Month: December 2010

Adam Serwer picks them apart.

Pakistani eunuchs take part in a rally to mark Worlds AIDS Day in Karachi on December 1, 2010. Pakistan's Sindh province is home to a total of 3,437 HIV positive people, including 30 children, 179 women and 3,228 men besides 192 people suffering from AIDS, a provincial AIDS Control Programme official said. By Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images.

In Spain, the Wikileaks revelations have dominated the headlines for the last few days. The reason? They reveal an extraordinary effort by the US embassy and the Bush and Obama administrations to cajole, pressure, redirect and try to rig legal cases that could reveal the war crimes of the previous administration. Scott Horton has the goods. Money quote:

Diplomats routinely monitor and report on legal cases that affect national interests. These cables show that the U.S. embassy in Madrid had far exceeded this mandate, however, and was actually successfully steering the course of criminal investigations, the selection of judges, and the conduct of prosecutors. Their disclosure has created deep concern about the independence of judges in Spain and the manipulation of the entire criminal justice system by a foreign power.

One reason I am not as alarmed by Wikileaks as some others – although I do see the damage they have done to the very possibility of frank and discreet governing and diplomacy. They have helped expose for real the US government's attempt to protect itself and its agents from the rule of law with respect to the torture and abuse of prisoners. Without the Internet – in which digital photos can be spread far and wide – we would also have no idea of the graphic horror of the Bush-Cheney torture regime.

So what do you prefer? Old-fashioned secrecy or our own governments getting away literally with murder and torture? Since Bill Keller won't even call it torture, doesn't Julian Assange merit some praise for helping expose it in full?

Jacob Goldstein thinks that housing prices are likely to fall further. Ryan Avent's two cents:

Falling home prices are nice for those looking to buy new homes. But falling prices also exacerbate ongoing crises, including the economy's flirtation with deflation and the problem of rampant negative equity. As values fall, ever more homeowners find themselves owing so much more on their homes than they're worth that default becomes the most attractive option—which leads to rising bank-owned supply and more downward pressure on prices.

The bright side is that these data are released on a significant lag. The outlook for the American economy as a whole was deteriorating during the months represented by the latest index. From October on, the outlook has improved. So, too, may home prices.

Suzy Khimm calls Tea Party Christianist and climate change denier, Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, "one of a group of crusading lawyers who've helped transform the state attorney general's office—a position once considered a bureaucratic backwater—into a launching pad for ideological warfare":

[U]ntil the 1990s, the job rarely drew much attention. "It used to be as exciting as being head of the highway department," says Michael DeBow, a law professor at Alabama's Samford University and a former advisor to the state's onetime Republican attorney general Bill Pryor. Then, in 1994, Mississippi's Democratic AG, Mike Moore, took on Big Tobacco, leading an unprecedented multistate lawsuit to recoup health care costs from cigarette manufacturers. The case, which led to a landmark $246 billion settlement, inspired other progressive AGs to launch their own campaigns against corporate malfeasance—then use them to climb the political ladder. New York AG-turned-governor Eliot Spitzer, for one, earned his reputation as "the people's lawyer" by suing big Wall Street firms. …

Such swashbuckling also began to rouse the opposition. Alarmed by the tobacco suits and the dwindling number of Republican AGs in office, Alabama's Bill Pryor created the Republican Attorneys General Association (PDF) in 2000 to get more conservatives elected. … Sure enough, the ranks of Republican AGs have grown—and the position has become increasingly politicized. Before Cuccinelli, for example, there was Kansas AG Phill Kline, who launched an investigation aimed at shutting down abortion doctor George Tiller.

Brian Beutler considers the various Bush tax cut compromises. One scenario:

Dems agree to a two year extension of all the tax cuts in exchange for a few goodies like extending unemployment insurance. And then…what? That's when you have to start asking yourself what the politics of late 2012 will look like — and for that matter who will control Congress and the White House in 2013. A two year extension of all the tax cuts is cheaper than the Schumer plan if taxes on the wealthy go up in 2013. But what if Dems punt again for two years? There goes the cost advantage. What if a Republicans control the government in 2013? Then all assumptions fly out the window. 

Joe Klein wants Assange in jail:

I am tremendously [concerned] about the puerile eruptions of Julian Assange. Let's say you're an American diplomat in a provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar Province. Let's say you're a woman, reporting on the conditions of women in this largely Taliban-controlled area. Let's say you mention one or two of your contacts in a cable. They are now extremely vulnerable–indeed, they are likely to be rounded up, defigured or murdered for merely talking to the Americans. This is not improbable, it is likely–and even m0re likely in a country like China, with the resources to examine every last one of the 250,000 documents leaked. These are not the sort of stories that make it into the news, but they are where the real collateral damage occurs.

This is indeed a terrible possibility, but would arresting Assange really put an end to Wikileaks or something like it? The point, surely, is that Assange is to Wikileaks as bin Laden is to al Qaeda or Mark Zuckerberg is to Facebook.

The "culprit" is the Internet, and how it facilitates asymmetrical power and transparency and removes any individual's responsibility for that transparency and asymmetry. No single editor or newspaper editor had to take the hit for this. No one could stop it. Even if every MSM outlet refused to publish these, the blogosphere would soon swarm over downloads which could be shifted from server to server.

The only way to stop this is to ensure that no one in the entire government has access to non-top-secret info (impossible) or that government itself return to the days of carrier pigeons. This is our new reality. The character or crimes of Julian Assange are a red herring.

What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years. There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president. Worse, figures like Cantor and McCain actively seek to back foreign governments against the duly elected president of their own country, and seek to repeal the signature policy achievement of Obama's first two years, universal healthcare.

I know it is the opposition's role to oppose. But the sheer scale and absolutism of the opposition, and its continuation in the lame duck session, even over such small but integral reforms such as the new START and DADT repeal, is remarkable.

The two parties are evenly spread in this 50-50 country, but only one can brook no compromise in its accelerating rush to the far right. And that is what it seems we have to contemplate for the next two years – total paralysis in the face of urgent problems as part of a game of cynical partisan brinkmanship. They simply cannot bear that another party might actually have a role to play in government.

This is not conservatism, properly understood, a disposition that respects the institutions and traditions of government, that can give as well as take, that seeks the national interest before partisan concerns, and that respects both the other branches of government and seeks to work with them. These people are not conservatives in this core civilized sense; they are partisan vandals.

And if the GOP block the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, despite the careful Pentagon study, a slow roll-out of its provisions, and support from the Joint Chiefs chairman and the defense secretary, then we will find out something else. The contempt the GOP has for gay lives, gay citizens and those who wear the uniform of the United States is as deep and as vile as we ever thought it was. Yes, I'm angry at this general nihilist partisanship, and wounded once more by these people's profound, obsessive homophobia. But I cannot, alas, say I am surprised. The degeneracy has been building for a long time. It is just the stench of it right now that overwhelms the nostrils.

(Photo: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivers an address at the conservative Heritage Foundation November 4, 2010 in Washington, DC. The Republican party made big gains in the Senate but failed to take control of the chamber. 'If the administration wants to cooperation then it's going to have to move in our direction,' McConnell said. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

A reader writes:

Posnaski wrote, “There is in some of us a capacity to not only like a predictable movie, but like it BECAUSE of it’s predictable.” Isn’t predictability the heart of tragedy? You know that Oedipus will kill his father and sleep with his mother, but you enjoy the ride. Do you know of any tragedies with a twist? It’s not just vapid Hollywood fare that thrives on being predictable. Just sayin’.

Another writes:

Predictable plots are much, much older than Hollywood and are about much more than laziness or corporate profits.

Where would Western culture be without the Greek tragedies and comedies, the Roman farces and melodramas, the great theatrical traditions of the troubadours and the commedia dell’arte? All of these relied on stock characters (“types”) and well-known traditional/mythological figures, and the ending was well-known to everyone in attendance before the play began. For the vast majority of the history of theater and storytelling, ingenuity in plot design was not of any concern; what mattered was in the telling.

Ever thought it strange that Shakespeare’s plays were nearly all adaptations and histories? Human beings, deep in our souls, love repetition and ritual. The idea that innovative, unpredictable storylines are something to be desired is largely an invention of the last 150 years or so.

Another:

Me, I like classic Hollywood films.  The 1930s and 1940s – the Golden Age.  Once the Production Code was in place, for all its flaws, you knew that the good girl and good boy would get married; you knew the bad girl would lose everything; you knew the crooks would get caught; you knew that the cops or detective would be triumphant.  The template “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again” doesn’t exist without reason.

Sometimes you can tell from the first 10 minutes exactly what will happen. The fun is in seeing the execution.  Is the dialogue snappy?  Are the leads terrific stars?  Will there be dancing and music?  Sometimes a few good wisecracks and classic reaction shots can take the most mundane plot and turn it into a classic.

Judy Berman passes along this gem:

How do you keep the romance alive in a long-distance relationship? Frequent visits? Marathon phone calls? Love letters? Well, a creative guy named Walter C. May has upped the ante for sweet gestures with “I Hope This Gets To You,” a song and music video he made with the Daylights.