"Fault" and the Death of the Public Option

There's no small amount of anger being directed at President Obama over the death of the public option, some form of national health insurance program to compete with private insurers. Take, for example, Glenn Greenwald,

Of all the posts I wrote this year, the one that produced the most vociferous email backlash -- easily -- was this one from August, which examined substantial evidence showing that, contrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it.

Greenwald then contends that Obama gave up the public option early, in order to buy off the insurance industry and perhaps to get it to financially support the Democratic Party.

I think Greenwald is correct in part - that President Obama has never viewed a public option as essential for healthcare reform. But what if he did? Obama could have twisted every arm in the Senate and he would not have come up with sixty votes, so why should he have wasted his energy on a doomed public option (and inevitably being accused of 'failing' by both the left-wing advocates of the public option and the entire Republican establishment when it didn't happen), when he could focus on things that could actually be achieved. Also, this appears to be misplaced anger - the public option died in the Senate some time ago. What Lieberman just killed off was part of a proposed compromise to advocates of a public option - the expansion of Medicare.

Greenwald alleges that the White House pressured freshmen Members of Congress on a war funding bill, linking to an article that notes that the White House denied the charge. But even accepting it as true, which of the Senators who were intent on killing the public option is a freshman? Which would shiver in his boots at the idea that "they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House" if they don't accede to the President? Sorry, but when you're scrambling for sixty votes every time an important issue comes up, and when you're dealing with Senators who don't need your help to get reelected, threats like that are apt to make you look silly and lose credibility.

Moreover, it does appear that President Obama has been doing his best to keep the party on track to pass a bill that he believes may work. He has also clearly embraced the principle of progress, not perfection. Think about it: A perfect healthcare reform bill would include provisions that have never even been on the table.

Joseph freakin' Lieberman - it's hard to think of a politician more deserving of being kicked to the curb by the White House, but reports are quite to the contrary - that up to now Obama has lobbied against any serious consequence to Lieberman because he supposedly can provide that sixtieth vote (that he somehow never seems to deliver when the need is critical). As much as I want to see Lieberman kicked to the curb, by all appearances he's such a petty, vindictive small-minded man that to do so now may well result in there never again being more than 59 Senate votes for healthcare reform - even the hobbled remnants Lieberman has deemed acceptable for debate (but still hasn't promised to support in a final vote).

Whose Victory Is It, Again?

While he's correct that passing a flawed healthcare reform bill is better than failing to act, Michael Tomasky opines,

No matter how frustrated or angry you are about what's not in this bill, is the proper response to that really to strike a posture that amounts to giving Republicans, who will never do anything to promote or even gesture toward universal healthcare when they have power, their biggest political win on Capitol Hill in at least six or seven and arguably in 15 years? That's just silly.

The Republican Party has been actively fighting universal healthcare for... what is it now... fifty years? Under the concept that if it passes it will prove popular, and will result in their becoming more like Britain's Conservative Party - able to attack Social Security and publicly funded healthcare at the margins, but largely stuck with a popular government-run system that they can neither destroy or defund. Hence we had David Frum fretting,

Instead of a healthcare reform to slow cost increases, Democrats in the Senate seem to be converging upon an expansion of Medicare to include age 55-64 year-olds and an expansion in Medicaid up to some higher multiple of the poverty limit. You might wonder why they didn’t do this before: expanding existing programs is always easier than creating new ones. So now instead of a new system that attempts to control costs, we’re just going to have a bigger and more expensive version of the old system, with a few tinkers around the edges. Republicans could have been architects of improvement, instead we made ourselves impotent spectators as things get radically worse. Plus – the bad new Democratic proposal will likely be less unpopular with voters than their more promising earlier proposal. Nice work everybody.

Medicaid is mentioned, but Frum's concern was about a popular, successful expansion of Medicare - something he apparently saw as worse than even a public plan. And while digging that up, what did I find? Frum's celebration of Joe Lieberman as the man who saved the Republican Party:

[The reform bill is] not good, but it’s not what we were threatened with two days ago. Thank you Joe Lieberman.

Whatever good comes to the Democratic Party from healthcare reform, the legislative victory was a Republican victory and, in a single flip-flop, it was delivered by Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman.

Another Round of "Stupid vs. Mendacious"

Way back in 2004, speaking of Lieberman's insipid attack on a video game, I commented,

... I've never cared for Lieberman. When he speaks about an issue, his comments usually betray a surprising lack of acumen - he doesn't seem to know the facts, nor does he seem to understand the issues. The alternative explanation is that he does know what he is talking about, but rather than advancing a sensible approach based on fact, logic, and law, he instead panders to the "family values" crowd, railing against immorality in a manner that, for somebody sworn to uphold the Constitution, is reckless and irresponsible.

Today we read,

In an interview with The Connecticut Post, he said he had been refining his views on health care for many years and was “very focused on a group post-50, or maybe more like post-55” whose members should be able to buy Medicare if they lacked insurance.

This week, when there actually seemed to be a compromise on health care that did not focus on Mr. Lieberman, he announced that he would block the package if the Democrats included a terrible idea — allowing people between 55 and 65 to buy Medicare.

He presented this as a principled effort to keep down federal debt, but when a Times reporter asked about his 180-degree turn, he said he had forgotten taking his earlier position until the Democratic leadership reminded him about it over the weekend.

Possible explanations:

1. Lack of acumen: Lieberman isn't capable of understanding the facts or issues, and his flip-flopping betrays a very weak mind.

2. Stupid: Despite truly believing he has spent years studying and learning about healthcare reform, with a particular focus on those who would most benefit from a Medicare buy-in, Lieberman can't keep track of the most basic of his own thoughts on the subject.

3. Mendacious: Lieberman 'forgot' his earlier stance the moment a health industry lobbyist contacted him and said "oppose it".

I recognize that there's a fine line between the first two possible explanations. Sadly, none of the explanations disqualify him from service as a U.S. Senator, and the third would arguably be "business as usual".

The Evolution of Religion

Some essays that have recently caught my eye:

• An Evangelical Christian frets about The Coming Evangelical Collapse, correctly noting some trends but overstating their likely consequences. One of the issues? Due to heavy church focus on things other than religion, "Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community."

• A commentary describing how churches have been affected by their shift from focusing on theology to focusing on social change.

  Christianity insofar as it is identified with a social agenda, whether liberal or conservative, will lose. Liberal churches are dying. Non-realist theology has little popular appeal: most laypeople who don't believe in God see no reason to go to church. There are innumerable secular organisations devoted to promoting social improvement and no reason why they should work for social justice under religious auspices. Conservative churches are identified with a social agenda that an increasing number of people find unacceptable.

  The author suggests that churches might "re-engage with theology, arguments concerning the existence and nature of God, and even with mysticism, the quest for direct experience of God", although if the author's correct I doubt that would connect with the secularized audience they wish to attract back. Further, if churches encourage parishioners to engage in direct discourse with God, a substantial number will find that God isn't telling them the same thing as their priest.

• An exposition on how a conception of "positive thinking", positing that the right mindset can make you rich, percolates itself through American thinking and some churches. Most often it's the proponents of that notion who get rich, not people who buy their products or donate to their churches.

• How the Anglican Church seems to have had a much easier time deciding to decry tolerance of homosexuality by its priests in America than to criticize Uganda's proposed genocidal policies toward gays.

  Under [Archbishop Rowan] Williams, the church that marries two women who love each other is to be thrown out of the Anglican Communion. The church that would jail them both for life, and would revile and persecute their defenders, stays snugly in his bosom. Not even the Archbishop's remarkable gift for obfuscation can conceal these facts forever.

  (A couple of days ago Williams finally got around to criticizing the Ugandan bill.)

• Charles Blow highlights the wide gulf between the religious beliefs of Americans and the religions they claim to follow. (He doesn't mention the interesting notion that many Christians have that angels are sweet, loving, benign beings who watch over us to protect us from harm.)

• With due respect given to the "generational horizon" projected in the previously linked articles about Evangelicals, it could be worse. Spain's Catholic Church faces a very serious shortage of priests.

Just Don't Look... Just Don't Look....

I find the notion that the best response to Sarah Palin is to ignore her to be misplaced. Whether she's deliberately injecting false and inflammatory information into the mainstream, or if she's simply a willing tool, being as I don't edit the Washington Post's editorial page I see no benefit in letting her lies stand unrefuted. Will it irritate stupid people to be told that the person they're choosing to worship is a liar? Maybe so. But it seems that the damage will be greater if they're never even exposed to competing ideas. And frankly, if the criticism does "pour petrol on Palin's fire" to the point that she becomes the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012, the joke will be on her supporters.

Palin shirked her responsibility to serve the people of Alaska who elected her governor, opting to resign and promote her autobiography instead. During the presidential campaign, she struggled while fielding questions relevant to the vice presidency during her debate, not to mention her much-publicised interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. This history does not constitute a personal attack on Palin's character: she may be a decent person, but her acumen and record with regard to policy and public service leaves much to be desired.

If this were the extent of the criticism, Palin might be treated like other politicians who entered the public sphere unprepared and demonstrated no command of the issues, which is to say, she would be irrelevant. But Palin's critics can't help themselves. Her biography, speaking gaffes, and family life continue to command people's attention, and serve as fodder for tabloids and comedic parody.

And this is the first time a politician's biography, speaking gaffes and family life were fodder for the tabloids, parodists and comedians? Or the first time the adherents of a weak-minded politician took offense at being told (politely or rudely) of those weaknesses? Fascinating. And it's like Attack of the 50' Eyesores - the best way to make Palin lose her importance is to simply not look?

But, if we are serious about combating the distortions that Palin thrives on, distortions that frame progressive politics as elitist fancy-talk, we need to think a bit harder about which jokes are both useful and in good taste.

So... the best way to respond to Palin is dry, scholarly and fact-based, lest her critics be accused of responding with "elitist fancy-talk"? Yeah... that should work.

The Washington Post has chosen to personify the problems in our public discourse that allow Palin's ideas to thrive. The problem isn't that she's treated with disrespect - the problem is that she is treated as if she deserves respect based upon her celebrity without any regard for her veracity. According to Op-Ed Editor Autumn Brewington,

She said the newspaper received an e-mail from Palin Tuesday asking to write about the issue and it decided it should run Wednesday, before President Barack Obama was to head to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

"If we were going to use it, we had to use it immediately," Brewington said. "It was a quicker turnaround than is often the case. But we made the decision based on news."

In other words, substance and merit weren't part of the equation - a celebrity said "Run it now, or somebody else gets it", and Brewington jumped.

Brewington did not regret giving Palin space, noting, "She is someone who stirs discussion and we are in the business of putting out opinion. She reached out to us."

And that's why there was a response piece published alongside... I mean, published the next day... I mean, published eventually... I mean, not published at all - because there's no better way to "stir discussion" than to present an error-riddled polemic and refuse the other side so much of a column inch in which to respond.

Brewington said the piece drew more reaction than most Op-Eds, adding that it ranked among the 10 most-read articles on the Post Web site Wednesday. "We are getting a lot of feedback. I have heard from a few more people today than I normally would have," she said. "Some people I think were glad that Palin had a voice in the Post, some were critical of her writing about climate change."

Among the critics was a university professor who has offered to write a rebuttal column, Brewington said, declining to name the person. "It is always interesting to see who reaches out to us," she said.

Yes, it's always interesting to see who offers scholarly, fact-based editorials that the Post isn't interested in running. The whole point is gathering eyeballs, and the Post can better do that by adding Page 3 girls running insipid columns by celebrities than by running thoughtful commentary from experts.

Media Matters asks,

So why won't the Post publish a column rebutting Sarah Palin's op-ed? Did the paper promise Palin it wouldn't run such a response?

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they, at a minimum, promised not to run a counterpoint alongside Palin's prattle - even though that probably would have generated even more attention and traffic for the Op/Ed page and Palin's column.

A few years ago, "link baiting" was all the rage in the SEO community. Try to build traffic by posting something sensational or with a catchy headline, under the notion that "all traffic is good traffic". Except a lot the time the traffic generated had no value, other than increasing server load. Visitors weren't interested in the site's other content or its advertising, just in whatever it was that initially attracted them to the site. If you're a new site, link bait leading to that type of spike in traffic can potentially help you get noticed. If you're good at it, it might help you develop a following. But if you're an established site, posting low quality link bait to draw traffic could have the opposite effect. Your new visitors see your low editorial standards as, for that matter, do your established visitors.

Whether you want to take the "just don't look" approach to Sarah Palin or you want to take a calm, scholarly approach to refuting her arguments, you have zero chance as long as the giants of the mainstream media give her a prominent platform the moment she requests one, while giving no space to the other side of the issues.

Joseph Lieberman, Worth Less than Worthless

Again, Joe Lieberman goes out of his way to impede the Democratic Party.

“You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in,” Mr. Lieberman said. “You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit.”

Class Act refers to a federal insurance program for long-term care, known as the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act.

Mr. Lieberman said he would have “a hard time” voting for a bill with the Medicare buy-in.

“It has some of the same infirmities that the public option did,” he said. “It will add taxpayer costs. It will add to the deficit. It’s unnecessary. The basic bill, which has a lot of good things in it, provides a generous new system of subsidies for people between ages 55 and 65, and choice and competition.”

A vote that "gets you to sixty" is no good if he's always voting against you. Lieberman should be made to understand that it's a deciding moment - if he can't vote for healthcare reform he should be kicked to the curb - he wants to be a Republican, fine, he can caucus with them. Who needs the narcissistic psychodrama.

Update: This is about right.

Update II: Via TPM, Lieberman supported Medicare buy-ins before he opposed them, advocating the idea as long ago as 2000 and as recently as three months ago. Presumably, since that time, the insurance industry lobbyists for whom he carries water set him straight.

Update III: I hardly know what to say. Somebody's arguing with a straight face that Lieberman not only deserves the benefit of the doubt, but that it's a "venomous slam" to infer the obvious from his actions - something his defender concedes (with no other explanation offered) may be "a little pay back" against his former party or "shilling for his home state insurance interests"?

Update IV: Did you read the post on zombie arguments? Jonathan Chait argues that the problem is not so much that Lieberman is mendacious, as much as it is that he's not very smart.

If Senator Smith from Idaho was angering Democrats by spewing uninformed platitudes, most liberals would deride him as an idiot. With Lieberman, we all suspect it's part of a plan. I think he just has no idea what he's talking about and doesn't care to learn.

Perhaps, but a lot of the time politicians say stupid things it's because they see a benefit from doing so, not because they're (necessarily) stupid.

Update V: (Am I turning into Glenn Greenwald?) The New York Times shares the brilliant insight,

But Mr. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, is not the least troubled by his status as Capitol Hill’s master infuriator.

In fact, he could not be happier. He is right where he wants to be — at the center of the political aisle, the center of the Democrats’ efforts to win 60 votes for their sweeping health care legislation. In short, he is at the center of everything and he loves it.

You think that might be because he's a narcissist, getting lots of attention for his childish pay-back against his former party from a credulous media that, even by Chait's measure, makes him look smart? Incidentally, I see very few comments indicating anger at Lieberman - I see anger at those who let him play Lucy, time and time again pulling the football away from Charlie Brown without consequence. People, including Dems, want the Dems to grow a backbone. (And please, no protest from his fellows, "I've known him for years. He's my friend!" When was the last time he showed any loyalty to anybody other than John McCain (was it GW?) or gave any indication of interest in the views or concerns of his old friends?)

Update VI: Joe Biden chimes in with a platitude that seemingly builds off of "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity":

But Biden said "honest to god" he doesn't know what is up with Lieberman (I-CT), whose opposition to elements of the health care bill has put Democrats in a major jam. But he added he learned from his own senate service, "never question another man's motive, question his judgment."

Still, when you have somebody do things that appear malicious, time and time again, you do have to remember - some people truly are malicious.

I suspect that part of the problem is that Senators are remembering the Joe Lieberman they (thought they) knew before his narcissistic bubble was pierced - they can't believe he's changed. They're right - he hasn't changed a bit. Back then, Lieberman helped himself by helping them. Now he helps himself by hurting them.

Update VII:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The D.C.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Amazon Prime Rip-Off Prices

Something I've seen recently on Amazon Prime are flagrantly inflated prices from participating merchants. If you look carefully, you might see a warning from Amazon,

Note: There are lower-priced buying choices available from other sellers that are not eligible for Amazon Prime.

But from the prevalence of the practice it appears that few people notice (or that enough don't notice that the vendors still make huge profits from their inflated prices), and the size of the "note" suggests that Amazon is cool with that.

I would propose three simple remedies that would restore some honesty to Amazon Prime:

1. If another vendor offers a lower price, that information be provided along with the price. "Price: $35.93 & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime; Available for other vendors for $14.99 plus $3 shipping."

2. If a vendor's Amazon Prime price exceeds the MSRP, that information be provided right next to their price - Price: $35.93 (MSRP $14.99) & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime"

3. If a vendor is found (algorithmically) to engage in excessive pricing as compared to either the MSRP or to other vendors offering the same product, they be excluded from the Amazon Prime program.

After all, the idea of Amazon Prime, at least as pitched to the consumer, is that you're prepaying for shipping - not that you're paying extra for the privilege of getting ripped off by Amazon's dishonest "partners".

Zombie Arguments

I was recently debating with a friend, whether politicians, pundits and the like who make irresponsible, inaccurate, false or fraudulent claims about various issues are mendacious or stupid. They say, "don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity", and that's the position my friend took - that no matter how absurd the argument, most of their advocates were either too stupid (or insufficiently intelligent while blinded by their own narcissism) to know that they were spouting nonsense. I don't disagree that it can happen, but I am skeptical that people who are clearly reading from the party memo, or where they offer a succession of discredited argument as each is refuted, aren't being deliberately dishonest.

I stumbled across a decent explanation of that phenomenon:

But the key to all of this is the recurring mischief of criticisms mounted against climate change. I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there's not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I'd welcome examples).

More than all that, I can spot the same rhetorical themes re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.

Among all these, reigning supreme, is the "zombie argument": arguments which survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down. "Homeopathy worked for me," and the rest.

Zombie arguments survive, immortal and resistant to all refutation, because they do not live or die by the normal standards of mortal arguments. There's a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. There are huge lists of them everywhere. It makes no difference.

"CO2 isn't an important greenhouse gas", "Global warming is down to the sun", "what about the cooling in the 1940s?" says your party bore. "Well," you reply, "since the last time you raised this, I checked, and there were loads of sulphites in the air in the 1940s to block out the sun, made from the slightly different kind of industrial pollution we had then, and the odd volcano, so that's been answered already, ages ago."

And they knew that. And you know they knew you could find out, but they went ahead anyway and wasted your time, and worse than that, you both know they're going to do it again, to some other poor sap. And that is rude.

Think, for example, of the tobacco executives who for decades flat-out lied about the dangers of cigarettes.

Update: Thoughts along a similar line from Paul Krugman:

When I first began writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely refuted their beliefs.

As Krugman notes, it rarely happens. Krugman's a bit cynical about their motivation:

In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Don't Save The Dealerships

There's an old joke that, had Congress followed its present practices at the time, we would still have (heavily subsidized) local blacksmith shops.

Faced with a sharply reduced market for new automobiles, and creaky, oversized dealer networks that are protected by state franchise laws, one of the key benefits Chrysler and GM sought through their bankruptcies was to reduce the size of their dealer networks. In my opinion the deal was too protective of dealerships. Don't get me wrong - I like the dealership where I last purchased a vehicle (as much as one can like a car dealership), and I like the service I receive at the dealerships where we get our cars serviced. There's value to the brand, and (if they're doing their job) to having the manufacturer protect its brand by requiring certain levels of quality and consistency in the level of service provided by authorized dealers and service centers. But a huge part of the current customer-dealer encounter - most notably picking out (settling for) a vehicle from the lot, negotiating price (and wondering if you were given a reasonable deal) - are relics of an era gone by.

There's no reason why a customer should not be able to customize a vehicle online. In fact, before you get to the dealership and find out that the configuration and color you want aren't "on the lot", pretty much every manufacturer lets you "build your own car" online. Why, as a matter of course, can't you order that car through the manufacturer's website, or get competitive bids from dealers within a specified geographic range? We tolerate what amounts to bad customer service in the sale of new vehicles because we're used to it, but can you imagine a new business that tried to impose a similar model?

Congress, in the manner of the aforementioned joke, wants to take us backwards:

The bankruptcy cleared the way for GM and Chrysler to eliminate more than 2,000 dealerships, with GM estimating that it would save $2 million per shuttered outlet. But on Thursday, the House passed a measure, attached to a must-pass spending bill, that largely undoes this vital reform. Headed for likely passage in the Senate and unavoidable signing by the president, the bill lets dealers threatened with closure take GM and Chrysler to arbitration on terms considerably more favorable to dealers than the companies had previously been willing to accept. The result will be hundreds of time-consuming cases - or demands by dealers that the companies pay them to go away. Either way, the taxpayers, who own most of GM and much of Chrysler, will bear the cost.

I have a great deal of sympathy for dealers who were running profitable enterprises (even if more from the sale of used cars and service than the sale of new cars) who are losing their franchises. Just as I have sympathy for the guy who profitably sold buggies before horseless carriages put him(and the village blacksmith) out of business.

Keep in mind also what this same Congress would do if this were workers asking for job protections - "Don't let GM close our plant. Don't let GM cut our hours." That would be quickly dismissed as interfering with the business strategies and profitability of a corporation. With due respect for Congress's greater sympathy for corporate subsidies (or perhaps it's the greater efficacy... or deeper pockets of corporate lobbyists), this is another side of the same coin.

Depersonalizing "The Enemy"

A few years ago, Richard Cohen personified the mindset that Bob Herbert finds so troubling. After explaining how he supported the Vietnam war until he was drafted, "no longer felt it was winnable" and he "did not want to lose my life so that somehow defeat could be managed more elegantly", Cohen drew a parallel to Iraq:

[O]riginally had no moral qualms about the war. Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat - and not just a theoretical one - to Israel. If anything, I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war - silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America.

On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing- the fighting - were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.

"Therapeutic" presumably meaning, "I thought it would make me feel better."

It was only when Cohen decided that the Iraq war could be lost that the numbers of U.S. soldiers dying for that cause started to concern him. The number of Iraqis (or Vietnamese) dying, before or after Cohen's change of heart on the war - either war? Apparently not a consideration. Continuing his theme from the earlier column, Cohen writes:

There are so few [war dead] - so few that in total for Iraq and Afghanistan we cannot even approach some individual battles of the Civil War or World War II, during which more than 19,000 Americans died at the Battle of the Bulge alone. In eight years, about 5,300 American service members have died in the two wars we now are fighting, the vast majority of them in Iraq. In that period, more than 250,000 Americans died in traffic accidents.

Cohen contrasts the changes in our society, the ability to see each war fatality as an individual and movement away from religious faith, to the experiences of "our enemies":

The ability to individualize -- no more Unknowns -- has undoubtedly changed America. We remain a religious nation but not as we were in the Civil War, when the dying tried to take comfort from the certainty -- it's true, isn't it? -- that a better life awaited them. Religion has lost that sort of mystery. Ministers have less authority. Dying has become harder.

In contrast, our enemies take religious solace in their own deaths. It is not that they don't value life; it's just that they don't value this life.

Here, Cohen is speaking of people valuing their own lives. Cohen only values the lives of our soldiers when he has given up on the cause for which they are dying, and there's no sign that he cares at all about the lives of casualties on the other side - soldier, civilian, man, woman, child. Despite that, I expect he's at least as confused as Thomas Friedman on why the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (and, historically, Vietnam) aren't sufficiently grateful for our efforts.

In Iraq, no one knows the number of suicide bombings - thousands of them, certainly.

If we're going for the "us and them" theme, it's fair to ask, how many suicide bombings occurred in Iraq before the U.S. invasion? In the nation's entire pre-invasion history, the number is zero.

Cohen is either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, the history of modern asymmetric war in which suicide bombing is not exclusively an Islamic or Arab phenomenon. (For all I know, Cohen thinks the Tamil Tigers were Arabic.) The Vietnamese used suicide attacks against French tanks. The Japanese used suicide attacks against our ships during WWII. But as I'm sure some part of Cohen knowns, it's so much easier to ignore facts and history, and to instead demonize and depersonalize "the enemy":

There is really no such thing as an American suicide bomber. We don't extol the bomber and parade his or her children before the TV cameras so that other children will envy them for the death of a parent. This is odd to us. This is chilling to us. This is downright repugnant.

See how awful "they" are? All of "them"? How different "they" are from "us"? The entire Arabic and Persian world reduced to a uniform, ugly stereotype that conveniently coincides both with the regions Cohen wishes to militarily attack and with his his complete disdain for their casualties?

By Design, Not By Accident

When it comes to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bob Herbert is upset that there's so little shared sacrifice, and many vocal proponents of the war have no interest in putting themselves on the line.

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

* * *

The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.

I recognize that Herbert's intimate experience with war was in an era during which we had a draft, while now we have a volunteer military. Sure, you can question how voluntary the military becomes once "stop-loss" policies kick in, or that some people choose the military out of economic need rather than out of a desire to become soldiers, but those arguments are peripheral to the issue of shared sacrifice. Even during the days of the draft, the children of the wealthy and connected could find ways out of service, or ways to avoid putting their lives on the line, so the sharing of the sacrifice was still not particularly egalitarian.

But more to the point, the military has switched to "all volunteer" both because it makes for a better military and because our nation's political leaders recognize that it's easier to fight wars without calling on the general public to share the sacrifice. In that earlier era, the student Herbert found who called for a "full-blown counterinsurgency effort, which would likely take many years and cost many lives" could easily have been a kid named Dick Cheney. In fairness to the Dick Cheneys of the world, and call it selfishness if you will, if not wanting "to serve in the wars" means "not wanting to get shot at on a battlefield" it's arguably evidence of sanity. The "shared sacrifice" imposed in the era of the draft was coercive.

I believe, actually, that a lot more Americans would volunteer to help support the families of deployed troops if they had a sense of how they might do that. I also believe that our government should spend more attention (and money) on reintegrating troops back into society post-combat. Without making excuses for anybody who "goes off the deep end" after their return to the U.S., there's an enormous transition to be made from being in combat to being back with your family - and even bigger if your family isn't there to support you. I spoke with a veteran of the Afghanistan War who described how he was greeted by his mother upon his return home, and knew the moment he saw her that his wife had left him - with an empty house and an empty bank account. He commented that it took about two years to transition out of the combat mindset, and to get back into a state of enjoying a "normal life" that initially seemed boring. By way of support, the military should have offered him more than a pat on the back on his way out the door.

But I digress. Herbert nails it here:

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

The political leaders who started this war, and the political leaders who want to continue the wars, don't want that type of pressure. So they continued a system carefully constructed by their like-minded predecessors - no pressure on us means no pressure on them.

The Real Scandal

When you find out that one of the sensational claims that were used to justify the Iraq war came from a taxi driver,

An Iraqi taxi driver who overheard two military commanders talking about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was allegedly the “intelligence sub-source” quoted in the Government’s dossier to prove that chemical missiles could be fired in 45 minutes, according to a report by a Tory MP.

Isn't the real scandal that Thomas Friedman wasn't the first to break the story?

Ever Strike Out in Little League?

What's the message here if you were really bad at sports, or if your team always lost?

The Problem With Forensic Science

I should say "problems". I think they're two-fold:

1. There's no such thing as "forensic science" - there's just science. The term "forensic" refers to how the science is used, not to the underlying scientific concepts or procedures. Instead, the term is treated as a brand - as something that sets the science apart from routine, day-to-day science (and, it seems, often exempts "forensic science" from the scientific method).

2. Forensic science is driven by police and prosecutors. Crime scene investigation is performed by police officers, who have attended a weeks-long police training course and perhaps some additional seminars. The evidence they collect is submitted to government funded "crime laboratories" that are sometimes deplorable. The credentialed professionals who may form the backbone of a prosecutor's case may turn out to be well-spoken incompetents.

Criminal defendants typically have no money to hire experts of their own. On those rare occasions when the court grants an indigent defendant money to hire an expert, the funds are typically not just inadequate but grossly inadequate to hire a quality expert. The not-so-quality experts? Very often retired from the police side, without either the self-awareness or the capacity to question the "science" they learned on the job. Judges are often former prosecutors, and many have little to no background in math or science. Prosecutors? Well, let's just say it's a rare prosecutor who is wiling to admit losing a case because of weak scientific evidence or their poor presentation of the case, rather than spinning about the "OJ Simpson Effect" or its successor, the "CSI Effect".

Occasionally I read about hopes to shake up the system, bring in real science, and there have been modest improvements in some areas, such as fire science as applied by arson investigators. Absent a scandal there's little to no movement for reform from within the system. Yet we have these scandals on a cyclical basis, and promises of reform (or potential for reform) never seem to take root. What is probably the best solution, adequately and independently funding defense experts, isn't going to happen.

Scandalous!

No, not the tempest in a teapot over questionable use of stock images, but...

The stock photos in question were added to the firm's web site in April by FindLaw, which Lindeman, Alvarado had hired to revamp and expand the firm's site, Lindeman says. Lindeman, Alvarado partner Charles B. "Brad" Frye says the project cost the firm about $30,000.

Thirty grand for this? Am I missing the place where you can insert keys, start the ignition, and drive somewhere? Seriously, even if you think West and FindLaw are great brands, and even if the companies that actively solicit your web design business and claim legal expertise want to charge similar amounts, it pays to shop around.

Isn't This Called... Blackmail?

Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred has insinuated her way into the Tiger Woods saga:

High-profile attorney Gloria Allred, who was to make a statement about Uchitel's relationship with golf's No. 1 player, said it was called off because of “unforeseen circumstances.” Allred said she would have no further comment.

However, Allred's daughter, Lisa Bloom, said the only conclusion is that her mother struck a deal with the Woods camp. Bloom, an attorney who worked with her mother for nine years and now is as a legal analyst for CBS, said Friday on The Early Show that she has never known Allred to cancel a news conference.

Bloom said that can only mean a confidential settlement was struck, which she estimated at being worth “at least a million dollars.”

“I know exactly how she operates,” Bloom said.

I don't say "celebrity lawyer" as a compliment. Most "celebrity lawyers" are interested principally in their own fame and fortune, shying away from anything that would resemble actual legal practice (let alone legal ethics). About the best thing a client of a typical "celebrity lawyer" can do for herself is to change lawyers.

Call it negotiations leading to a "confidential settlement", if you will. But what's described sounds to me like a classic shakedown.

Graceless but Accurate?

George Will whines,

But after 11 months of graceless disparagements of the 43rd president, the 44th acts as though he is the first president whose predecessor bequeathed a problematic world.

Apparently in Will's book it's only acceptable to gracelessly attack the current President? Because boy, especially when the President is a Dem, he's a master at that.

Too Easy

I recently speculated,

I suspect that Obama will order an approach that he believes will improve the situation in Afghanistan, but with the idea of wrapping up major military operations by mid-2011. At that time he can begin withdrawing troops without fear of a Najibullah-type collapse of the Karzai government before the election. His Republican opponent will have to decide if he wants to run on a platform of re-escalating and perpetuating the war, or effectively endorsing Obama's policies - and I suspect that in a national election there's a lot more danger to a politician who does the former.

Early excerpts from President Obama's speech confirm,

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

I wouldn't go so far as calling it the "easier option", let alone a "tragic mistake". The tragedy will be if, even with another two years, we're still looking at "Taliban lite" as an "acceptable" outcome. Further, few people (and fewer Obama supporters) are going to be happy with the policy. But just as it wasn't difficult to anticipate a policy that is timed around the election cycle, even if the decision proves to be correct, it's not unfair to view it as something of a cop-out, or at least as being politically safe.

How Do You "Create Jobs"

That is, without creating a new bubble.

Paul Krugman has been advocating for a "jobs bill", allocating funds to "create jobs", but the best argument for that seems to be that there's not really anything else that the government can do. You hope to create or sustain enough jobs to contain unemployment levels until the economy "naturally grows" to the point where it's no longer necessary. The measures for the success or failure of a job bill are crude - if unemployment is above projected levels it has "failed". But even assuming projections of the future unemployment rate have any validity (and they're really, at best, educated guesses), many factors can confound the jobs picture.

A great many of the jobs that have disappeared with the bubble were in the housing industry, and related industries. It's possible to improve the market for the construction trades through government contracts, but as Krugman notes today, that effect only lasts as long as there are approved, funded projects to build:

Two stories this morning highlight the risks. The WSJ has a report on highway construction titled Job Cuts Loom as Stimulus Fades:

Highway-construction companies around the country, having completed the mostly small projects paid for by the federal economic-stimulus package, are starting to see their business run aground, an ominous sign for the nation’s weak employment picture.

I suspect that a second, third, fourth round of funding will have a similar effect - sure, it keeps some people employed, but that the construction industry is so far off its peak that it cannot reasonably "naturally grow" enough to absorb laid off workers or to sustain itself without those contracts. By all means fund infrastructure, and perhaps fund it at a level above where you would in a conventional economic environment, but for the sake of improving the nation's infrastructure. But unless there's some reason to believe that you're doing more than cycling workers through short-term employment before another long-term layoff, there must be better ways to create jobs.

As we emerge from the current recession, I expect that a lot of employers will review their historic employment practices and implement some changes, none of which will be good for a traditional "job" market. I expect there to be more part-time workers (particularly if we get an ineffective healthcare reform bill from the Senate), more independent contractors, more outsourcing, more attempts to replace manpower with automation. Perhaps Krugman's proposal for a "tax credit for employers who increase their payrolls" would help, but I suspect that would for the most part mean giving companies money to do what they were going to do anyway.

As for literally creating jobs through a "small-scale version of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration"? Even if you could identify appropriate tasks for the workers to perform, I'm not sure that it's the best way to spend money. Would this be a WPA for the information era? Because if it's about manual labor, I would expect that most gradates of the program would find the job market as lacking as any other construction workers whose employer's contracts were completed.

I still think that it's time for a real investment in helping workers figure out how to help themselves. I suspect that would be a lot cheaper than most "job bill" proposals, with the added benefit that people who can employ themselves are less likely to again find themselves included in the nation's unemployment statistics.

Money Is Only Fungible When It's Convenient

When it comes to defeating... I mean, funding healthcare reform, the editorial board of the Washington Post has been clear: it wants additional funding in the form of a middle class tax hike, and that funding should come from a tax on employer-provided health insurance plans. Completely unacceptable to the Post? An income tax surcharge on the wealthy, or any other measure that might increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Within that context, the Post could not bring itself to view money as fungible:

The deeper issue, though, is whether it is wise to pay for a far-reaching new federal social program by tapping a revenue source that would surely need to be tapped if and when Congress and the Obama administration get serious about the long-term federal deficit.

It's a wonderful argument that can be recycled for any occasion - we can't tax the rich now because we may need to tax them later, so what we really need to do is impose a regressive tax directed at those working Americans fortunate enough to have decent health insurance. It's also absurd, because the order in which a tax is imposed (the working masses first then the rich, or the rich then the working masses) has little impact on the revenues that any given tax will raise. If we raise taxes on the wealthy first, we can still later tax health insurance benefits.

As you would expect if you follow their unsigned editorials, or the writings of Fred Hiatt and his crew, the Post's arguments are entirely situational. When it comes to funding war, money suddenly becomes fungible. It no longer matters that there be a connection between the tax and what the tax ostensibly pays for (such as taxing health insurance benefits to pay for an extension of health insurance to the uninsured). The only constant is the Post's insistence that the burden should fall on working Americans, and that taxing the wealthy should be off-limits.

As we have pointed out before, the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon has not been raised since 1993 and is long overdue for an increase. Two federal commissions have proposed one in the past couple of years. In January the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission said its recommended hike of 10 cents a gallon for gasoline and 15 cents for diesel would raise $20 billion a year.

A 40-cent increase over five years, proposed by a second federal commission, would cover most or all of the war's costs and still leave gasoline prices well short of where they were in the summer of 2008. Those months showed that higher prices could do much to reduce U.S. carbon emissions¹ - another national imperative. While most proponents of a higher gasoline tax want to use the money for highway infrastructure, or refund it to taxpayers, Congress could shift funding to those purposes once the U.S. mission in Afghanistan begins to wind down.

I do think that a carefully implemented gasoline tax increase could be a good thing, if the funds are appropriately applied to measures that reduce the need to drive, increase fuel efficiency, repair broken infrastructure, etc., ideally with the money kept out of the general fund to avoid its being applied to other projects even as our nations' infrastructure continues to crumble. (We arguably could deficit spend to pay for major capital investments, but war proponents seem to only favor deficit spending to pay for war.)

The editorial mentions peak gas prices - a time when people who were well off might have grumbled when they filled their tanks, but where many working people had a difficult time affording their commutes to work. Has Hiatt's crew forgotten how the spike in gas prices triggered the collapse of the domestic auto industry and contributed to mortgage defaults, helping to burst the housing bubble that nearly collapsed the world economy? I have come to accept that regressive taxes are the only kind that the Post's editorial board likes, but if we must have one we really should be directing the tax revenues at preparing for a future where gas again exceeds $4/gallon, not frittering it away indefinitely on one of Fred Hiatt's pet wars. Hiatt has to know that once that money goes into the general fund, it's exceptionally unlikely to be later set aside for other purposes, but what are the odds that he actually cares?
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1. Yes, global economic collapse does result in reduced carbon emissions. I'm just not convinced it's the best means to the desired end.

Sticker Shock?

As it turns out, an "autographed" copy of "Going Rogue" isn't worth the price.¹ (via LGM)
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1. If you ask, "How does that distinguish it from the standard version", well, um, I dunno.

If You Burn Through Your Allowance, And Then Some....

How many times should mom and dad simply hand you more money? Paul Krugman argues,

One [job creation or preservation] measure would be another round of aid to beleaguered state and local governments, which have seen their tax receipts plunge and which, unlike the federal government, can’t borrow to cover a temporary shortfall. More aid would help avoid both a drastic worsening of public services (especially education) and the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

And he's right. And it may be a fair retort that "this is not the time to raise taxes". But at the same time, I don't approve of simply handing more money to the states without demanding a change in the status quo.

A lot of the problems states are facing arise from tax policies that are short-sighted and regressive, and a lot of states have been (and will continue) to make things worse by shifting part or all of the cost of present programs onto future budgets, or by selling off forms of revenue generation (e.g., lotteries, roads, parking meters, prisons, bond issues, etc.) to balance this year's budget on the backs of future generations. It really makes me want to issue a parental, "You should have planned for this before you spent all your money," lecture.

If more federal aid is offered to the states, it should have clear strings attached: tax reforms likely to create and sustain a balanced budget starting in, let's say, 2011. The CBO can crunch the numbers.

The Moral Imperative of Running Up Debt

If you assume a benefit to your children and grandchildren, it would be morally wrong not to leave them the debts associated with your indulgences:

It is possible that the Afghanistan War is a bad idea; if so, the remedy is to end the war, not to raise taxes. If it is a good idea, the benefits will accrue to the inhabitants of the future, who will be protected from terrorists and other baddies, not us. We perform a benefit for the future, and we charge them for our costs; what is there to object to?

See? There's no justification for paying for war - you either end it, or assume that it will bring about good results for future generations and pass the cost on to them! You don't need their permission or consent, and it's legitimate to work off of assumption because, quite obviously, we have no way of knowing how the war in Afghanistan will turn out for future generations. But no matter how you slice it, it would be just plain wrong to expect war proponents to help finance the war - maybe it would be just to tax war opponents, for failing to stop the war, but not the proponents with their demands for unlimited deficit spending and sacrifice by others.

Deficit spending for what is in effect a capital investment — as opposed to spending on current consumption — is justified. If the War Tax is imposed, we simply transfer additional wealth from ourselves — including the soldiers and others already making the sacrifices — to the future.

Assuming for the moment that is correct.... Leaving future generations a better world, at our own expense? The horror!

And how can it not be a capital investment to burn through billions of dollars in munitions to blow up billions of dollars in infrastructure? Oh, I see, it's "in effect" a capital investment, even though it's not actually a capital investment, so even though we're destroying wealth we should nonetheless treat the war as an investment or a wealth-creating activity. It's even better than the Robert Samuelson / Fred Hiatt-type arguments of "we can afford it" and "deficit spending for wars is okay 'because wars end'" - we have a moral imperative to run up the deficit so as to not let future generations leech off of our lack of sacrifice. It's only those things that provably help people that must be paid for with new taxes.

Such Ingratitude

Tom Friedman's latest reminds me of the days when the Times Ombudsman defended the paper's coverage of Middle East issues by claiming that they received roughly equal amounts of criticism from both sides. No, being criticized by both sides doesn't automatically mean you're fair, balanced or accurate. Sometimes it means that everybody but you can see serious fault in your argument.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

What say you, Glenn Greenwald?

Six months into the war, Friedman proudly proclaimed that "the real truth" was that we invaded Iraq to take out our "big stick" and tell them to "Suck On This," to take a 2-by-4 across their heads, and that we attacked them "because we could." In his 2003 explanation with Charlie Rose, did he even mention what he now claims was the war's "primary" purpose: "to destroy two tyrannical regimes ... and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics"? No. In a very rare moment of candor for this rank war-loving propagandist, he announced very clearly the real purpose of the war, only for him to now turn around and accuse Muslims of being blind and hateful because they heard his message loud and clear, and because they don't express enough gratitude for all the gracious Freedom Bombs we've dropped - and continue to drop - on their homes, their villages, their families, their children and their society. Apparently, they heard deranged, chest-beating bellowing like this from America's Top Foreign Policy Expert and took it seriously....

Well, let's hear a balancing comment from the other side of the political spectrum. Dan Larison?

One of the most irritating things I have noticed during the last decade has been the whining from American pundits about how ungrateful the world’s Muslims have been in response to our alleged beneficence on their behalf. The grimly amusing part of this is that the whining pundits accept the assumptions of pan-Islamists, but put them to different, limited use: Muslims everywhere must feel gratitude for any assistance we have ever rendered to a Muslim population. Of course, if our policies have ever adversely affected a Muslim population, Muslims everywhere should not think that they have any particular interest in this, but should instead resist the siren song of pan-Islamism.

And perhaps that illustrates my original point - sometimes when you're criticized from both ends of the political spectrum, and perhaps particularly where your critics are making the same point, it could be that you're wrong.

Friedman's conclusion seems narcissistic, a wish to place his words into President Obama's mouth:

"Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, 'This is not Islam.' I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn't. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves."

Did you get that? Friedman doesn't believe that Islam is the source of all evil, but the problem is that everybody else needs to be told that it's not - including Muslims. And he wants to put that attitude into President Obama's mouth.

Please refresh my memory. When has Thomas Friedman ever complained when a Western-backed military has crushed a largely secular Arabic government or movement, even when it was obviously going to be replaced by an Islamic alternative? Where does he remind us of the benighted, enlightened regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before they were toppled? (Wait, you say they were despots? But they weren't religious, so how can that be?) When has he ever taken notice of peaceful protest by Arabs in his columns, and if you can find an example how much impact did it have on his proposed "solution" to the issue they were protesting? Where can I find a single column in which he refuted the calumny that the secular Palestinian Authority and fudamentalist Islamist Hamas were "the same thing"?

How many times has he ignored exactly the type of statement he demands, likely rationalizing it away as insincere, not representative, or whatever else it takes to avoid changing his mind about Islam (even as he pretends that only others need persuasion)? Outside of the context of Islam, has he ever conflated the acts of any other people, individual or collective, secular or religious, with the dominant religious beliefs of their society - or would he reject such a conflation as bigoted?

I'm also curious - what was the last march Thomas Friedman attended, to demonstrate the supposedly peaceful, progressive nature of whatever opinions or positions he holds? (My bet is that he's never marched for anything, unless it was in college as part of an effort to impress a girl.)

Friedman seems to be offended that the Islamic world doesn't share his positive view of Western interventions and invasions in their nations. Perhaps he should reflect on that, as he seemed to be in the "candy and flowers" crowd at the start of the war: If you believe you are doing something because it's right, do it because it's right. But if you're going it because you expect or need gratitude, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

Update: Another take on Friedman:

It's curious that while accusing Muslims of buying into an imaginary narrative, Friedman himself buys into an imaginary alternative one: the romantic idea that US foreign policy is altruistic – "dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny". That is nonsense. US foreign policy, like that of other countries, is based primarily on its perceptions of its own interests.

The kind of self-righteousness seen in Friedman's column – puzzling over Muslims' apparent ungratefulness towards the US – is not only simplistic but actively harmful, Walt says. It "makes it harder for Americans to figure out why their country is so unpopular and makes us less likely to consider different (and more effective) approaches".

Agonising about "why they hate us" – as Friedman and many others in the US do – is never going to be productive so long as it is framed within the notion of an altruistic foreign policy, but once self-interest is recognised, the picture becomes clearer.

Where Have We Heard This Story Before....

Wikipedia declares that rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. A web designer comments,

I suspect we’re observing a case of diminishing returns. When Wikipedia started, there was just one page so it’s initial growth was exponential. However, now there are 3 million articles in English alone; how easy is it for contributors to find a topic that hasn’t already been covered in considerable depth?

In addition, Wikipedia has evolved from a free-for-all into a more secure information resource. In the early days, it lured spammers and vandals who added or modified a significant number of pages. Those activities have been mostly banished, so frivolous updates are far less likely.

Basically, the pattern works like this: An online collaborative project, open to everybody, begins with pretty much a blank slate and volunteers can do pretty much what they want. Opportunists take advantage of the situation, and the free-for-all environment leads to some very low quality work, and the handful of staff members overseeing the project are overwhelmed.

So staff implements rules on who can edit, and where, and delegates more responsibility for the quality of the project to volunteer editors. The volunteers have little or no say in the direction of the project, and are subject to being overruled by various real or ad hoc committees, community votes or individual staff members. People who have "created" parts of the project don't like changes made by newcomers, newcomers find their work quickly modified or deleted by others, newcomers are suspected of wanting to abuse the project, senior editors are accused of various forms of abuse or conspiracy, and the project's initial fun and energy dissipates into drudgery.

Meanwhile, the owners or founders may appear to have little or no vision of the future of the project - it is to stay pretty much the way it is, even as it's obviously faltering or failing, and editors are expected to pretend that the Internet stands still.

Whether we're talking 80, 90 or 100%, I can't presently think of an online collaborative project of this nature that hasn't followed a similar path.

As Much As The Next Guy....

Michael Gerson shares this gem:

I dislike media bias as much as the next conservative. But I don't believe that journalistic objectivity is a fraud. I was a journalist for a time, at a once-great, now-diminished newsmagazine. I've seen good men and women work according to a set of professional standards I respect -- standards that serve the public. Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

Amazingly, Gerson's entire column lamenting the decline of journalism, concluding with the assertion that conservatives dislike media bias, fails to even mention Fox News.

More to the point, Gerson used to work for the Bush Administration whose contempt for the media seems fairly characterized as one of the many knives in the back of professional journalism. By way of example, has Gerson already forgotten Talon News and Jeff Gannon? Down the memory hole....

Soylent Green... In Reverse?

I'm skeptical of the time frame, particularly if we're talking about getting something with realistic taste and texture, but artificial ("in vitro") meat is on the horizon:

In-Vitro Meat - aka tank steak, sci fi sausage, petri pork, beaker bacon, Frankenburger, vat-grown veal, laboratory lamb, synthetic shmeat, trans-ham, factory filet, test tube tuna, cultured chicken, or any other moniker that can seduce the shopper's stomach - will appear in 3-10 years as a cheaper, healthier, "greener" protein that's easily manufactured in a metropolis.

So it's green, but not so soylent:

Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we'll just eat people we don't like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, "The State of the Art" with diners feasting on "Stewed Idi Amin." But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines. And of course, masturbatory gourmands will simply gobble their own meat.

An image that would probably still have Charlton Heston shouting an alarm, although "People are made out of it" doesn't have quite the same ring.

Less Junk, More Charity

George Will makes some good points on Christmas consumerism.

Historical Analogies

A thought exercise from Paul Krugman.

Diplomacy as Speed Chess?

Roger Cohen's impatience is bringing out his inner (and outer) Kissinger:

I found myself seated next to Henry Kissinger at a New York dinner and asked him how he thought President Barack Obama was doing.

"He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games," Kissinger said. "But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one."

Cohen bought into Kissinger's analogy without asking the appropriate follow-up questions, "How many chess games did you finish during your first ten months, whether as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State? And how many key matches did you and Nixon win?" In one particularly memorable multi-year game, the Vietnam War, the Kissinger team pulled an "illegal war in Cambodia and Laos" gambit, attempted an end-game that revolved around the Paris Peace Accords and "peace with honor", and shortly thereafter was checkmated. Maybe Kissinger there's a reason Kissinger chose the word "finish" instead of "win".

Kissinger could respond that these issues are hard, many will take years to wrap up, and it may take many more years before it's clear who won or lost a particular match. And that would be a fair response, but for the fact that it undermines his analogy. It's fun to drop bon mots, but it's hard to imagine that Kissinger didn't know he was pushing for an impatient response to problems that can only be resolved through care and patience - and perhaps not even then. (How well did Kissinger's policies work to unify Cyprus? Does he still want Cyprus under Turkish control?)

Cohen eagerly accepts the role of the impatient American:

I thought that wasn’t a bad image for Obama’s international gambits, and then here, at the first Halifax International Security Forum, I heard a similar observation from one participant: "We’ve had the set-up, but is there a middle game?" Or, put another way, can this probing, intelligent president close anything?

Cohen should know better, and probably does. Most likely, though, he doesn't care about the half-dozen high stakes games President Obama is working through. Most likely he cares about one, maybe two, and he's less concerned that Obama can't "close" than he is that Obama will choose to close in a manner inconsistent with his own preconceptions of how the matter should be handled.

Cohen also misses the boat with his comment on Obama's talk of a world without nuclear weapons,

It’s an idea with resonance, and may provide some moral suasion over countries contemplating pursuit of a bomb, but I can’t help recalling that the worlds of 1914 and 1939 were worlds without nukes. No thanks to that.

To bring up the subject is something of a red herring, given that even if Obama makes progress toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, I know of nobody with the slightest sense that he will eliminate nuclear weapons during his Presidency - at best it would take decades. But he should consider also that the present world is nothing like 1914 or 1939. Now granted, should Russia or China start acting in a militarily threatening manner to the United States or each other, possession of nuclear weapons by all parties does deter transforming a cold war into a hot war. But the U.S. can presently militarily crush any nation it chooses... except for those with nuclear weapons.

Does Cohen believes that détente can be achieved between any two nuclear-armed nations? Clearly not. The present danger is that an otherwise militarily weak nuclear-armed state might use its weapons in a war with a neighbor, might lose control of its nuclear arsenal in a coup, or might sell or trade its knowledge, components, or even a nuclear device in exchange for cash or weapons. That's the danger Obama is attempting to address.

On Russia, Cohen offers a conclusion that sounds like it was lifted from a corporation's annual report: "I don’t believe Obama has yet shifted the basic confrontational optic of a resurgent Russia emerging from the humiliation of imperial collapse." Cohen sees Russia as having two conflicting approaches to the world: one comes from Dmitri Medvedev, and "The other perspective is called Vladimir Putin." (Ah, memories.) Is Cohen arguing that Obama needs to take a hard line with Russia and somehow force it to act against its perceived best interest on foreign national policies, such as its relations with Iran - with the probability that Russia will respond by saying no? Is he arguing that the U.S. should give up on diplomacy with Russia, and just let Russia do what it wants? Seriously, what's his point? As Cohen knows, we have no military option against Russia.

On Afghanistan, Cohen is critical that while Obama showed "clarity" in March by sending a lot more troops, he is presently showing "uncertainty" because he didn't immediately agree to send tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan seven months later. I'm not going to dig through Cohen's past writings to try to determine if he wrote something similar about Bush during the former administration's seven years of malign neglect of the Afghan war, but it's worth noting that by way of comparison Obama is running laps around the mediocre record of his predecessor. No, the real fear isn't that Obama's indecisive - it's that he won't commit to endless war:

I worry now that Obama’s quest for perfect calibration will yield a less than resounding fudge where the tenacious message of a troop increase is undermined by talk of exit timing. That’s not how you break the will of an enemy.

How many times in its history has Afghanistan been the subject of an invasion attempt, invasion, or occupation? How many times in its history has it been successfully pacified, even when occupied by a superpower? Cohen truly believes that if Obama doesn't remind the Afghan people that we'll eventually pack up and go home, they somehow won't remember centuries of history - that the foreign occupier always packs up and goes home? Or that they have failed to notice that the same holds true in regard to any modern military engagement involving a long-term occupation in which the occupying power didn't engage in a massive population transfer into the occupied territory? Come on.

Cohen also seems to believe that every leader in the world wants to be Obama's best friend, and that they're all stinging at perceived slights:

In Europe, a more modest reset attempt has been compromised with political leaders (if not the public) by a perception of cool distance, underscored when Obama did not show at 20th-anniversary celebrations of the Berlin Wall’s fall. Feelings are particularly strong in Paris, where mutterings about Obama’s “Carterization” are heard. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who ushered France back to NATO’s integrated military command structure, and shattered political taboos dictating coolness toward America, has seen his hopes for a special relationship evaporate.

(Ah, memories.) It sounds like he's describing junior high school. "Angela threw a big party but Barack said he was too busy to come. All of Angela's friends are mad at him. Nicolas offered Barack a BFF bracelet, and Barack told him 'I don't want to be your best friend,' and now Nicolas doesn't like him any more and called him a loser." Again, come on.

Anne Applebaum has a better take on what's involved in Europe, noting that there's nothing close to a European consensus or European decision-maker with whom Obama can work on the key issues of the day, and she correctly notes that nations like China are going to pursue their own foreign policy interests, although her conclusion (while suitable for an editorial) seems overblown:

Europe might have a new phone number, but when Obama calls, the person on the other end of the line will still be unable to act. "Europe" will not be a unified entity capable of coordinating a unified policy in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, the Middle East or anywhere else anytime soon. Europe cannot, in short, become America's full partner in foreign policy....

This does mean that the Obama administration has a problem, however: Having come to office promising to work with allies, it may soon discover that there are no allies with which to work. Europe is still our best hope, because Europeans share most of our values. But organizing sanctions with a divided Europe - never mind a military operation - will continue to be a major chore. China, meanwhile, is acquiring vast foreign interests, trading in Africa and South America as well as Asia, along with a vast army to match. But China appears uninterested in joining an international campaign against terrorism, nuclear proliferation or anything else.

Global military and security thus look set to remain in the hands of the United States, whether the United States wants it or not. Halfway through his presidency, George W. Bush found he had to drop unilateralism in favor of diplomacy. Now one wonders: At some point in his presidency, will Obama find he has to drop diplomacy in favor of unilateralism, too?

Cohen seems to be operating under the conceit that U.S. foreign policy interests are everybody's interests, and thus that it's absurd that Obama can't handshake his way to consensus - that it's somehow Obama's failure. He underestimates the effect of Bush's unilateralism, which if anything caused our traditional allies to become quite accustomed to saying "no". He disregards the fact that foreign nations have their own issues to worry about, and their most pressing issues may not be the same as ours. He also overlooks the fact that there can sometimes be a political gain to a politician, even in an allied nation, for standing up to U.S. pressure.

I also like this one:

In Israel-Palestine, Obama underestimated the damage of the past decade and has been outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

No, what happened was that Obama overestimated the resiliency of the U.S. economy, and severely underestimated his own party's willingness to address serious domestic issues such as stimulating economic recovery or passing a healthcare reform bill, and has had to expend significant political capital on those issues. Netanyahu, ever an opportunist, recognized that he could say "no" to the Obama Administration without consequence, as the Obama Administration is not presently positioned to impose a consequence. Is it a great shame that a Democratically controlled Congress doesn't have the President's back on key domestic and foreign policy issues? Absolutely. But what does Cohen expect President Obama to do about that?

Cohen has a sense of how skewed perspectives are in Israel, but compare and contrast Benny Morris who describes Obama as "a man who has, in the international arena, shown a proclivity for indecision (except when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank)." Even with the retreat from his earlier demands for a mere freeze on new construction within those settlements, developed in knowing violation of international law, Morris sees Obama as having taken a hard line against Israel. (Meanwhile, Morris argues that an Israeli attack on Iran could bring chaos to the region, then turns around and suggests that it's the responsibility of the U.S. to bomb Iran so Israel doesn't have to, or at least to give it a green light and a massive infusion of high tech weaponry. Morris is definitely a person who brings to mind the phrase, "With friends like these....") It's also worth observing that Cohen sounds an awful lot like Pat Buchanan.¹

It's worth remembering that Cohen very recently argued that the time for achieving a bona fide peace, with a two state solution, started to vanish under President Clinton and was squandered under Bush.²

Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.

Peace is unattainable, Netanyahu's evasive, and all of this arose before Obama took office, yet it's somehow Obama's fault that his proposal for peace talks isn't working out. Or perhaps Cohen is now of the position that U.S. Presidents should pretend that the Israel-Palestine conflict is irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy interests, and give neither time nor effort to resolving it. Even a grandmaster will have difficulty ending a match, at least in a positive way, if Cohen is correct that he inherited a board where his only pieces are a king and a pawn while his opponent has retained most of his pieces.

The only thing Cohen offers that could approximate as a proposed solution is that Obama spend more time talking about "human rights and freedom". Does Cohen believe that in the prism of junior high school through which he views Europe, that will dissuade Nicolas Sarcozy from comparing Obama to Carter?

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1. Dan Larison offers a response to Pat Buchanan's arguments here.

2. You want to talk ineffectual? Or "dithering"? How about G.W. and his "road map" to nowhere?