Month: September 2012

Is Sam Bacile Even A Real Person?

So far very little is known about Sam Bacile, the “Israeli-American real-estate developer” behind the crude new hate-film, as Laura Rozen reports:

[T]he man who claimed to have written, produced and directed the $5 million film that reportedly sparked the protests said he blamed lax security at the US government facilities and the protesters for the deaths of the US diplomats.“I feel the security system (at the embassies) is no good,” the man who identified himself as “Sam Bacile” told the Associated Press in an interview from an undisclosed location Wednesday. “America should do something to change it.” “Bacile, a California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam’s flaws to the world,” the AP report said. But it’s not clear that Bacile is who he claims. Israeli officials said they would not confirm or deny that he is an Israeli citizen, under that or other names. And there were some hints that Bacile may be a pseudonym, possibly for someone affiliated with the Egyptian Coptic diaspora.

Sarah Posner is also going through the sketchy details about “Bacile”, who is apparently now in hiding:

Consider all the contradictions: small ones, true, like in one account he is 52 and in another he is 56. To the AP he is “a California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew” and to the Times of Israel he is “Jewish and familiar with the region.” And what about that bit at the end of the statement to the Times of Israel–that “even Jesus” should be “in front of the judge”? That sounds like someone who is trying to provoke more than just Muslims. A lot of things don’t add up here about the claimed identity of the filmmaker.

Unfit For Government

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The obvious responsible thing to do when American citizens and public officials are under physical threat abroad and when the details are unknown, and events spiraling, is to stay silent. If the event happens on the day of September 11 and you are a candidate for president and have observed a political truce, all the more reason to wait to allow the facts to emerge. After all, country before party, right? American lives are at stake, yes? An easy call, no?

But that's not what the Romney camp did. What they did was seize on a tweet issued by someone in the US Embassy before the attacks in order to indict the president for "sympathizing" with those who murdered a US ambassador after the attacks. Unfuckingbelievable. Here's the embassy statement from earlier in the day that set off the neocons:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

The statement came from someone in the embassy, and was not formally issued by the State Department or the White House, both of which have subsequently disavowed the tweet for not also defending absolute freedom of speech. The facts were still murky last night. But the Romney campaign immediately tried to shoe-horn yesterday's fog of mob violence into the "apology" rubric Romney loves so much. The Priebus tweet is disgusting. The first Romney statement is no better:

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

That's untrue. The Obama administration did not issue the tweet, which was, in any case, tweeted before the attacks, not after. Today, Romney doubled down on these two obvious misstatements:

“We join together in the condemnation of attacks on the American embassies and the loss of American life and join in sympathy for these people. It’s also important for me — just as it was for the White House, last night by the way — to say that the statements were inappropriate, and in my view a disgraceful statement on the part of our administration to apologize for American values…

A brief moment of digression: the White House disowned a statement it itself did not release – but is then equally responsible for the tweet itself? The mind boggles. Then this, apparently, is an apology for American values:

Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

I'm a free speech absolutist – but I'm not an anti-religion absolutist. I think a little respect for religions we don't share is something most Americans would think is precisely an American value. I can see why there should have been a defense of the free speech of Terry Jones in that tweet in principle – and there is: "the universal right of free speech." Does Romney think the administration should have defended the film itself? Does Romney?

Of course, sitting in my blogging chair on the Cape, I can demand as radical a defense of blasphemy and hate speech as Romney can. But I was not inside an embassy in a foreign country as mob violence was building outside and as the US government was being conflated entirely with a bigoted anti-Muslim fanatic. And practically speaking, the embassy was trying to calm a situation, not inflame it. And diplomacy in the real world, where American lives are at stake, can necessitate such frustrating but necessary nuances. But such nuances are lost on Romney, as is, it seems, the basic notion of agency and responsibility:

The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth but also for the words that come from his ambassadors from his administration, from his embassies, from the State Department. They clearly sent mixed messages to the world, and the statement that came from the administration, and the embassy is the administration. The statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a severe miscalculation.

So the president of the US is directly, personally responsible for a lone tweet designed to calm a dangerous situation – and this other person's tweet is then described as a "severe miscalculation" by the president and "akin to an apology." Well: you try to figure the logic out. Then this outreach from his senior foreign policy spokesman, Rich Williamson:

Tuesday night, while the attacks were still ongoing, Williamson said that the governments in Egypt and Libya as well as the Obama administration bear responsibility for the deteriorating security environment that led to the attacks.

"The events in Egypt and Libya show the failure of the Egyptian and Libyan governments to uphold their obligations to keep our diplomatic missions safe and secure and the regard in which the United States is held under President Obama in these two countries," he said. "It's all part of a broader scheme of the president's failure to be an effective leader for U.S. interests in the Middle East."

My italics. These people are simply unfit for the responsibility of running the United States. The knee-jerk judgments, based on ideology not reality; the inability to back down when you have said something obviously wrong; and the attempt to argue that the president of the US actually sympathized with those who murdered his own ambassador in Benghazi: these are disqualifying instincts for someone hoping to be the president of the US. Disqualifying.

(Photo: David Calvert/Getty.)

Will Morsi Apologize?

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Libyan officials have been quick to condemn the violence in their country, but Egypt's politicians are staying silent. Marc Lynch believes Egyptian leaders are making a huge mistake:

Morsi and the Brotherhood do not seem to understand, or perhaps they simply do not care, how important their public stance is today in defining their image.   The U.S. has taken real risks by engaging with the Brotherhood, pushing for democratic change despite their likely victory in fair elections, and insisting that the Egyptian military allow the completion of the transition after Morsi's victory.   That was necessary to have any hope of genuine democratic change in Egypt, and the right position to take.  But I suspect that many in Washington will feel that they have been repaid with Morsi's silence after the breach of the Embassy wall which could well have resulted in the same kind of tragedy as in Benghazi.  And that will have enduring effects on the nature and extent of American support for Egypt's transition — how much harder is it going to be to get debt relief through Congress now?  It is quite telling that Obama said nothing about Egypt in his remarks about the deaths in Benghazi. 

(Photo: Egyptian protesters tear down the US flag at the US embassy in Cairo on September 11, 2012 during a demonstration against a film deemed offensive to Islam. By /AFP/Getty Images)

The Dick Morris Award

Scores of readers are echoing this one:

You wrote, regarding Dick Morris’ latest nomination:

He should really be ineligible for this award; the competition doesn’t stand a chance. No pundit is as relentlessly wrong as Morris.

This begs the question, why not rename the award “The Dick Morris” award? I’m a well-read political junkie and a 10-times-a-day Dish reader, and I still have no clue who Von Hoffman is.

Another points to a 2009 post from Ben Carlson:

New York Observer columnist Nicholas von Hoffman notoriously predicted American failure in Afghanistan in 2001, just as troops were marching into Kabul. Has the swing in fortunes in Afghanistan proven Nicholas von Hoffman right, warping the award’s original meaning?

Below are excerpts from von Hoffman’s 2001 piece, cited by Jonah Goldberg when the award was inaugurated:

“The war in Afghanistan, the one (Bush) should never have declared, has run into trouble. Just a few weeks into it and it’s obvious that the United States is fighting blind. The enemy is unknown, and the enemy’s country is terra incognita. We have virtually no one we can trust who can speak the languages of the people involved. With all our firepower and our technical assets and our spy satellites, it looks like we don’t know if we’re coming or going. … “We are mapless, we are lost, and we are distracted by gusts of wishful thinking. That our high command could believe the Afghani peasantry or even the Taliban would change sides after a few weeks of bombing! This is fantasizing in high places. … “Moreover, as hellish as the Taliban are, it appears that the ordinary people of Afghanistan prefer them to the brigands and bandits with whom we’ve been trying to make common cause … .”

Another cites a precedent for renaming the award:

Pollstar, the trade association for the concert industry, gives out annual awards for the top concert venues in the US. For years, every year, the winner of Best Outdoor Concert Venue was Red Rocks Amphitheater. Pollstar finally conceded that all things equal that Red Rocks would always win. It’s a fan and artist favorite … if you’ve been there you understand why. Now, the group splits the award into two: Best Small Outdoor and Best Major Outdoor. Except that the former is called the Red Rocks Award and the venue from which it gets its name is ineligible to win.

Change the name to the Dick Morris Award.

Another:

He is a contrarian indicator.  The more he is convinced about something, the more I am inclined to believe the exact opposite.

As further evidence, another points to Dick’s piece from Friday titled “It’s advantage Romney after Obama fails to move the needle [in Charlotte]”. Another:

On today’s lunchtime video Morris shrugs it off: “I was hoping that Obama wouldn’t get a bounce but he did.” But don’t worry, he reassures us, because Obama’s re-election is doomed! Making this a choice election will “absolutely destroy him” in the debates, ads and messaging.

One more:

Do you remember in 2008 when he thought that Obama was going to win Arkansas and Tennessee? The dude is a hack, and a stunningly bad one at that. He embodies the award. He is the award. The award should be him.

I’ve had an increasingly guilty conscience about keeping that award named after someone who in may ways got the future right – at least righter than I did. So fine. Let’s re-name the award for really bad predictions after this lardacious blowhard. You talked me into it.

Ask John Hodgman Anything: Preparing For The Apocalypse?

You probably recognize Hodgman from his appearances on The Daily Show and those ubiquitous Apple ads, but be sure to check out his book, That Is All, an audio and paperback version of which are being released October 2. Excerpts here:

That is All is predicated on the premise (ahem, CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE) that, starting quite soon, we will enter a pre-apocalyptic period leading up to the end of the world, or to be more specific, Hodgman’s “COMING TOTAL ULTRACOLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION AND END OF HUMAN HISTORY,” but which may conveniently be referred to using the Norse term Ragnarok. You may think this is a joke, but it is deadly serious — this really is the end, because indeed, Hodgman has finally decided to write about topics including WINE and SPORTS, which were dismissed in his previous volumes. The end is nigh, and it has a bouquet with hints of fruit, albuterol, and jokes.

You can now pre-order The Complete World Knowledge box set. Check out his podcast here. Previous videos of John here and here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

When Islamists Attack

First, the public servant whom some Libyans murdered in a city saved from mass slaughter by US-backed intervention: Now the facts we have: in Libya four Americans have been killed by a mob, including Chris Stevens, the US ambassador, after an attack on the embassy in Cairo over an incendiary online movie trailer that is almost a parody of religious bigotry. About the film [WSJ]:

The movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” was directed and produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer who characterized it as a political effort to call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam. It has been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots around the world. …[The] film [is] about the Prophet Muhammad, portions of which in recent days have been circulating on the Internet. Contravening the Islamic prohibition of portraying the prophet, clips from the film show him not only as flesh and blood—but as a homosexual son of undetermined patrimony, who rises to advocate child slavery and extramarital sex, for himself, in the name of religion.

Max Fisher has clips. The filmmaker has called Islam a “cancer.” Here’s the New York Post’s review:

Burn this movie! Based on the 13-minute trailer posted on YouTube, the mysterious anti-Islamic hate “movie” that provoked protests should never have been made — it’s not only the most offensive but the most thoroughly inept piece of “filmmaking”’ I’ve had the misfortune to watch in 30 years of reviewing films … 

On a scale of one to four stars, I’d give it a minus 10. Burn this movie.

The attempt by Christianist and radical Jewish fundamentalists to demonize Islam and Muhammed does not in any way justify the kind of violence we have seen. Peaceful protests? Sure. But murder of innocents? No context makes that in any way anything but categorically intolerable. Blake Hounshell steps back:

For me, the embassy assaults are a sobering reminder not only of the deep anger and dysfunction that plagues the broader Middle East, but of the enormous difficulty the United States has in dealing with this part of the world. The level of distrust and fury toward America is not the sort of thing you heal with a speech or two. And to make matters worse, there will always be groups that exploit things that have no connection whatsoever to U.S. government policy, like this anti-Islamic film.

Ambinder says what needs to be said:

On Twitter, the first instinct of a lot of Americans was retributive justice. But the U.S. government’s sensitivity about the mood of the violent protesters is maddening but necessary. Being aggressive would cause more unnecessary dying. 

Those who use the gift of institutionally and legally-protected free speech to exploit and prey upon the vulnerability of certain people to violence ought to be shamed.  

At the same time, the people who killed people; protesters, thugs, militants, whomever, are ultimately responsible for their actions. If the U.S. government is going to discourage our own idiots from provoking people, then the governments of Egypt and Libya should act to corral those within their own nations who would storm an embassy on the pretext that a film offends. Well, barely, a film. A piece of anti-Muslim bigotry that was made to make the filmmakers feel good and others feel bad. If, as an American, I feel embarrassed that so many of my fellow Americans are bigots, I would, as an Egyptian or a Libyan, be even more horrified that the majority in my country seemed unable to stop (and barely condemn) the even more deplorable violent religious extremism of a minority.  

On that note, Lynch looks at the official reactions in both countries: 

Details and video from the violence in Egypt here. My take on the Romney reaction incoming …

Our Investment In College, Ctd

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In response to McArdle's cover story on college, Dylan Matthews charts the college return on investment:

[E]ven today a college education more than triples your investment, an astounding rate of return compared to traditional investments such as stocks and bonds. Human capital is still very worth investing in. But unless growth in tuition costs is corralled, the return is going to keep falling. So McArdle’s piece was premature. The returns on college are enormous. But she does highlight a worrisome trend.

Elsewhere, McArdle responds at length to Felix Salmon's criticisms of her piece. It begins:

I definitely agree that college has become a necessary degree to advance in a lot of fields.  And you can argue, as my former colleague Jordan Weissman does, that this represents a genuine advance: that the fact that 50% of insurance salesmen now have a college degree represents a genuine improvement in the quality of insurance salesmen.

But this is somewhat recursive: the fact that college diplomas are required for more and more of the high paying jobs will definitionally increase the returns to education, but if all we’re doing is using the credential as a signal, then this is not, from a social standpoint, a good thing. It would be far cheaper just to agree not to lean so hard on the signal.  

Time For The Fed To Act?

As we wait to hear whether Bernanke and the Fed will undetake another round of quantitative easing (known as QE3) in the next couple of days, it's worth reviewing economist Michael Woodford's recent paper (pdf) on nominal GDP (NGDP). Dylan Matthews provides background on the paper:

Woodford’s paper is an extended argument for the Federal Reserve to stop targeting a certain level of inflation (about 2 percent annually) and to start targeting a certain level of nominal (that is, not adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product. Woodford is hardly the first person to endorse this idea, commonly known by the not-particularly catchy name of“NGDP level targeting”. Bentley University’s Scott Sumner popularized the idea first on his blog, The Money Illusion, and then in a long essay in National Affairs. It has since been endorsed by Christina Romer, who was President Obama’s head economist earlier in his term, Paul Krugman and the economic team at Goldman Sachs.

The idea is that NGDP encompasses both the rate of inflation and the rate of real economic growth. So, if either inflation grows too large or economic growth is too slow, NGDP targeting would recommend action to correct that. By contrast, inflation targeting such as that engaged in by the Federal Reserve in recent years does not react as aggressively to recessions.

Joe Weisenthal uses an analogy to explain NGDP targeting:

Bernanke is driving a race car across the country from New York to Los Angeles. He already has the accelerator all on the floor, so he can't pump faster. To convince everyone that he'll get to his end goal even faster, he disables the brake pedal, so that he can't slow down in the future, even if he wants to.

Wonkblog rounds up a range of views on whether the Fed will pull the trigger on QE3. Wiesenthal thinks the Fed won't. Bill McBride not only differs, but explores why this round of asset purchases "might be more effective than most people expect":

[O]n effectiveness, one of the key transmission channels for monetary policy is through residential investment and mortgages. The previous rounds of QE (and "twist") have lowered mortgage rates and allowed homeowners with excellent credit and income to refinance. However this channel has been limited as Bernanke noted in his Jackson Hole speech. … As residential investment recovers, and house prices increase (or at least stabilize), this channel will probably become more effective. Last month I summarized some of The economic impact of a slight increase in house prices. This includes mortgage lenders and appraisers becoming more confident in the mortgage and housing markets. I think that is starting to happen, and I think QE might have more traction now through the housing channel.

Meanwhile, Yglesias argues Bernanke won't act because of vanity:

If he says "hey, Michael Woodford and Christina Romer and Charles Evans and Jan Hatzius are right, let's start pairing these asset purchases with an explicit nominal GDP level target" and the economy starts rapidly improving, that will show what a disaster his tenure in office has been. So it won't happen.