Great news!

. . . for Rupert Murdoch. Soon he can put all that unpleasantness behind him.

The "plurality and independence of news provision" is assured!

Late update: looks like the Sky News spin-off might actually prevent total consolidation of independent news under the great god Murdoch. Maybe I'm naive but it's possible someone's heart is in the right place on this. We can only hope.

Later update: damn funny post from the Daily Mash. Yes, in a way I will be disappointed if Murdoch actually and truly divests himself of SkyNews so that Britain is spared the Fox Effect. And, yes, I do believe Murdoch is the avatar for Sauron so this must be just a ruse to trick us into laying down our arms to embrace the Orcs. Must be the PTSDs. Guilty as charged.

Even Later update: not so sure it's quite this bad.

Even LATER update: what, us worry?

The Realpolitik of Naïve

Okay – I really don’t know how sensible or horrible the “Deal in the Desert” was. Maybe on some level it made sense at the time. For the sake of argument we might grant Tony Blair this much. Its crude realpolitik sensibility made you grudgingly accept it for what it was. There was an odd dignity to Tony's unflinching prostitution: he was better playing the honest whore than the sancitmonious crusader.

Even if you accept that people in the west generally understood it was always really about the oil and just fuck the rest, it is striking how quickly we convinced ourselves - or allowed ourselves to be convinced - that 9/11 made for some kind of post-realpolitik paradigm, which our minders in government exploited to the fullest to launch their wars unhindered and unquestioned. Maybe Atrios is right: maybe Egypt has reintroduced us back to reality.

In any case, it seems likely the clock has long since run out for any distinction that would make a difference.

How it's done

An excellent dissection on a random day of how NewSpeak works.

It's a time-honoured tradition.

If you haven't, you should book-mark David Niewart: the man is a saint.

Finance is too important to be left to the financiers

An excellent film - a must see.

By and large, Inside Job accurately portrays the conflicts of interest inherent in the political, academic and financial regulatory systems. It should make anyone with a soul angry: it is especially aggravating, bordering on hilarious, to watch some high-falutin' academic-types squirm heroically, even become angry, as their whorin' ways are laid bare for all to see.

My own two cents: there was a time when the SEC listed as its core responsibilities ensuring market integrity and investor protection. If you check the SEC's current mission statement, these seems downplayed.

It used to be recognised that market integrity was important not only to facilitate the free flow of capital, but also to maintain confidence in the U.S. securities markets. It's as if there was recognition that the country's strength was tied to its reputation for observance of the rules - the rule of law. There was a geo-strategic dimension to America's reputation for the probity of its markets - sort of like respect for human rights (again - the rule of law).

It might just be a coincidence that both of these priorities - market integrity and human rights - began to founder contemporaneously on the rocks of the Reagan revolution. Perhaps it's just an accident that both culminated roughly contemporaneously with the financial crisis and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

As for investor protection, the following is now emphasised on the SEC's website:

The world of investing is fascinating and complex, and it can be very fruitful. But unlike the banking world, where deposits are guaranteed by the federal government, stocks, bonds and other securities can lose value. There are no guarantees. That's why investing is not a spectator sport. By far the best way for investors to protect the money they put into the securities markets is to do research and ask questions.

You know what that means!

The Fed, meanwhile, seems to give a shit about the public - well, officially, at least. Their mission statement is slightly more reassuring. Among other things, they emote:

Today, the Federal Reserve's duties fall into four general areas[, among them]:

• . . . supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
• maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets . . .

That's more like it!

But this guy, a self-professed acolyte of Ayn Rand, was at the helm:

"Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear."

I blame Ayn Rand!

Meanwhile, Obama shows no signs of doing anything meaningful about any of the above.

Late update: as Artios notes, this just in: no indictments forthcoming. It seems, so sayeth the good Professor Coffee, there are simply too many un-indicted co-conspirators.

"The question is: do we have a shadow government, and who are those intelligent minority that is guiding us through?"

Gotta love it: Soros sees the humour, but eventually he can't help but get to the point:

"You can tell the people falsehoods, and deceive them"

This is the kind of "plurality and independence of news provision" that the Murdochs want to import into Britain.

Yes, it's "so important for our democracy."

This is news?

Long ago I reserved a special place in hell for Colin Powell.

Now Colin is publicly whining about how shocked, shocked, shocked he is that he was used like a cheap hooker by those naughty men in the CIA and DIA. And, my oh my, how shocked we all are that Curveball did not shoot straight with us.

Didn't Seymour Hersh lay this all out in painful detail pretty much as it was happening?

Never mind - go back to sleep.

It's never too late

My ongoing war against The Economist in respect of its mostly lamentable coverage of U.S. politics ebbs and flows. Lexington in particular, for the most part, was for a long time spectacularly (if not conveniently) obtuse. I charted The Economist's various crimes against rational analysis throughout the Bush years and still believe a hint of contrition is in order - given their role as enablers of the great Bush/Blair con job. But . . . life's too short.

For the most part things have improved since the departure of their previous editor, but every now and then The Economist reverts to its bad old ways. Lexington's column last week is a case in point: its suggestion that 'Dubya's "radical" plans to democratise the middle east may have been "right" in light of Tunisia, Egypt, etc., showed shades and echoes of its former gloriously shameless pandering to the extreme right in America, but although Lexington gamely tries to prostitute itself convincingly, its pandering comes off as decidely muted and half-hearted: while Lexington still ascribes to Bush the noblest of intentions (conveniently ignoring the influence of the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz axis), the reality of the results of the neocons' "democracy agenda" do not go unremarked:

"So Mr Bush is vindicated? Not so fast. Yes, those who mocked his belief in the Arab appetite for democracy were wrong; he is to be admired for championing reform and nudging autocrats towards pluralism. But keep things in proportion. The big thing Bush did in the Arab world was not to argue for an election here or a loosening of controls there. It was to send an army to conquer Iraq. Nothing that has happened in Tunisia or Egypt makes the consequences of that decision any less calamitous.

"The war poisoned the Arabs’ reaction to everything America later said or did. Iraq is now a fragile democracy, but precious few Arabs (and rather few Europeans) believe that Mr Bush invaded Iraq for democracy’s sake. Many think the non-existent weapons of mass destruction were a pretext, too. In Cairo in 2009 Lexington let a pro-reform academic, Nader Fergany, still seething six years on. “The Americans are the Mongols of the 21st century,” he said, “and now Barack Obama is trying to put the icing on this dirty cake.” Whatever they think of the freedom message, most Arabs utterly reject the messenger."

The reality for the neocons is that some in the media have developed a little with the times. Analysis these days from The Economist occasionally stumbles towards being balanced, thoughtful, even - dare I say - informed. For example, this recent entry from Lexington's blog, as shockingly naive as it is in many respects . . .

"In other words, for all its many missteps of the past two decades, America is remarkably well placed to win the war of ideas now unfolding in the Middle East. This is not because Arabs are fond of America. Most aren't, right now. But thanks to globalisation, education, satellite television and the palpable failure of the local alternatives, most Arabs (and Iranians) are fully aware of what sort of societies the Western democracies are, and they would like some of the same fresh air for themselves."

. . . seems counterbalanced - somewhat at least - by consideration of the actual facts on the ground:

"Arabs (and Iranians) look around them and see many different political systems claiming ascendancy. These range from Shia theocracy (Iran and Hizbullah), Sunni Islamism (Saudi Arabia, Hamas, al-Qaeda), secular dictatorship (Syria, Libya) and traditional monarchy (Morocco, Jordan, the Arab Gulf). But guess what? By far the strongest of the ideas currently on offer—and the one for which most Egyptians seemed to be clamouring these past few weeks—is none of the above. It is liberal democracy."

A definite improvement, but I'm not quite ready to renew my subscription just yet.

Pay no attention. Carry on.

The downside of the drama in the middle east is that it distracts from previous front page news that hasn't diminished in importance. In the UK at least, before Tunisia and Egypt intruded, it was all Murdoch, all the time. People were starting to ask some inconvenient questions, such as:

1. Why exactly does Cameron hold a private dinner with James Murdoch on 25th January? What do they discuss on the eve of the government's decision whether or not to give Daddy his heart's desire: a chunk of the British media that is even larger than the chunk he has already?

2. Meanwhile, on 21st January, Andy Coulson is finally required to accept the inevitable, even if the government can't quite take the hint, when previously-proffered tales of deniability no longer ring remotely plausible. Now, it's not just The News of the World looking decidedly dodgy: it's the police, too. Cameron's judgement increasingly appears seriously impaired. Questions start to emerge about what is really going on here. Even The Economist seems to get it that this is serious:

The hacking scandal matters because it makes it seem that, in Britain, some people are above the law, and others are content for them to be so. The truth must out.

3. Lest we forget, Murdoch and this government were a match made in hell from the beginning. And even before that, the BBC had been openly targeted as road-kill to be ground up under the wheels of Murdoch's triumphal chariot.

So many dots to connect, so few people paying attention.

Presumably, the government couldn't be happier with developments in the middle east - possibly for reasons having little to do with the inherent benefits of liberty and democracy.

Late update: on the off chance that you, dear reader, are in America, where irony is missing and presumed dead, forgive me for bludgeoning you with the obvious: as I pointed out in this earlier post, that the Murdochs would presume to lecture us on how the BBC, of all things, is what Orwell warned us about provides one of the all-time great examples of boundless chutzpah (even by Fox News standards!) mixed with raging sanctimoniousness, ladled over with delusional self-pity and topped with delicious dollops of supreme irony. Yum!

Later update: definitely not looking good for the coppers.

Omar's our man

Although I remain inexpert on Egypt, I can't help but remember the words "rendition" and "Egypt" being used in the same sentence quite a lot over the past decade. I don't know if this has anything to do with the U.S. government's tepid non-opposition to Egyptian regime change: it may just be a coincidence. But then along comes Omar Sulemein, Mubarek's first-ever deputy and apparent successor: that name rang a bell and I did a quick google. Yep, this is the man we want for Eqypt:

Ron Suskind, author of the book The One Percent Doctrine, called Suleiman the "hit man" for the Mubarak regime. He told ABC News that when the CIA asked Suleiman for a DNA sample from a relative of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Suleiman offered the man's whole arm instead.

"He's a charitable man, friendly," said Suskind. "He tortures only people that he doesn't know."

I may not know a lot about Egypt, but I'm learning more, and I've read Suskind and seen him speak. I've no reason to doubt him.

Look's like the west is sticking to the same old game-plan. It's worked so well so far.

Late update: Meanwhile, Cheney weighs in, predictably, with kind words for Mubarak.

Nice to have the company

Thank you, Common Cause. And thank you, NYT, for - finally (at last!) - shedding a little light on the travesty of letting these clowns continue to run amok on the Court.

It was getting lonely standing out here yelling at the cars. Nice to have the company.

Can we impeach them yet? The Citizens United decision stinks more with each passing day.

Like momma used to say . . .

. . . there are a lot of people in heaven who may have had the right of way. Josh and my momma appear to have something in common:

"You walk out into the street without looking for traffic and get run over. Your fault. Now another example. You look one way then the other and then walk into the street and get run over. Not your fault? Maybe not. But who cares? Your problem. You're still run over. And maybe both ways wasn't enough. Maybe you needed to look one way, the other and then back again. Not your fault doesn't make it not you problem."

. . . and so it goes for Israel's hapless foreign policy, and this assumes a maxed-out charitable view rating.

Very Late Update: right on cue, Iran sails right up the Suez Canal. Not to worry - just a coincidence, I'm sure!

Don't do it

Usually I exhort Brits not to emulate American policies but, as this commentary convincingly suggests, it's hard not to state the inverse when it comes to current fiscal and economic policy.

And, hard as it is to admit, what is happening now to the British economy is exactly what Gordon Brown warned us about.

Okay, so I don't know much about Egypt

But it seems I know more about the middle east in general than this guy.

Late update: this episode provides instructive insight on the mind that is Blair:

Mubarak: good because he preserved the "cold peace" with Israel. The west should proudly admit its willing engagement with and support of this regime. What Mubarak did to stay in power is not the west's problem. The Muslim Brotherhood might step into the vacuum, and we don't want that. Better to keep it bottled up. Let that rage build (be sure to ignore where Mohammed Atta came from).

Saddam: bad man. Killed his own people (ignore use on Iraqi civilians of U.S.-supplied chemical agents intended for 14-year old Iranian conscripts; ignore the CIA's tacit approval of same; and above all ignore all that stuff I said about launching chemical weapons in 45 minutes).

Blair: am I plain stupid, or just supremely "situational"?

Late, late update: God help me, Caldwell gets it exactly right. The hilarity of the neo-cons' middle east "democracy agenda" comes glaringly into focus. I'll have to look into what the PNAC crowd are saying about Egypt. That'll be a hoot.

Profound thoughts on Egypt

By applying my superior powers of inductive reasoning and analysis, I, like Paul, conclude as follows:

I don’t know anything, have no expertise, haven’t even ever looked at the economic situation. Hence, no posting. If there comes a point when I have something to say, I will.

Missile defense that doesn't work against missiles that our enemies do not possess

I give you the speech Obama should have given. Highlights:

Our so-called economic growth has powered along based on a series of financial bubbles, leading to ever-increasing instability, mass unemployment, and misallocation of capital. All things our vaunted financial innovation and market liberalism were supposed to cure. My best efforts to ease the burden of this calamity were thwarted by fools in both parties. The stimulus effort was of insufficient magnitude, while tax cuts and quantitative easing are ineffective. The result is sustained, record-high unemployment. Morever, the financial risks built into the system were transferred to you, the proletariat.

and . . .

As my predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower had foreseen, our military industrial complex has grown obese in the marketing of its herd of sacred cows. All manner of malfunctioning weapons systems that aren't needed continue to be churned out of the nation's factories. Missile defense that doesn't work against missiles that our enemies do not possess, and wouldn't use if they did possess them. And you voted for it, my friends. Yes, you ordered this shit sandwich. Whatever piece of crap is manufactured in your neighborhood has proven to be sufficient inducement for you to vote for whatever politician is more adept at prostituting himself to its promotion.

Think of what might have been, or what still could be, if you only you idiots could unite!

My buddy Karin . . .

. . . what a great post.

And how odd indeed.

Late Update: corrected the link.

The Sheriff speaks

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

"It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that's the sad thing of what's going on in America. Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office."

He later added:

DUPNIK: Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech. But it's not without consequences.

REPORTER: How do you know that that's what caused it.

DUPNIK: You don't.

It was just a matter of time

Needless to say, this graphic has already been taken down.

I hope Gabrielle Giffords pulls through.

RIP Judge Roll.

Burn in hell, Sarah Palin.

Here's some other morsels from our right-wing fellow country-men:

"I’ll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo — every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress." — Sean Hannity

"To fight only the al-Qaeda scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders... Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that's who." — Michael Savage

"Liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces." — Rush Limbaugh

"It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan." — Bill O’Reilly

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could." — Glenn Beck

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too." — Ann Coulter

"I don’t see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis." — Bill O’Reilly

"The Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats. Islamofascists from Ahmadinejad to al-Zawahiri, Oba -- Osama bin Laden, whoever, are constantly issuing Democrat talking points." — Rush Limbaugh

"There are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the [House] speaker." — Sean Hannity

What a wonderful world.

Late update: The shooter appears to have been some kind of Sovereign Citizen, which I've heard described as a libertarian on steroids. Too much Ayn Rand, perhaps, but the key ingredient seems to have been being a total nut-job. It will be instructive to see how much the over-the-top rhetoric from the extreme right pushed him over the edge. In any case, it was sadly inevitable that someone like Shooter would come along, and the rhetoric from the likes of Palin and Fox News would be the soundtrack.

Our greatest jurist's latest . . .

Scalia, again:

“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.”

Such a gift to comedy. So, why am I crying? Perhaps because Scalia gets away with it, time and time again, and media still lauds him as a genius.

As one commenter on TPM has noted:

By Scalia's reckoning, the 2nd Amendment would be limited to blunderbusses since more modern weapons had occurred to no one.

The 14th Amendment provides:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Basically, Scalia is saying (according to originalist doctrine), women may not be considered "persons" within the meaning of the constitution because this was not the "plain meaning" of the term at the time of drafting of the 14th amendment, which was adopted in 1868.

Another TPM commenter:

New Jersey allowed women to vote from 1790 until 1807. The Washington Territory proposed granting women the vote in 1854; it failed in the territorial legislature by only one vote. The Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869, and the Utah Territory did the same in 1870, though Congress killed that in 1887 with the Edmunds-Tucker Act. Colorado granted women the right to vote in 1897.

. . . I find it ludicrous to say that nobody had any inkling of expanded rights for women in 1868. It was a hot topic. The 14th amendment specifically mentions only men in Section 2, but it makes no such specific exclusion of women in the rest of the amendment. Why doesn't it? Why should the only "proper" reading be that any group not specifically mentioned (except white men, of course) were intended to be excluded?

Scalia is the worst kind of clown: a clown with lifetime tenure.

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it . . .

Judy, Judy, Judy reminds us why she is so special:

"[Julian Assange] didn't care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out or determine whether or not it would hurt anyone."

Love 'ya, babe. Excellent stuff.

Your follow-up is equally priceless:

If anybody bothered to read the Iraq war stories they're now so busy criticizing, they would see that Julian Assange and I were involved in very different kinds of journalism. They are not morally equivalent. While we both sought to publicize official secrets, I and my co-authors at The NYT spent enormous time trying to verify the secret government reports and other WMD-related stories we published. Every exclusive story of mine appeared with a discussion of its context, the difficulty involved in corroborating the highly classified information, and an assessment by at least one independent expert and likely skeptic, often identified by name and organization. Julian Assange, whom I have repeatedly defended, did none of these things. He engaged in data dumping and left these vital journalistic tasks to the papers that used his information. I stand by my criticism of this aspect of his work, as well as by my conclusion that he should not be punished or even faulted for trying to ferret out government secrets. That is what journalists do. Rather, our government is to blame for failing to safeguard truly sensitive information, for grossly over-classifying too much of it, and now, I fear, for deciding to circulate less of it rather than figure out a smarter way to share more of it safely, as the 9/11 Commission recommended almost a decade ago.

So compelling. Ah, Judy, I miss those days when you graced the NYT with tid-bits like this:

Hard-liners are alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war. Conscious of this lapse in the past, they argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a ''smoking gun,'' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.

It seems so long ago - 2002, when most of what Miller wrote was filled with many statements like "they argue", and "hardliners are worried", and "Bush administration officials", without ever identifying these individuals. Judy didn't trouble us with silly details like "the individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity".

At one point in my credulous youth, I believed the NYT justifiably held itself out as a credible newspaper, something Wikileaks never has had pretensions of doing. But, never mind: the distinction seems lost on Judy.

Go back to the aspens, Judy - Scooter is waiting for you.

Once again, Krugman is proven correct

He was absolutely on the money when he warned in this January 2009 NYT commentary that Obama's initial fiscal stimulus package didn't go nearly far enough. One aspect of the damage of the Bush years can be measured in terms of its unpardonable fiscal profligacy, mostly thanks to stupid, misdirected tax cuts coinciding with stupid, expensive wars, which the White House tried to keep off the books at the time. From the Center on Budget and Priorities:

Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers.

The fiscal disaster that was Bush can also be assessed in terms of the budgetary things that went criminally unattended - and which were exacerbated by the tax cuts and wars. This was not nearly sufficiently appreciated by Team Obama. When the incoming Obama administration announced its budget plan at the beginning of 2009, Krugman warned:

Bear in mind just how big the U.S. economy is. Given sufficient demand for its output, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But with both consumer spending and business investment plunging, a huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.

And the Obama plan is nowhere near big enough to fill this “output gap.”

Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office came out with its latest analysis of the budget and economic outlook. The budget office says that in the absence of a stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would rise above 9 percent by early 2010, and stay high for years to come.

Grim as this projection is, by the way, it’s actually optimistic compared with some independent forecasts. Mr. Obama himself has been saying that without a stimulus plan, the unemployment rate could go into double digits.

Even the C.B.O. says, however, that “economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential.” This translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production. “Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity,” declared Mr. Obama on Thursday. Well, he was actually understating things.

To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

To repeat: this was written in January '09. Obama explicitly acknowledged Krugman's warnings, and greeted them with extraordinary condescension:

"If Paul Krugman has a good idea, in terms of how to spend money efficiently and effectively to jump-start the economy, then we’re going to do it. If somebody has an idea for a tax cut that is better than a tax cut we’ve proposed, we will embrace it . . . Just show me. If you can show me that something is going to work, I will welcome it."

In other words, no matter what you've shown me, you haven't shown me.

Two years on, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears Krugman was dead-on.

Naturally, the pundits completely misinterpreted the implications of the Dems' 2010 mid-term election rout. About the election, as Krugman has more recently pointed out:

The real story of this election, then, is that of an economic policy that failed to deliver. Why? Because it was greatly inadequate to the task.

And here we are - with the tax-cut deal, Obama is doing little more than throwing a hail-Mary pass. In the mean time, we have the execrable Caldwell once again revelling in unreality in the FT with a bizarre interpretation of the facts on the ground but somehow coming up with the correct political diagnosis: the era of collusion between the main political parties in the United States is indeed probably coming to an end.

It is, however, too late. America is destined to move quickly from the world's only superpower to a highly influential member of the G-20. The new paradigm is upon us.

I come across the French quite a lot

Officially, I usually take issue with their views. On a different level - the one that perhaps is more important - I concede that they are right on very much. How I admire this annoying country.

Twilight and the tyranny of numbers

Three books out writing the epitaph for America's leading role on the world stage. One of them - the last of the three reviewed, The Frugal Superpower, by Michael Mandelbaum - strikes me as getting it right:

The Frugal Superpower argues that the Afghan War is no aberration. It marks the beginning of a new era of constraint in US foreign policy. After the crash, it is increasingly apparent that “mounting domestic economic obligations will narrow the scope of American foreign policy”. In a brief but remorseless work, Mandelbaum first sets out “the tyranny of numbers” and the growing claims on America’s budget. In his view this will make America less able to play the central role in the international system that the US, and the rest of the world, has come to take for granted. America will “no longer provide as large a market for other countries’ exports”. And there will be no further Iraq or Afghan wars, since the US will lack the resources to embark on expensive exercises in state-building.

The Iraq and Afghan wars have hardly been advertisements for the beneficial use of American power. So many people, both in the US and around the world, might greet the prospect of a new era of American foreign policy restraint with applause and relief. Mandelbaum believes, however, that a diminished American global role will destabilise international relations and will open the way for Russia and China, in particular, to challenge the global order established by the US in the aftermath of the cold war.

In the mean time, the hope that China is just another Japan-style bubble strikes me as ephemeral at best.

The right take . . .

. . . my bet is people will look back upon the American imperium as relatively benign, Bush/Cheney excepted (who not-so-coincidentally will have marked the turning point in Amreica's fortunes).

Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! . . . I can't believe I missed this!

Thank you, Salon:

We're listing the worst columnists and cable news commentators America has to offer. Think of this as our all-star team -- of the most predictable, dishonest and just plain stupid pundits in the media.

Late update: that Charles Krauthammer didn't even get a mention is criminal . . . he waz robbed!

Ya think?

Froomkin:

History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.

And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.

Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict.

Read the rest - nothing new we didn't already know, but it's a bit jarring to be reminded how easy it is to forget just how bad that horrid little man really was.

Late update: Lionel Barber was one of four experts who briefed Dubbya before his first trip to Europe, when Boy Wonder announced his plan to "look into Putin's soul." His own review of Dubbya's ghost-written book is sober, measured, respectful - but he cannot help but conclude:

The more likely judgment is that Bush's two terms marked the moment when US power peaked and over-reached, with execrable consequences.

More Reasons Not to be Thankful

Yes, I'm glad just not to have Bush or McCaine or Palin in the White House. I guess that's what Obama is counting on, because on the things that matter, I remain pretty disappointed: Krugman again.

Another Epic Media Fail

. . . they are hopeless.

And Tony and Dubbya will still say it was all worth it

Yes, Saddam was very bad man . . . shall we ask the dead if they agree?

Late update: sorry - 79,000 dead is laughably low. Just hilarious.

Could not agree more . . .

I am so glad Karl Rove doesn't want the Iraq war to be left down deep in the memory hole: like Josh, I welcome Karl's urge for re-examination. I suspect my motivations are somewhat different from Karl's, however.

Once again, Paul nails it:

The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back. In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda . . .

This includes - obviously - rehabilitating Bush's legacy on the Iraq war:

Finally, on the war: For most Americans, the whole debate about the war is old if painful news — but not for those obsessed with refurbishing the Bush image. Karl Rove now claims that his biggest mistake was letting Democrats get away with the “shameful” claim that the Bush administration hyped the case for invading Iraq. Let the whitewashing begin!

Meanwhile, here in the UK, the subject just won't die the death Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell (and probably the co-conspiring Conservatives) wish it would. From today's Observer:

. . . Carne Ross, the UK's Iraq expert at the UN between 1997 and 2002, writes that the inquiry is being prevented by "deep state" forces from establishing the government's true motivation for invading Iraq.

Ross, who appeared before the inquiry this month, says he was not provided with key documents relevant to his testimony and was warned by officials not to refer to an internal Foreign Office memo that contradicted the government's public case for war.

Will the truth ever out? The drum beats on:

Despite the official's concern, the paper was used to brief the cabinet. Ross writes: "This paper was pure overstated propaganda, filled with almost ludicrous statements like 'one teaspoon of anthrax can kill a million people'."

He [Carne Ross] expressed incredulity that the Foreign Office wanted references to the briefing removed from his testimony, as it related to a public document. "It is very worrying that the government machine is still trying to withhold key documents, and silence those of us with detailed knowledge of the policy history. I have been told too... that members of the [inquiry] panel have been refused documents they have specifically requested."

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said: "The Chilcot inquiry will not be credible if relevant documents that do not now threaten national security are kept from the inquiry and the public."

Ross said he had wanted to use his appearance to highlight how ministers failed to consider alternatives to military action. "I had asked for specific records relating to the UK's failure to deal with the so-called Syrian pipeline, through which Iraq illegally exported oil, sustaining the Saddam [Hussein] regime. I was told that specific documents, such as the records of prime minister [Tony] Blair's visit to Syria, could not be found. This is simply not plausible." He also asked for joint intelligence committee assessments on Iraq, some of which he helped prepare and all of which he had seen. "Only three were provided – 40 minutes before I was due before the Chilcot panel."

The claims come at the end of a week in which the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, cast grave doubts on the case for invading Iraq and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, described the invasion as "illegal".

The government may have withheld key documents whose release would pose no national security risk? Quel surprise!

The more I read . . .

. . . the more I like. Even as a Supreme Court newbie, Kagan showed remarkable sophistication and prescience . . .

Drill, baby, drill!

It's all about progress . . .

Fair-reading

Souter speaks . . . finally.

"Time to exchange the winter dirt for some fresh summer dirt in that sandbag she calls a mind"

- taken from a comment on another blog. Pretty infantile, I know, but not as infantile as when the rock star of the Right blames the "greenies" for the BP disaster.

I'm afraid Frank has missed the point

I like Frank Rich - the way he steps back to afford a view of the bigger picture - but this article, as good as it is, fails to call the Obama administration on its more fundamental failure: it's manifest betrayal of the principles it was put in power to advance. For moderates and progressives, Obama's policy initiatives (or lack thereof) have been extremely disappointing - far more a continuation of the previous administration's ruinous course. Instead of throwing down a clear marker signalling a break with the egregious past, Obama only nibbled at the edges of such things as civil rights and torture, especially in his wilful failure to hold perpetrators accountable, and outright embraced certain other Bush-era policies, like offshore drilling - despite the manifest corruption of the Minerals Dept.

In introductory courses on administrative law, budding young lawyer-wannabes learn all about "capture theory", which posits that for a variety of obvious reasons regulatory agencies quickly become "captured" by the industries they regulate. Lack of effective oversight of such agencies becomes, axiomatically, fatal. Obama went to a pretty good law school, and yet we seem to need to experience - catastrophically - this axiom put into practice.

This - thus far - is the signal failure of the Obama presidency and, unlike Bush, he knew better.

Ted Hearts Bison

On balance I think people should lighten up and let Ted continue with this - I think it's pretty cool and should be encouraged. The idea that bison should be confined to the Park and kept entirely off limits as if they are museum relics once they cross the park boundary is ridiculous. Ted is paving the way to acceptance by a paranoid ranching community that just needs to get over the fact that their industry is contracting.

Me like what me see . . .

While some aspects of her oeuvre are not great (e.g., I worry that her rejection of judicial activism won't extend to the masturbatory rantings by nutcases like Scalia since it's become conventional wisdom that conservatives by definition can't be judicial activists, which is completely ridiculous), this is pretty good stuff:

During Ms. Kagan’s confirmation for solicitor general, she was asked whether the president has the authority to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court.

She cited a three-part analysis established by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, which struck down president Harry S. Truman’s authority to seize the nation’s steel mills in the name of national security. (The Justice Department cited the same analysis in 2006 in justifying President George W. Bush’s power to order the National Security Agency surveillance program, as did Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.) The analysis notes that “when the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress,” presidential “power is at its lowest ebb” and these circumstances should be rare.

Obama picks a uniter, not a divider

Interesting track record at Harvard - Obama's tacking to the middle. Not sure she'll be able to do much to forge a consensus among the Supremes when one is a raving lunatic and another may as well be in a coma.

What in the world is the Guardian smoking?

It's so over for Gordon, I don't care what drugs are making the Guardian suggest it isn't.

I, too, recently believed that the Lib-Dems HAD to find a way to make a coalition work with Labour if they wanted any prayer of electoral reform that approximates proportional representation (and basic notions of fairness), but the gap is too wide, and they are going to be screwed by the Tories, plain and simple. The Lib-Dems just don't have the numbers to make it work the way they want. It's going to be a mess here in the UK for the foreseeable future.

This parliament will not "hang" well (cue the porn jokes), anyway you look at it.

True to my investment prowess, the prospect of continued aimless dithering in the UK while Greece burns compelled me to cash out of my money market fund in the U.S. and invest in the markets. Timing is everything! Oh well: Warren Buffet I ain't.

These are starting to resurface

It was the taxi-driver's story that made me sick . . . let's see if Obama's Justice Department continues its campaign to keep justice out of the play-book.

Late update:

Here's a film worth seeing about what happened to that poor taxi-driver, and the inevitable cover-up which followed.

Murdoch unleashes the hounds . . .

The Tory press is going after Clegg, big time.

Why might this be so? From a reliable source:

. . . the Murdoch press to seek favour from a new government policy in reward for electioneering support that will result in a government that is willing to implement policies to diminish the competition poised by both the BBC and the internet. At the beginning of October the Murdoch press accelerated its objective of winning favour amongst the tory party leadership by the Sun publically declaring its backing for the Conservative party some 6 months ahead of the next General Election.

This has been subsequently been followed by favourable policy proposals out of the Conservative party in the commercial interests of News International such as reported in the Independent in response to Peter Mandelson's allegations of the Tory leaders being suspected of having done a deal with Murdoch.

"Examples of the apparent tie-in between what News International's boss, James Murdoch, wants, and what David Cameron is ready to promise include the recent decision by the Conservatives to abandon the idea of "top slicing" the BBC licence fee. It had been proposed that part of the money paid to the BBC would be siphoned off to help regional television companies meet the threat from the internet. But this would also have helped them compete more effectively against Sky News, which is part of the Murdoch media empire.

When the policy was abandoned in September, Jeremy Hunt, the shadow Culture Secretary, said that it was because enacting it might make the commercial television companies "focus not on attracting viewers but on attracting subsidies". There was no gain for the BBC in the climb down, because David Cameron had already said that the Tories will freeze the licence fee. What it will mean is that the BBC's income will be capped, without the regional television companies seeing any government help, which will strengthen the market position of Britain's only satellite television company, Sky. "This was done for News International," a Tory insider said yesterday. "Murdoch wants Sky to go head to head with the BBC. He doesn't want the independent companies strengthened.”

In April 2008, James Murdoch complained bitterly about the media regulator Ofcom in his first major speech after taking over as chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia. The following year, David Cameron announced that a Conservative government would cut Ofcom down to size."

Why is it important that we prevent Jimmy-boy from turning his beautiful dream into reality? This is why.