December 2009 – Page 4

John Cole and ED Kain cannot get their head around my call for Napolitano to be fired. It may be a cultural hangover from my British youth but in my view, when government reveals itself as incompetent in tracing potential terrorists, even when basically handed them on a plate, someone needs to take the fall. That person need not be directly personally responsible for the mistake, but since the error that could have led to the preventable deaths of scores of people comes under Napolitano's broad responsibility, she should go.

One of the federal government's core responsibilities is public order.

They've had eight years to figure this out and they are still clueless. Sure, Bush was president for much of that time and bears the bulk of the responsibility, but Obama is now president. When officials screwed up under Bush, they were defended, backed up, told they were doing great, etc etc. Even when they offered to resign, as Rumsfeld rightly did after the torture program was exposed at Abu Ghraib, Bush refused.

Obama needs to prove he is not Bush. Hold a thorough investigation and fire everyone in the chain of command who let the Jihadist onto a plane. Every single one. But before then, fire Napolitano. The buck stops with her.

The Pivotal Presidency, Ctd

A reader writes:

This sentence stood out to me especially:

“What Obama is doing is trying to cement this new liberal era in the conservative institutional structure of American government.’

The key words here in that sentence for me is “conservative institutional structure.” This essential nature of American government is something that I don’t believe that the whiny, purist left understand, or don’t want to understand or accept.

This is one of the main reasons I stopped calling myself a liberal and started calling myself a liberaltarian (that and because the demonization of the free market from the increasingly nutty far-lefties turned me off).

When Obama became president I welcomed a resurgence of the reality-based community. Too bad the leftie whiners haven’t decided to join the reality-based community with this fact: American govenrment is conservative in it’s structure.

I am so tired of hearing the whining from the left about this basic fact of American life, because in my mind, you can work with that reality to the best of one’s ability to more or less achieve liberal goals like Obama, or spin in anger and talk like joining the Tea Baggers is a good idea (again, Jane Hamsher and her histrionics).

Enough already.

Move Your Money

Here's an interesting idea that does not rely on government but can put pressure on the big four banks that just robbed us blind, threw so many out of work and are now refusing to make loans to people who need them: take your money out of the big banks and place it in community banks, ones that were not responsible for the meltdown. You can find local alternatives here. Just because Arianna supports the idea should not dissuade you. Her argument makes sense:

The idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it's meant to be. It's neither Left nor Right — it's populism at its best. Consider it a withdrawal tax on the big banks for the negative service they provide by consistently ignoring the public interest. It's time for Americans to move their money out of these reckless behemoths. And you don't have to worry, there is zero risk: deposit insurance is just as good at small banks — and unlike the big banks they don't provide the toxic dividend of derivatives trading in a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose fashion.

Maybe readers will immediately see some unintended consequences of this, but I can't see any at first blush.

The Campaign To Torture Abdulmutallab

Kristol is chomping at the bit for a waterboarding.

Simply Staggering Footage

Just released on the web: the full scene of that astonishing moment when a group of baseej is surrounded by the crowd, and disarmed. If this doesn’t unnerve Ahmadi, what will? And it makes a new and ante-upping move by the regime more likely:

Khamenei’s Jet On Standby?

Make of this what you will:

Iranian Supreme National Security Council has ordered a complete check-up of the jet which is on standby to fly Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family to Russia should the situation in Iran spiral out of control. The order, to the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guard Corps, was dated on Sunday, 27 December, the second day of recent unrests in Iran. The document containing the order was sent to Shahrzad News office in The Netherlands. The letter has been signed by Said Jalili, the current secretary of the council and one of two representative of Iran’s religious leader Ali Khamenei.

Who Is The Enemy Now?

An interesting glimpse into the genius of anger that is Larry Kramer:

Who is the enemy now? Not that old standby, the medical Establishment, which gave him a liver and thus his life. Nor his insurance company; Kramer gratefully pays almost nothing for the thousands of dollars’ worth of anti-viral and anti-rejection drugs delivered monthly to his door. As for homophobia, it may now be too diffuse to respond to the full-bore strategy of a Kramer-style attack. The “lack of anger” he finds around him, and which he has attempted in recent years to replenish from his own apparently bottomless supply, similarly cannot be attacked head on. And sitting on a sofa in his third-floor apartment (he’s terrified of heights because they invite jumping), sweet little Larry—asking after one’s health, cuddling his terrier—seems to know it. Of course one quickly remembers that even pets are made part of the struggle. A few years (and another dog) ago, when Koch moved into his building, Kramer was ordered by management to keep his distance, at least verbally. So when Kramer ran into the ex-mayor in the mailroom one day, he looked at his pooch and said, “Don’t go near him, Molly, that’s the man who murdered all of Daddy’s friends!”

Kramer's absolutist anger – a prophetic form of activism – met its moment in the AIDS crisis, the moment when hysteria and rage were totally appropriate.

I owe my life in part to his and others' activism. I share his anger, his isolation from the gay establishment, his loathing of the bullshit of the Human Rights Campaign, his frustration that the closet still exists, and his view that the biggest obstacle to gay equality is the self-doubt of so many homosexuals. The gay community is also, alas, criminally indifferent to its history. The memory of the plague has been wiped clean in millions of young minds. Because we do not have our own children, the lessons of our collective past are far more vulnerable. And the kids have moved on. That they barely know who Kramer is any more tells you a lot about their callowness, shallowness and also the success of the movement he helped galvanize. If all political careers end in failure, Larry's is no exception. But it is the failure of all those who helped bring about success.

We once had a long, rambling discussion about my religious faith, why he couldn't understand it, why he felt it was the reason I didn't become the gay leader he wanted me to be. But I replied then and believe now that anger at the rank injustice and cruelty against my brothers and sisters would have consumed me without such faith, and that Jesus' calm perspective on what matters to all human beings, gay and straight, has kept me as sane as I can be.

The only real answer to rage is hope. And, in my experience, hope is as much of a gift as faith. Larry has given many people hope, even as he has enraged others. One day, I pray that hope comes back to console him as well.

Month: December 2009

Should We Israelify Airports?

2009: Jib-Jab

Accountability