Month: March 2010

 

by Graeme Wood

I had dinner tonight at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, the most prominent target in the November 2008 attacks that killed 173 people in Bombay.  Parts of the hotel remain shut, but the tower section is open, and still quite grand.  If there are bullet-holes in the lobby, some putty-knife artiste has covered them up expertly.

The Times of India reports today on a totally unrelated violent movement: a Maoist-Naxalite insurgency that has been running for years in eastern states.  The Government of India has estimated there are 20,000 armed fighters inside India's borders.  Six thousand people have already died, with numbers trending toward more death every year. 

Naxalism isn't new.  What captured my attention about the story was the statement that the insurgency vows to achieve victory in "2050, some say in 2060." Is it a good or a bad sign when your enemies take such a patient approach?  Terror warnings in the US seem always to stress the threat right now, and the most optimistic jihadists used to prophesy a restored Caliphate in months, not years.  A 60-year forecast could mean a very weak enemy or a very determined one, or both.

(Photo by Flickr user Swami Stream under a Creative Commons License.)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Could this be the successor to the Rickroll?

"You got TroLo'd" perhaps?

by Jonathan Bernstein

Greg Sargent has more great reporting about the GOP's latest plan to derail the health care bills.  Remember, the plan is Pass Then Patch: House votes on the Senate bill, then House votes on the relatively small reconciliation bill that makes relatively small changes, and then the Senate votes on the reconciliation patch.

The new plan is for the GOP to challenge lots of provisions in the patch as violations of the Byrd rule.  The hope, according to Sargent's reporting, is to force at least one change, which would then mean that they House would have to vote yet again.  The real plan, however, is to scare House Democrats into voting against the main (Senate-passed) bill, because the Dems are nervous about whether the Senate will leave them hanging once again.

The problem with the new plan is that the Democrats are not going to have any problem at all in passing the reconciliation bill: it's all ice cream, no spinach.  The "patch" part of Pass Then Patch is made up of repealing various deals that the GOP has been complaining about; trading in the (unpopular) Cadillac tax for a (popular) tax on rich people; the GOP ideas that Obama put in his letter to Ried and Pelosi this week; and a bunch of other relatively popular items.  If looked at as a stand-alone bill — which it will be, at that point — I'm guessing that well over 55 Senators will support it, and I would set a betting line at 58.  And take the over.  All the problems are with finding 217 (or whatever the number turns out to be) for the main bill. 

The deeper problem with the new plan for the GOP is that as far as I can tell, the patch bill is being pretty carefully drafted to avoid Byrd rule problems.

The even deeper problem with the new plan for the GOP is that it puts them in a position of opposing repeal of the Nelson deal, the Florida deal, etc.  The one thing that I believe might be very vulnerable to a Byrd rule challenge is lifetime caps.  Does the GOP think that it can hold all 41 Republicans on that issue?  I don't.  Moreover, do they really want a vote on lifetime caps? 

The yet even deeper problem with the new plan for the GOP is that if they do manage to stop the patch, then health care reform would still have passed. 

Granted, none of that matters if the Democrats hear "Republicans have a plan" and hightail it for those hills were always hearing about.  As I read the coverage, however, the House Democrats are getting over their concerns about the Senate, and we're down now to the core issue of Democrats who want the bill to pass, but without their vote.  I don't see how this latest GOP tactic speaks to that situation.  Or at least, House Dems should be getting over their concerns about the Senate.  Yes, the Senate has double-crossed them before, many times, but this time the Senate has an easy vote remaining, not a hard one.

U.S. Army chaplain Carl Subler reads under the glow of his red-filtered head lamp early on March 5, 2010 at a a combat outpost in Sha-Wali-Kot in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. Soldiers in combat zones are often forbidden from using 'white' light at night, in order to avoid detection by enemy insurgents. The Catholic priest was reading I Am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert. Military chaplains, who travel the battlefield across Afghanistan, provide a backbone of support for thousands of soldiers struggling with the difficulties of war and year-long deployments away from home. By John Moore/Getty Images.

by Alex Massie

Early voting has begun in Iceland's referendum on whether it will honour the terms of an agreement its  government made with the British and Dutch authorities to repay £3.5bn those governments paid out to investors in Icleand's broken, bankrupt banks.

The Icelanders feel as though they've been bullied (especially by the British) and it's hard not to agree with them. Quite why the Icelandic government should be held responsible for the British government's entirely voluntary decision to bail out savers and investors is a mystery.

Worse still was the manner in which her Majesty's Government treated Iceland – seizing all Icelandic assets in the UK and using anti-terrorism legislation to do so. This was a) disgraceful and b) a reminder of how dangerous such laws are and how subject and open to abuse they really are.

This being the case, I'm with the plucky Icelanders. Vote No!

by Jonathan Bernstein

I enjoyed Alex Massie's response to my response to his comments on the upcoming Brit debates.  I hope he doesn't mind if I go one more round.  

I'm not sure that we do disagree (and if if I mischaracterized his views, I definitely apologize).  I too think that American presidential debates are overhyped silliness even less appropriate for the British system.  As he says:

Consider the 1992 Presidential debates. About the only thing that anyone remembers is George HW Bush looking at his watch. An awful lot of guff and pop-psychology was extrapolated from that single second. Did it help the electorate make an informed choice? Not really. At least not in any substantive fashion.

And that's fine. What I object to is the pretence that these contests are actually debates in which rival candidates demonstrate their prowess or moxy or whatever. They're nothing of the sort.

I agree!  But I also don't really think there's much at stake in calling these things "debates."  I remember that Dan Rather used to be really cranky about that, refusing to let that word pass his lips.  I never understood why he cared.  As for debates revealing character of the participants…well, I agree with that too, but it's not as if press coverage of elections (at least in the USA) focused narrowly on "prowess or moxy" are restricted to the debates; that sort of stuff dominates political coverage, regardless.  Alas, but again: what does it have to do with debates?

At any rate, I think we both agree that presidential debates have been useless at doing any of the things that the people who hype them say that they can do, and that as useless they are at those things in America, they're likely to be even worse at them in Britain. 

I do want to add something about promises, however, because I think this is pretty important.  Politicians make lots of promises when they campaign — some are on matters of public policy, some on process, and some on style.  Whatever voters may think, the evidence is pretty good that pols themselves take these things pretty seriously.  There is evidence (yup, from political scientists, but I'm afraid I don't have a citation handy) that pols tend to keep their promises…if you look at the data compiled by the folks at PolitiFact, Barack Obama has either kept, tried to keep, or is working on keeping almost all of his issue promises.  The style promises matter, too.  Let's see if I can find a good way to put this…remember the Beer Summit?  I'd say that Obama got in trouble with his initial remarks about that episode because he was perceived as having made a promise to be a certain type of president — a certain type of black politician as president, and his remarks verged on breaking that  promise.  I'm not sure whether, in that instance, the press correctly interpreted Obama's promise (and this stuff does get tricky, because unlike issue promises candidates are rarely explicit about this type of promise).  But the idea is that all promises candidates make place constraints on them, even if voters don't actually believe those promises.  And so I do think that one benefit of debates is that, by focusing the attention of the political world on the candidates, the promises (issues and style) that that case about the most get the most attention, which in turn places the most severe constraints on them should they want to break those promises.  Which, of course, they may do, as we've seen with Obama in cases such as the Armenian genocide or the business of conducting health care negotiations on CSPAN.

I do think that centralizing the campaign for a few hours is probably less important in nations that are smaller than the US, nations that have shorter election campaigns, and nations that have a closer connection between formal, written party platforms and actual promises by the top candidate. 

by Chris Bodenner

"That those in question would have their patriotism, loyalty and values attacked by reputable public figures such as Elizabeth Cheney and journalists such as Kristol is as depressing a public episode as I have witnessed in many years. What has become of our civic life in America? The only word that can do justice to the personal attacks on these fine lawyers — and on the integrity of our legal system — is shameful. Shameful," Walter Dellinger, former head of the OLC and senior partner of a firm that represented a Gitmo detainee pro bono at the behest of Bush DOD lawyers.

by Patrick Appel

I somehow missed this Nate Silver post from earlier in the week:

When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House seats, counting independents who were sympathetic to the party. And those numbers only increased over the next couple of midterms — during their peak during 1937-38, the Demorats actually controlled about 80 percent (!) of the seats in both chambers. Obama, by contrast, came into his term with 59 percent majorities in both chambers. That's not much to complain about by the standards of recent Presidencies, but is nevertheless a long way from where F.D.R. stood during his first two terms, or for that matter where L.B.J.'s numbers were during the 1965-66 period, when the bulk of the Great Society programs were implemented.

by Jonathan Bernstein

I tend to be pretty generous in my grades for President Obama, thirteen months in.  I think that he's handled a lot of things well, and those that haven't gone the way he originally wanted, I think, have often been cases in which he just lost.  That happens sometimes, even with large Congressional majorities.

Where I do think that Obama has done a poor job, really inexcusably, is on nominations, both executive and judicial.  Yes, he's had to deal with a rejectionist Republican Party ready to filibuster everything, but that's no excuse for not even nominating people.

There is one structural change that I would recommend, especially for executive branch nominations: just stop vetting them, already.  The White House can't tell Congressional committees what to do, but by all accounts the initial vetting for these jobs is far, far, more than necessary.  That is, if presidents scaled way back on vetting, the occasional dud would get through, and…what?  Would it ruin the presidency?  No, it wouldn't.  For example, the White House shouldn't have nominated Van Jones.  Whatever his other strengths or weaknesses, and whatever his actual beliefs about the September 11 attacks, his support of the "truther" add made him toxic.  And in fact, that weakness was exposed, and he resigned.  And…no damage was done.  Is it really better to have no one at all in a large number of positions, with all the damage and wasted opportunity involved, then to take a slightly larger risk that something will go wrong?  No, it isn't.  This kind of surface risk-aversion is a real mistake.

Here's what I've recommended. 

Appoint a commission.  Put on it a couple of former chiefs of staff, a couple of former Senate committee chairs, and a couple of corporate executives with experience in hiring people, and a couple of people who have had to be vetted for mid-level jobs in a executive branch department or agency.  Tell them that you want them to report back in three months with a streamlined vetting process.  For executive branch positions other than those in sensitive national security areas, it should be no more intrusive, expensive, or difficult than whatever major corporations do when they're hiring someone.  And then, implement the new process immediately, and get some nominees sent up to the Senate.

Meanwhile, nominate judges!  There's just no excuse for leaving so many positions open.

Of course, that still leaves the broken confirmation process, but that's mostly beyond Obama's control, although I agree with those who say he could be fighting a lot harder for his nominees (threatening recess appointments shouldn't have taken thirteen months, for example).  One thing at a time, especially when it's something that Obama can do on his own.  The nominations process is broken, and if Obama cares about governing, he should fix it.

by Graeme Wood

People tend to dislike movies about events they experienced, for the same reasons they tend to dislike movies based on books they've read.  If the movie's accurate, it bores them, because it's just an abbreviated version of a more vivid past.  And if it's inaccurate, well, it's inaccurate.

My old colleague Brian Mockenhaupt faults Hurt Locker for the latter reason, and he is right: there is much that feels bogus.  The movie's first sour note is its epigraph — "War is a drug" — from Chris Hedges, whose book taught me more about the psychological trauma of Chris Hedges than about the psychological trauma of war. (Hedges, a former NYT correspondent, describes brutally beating a KLM agent in Costa Rica, an act of psychopathy other war reporters somehow resist.)  The drug in question in the film appears to be some kind of horrible speed-plus-angel-dust twofer, which simultaneously revs up reality, robs you of judgment, and makes you strong.  I have never popped open the trunk of a car to reveal a huge bomb meant for me, so I can't promise that bomb-disposal technicians don't experience these effects.  But the needless risks and hijinks in Hurt Locker seem laughably far-fetched.

I spent two years in Iraq, never as a soldier and usually away from fighting.  Most of the bomb-disposal work I saw was controlled detonation, from a great distance.  It looks like this:

The aspect of Hurt Locker I found truest was the return home from Iraq to a world whose colors felt dulled, and whose blessedly banal choices — Window or aisle? With or without ice? — felt meaningless.  (Which, of course, they were.)  Ironically, the effect of the homecoming scenes in Hurt Locker reminded me not only of my returns from Iraq, but also of the withdrawal symptoms experienced by Avatar viewers.  It's the feeling of entering a world less vivid and dramatic than the one you've left.  That these movies both manage to induce such highs and lows suggests they both deserve their Oscar nominations, accurate or not.