat U.S. prisoners], then we become them.' " Shortly after leaving Guantanamo, Lehnert said he concluded that the detention center should be shut down as soon as possible, a position that he holds more strongly now. "I think we should close it down," he said. "I think the information we're getting is not worth the international beating we're taking."

Would Jim Geraghty also call this Marine "stupid"? The Dish calls him heroic.