Month: July 2010

by Chris Bodenner

Greenwald keeps the controversy fresh:

[J]ust to underscore how mild and mainstream were Nasr's firing comments, consider this 2002 column from ultimate establishment centrist David Ignatius, expressing "sincere respect for Fadlallah's intellect and passion; he is one of the few Muslim clerics who recognize that there is an urgent need for Islam to find a better accommodation with the West"; this Economist editorial on Fadlallah's moderating and progressive influence in the Middle East; and even this lament from David Schenker, a senior fellow at the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near Policy, who praised Fadlallah as "the most credible moral, political, and theological alternative to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia," arguing that the U.S. will regret his passing.

by Chris Bodenner

Michelle Cottle considers Palin a "p.r. genius":

[U]nlike other categories of the rich and famous, political celebs (especially populist firebrands) cannot risk being seen as remote or out of touch. But here’s where Palin’s embrace of new media saves the day. Her perky, quirky tweets and chatty Facebook items make her fans feel as though they have a direct line to her—despite the oft-voiced assumption that Palin (like so many pols) does not write most (if any) of her own Facebook posts. Such is the beauty of social networking: It allows a public figure to avoid direct interaction with the public while promoting the illusion of personal connection and involvement.

This model makes perfect sense for Palin if she plans to continue as a media personality. It’s unlikely she’d change her m.o., however, even if she decided to run for office again one day. It suits her core strengths—passion, pithiness, and a mind-boggling magnetism—and, let’s face it, it’s so much easier than the conventional model. Already, even as Palin eagerly collects scalps in the midterm races (a key step toward running for future office), she is skipping much of the messier, schmoozier work of building relationships with other campaigns (traditionally also a key step), opting instead to bless many from the safe, antiseptic distance of Facebook.

Somewhere Hillary is seething.

by Dave Weigel

Like I said in my first post, I guest-blogged for the Daily Dish back in 2006. I don't remember anyone, at the time, challenging the decision. So I was unprepared for the rat-a-tat of criticism I got for signing up this week. To quote Baseball Crank, who kept up a drumbeat about this on Twitter, "David Frum and David Weigel are free to associate with Andrew Sullivan, but how can they now call anyone else on associating with crackpots?"

There are two levels of criticism, both of starting with the assumption that by agreeing to blog in this space I am tacitly endorsing everything that usually appears in this space. One is that Andrew Sullivan is wrong and spreading misinformation about the birth of Trig Palin in 2008. The other is that Sullivan is wrong about Israel. I'm in Alaska and the subject of the Palins comes up frequently enough here, so let me just deal with the first criticism. Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's son and it's irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

I've spent way too much time in the trenches of Birtherism, so I both 1) think "Trig Trutherism" is hard to compare one-to-one to that and 2) know that it exists in the same logical wormhole. It's less important because Birtherism first started making news as a way for activists to raise doubts about whether Barack Obama could be on the ballot, then whether he could become president. The first article I wrote about birtherism was on the petitions to the Supreme Court demanding he be denied the office because he hadn't sufficiently proven his citizenship. Once Obama was inaugurated, birtherism became a way for kooks to raise money off of the gullible, a reason for military officers to sue their president, and — most importantly — an issue for congressmen to sign onto and pander to constituents on. The polls are all over the place, but suggest that a sizable number of Republicans and conservatives believe in this nonsense.

"Trig Trutherism" is less serious. Were Sarah Palin to become president and everything the Trig Truthers believed to be proven right, it wouldn't matter at all. But they won't be proven right. All of the evidence indicates that Trig Palin is Sarah's son, and none of it suggests otherwise. I paid close enough attention to this in 2008, and realized pretty quickly that the countervailing theories made no sense. Too many people watched Palin announce the pregnancy and saw her come along until she went into labor, prematurely, while attending a National Governors Association event in Texas. Here in Alaska, people tell me that Palin fans (who at one point made up 85-90% of Alaskans) held "baby showers" for her, and she'd drop in to thank them.

The other Trig theories seem to be based on vapor — that she wasn't "showing" much in some photos, that her campaign was less than 1000% forthcoming when asked about it. I don't generally trust politicians, but I know the difference between a "dodge" and an answer given to ward off annoying tabloid stories. The answers on Trig were in that latter category. (Watch Robert Gibbs when he answers "birther" questions, then watch how WorldNetDaily dissembles them for "proof" that his choices of verbs show he's hiding something.)

From my e-mail I gather Sullivan critics are angry about the other Palin stories he's posted. I don't see a huge difference between how he's covered the odder Palin rumors this and how the rest of the media has covered them. I do see a difference on Trig, and I do think that he's made a huge mistake by indulging this. Politicians suffer when they're called out on things they've done. They thrive when they're called out for things they haven't done, for stories they can call "conspiracy theories," and for stories they can file under "politics of personal destruction." Obsessing over Trig, as much as it annoys the Palins — and I see why it does — is one of the best ways of propping her up. It gives her fan base proof that its hero is constantly battling unfair personal attacks that the media won't debunk. It convinces them that critics focus on this nonsense because they've got nothing else to criticize Palin about. She has taken advantage of this impression.

The Trig obsession has also, I'm sad to say, damaged Andrew Sullivan's reputation. I'm stunned by the anger he's generating not just among random Tweeters but among people who've been online for years, part of the rough-and-tumble of blogging. They know that 99% of what Sullivan writes is challenging, smart, and addictive, and that he's very capable of honing in on bigger political and philosophical debates. People want him to take a deep breath and stop obsessing over this conspiracy theory. Count me among those people.

by Chris Bodenner

Christopher Ryan emails:

Not sure if my $0.02 is welcome in this conversation, but your reader's recent comment contains the essence of what we're trying to get at in our book. He or she writes:

In my eventual marriage, I will insist on monogamy. I don't think I could be that free, sexually, with someone if, in the back of my mind, the possibility existed that they were thinking of someone else.

That's just it. The possibility will ALWAYS exist that they may envision someone else, no matter how much they love you and cherish the marriage you share. This definition of "monogamy" that extends even to thought-crimes is inherently dysfunctional and psychologically naive. To insist on controlling even the fantasies of your partner is to invite bitter disappointment and divorce. If the Catholic sex-abuse scandal teaches us nothing else, we should at least see that insisting people deny (even in their private thoughts) their evolved sexuality can result only in disaster.

Several readers have requested a collection of all the posts from this popular thread. Find them, in chronological order, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

by Dave Weigel

Adam Serwer dials back the claim he made yesterday about the timing of the case against the New Black Panther Party — the claim I linked, a bit too hastily.

Beziers, France, 8.24 pm

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

In differentiating between blue collar workers and other workers, I think the biggest obstacle is that it would require more administration, bureaucracy, and paperwork (which would decrease the cost effectiveness of reform), as well as create a political problem of how you define the difference.

In regards to people suggesting that Social Security be means tested (and especially people who recommend it be shifted away from payroll taxes), I worry that it would undermine its base of support. FDR once remarked, "Those [payroll] taxes were never a matter of economics, they are politics all the way through. We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program".

If the link between contribution and compensation is weakened too much, I fear that in future reforms (which being a pension system, there always will be) it would be easier transition to a way that takes less consideration of low-wage earning Americans. Thus in my opinion, the great balancing act of Social Security reform is how do you keep the program solvent, without weakening its broad based political support.

Andrew Sprung argues that the program is already means-tested in a way:

What seems lost in this conversation is the fact that at present social security benefits are allocated disproportionately to low earners.

It's true that the tax is not progressive — those earning $100k pay the same percentage as those earning $20k, while and those earning, say, $213,600 (twice the cap) pay half the rate on their total income.   But the benefits reaped constitute strongly diminishing returns as one's income increases.  Benefits are based on a taxpayer's  average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) up to the taxable cap. Of those earnings, averaged over 35 years, those who retire at age 66 currently get the following in SS benefits:

• 90% of the first $761 of AIME
• 32% of the AIME between $761 and $4,586
• 15% for the AIME above $4,586 (up to $8900, beyond which there's no tax or benefits).

At present, if your work life is completed and your AIME is $8900, your monthly takeaway is $2,556, or 28.7% of your AIME.  At an AIME of $4586 (roughly $55k/year), you'd get $1909, or 41.6%.  If you earned just $3k/month over your working life, your monthly SS payment would be $1401, or 46.7% of your AIME.  For an income of $2k per month, the payout would be $1081, or 54% of income.

Attention fiscal wonks (who are probably the only people still reading this post): The Urban Institute is holding a forum tomorrow on the topic of raising the Social Security age and its effects on low income workers. Details here.

by Dave Weigel

UNALASKA, AK — When I agreed to blog here for a week I gave a quick word of warning: I was set to spend a week in Dutch Harbor, the remote fishing town made globally famous by 1) the series "Deadliest Catch" and 2) fish.

"Remote" is a word we like to misuse, like "awesome" or "ironic" or "electable." You go to a hunting cabin in West Virginia and you say you're in a remote location. But I am about as far from the great mass of humanity as I could be right now. This is obvious if you open a map and notice that the island is closer to Pyongyang than it is to Seattle. The trip out here made this more obvious. Fly into Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport (yes, still) and you don't immediately see the listing for your Dutch Harbor connecting flight. This is because you need to walk out of the main airport and into a few rooms located next to the airfield upon which 737s wait for clearance to fly.

There is usually some diversity of companions on an airplane. Not on this one. The men have beards and gear and heavy boots; the women have all but one of these things. Your fellow travelers look like they're heading to the same bar after work, possibly because they are. Another thing you notice is that most of them have shirts or jackets with "Alaska" written on them. This seems odd — you don't head into Newark and bump into travelers with "New Jersey" jackets. Then you realize you're being foolish, and that almost everyone you're flying with works for some Alaska company, in construction or fishing or research, and that they're wearing the raincoats they've been handed for free.

I said we overuse the word "remote." One example that comes to mind is that commercial for wireless 3G cards that feature a British person (I don't know why this is) camping out in barren locations, showing off the fact that he can, click, get onto the internet. He never made it out here. When you exit your plane your phone informs you that you have a new Alaska Wireless number that you can pay for and use if ever you want to make a phone call. When you sign onto a wireless account, you are one of 4000-odd people who might be on at any given time, and this makes your 4-bar connection about as speedy as a 1-bar connection back in your soft, cozy urban cafe. When you plug in your 3G card? Nothing! Serves you right for trusting commercials with inappropriately wacky actors.

Find a helpful radio station, though, like KUCB, and you're back and blogging, only four hours behind the east coast.

by Chris Bodenner

Susanna Ferreira cautions against celebrating too soon:

Anti-foreigner violence — temporarily suppressed by the World Cup — is about to boil over again. Diepsloot was an epicenter for the 2008 rash of attacks against Zimbabwean refugees that left at least 62 people dead — a third of them technically South African — and displaced more than 100,000 across the country. During the last few months, extra cash from World Cup jobs, as well as scrutiny from the international media and the government, kept things mostly quiet. Fans have been unanimously impressed with how few incidents of theft and assault — both commonplace in South Africa — there have been. But after that temporary work dries up, the foreign media leave, and the government relaxes its watch, observers fear that the brewing animosity toward foreign nationals will re-erupt. If rumors are to be believed, plans to attack the foreigners are in the works.

by David Frum

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary describes the launch of a new pro-Israel group, the Emergency Committee for Israel:

There is a gaping hole in the Jewish community’s response to the Obama administration and in its defense of Israel. In the past, these groups’ close relationship with incumbent administrations has served them well. But as I have written for nearly a year, that tactic is not suited to the current challenges and has proven counterproductive in the Obama era. The need is great to expose, confront, and challenge the administration when it, for example, eggs on an international flotilla investigation or excepts Russia and China from sanctions on Iran or mindlessly pursues engagement with Syria.

Probably much of the press attention will go to the group's directors, which include Bill Kristol. But the real news is the group's director: Noah Pollak, a friend of mine, and a brilliant advocate for rethinking Israel's self-defense in a new media era. As a blogger, he proposed that the Israeli Defense Forces aunch their own YouTube channel, which did enormous service rebutting falsehoods during the Gaza campaign. 

It's long been a thesis of mine, to adapt Clausewitz, that modern warfare is PR by other means. Pollak understands this truth (wrote his Yale thesis on it) – and friends of Israel will be excited to watch his deployment of the truth in the critical days ahead.

Here's a link to the committee's first ad, which will run in Pennsylvania.