Oh, Copenhagen . . .

Yes, China has not acquitted itself well . . . but at times like these, the historian in me speculates what might have been had Bush not been handed the White House by Scalia. One cannot help but lament the undeniable impact of eight precious years and so much credibility going down the drain. Such reveries provide for interesting thought experiments, but it's a depressing way to start the day and profits us little - other than to hope that the species will finally grow to appreciate that it really matters who is put in positions of power.

Sometimes, I think the realisation of such a hope entails another evolutionary step - and we don't have time for that. We as a species are capable of reacting quickly to immediate threats, such as an outbreak of disease or an attack of an animal or enemy. This explains the necessity of Bush and Blair creating a casus belli for the Iraq war which was premised - however mendaciously - on just such an "imminent" threat: portraying Saddam Hussein as a long-term threat was just not going to do it. This is proof that neither Blair nor Bush were stupid people: they understood well what it takes in order to succeed at exhorting human beings to action (in this case, mass violence) when the truth is less compelling.

It is the rest of us who are stupid: an existential threat to the species looms, and we seem powerless to stop it. Happy Christmas, kids!

Tony finally just says it . . .

. . . next stop: The Hague.

In my dreams.

Christmas comes early for the insurance companies

Soooo . . . no public option, and no medicare buy-in. Funny how a little competition from the supposedly bloated, inefficient government became so totally unacceptable. I guess we owe it to those insurance companies who nurture and protect us so lovingly . . .

On the bright side - if you had told me in 2004 that in this decade we'd have a $900 billion bill that would provide subsidies to most of the uninsured, ban discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, place a cap on premium costs for low-income workers, cap out-of-pocket expenses, cover more preventive services, expand Medicaid, and end gender discrimination in premium charges, all while shrinking the federal deficit... I'd have said you were tripping on mescaline.

I think Martin's got it right . . .

. . . Goldmans should fork over a pile of cash now. A big pile. It would be a mistake to impose punative tax on bonuses over a long period of time: the banks would just dance around that one - most easily by raising salaries.

But going after the bonus pools on a one-off basis? Why not try it? Martin's logic is sound.

For you geeks out there, this article from the BofE's Andrew Haldane puts it all in context:

" . . . the scale of intervention to support the banks in the UK, US and the euro-area during the current crisis . . . totals over $14 trillion or almost a quarter of global GDP. It dwarfs any previous state support of the banking system."

I'm lovin' the 'baggers . . .

. . . so entertaining.

Belated post . . .

. . . linking to a great article written by a Brit trying to explain what the hell is going on with the Right in America.

Respect your children . . .

. . . but that may be too much to ask in Texas.

Paul explains . . .

. . . how they got it so, so wrong.

I guess I really don't like being lectured to by rich kids about the genius of the free market

Here in what the locals like to call “Little Britain”, a nasty spat among the media elite has messily intruded on the public consciousness. The occasion giving rise to the current palaver was a recent speech darkly titled “The Absence of Trust” by none other than James Murdoch at the MacTaggart Series of lectures in Edinburgh on 28^th August. The speech was delivered on the twentieth anniversary of a memorable shot-across-the bow delivered by James’ dad, Rupert, at the same venue in which Murdoch-the-elder portrayed (probably accurately) a calcified British television media slumbering, contented and oblivious, on state subsidies as the digital media age beckoned - with Rupert Murdoch chomping at the bit in its vanguard. It was obvious that a speech on such an occasion by Rupert’s son-and-heir called for something special.

And Murdoch-the-younger delivered. In one sense, his was a tired reprise about the size and scope of the ‘beeb, whom competitors love to loathe as a state-sponsored behemoth stifling competition and distorting markets. But, by invoking Orwell, Mr. Murdoch cranked the debate up a notch. “As Orwell foretold,” he reminded us grimly, “to let the state enjoy a near-monopoly of information is to guarantee manipulation and distortion.” This certainly got people’s attention in a nation that takes its Orwell seriously indeed, as was no doubt intended.

It is important to keep in mind that the framework for this discussion – when stripped of all the accompanying sound and fury -- has been utterly upended since dear-old-Dad’s speech of twenty years ago: the debate now must be conducted against a backdrop which recognises the ascendancy of new formats, new media and the “New Media”. The last of these is dominated coincidentally by the Murdoch empire, which today wields enormous power in its own right, seizing market share in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere, and dominating certain markets (such as television sports). It is for this reason that James Murdoch’s plaintive exhortations to throttle the BBC in order to save democracy ring a wee bit hollow.

Meanwhile, we Americans living in the UK can only shake our heads in admiration or disbelief at the chutzpah of the son of Rupert Murdoch lambasting the BBC as a “state-sponsored” Orwellian threat to the “plurality and independence of news provision, which is so important for our democracy”.

In calling for “genuine independence” in the news media, Mr. Murdoch is to be applauded, but his prescription for ensuring such noble aims errs in one crucial respect: it fails to take account a little thing called irony. When the premise of one’s thesis also happens to be utterly self-serving, irony may have an unfortunate cancelling effect. We can only take Mr. Murdoch’s earnestness at face value, which make the passages from Mr. Murdoch’s speech priceless examples of apparent complete lack of self-awareness, among them: “. . . people value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus,” which is an “inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.”

“A better society”? Is this what the Fox Networks aspire to?

Even strident detractors grudgingly admire the discipline with which Fox News eradicates the very plurality and independence that James Murdoch now claims to champion. The reason Fox does this inevitably results from the very profit motive Mr. Murdoch claims ensures the opposite for example, there was money to be made in beating the drums of the Iraq war. When considering the alternative - providing thoughtful reporting and nuanced analysis – it was no contest. War sells, nuance doesn’t – especially in an America where attention spans grow ever more diminished. Slick graphics consisting of gauzy American flags ceaselessly waiving and jet fighters zooming across the screen between segments always help.

Can any serious observer say Fox News has elevated the level of debate over the past fifteen years? Fox News and the rest of the right-wing scream-machine have all but ensured the impossibility of any meaningful or productive debate in the United States about anything important. Fox’s fingerprints have been all over the “astro-turfed” “Tea-Baggers” masquerading as genuine “grass roots” citizen uprisings and the farcical town hall meetings that were supposed to be about health care reform, but which instead will be remembered for raising the prospect of having a president in the White House who is a Nazi.

If only we in the U.S. during the lead-up to the Iraq war had the equivalent of a BBC, which, of course, did not transcribe for public consumption White House or Downing Street diktat quite as dutifully as Fox News did. In fact, as Alistair Campbell memorably discovered, and amply demonstrated, the BBC turned out to be quite a thorn in the side of the British government. One can only wonder if Murdochs’ SkyNews in the UK has thus far stopped short of the outrageous excesses of Fox News in the U.S. as a result of being held in check by a rival state-sponsored news organization less motivated by profit. This contrasts alarmingly with the situation in the United States, where rival privately-owned news organizations fell quickly into line for fear of losing more market-share and even PBS, the once-independently minded Public Broadcast System, ran scared as Republicans cut off meaningful public funding. One can only wonder if changing this dynamic is what James Murdoch really wants to achieve. After all, as he so bombastically concluded at the end of his speech in Edinburgh (“[t]he only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit”), its all about profit.

James Murdoch’s earnest invocation of Orwell is ironic on levels too many to count: one might say it’s Orwellian.

This guy . . .

. . . is such a tool. You gotta wonder if this person's brain is capable of grasping the enormity of the irony bound up in the concept of an idiot child of a scion of yellow journalism preaching the virtues of unfettered free markets. Probably not . . . oh well, the rich are not like you and me. Sigh.

I'm lovin' Glen Beck . . .

. . . he's just the best.

Sometimes . . .

. . . I really don't miss living in that country . . . and, for the record, the NHS in the UK is far from perfect, but less not-perfect than the insane healthcare system (if one can call it that) in the U.S.

Been travellin' . . .

. . . and I admit to succumbing to temptation. Lo, to my shame I have bought The Economist. Twice. And I enjoyed it.

On economics, I've never had a problem with The Economist, but their commentary on American politics and culture seemed appallingly ignorant. In the past I attributed this to a craven desire to appeal to a certain readership who coincidentally believe everything they are subjected to on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages . . .

In my defence, The Economist have had a new editor for some time now. Perhaps this explains why they have injected a bit more of a measured approach which I find bordering on readable. As I have waxed at length in the past, the previous editor is not on my list of best friends.

Advice and consultation would be welcome: should I feel dirty and foreswear further transgressions, or give in to tempatation and renew my subscription?

I'd like to say he's thinking what I'm thinking . . .

. . . but, as usual, he's ahead of me. Living in the UK as a dual national, the irony of the Labour Party's unfortunate predicament certainly has not escaped me. Brits look at me funny when I say the current crisis, really, can be laid at the now buried feet of Ronald Reagan (and those of Thatcher, I suppose). Unfettered dergulation and subsequent unceasing degradation of government capacity to regulate effectively inevitably led to massive consolidated financial services firms maximising profit and senior executive pay at the expense of meaningful risk management. The fact that New Labour and Clintonites bought into the charade hook, line and sinker only testifies to the power of the cultural shift that took place in the early '80s . . . as well as to the power of cynical political calculation, delusion and the willing collaboration of a sycophantic, incompetent and conflicted newsmedia.

As we and our children pony up to pay for this mess, don't ever forget these simple facts.

Clash of the Titans?

Krugman versus Ferguson: the Battle Royale.   My money is with the Nobel laureate, not just because he's more qualified as a proper economist, but because I feel obligated to him since I am the source of his inspiration, his muse, if you will.

Economists have sucked lately

 . . . a plausible explanation . . . 

What Matt says . . .

. . . so simple, so true:

You know, Newt Gingrich knows a lot about saying stupid things and being forced out of the job as Speaker. … But one way or the other — I mean, I wasn’t in the room, you weren’t in the room, Newt Gingrich wasn’t in the room. None of us know exactly what happened there. But whatever it is Nancy Pelosi knew about, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, they knew more. And ultimately, when we have a thorough investigation of what happened, the bulk of the blame has to lie with the architects of the policy, not with a member of the opposition party.

The GOP playbook hasn't changed a bit: destract, deny, project.  And their demographic keeps on shrinking.

Getting silly now

I really wish Dick and daughter would just let us put this whole torture thing behind us . . . 

Really gotta wonder what they are on about . . . the more they jabber the more ridiculous they look.  And the more ridiculous they look, the idea we can keep looking away-nothing-to-see-here ever less and less tenable.  I want the lawyers' heads on pikes - for starters.  I don't care what Pres. Obama says.  It's a matter of professionalism and standards . . .   

And he, too, shall be judged . . .

. . . not sure why the rats are scurrying now - the ship sank a long time ago. 

Teabagging Michelle Malkin

Love this post - good on substance, too . . .

Here's a choice excerpt at the end - really puts the empty rhetoric and paint-by-numbers faux rage of the rudderless right in perspective:

yeah, government waste sucks, it’s rampant at every level, and taxes are a vicious racket, and everyone should be pissed off . What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending actually has a chance of benefiting them. You will never hear of a teabagger crying about OPIC giving $50 million in free insurance to some mining company so that they can dig for silver in rural Bolivia. You won’t hear of a teabagger protesting the $2.5 billion in Ex-Im loans we gave to GE through the early part of this decade, even as GE was moving nearly a hundred thousand jobs overseas over the course of ten years. And Michelle Malkin’s readers didn’t seem to mind giving IBM millions in Ex-IM and ATP loans at the same time it was giving its former CEO, Lou Gerstner, $260 million in stock options.

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!

Yeah - What about a "Bill of Obligations" . . . ?

It's an excellent point, if one can forgive a sitting Supreme Court Justice for apparently having not a clue about the entire basis for our form of goverment.  

Can you believe this guy hasn't asked a single question from the bench since early 2006?  Sorry, that can't be normal.

Obama won't look into Medvedev's Soul!!!

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/04/breakthrough-on.html

Deleted Post

Took too much space

I wouldn't bet on the dollar . . .

. . . at least not in the long run.  I bid you welcome, my Chinese masters . . . (apologies for the free registration filter, but reading the FT is worth it, so just do it)

Never been a better trainwreck . . .

. . . back behind the woodshed.  

Gotta love how Stewart just eviscerates this guy . . . even if Stewart doesn't seem to understand the first thing about short-selling, hedge funds, CDS's or how any of them have anything to do with our pension plans . . . 

The state of our media

Not sure whether to laugh or cry . . . 

Being treated like grown-ups

Obama explicitly rejected some of the more egregious budgeting practices of his immediate predecessor. President Bush never included the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his budgets, for instance, opting instead to treat those military campaigns as emergencies and fund them off the books. He took a similar approach with the entirely predictable $60 billion it cost the Treasury for each year that Congress spared 20 million taxpayers the expensive bite of the alternative minimum tax. Bush also budgeted nothing for federal disaster response, though natural disasters invariably occur. Obama included all three things in his 10-year budget.

Read the remainder -- a new era.

Report from the bunker

Some disclosure: my real-world avatar is a boring banking lawyer deeply embedded in the belly of the beast.  I can therefore confidently explain what has happened to make all the major financial institutions of the world look like a fleet of Titantics ploughing dead ahead into various icebergs. 

While it may be true, as everyone seems to have concluded, that most bankers are indeed minions of beelzebub, Satan alone should not be blamed for the current mess. Unless we want to make greed a capital offence it's pretty pointless to get all uppity about avaricious bankers. After all, we were the ones who gave them the rope to hang us all with. 

It is important to keep in mind that in the parlance of our times, thanks to Reagan revolution, it has been long accepted conventional wisdom that all government is bad, and regulators are particularly bad, which I think often explained the quality of regulators I myself have come into contact with. This is not always true: some have been astute and very good – but for a long time they have been radically underpaid and maligned to the point of irrelevance. 

So why should anyone be surprised when the end result is massive and comprehensive regulatory failure? 

The financial system, though complex, can work if risks are correctly assessed. The problem is that under conditions of large liquidity, which we had when credit was cheap, the quest for “returns” encourages excessive risk taking and exposes the system’s vulnerabilities: 

Market participants that work for fees (mortgage brokers, payments receivers) don’t have incentives to monitor the quality of loans, only to increase the quantity of loans. 


The same thing happens with the credit rating agencies which supply “ratings” for the structured products and do not face any financial responsibility to cover losses from their mistakes. 


Regulatory Arbitrage: different financial institutions undertaking similar activities face different regulations (especially capital requirements). 


Principal-Agent Problem: huge disparity in traders’ maximum loss (zero bonus) vs. investors’ losses (the full capital invested). 

The job of regulators is to ensure these risks are correctly assessed and, where they aren't, the financial system is protected. 

Guess that hasn't happened.

Stick to baseball, George

So, the global restructuring and geo-strategic recalibration is well under way.  

America's, and Europe's, historic economic predominance can be expected to slip away - with inevitable consequences for the west's ability to lead and shape events on the world stage. In other words, all of this is about something much bigger than a few poorly-managed megabanks: we've seen this movie before. The British Empire effectively spent itself into oblivion as its economic might imploded.  

In recent years foreign central banks and sovereign funds have increasingly propped up the dollar and bought U.S. Treasuries. We can't expect this to continue indefinitely: China now is diversifying aggressively to hedge away from its exposure to a country with such dire long-term fiscal imbalances as the United States. Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize, Economics) calculates the Iraq war will cost the US three trillion alone (all in), which puts Obama's fiscual stimulus package (roughly $800 billion) into perspective.  

In short, as a nation, we've been profligate idiots. This is more true in the U.S. than the UK (as Stiglitz himself has observed) but the UK has been far from prudent itself (as Warren Buffet has repeatedly observed since the 90s).  

Things didn't have to be this way, but, of course, rational discourse hasn't been permitted for a long time, and there certainly was no interest on the Sunday talk shows. Even today we have George Will still blathering about how the New Deal didn't work: it amazes me how many apologists for Hoover are still out there. World War II got us out of the Great Depression? Even if you concede that might be true (and I don't), it doesn't change the fact that massive public spending did the trick. Is George advocating another big war? Iraq wasn't enough?  

I laugh when I think about all those fiscal conservatives who demanded a balanced budget amendment in the late 90s, and who then promptly forgot about it with dubbya in the White House: they discovered John Maynard Keynes and suddenly deficit spending was, like, so cool! Except deficit spending as Kenyes conceived it had nothing to do with tax cuts for the rich. In contrast, fighting stupid wars that make no sense can work as a form of fiscal stimulus (as sort of a large public works project), but dubbya didn’t get the timing quite right. Yes, he’s probably the worst president we’ve ever had.  

But we, the People, put him in office, so who really is to blame?

Let me get this straight . . .

COST OF IRAQ WAR : 

• $3 TRILLION (all in) ***

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: 

• resurgent Al Qaeda 
  
• undermined multilateral nuclear anti-proliferation efforts  
• massive loss of American foreign policy and intelligence agencies credibility
• depletion of armed forces capabilities 
  
• distraction from Afghanistan 
  
• maybe someday "democracy will flower in the middle east" (like it did in Palestine, except they elected Hamas to power - oops)

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED: 

• Zero
  

-- compare and contrast with -- 

COST OF PROPOSED STIMULUS PACKAGE (Senate Version): 

• $780 billion

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: 

• Only hope for avoiding crippling global depression (tax cuts for the rich repeatedly proven ineffective as stimulus)

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED:

• All but three Senators.
  

*** see, Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University, former chief economist at the World Bank, winner, Nobel Prize for Economics, 2001: monetary estimates may be considered in addition to 100,000 to 655,000 dead, not that many seem to care very much

Our Greatest Jurist

Why is our ever-somnolent media waking up to pay attention to what a boor this guy is all of a sudden now?

Hoover Lives!

Change most definitely has not come to the Beltway Grandees, least of all Wolfie  . . . 

Can we please, please, please have a press corps that is not entirely somnolent?  

Sigh.

Bring out your Dead!

Remember early on during the Bush years all those Republicans who suddenly threw down the mantle of "fiscal responsibility" and donned proudly the one labelled "John Maynard Keynes" as they happily pushed through Bush's tax cuts for the rich?  Yes, deficit spending was suddenly in vogue with a Republican in the White House . . . it mattered not what kind of deficit spending Keynes actually prescribed to combat a recession (needless to say, tax cuts for the wealthy were not what Keynes had in mind).  And . . . don't forget that laugher of a Laffer curve: like that unfortunate old gaffer in the "Bring out your Dead!" bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that little gem of Reagonomics still is not "dead yet", despite being thoroughly discredited many times over.

I really wonder what is going on the heads of Republican lawmakers as we teeter on the precipice of Great Depression 2.0.  Marshall is losing it:

I cannot say my expectations were high. But Sen. DeMint (R) of South Carolina does seem to be an even bigger ignoramus than I'd realized. On This Week this morning he actually said: "Let's don't say it's a stimulus when it's a government spending plan." A 'Stimulus plan' is pretty much by definition a spending plan, though of course it can include tax reductions as well.

As noted, my expectations are not high. But I'm wowed by the amount of nonsense and lies that are being injected into this debate.

Also, high on the list, of course, is the fact that basically all the 'wasteful' spending that's being discussed amounts to a total of what ... maybe 2 or 3 billion out of $819 billion total? Why is this point not being made more clearly?

It's enough to make one want to swing a cat around in the middle of a medieval plague!

Conspiracy Alert

Did you ever notice that the Homeland Security Dept's terror alert color-coding system . . .

. . . corresponds PRECISELY with the colors of the characters in Teletubbies?

. . . think about it.

Homeland Security Live Alert

Krugman

Yep . . . it's a priority:

Let’s talk about the magnitude of the looming health care disaster.

Just about all economic forecasts, including those of the Obama administration’s own economists, say that we’re in for a prolonged period of very high unemployment. And high unemployment means a sharp rise in the number of Americans without health insurance.

After the economy slumped at the beginning of this decade, five million people joined the ranks of the uninsured — and that was with the unemployment rate peaking at only 6.3 percent. This time the Obama administration says that even with its stimulus plan, unemployment will reach 8 percent, and that it will stay above 6 percent until 2012. Many independent forecasts are even more pessimistic.

Why, then, aren’t we hearing more about ensuring health care access?

Now, it’s possible that those of us who care about this issue are reading too much into the administration’s silence. But let me address three arguments that I suspect Mr. Obama is hearing against moving on health care, and explain why they’re wrong.

First, some people are arguing that a major expansion of health care access would just be too expensive right now, given the vast sums we’re about to spend trying to rescue the economy.

But research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.

It’s true that the cost of universal health care will be a continuing expense, reaching far into the future. But that has always been true, and Mr. Obama has always claimed that his health care plan was affordable. The temporary expenses of his stimulus plan shouldn’t change that calculation.

Second, some people in Mr. Obama’s circle may be arguing that health care reform isn’t a priority right now, in the face of economic crisis.

But helping families purchase health insurance as part of a universal coverage plan would be at least as effective a way of boosting the economy as the tax breaks that make up roughly a third of the stimulus plan — and it would have the added benefit of directly helping families get through the crisis, ending one of the major sources of Americans’ current anxiety.

Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.

[...] One more thing. There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.

I agree with administration officials who argue that these financial bailouts are necessary (though I have problems with the specifics). But I also agree with Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who argues that — as a matter of political necessity as well as social justice — aid to bankers has to be linked to a strengthening of the social safety net, so that Americans can see that the government is ready to help everyone, not just the rich and powerful.

The bottom line, then, is that this is no time to let campaign promises of guaranteed health care be quietly forgotten. It is, instead, a time to put the push for universal care front and center. Health care now!

Just my opinion

Promise me we won't go to a nightclub 

I really think that it's obscene  

What kind of people go to meet people  

In a place you can't be heard or seen  

- The Be Good Tanyas

Yes, the Damage can be undone . . .

. . . but, my oh my, how hard it's looking:

During his eight years in office – fat ones, for the most part, from a fiscal point of view – President George W. Bush moved the budget balance from surplus to structural deficit. Demographic and other pressures will worsen the position over the next decade or two. Now comes a fiscal expansion that will be only partly counter-cyclical: some of the new president’s spending will not reverse automatically as the economy recovers. A structural deficit of the sort taking shape is unsustainable and will be corrected one way or the other – if not by a timely change in policy, then by a new and potentially even worse financial calamity.

So, Happy Inauguration Day!  Eat, Drink and be Merry, for tomorrow we have a hell of a mess to clean up . . .

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5665f224-e568-11dd-afe4-0000779fd2ac.html

 

And, as twilight fades to black for the glory that has been the Cheney/Bush years . . .

. . . we need to send a big Shout! out to the man who made it all possible . . .

To honor this great jurist and his incredible contribution in giving us the Cheney/Bush legacy, here is a link to one of my fave speeches of all time, given in 2002 in Chicago:

http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty

You need to link through the Pew website to get to the speech and then scroll down a bit in the speech itself for the money quote (it's one among many, actually), but I re-print it here in case you'd rather not bother with all of that -- it really is priceless:

It seems to me that the reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should be not resignation to it but resolution to combat it as effectively as possible, and a principal way of combating it, in my view, is constant public reminder that – in the words of one of the Supreme Court’s religion cases in the days when we understood the religion clauses better than I think we now do – "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being".

Got that?  "People of faith" (who, presumably, count for more than people whose faith do not measure up to Justice Scalia's standards, as I assume he, or the Pope perhaps, might choose to define them) must "combat . . . as effectively as possible" democracy's "tendency to obscure the divine authority behind government".  Got it?

This, from a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice.  I had to read it a few times before I could believe what the good Justice was actually saying - not implying - but literally saying.  

I don't recollect many examples of guardians of the republic using the word "combating" and "democracy" in the same sentence, unless they were referring to combating somebody else in defense of democracy.  I don't know about you but I'm having a really hard time imagining any circumstances under which citizens would justifiably "combat" their own democratic form of government.  Remember: Justice Scalia is issuing a call to arms not to combat corruption in government, or a particular political party he doesn't like, or even the government itself: he is stating clearly and unequivocally that there is something inherent in our form of government - a democracy - which is inimical to something else that he believes is more important: the "divine authority behind government".  

This isn't just about semantics: don't all Americans have a pressing interest in understanding exactly how Justice Scalia proposes to combat an inherent "tendency" of democracy without combating democracy itself?  

There are other equally outrageous statements in this particular speech that betray a quite candidly unapologetic contempt for democracy -- mostly as a justification for the death penalty, of all things.  You gotta hand it to him: you could never accuse Justice Scalia of trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.  The statements in his Chicago speech and myriad other statements (see posts further below) have been practically screaming at us for years just what he thinks of the sanctity (triviality) of the vote and the importance (irrelevance) of the Establishment clause, not to mention the Great Mistake that was the Enlightenment.   Bush vs Gore should not have come as a surprise. 

The Obama cavalry arrived in the nick of time -- with people so focused on the economy, the wars and the various other Cheney/Bush-set brush fires and lapses requiring immediate attention, I'm not too sure they are aware of what a bullet we've dodged in the Supreme Court.  Now Justice Stevens can retire with some semblance of peace of mind.

Uh . . . duh . . .

From Josh Marshall: 

"No U.S. president can justify a policy that fails to achieve its intended results by pointing to the purity and rectitude of his intentions," - Paul Wolfowitz, "Statesmanship in the New Century," in Kagan, R. and Kristol, W, eds.

I guess what's notable is seeing Paul Wolfowitz saying something sensible, in a book edited by Robert Kagan and William "the bloody" Kristol, no less . . .  doesn't quite make up for the mess they've made . . . but every little, I guess.