Month: September 2009

A reader writes:

This morning you wrote:

"And that, surely, is what really lies behind Cheney's embrace of torture, lawlessness, murder and violence: he does not have the nerve to defeat Jihadism the way the West has always defeated its enemies. Like many on the far right fringes, he is motivated primarily by fear, and paralyzed by paranoia."

Agreed. But you're forgetting two other primary motivators for Cheney's actions: guilt, for allowing the worst attacks ever on American soil to occur on his watch despite clear and present warnings, and self-interest, personal and political — he had to show results before the next elections; what better way than to hire Jack Bauer and set him lose? You're also forgetting "stupidity".

Two words to describe Cheney's appalling record: he panicked.

"The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill," – Tom Friedman.

East Village, New York, 12 pm

James Surowiecki previews Obama's big healthcare speech tonight:

[It] seems to me that Obama has already figured out what he needs to say, and, in fact, he said it on Labor Day, in his speech to the AFL-CIO, when he described the goal of health-care reform as “security and stability for folks who have health insurance, help for those that don’t.” The easiest (and perhaps only) way to enact meaningful health-care reform in the U.S., as I wrote about here, is to convince Americans that reform will offer them something that their current insurance plans (which seventy per cent of Americans are satisfied with) can’t offer them: security. That means two things at the very least: that if you lose your job, you won’t lose the ability to buy affordable insurance, and it means that if you get sick, you won’t find out that your insurance company has rescinded your policy or that later on it’s impossible to get insurance.

And after the president has offered a plausible account of reform that seems to enhance individual security – against losing your healthcare suddenly, against finding you can't get insured because of a pre-existing condition, against realizing that your insurance won't cover what you thought it would – we'll see where the "debate" heads. My sense is that Americans are open to persuasion, and that if they have to choose between a reasonable president who seems to have tried hard to accommodate the views of others and a rabid Republican base screaming "socialism!" and "death panels!", they will go with the guy they voted for last year.

Maureen is 90 percent right and yet 100 percent wrong this morning. Obama does not defeat his opponents by being Rocky. He never has. He defeats his opponents like this.

Once the Republicans get past the communist/fascist/Muslim thing, they might even like him.

Ambers begs for media restraint:

So here's a challenge to the media: if you want to do justice to conservative ideas and find some balance in your coverage tomorrow, book serious Republicans with original ideas on your programs.  If you don't, Palin is giving herself a voice at your expense and through little effort of her own.

By implying, incidentally, that Palin gets help from a speechwriter, I mean to make an observation. Barack Obama didn't draft his op-ed, either.  But, reading Obama, it's not a leap to believe that the ideas are truly his.  Palin has no chops and no experience talking about health care and isn't participating in this debate; the content of her op-ed piece isn't original, and the points are points that Republicans make every day. 

I say: bring her on. She is the id of the current Republican party: pure identity politics, no serious ideas for reform, and utterly unserious as a party of government. She would be the ideal representative of the current GOP on television.

Is it the moment when the GOP finally bring down Obama? After the summer of discontent, have they got him? A parable:

Andrew Exum strikes a sour note:

Before the Afghan elections, every assessment you could read and every opinion you could solicit from policy-makers was the same: the worst outcome of the Afghan elections would be one that, in either the first or second round of voting, delivered the election to Hamid Karzai with a narrow margin of victory amidst wide-spread allegations of corruption and ballot box-stuffing. The overwhelming fear was of "another Iran" — only with our fingerprints all over it. The worst-case scenario now appears to have been realized.

At what point in the history of occupying Afghanistan has the worst case not been realized?

These guys are getting better:

(Hat tip: Fallows)

A reader writes:

This smallish site is devoted to the Tate/LaBianca killings. As a lawyer – I've long been interested in the Manson trial, and always suspected prosecutor Bugliosi cut a lot of corners. He placed far more blame on Manson than was warranted by the facts (it was really all about the girls and Tex). The "Helter Skelter" theory was always such transparent nonsense. But the subject is just too arcane to merit regular book treatment thru a mainstream publisher after all these years. So along comes this guy named "the Colonel" who has dedicated himself to meticulous journalism and blogging about the myths of the prosecution.

He has uncovered a boat load of facts and fascinating arcana for those interested in the trial. He's not saying Mason was innocent. He's just saying other people in the Family played larger roles than Manson, and Manson was more of a follower trying to keep up with his eager beaver family of dedicated, fiercely independent criminals. If Bugliosi had not placed such misguided emphasis on Manson, perhaps Kasabian and 40+ family members would not have escaped so easily to spend the next several decades in a nationwide crime wave.  

Prior to the Internet there was just no forum for this kind of detailed hard focus. The case lends itself to continual obsessive updating as new witnesses come forward after years of silence. Any hard copy book would be past its shelf life in a year.

In addition the Internet allows the author freedom for speculation, random musings, irreverent humor, taking on other bloggers, and occasional forays into unrelated topics. None of this would be tolerated by any mainstream publisher. 

Also the blogger is (I believe) gay, which leads to further interesting takes on the Manson family. For example I never knew one of the victims (Parent) and the only survivor (Garretson) were gay teenagers who had only recently come out. Garretson was living in the guest house as the on-site caretaker of the property for the owner who was also gay. Irrelevant perhaps, but interesting to followers of the case. 

What did we do before the Internet? The desire to drill down into multi-layered minutiae of small but important subjects was expanded a thousand times by the web. I really do believe its boosting our culture's collective IQ. And it makes it harder for the scoundrels, shysters, charlatans, and publicity whores of the world (like Bugliosi) to hide out.