The Dish

Presumably, that's Ahmadinejad's response to Bush's "Axis Of Evil". He needs a Frum or two. Scott Adams is amused:

I laughed when I saw this New York Times article in which Iran's state run media referred to America as part of the "triangle of wickedness." Apparently the triangle includes America, Israel, and Miscellaneous.

I will allow that there are some translation issues here. Triangle of wickedness probably sounds way more awesome in Farsi. But it does make me wonder what phrases they considered before they landed on the Triangle of Wickedness.

One clue is that they had to add a miscellaneous category just to get the threat level up to triangle. Otherwise the labeling options are limited to Duo of Duplicity, or the Gruesome Twosome, or the Twin Terribles. See? It's harder than you think.

Remember when Fox News called Michelle Obama a "baby mama"? It appears Scott Brown implied the same regarding Barack's mother:

Chait reacts with disgust:

By showing Brown endorsing a fringe right-wing pet theory (explanation here), it's more evidence of the fact that Brown is anything but the good government, uniter-not-a-divider moderate he pretends to be. That's the fundamental lie of his campaign that Coakley has been seeking (unsuccessfully, thus far) to expose. And on a visceral level, to watch him chortling as he calls Obama illegitimate is just gross and offensive. To me it exposes the man far more deeply than Coakley not knowing who Curt Schilling is.

A longer clip of the segment reveals the context of the remarks to be the unplanned pregnancy of Bristol Palin. Perhaps Brown actually meant, "Well I don't know how relevant Obama's mother's marital status is to the point at hand," but it sure looked unseemly. Watch it and make up your own mind.

"[I]f you know that it takes eight years for George Bush and his cronies to put our country into this hole … then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president's in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that," Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), who went on to call Martha Coakley "Marcia" repeatedly.

Rafaela, Argentina, 12 pm

I recommend Chait who recommends Cohn:

Democrats from both ideological sides ought to consider whether voting against it now really spares them political blow-back. All of them have already voted for a health care bill. And that means they can expect one of the following two advertisements this fall: Candidate X is an out-of-touch liberal who voted for the horrible health care reform bill that passed.

Candidate X is an out-of-touch liberal who voted for the horrible health care reform bill that almost passed.

It seems to me the two ads would be equally effective, unless Democrats can counter it by touting the benefits of reform–by reminding voters that, in the future, they won’t have to worry that insurance will run out when they get sick, that they’ll be able to have a binding appeal when insurers deny coverage, that they’ll be guaranteed emergency room coverage without prior approval, that they’ll be able to change jobs worrying about losing insurance, and so on.

But the only way to make that argument is to pass health care reform. No matter what happens on Tuesday.

That's Joe Klein's read of the election in Massachusetts:

At the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton told me that he should have enacted welfare reform before trying health care. He needed to establish credibility as a good manager–at that point, most middle class voters considered the welfare system a worthless scam (and it was, as subsequent events showed, in desperate need of reform). Obama probably needed to do something similar…and he will, belatedly, do so this year, pushing for stricter financial regulations and a tax on big banks to recoup the bailouts…

He chose instead to take on health care reform, a project of indisputable long-term value to the country. He has gotten farther than most experts considered possible. He has made embarrassing compromises in the process, but it's likely he couldn't have gotten to this point any other way. He has spent most of his political capital. And, if the Democrats lose the election in Massachusetts, Obama loses his veto-proof majority in the Senate … and if he does, his gamble will, most likely, have failed.

The thing missing in this equation is that Obama did indeed tackle as best anyone could the economic crisis. But total opposition from the GOP and the usual foot-dragging by the Dems made health insurance reform a dominant issue and the sheer size of the problem allowed the nihilist right to promote the lie that this was all he was interested in.

But if there's one thing the nihilist right understands it is the power of a good lie. And if you lose your health insurance in the next few years, or you were hoping to be able to get some soon, or if you just lost your job and thereby insurance, or if your premiums continue to sky-rocket and your wages continue to languish because of health care costs, you know who to blame. 

He tried. The system killed it.

(Hat tip: Smith)

One of the key figures in the alleged cover-up of a torture session gone wrong – "If the prisoner dies, you're doing it wrong" – responds to the Harper's Magazine piece:

On Monday, in response to the article, Army Col. Michael Bumgarner said in an email that "this blatant misrepresentation of the truth infuriates me." Bumgarner said that Hickman "is only trying to be a spotlight ranger; he knows nothing about what transpired in Camp 1 or our medical facility. I do, I was there." Camp 1 is the facility where the three detainees were ordinarily held.

Bumgarner added that he would have to get clearance before he can talk to the news media, "but rest assured, I do want to talk to you very badly and set the record straight."

Here's what Scott Horton's article notes about Bumgarner's response to the sudden, simultaneous deaths of three inmates:

According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes.

This is the isolated part of Gitmo where paddy wagons came and went, whence screams could be heard during "aggressive questioning", and whence three corpses are believed to have emerged after the kind of treatment once reserved for totalitarian states but now indelibly part of the American way.

No, this is not a satellite of a secret Iran torture chamber; it is not a Soviet camp; it is not an isolated black site in North Korea. It is in Gitmo. And it is where America's founding principles came to die.

The corpses were delivered to their families with their necks cut out, to make it impossible to tell whether they were strangled to death in a session engineered by Cheney and Rumsfeld or whether they hanged themselves simultaneously as the cover-up insisted.

A closer-up version of the same photograph below the fold:

Here's an email that helped me understand better what's going on:

If you are correct and President Obama didn't do a single thing wrong his entire first year in office why did he have to schlepp off to the most liberal state in the country, that he won by 25.8 points to campaign against a state senator whom nobody had ever heard of before 2 weeks ago? Why are independents and moderates in Massachusetts voting against the Democratic Party knowing that a Democratic defeat may doom Senator Kennedy's life long dream of health care reform forever and damage this president so badly? Given his popularity when he came into office and overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House why hasn't he gotten more accomplished?

If Brown wins which meme will you be pushing? Martha Coakley was a horrible candidate, the American people just don't understand President Obama, it's all the fault of the Republicans and Fox News, or this election, much like New Jersey and Virginia had nothing to do with President Obama? 

Congratulations on the green card Andrew. Once you are squared away you need to get out of your bubble and get into the country and I don't mean this "Real America" bullshit pushed by people like Palin. When you lived in Boston did you ever go to Fenway and watch a Red Sox game? Ever eat at the Border Cafe in Cambridge or eat ice cream in the tea cup in JP Licks? Watch the Head of The Charles from Eliot Bridge? Boston Duck Tour? Newbury Comics? Ever been in a Southie neighborhood bar? When you are in NY have you ever been to Rucker Park or carved you name in a booth in John's Pizza on Bleeker Street? On the micro level Its a big beautiful messy optimistic country that you should wade into as de Tocqueville did.

I've been to almost every state in the US and tend to hang out in exactly the kinds of places my reader cites (with the exception of ballparks) but this email is unanswerable. It is almost pure populism. I am guilty of elitism – even though I'm an immigrant who was not born with any spoon in my mouth – because I support the constructive change Obama is trying to bring to the US.

You will note that my column was about the substantive progress Obama has made this past year in a deeply polarized political climate with some vast and intractable problems in the middle of the worst recession in a very long time. It was not an assessment of the politics of it all, which seems to be my reader's only criterion of success (maybe he should join the MSM elite which echoes everything he says). You will also note that my reader does not counter my arguments on this matter, or show why I am wrong in my assessment. I wish he would. Then we could have a debate. He just assumes I am out of touch. He echoes the pure feeling, removed from any actual substance, that Peggy Noonan's recent columns evoke.

Would Scott Brown have refused to pass a stimulus package? Or bail out the banks? Or restructure the collapsing car industry? Brown's core argument about health insurance reform is that Massachusetts has already done almost exactly the same thing, and he's fine with that, so screw the rest of the country. He favors controlling government debt, but wants more tax cuts and refuses to touch Medicare or defense. As Ross notes this morning:

The “right roots” activists are rallying around politicians who are promising to shrink government without offering any plausible sketch of how to do it. When Scott Brown pledges an across-the-board tax cut and sweeping deficit reduction all at once, he’s setting the conservative grass roots up for a major disappointment.

Brown is not a step forward; he's a throwback to the Bush years: more debt, more executive power, more war, more spending, more politics over governance, more Rove tactics and no substantive proposals except more tax cuts. He has no plans to help the uninsured or to control healthcare costs.

But it seems pretty clear to me that he will win, which means that the FNC/RNC machine has succeeded in perpetuating the meme that somehow Obama is a communist elitist out of touch with real Americans who want their government slashed, while they want no cuts at all in any entitlements, who want the budget balanced without any tax hikes or spending cuts, who demand access to unrestricted healthcare for ever, but refuse to support ways to reduce soaring costs. They want an end to crippling occupations overseas, but they also don't want to retreat or surrender to terrorists. They want to restore America's moral standing but retain the torture camp at Gitmo. And when told they cannot have all this, they vote for someone else who can promise it, however utopian their plans are.

A politician cannot change this mood. But Obama now has a clear warning that he must adjust his program for change in a more populist direction. How to do this will not be easy. But the attempt to offer a centrist path against a populist wave on both right and left has clearly been overwhelmed by the passion and anger of the moment and the barrage of lies and propaganda promulgated by a shameless GOP and a pusillanimous media.

But we know where we are now. Obama's George H W Bush-style focus on the merits of government has served the interests of the country well, in my judgment. But it has met the fury and shamelessness of the hard and ever more extreme right and the staggering amnesia of the electorate. With one major propaganda channel perpetuating an alternative reality and an opposition party motivated by anger, rage and populism, Obama's careful centrism is the right path but a tough sell. That tension – between substance and politics – will define the rest of his first term.

(Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty.)