Haven't Checked in with the General Recently

Forgive me, General, for thou art always entertaining.

Biggest Mistake of Obama's Presidency

Selecting a bunch of anti-Keynesians and following their advice early on was a bone-head move.  I posted at the time that Obama should have listened to - instead of rudely denigrating - Krugman's warnings that Obama's inaugural budget was not remotely bold enough.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Obama is only a pale imitation of a Keynesian in comparison with the GOP's hero, Ronald Reagan - such is the insane era we live it when one can say that Obama's biggest mistake was lacking the courage to be half the Keynesian Ronald Reagan was.

It's not so funny when you start to think about it

. . . and realise just how accurately it describes the state of our democracy.

Yawn . . .

This evidently comes as a surprise to people.

Who ever could have guessed such things go on in the halls of power?

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., the only surprise these days is that some in Rupert's own family appear to have briefly strayed off-message:

"[Matthew] Freud told the New York Times he was "ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to [cue stifled gag reflex]".

Freud, who is married to Elisabeth, Rupert Murdoch's second daughter, was speaking to the NYT for a profile of Ailes, who is President of Fox News, and prefaced his comment by saying that he was "by no means alone within he family or the company" in holding such hostile views of Fox News.

I suspect Wendi has been dispatched to deal with Freud's intemperate remarks.  She is definitely the one to fear:

Wanker of the decade

Congratulations, Tommy - no-one deserves the honour more than you.

"The legal opinions have grave weaknesses"

So, belatedly, a memo is now in the public domain. In truth I can't understand why this makes much of a difference. Okay, yes, perhaps this is a smoking gun signifying the Bush administration was told point-blank that its policy amounted to war crimes:

"We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systemic interrogation practices similar to those in question here."

And, yes, the Bush White House did everything possible to destroy all copies of this particular memo, figuring it might be difficult to explain to a media, even one as craven and compromised as ours turned out to be.

But, on the substance, there is nothing new here that we didn't already know. As early as April 2009, Philip Zelikow wrote, despairing, about this systematic and brazen violation of some of America's most core principles:

". . . [T]he issue is not about who or what [the detainees] are. It is about who or what we are."

Mr. Zelikow chaired the 9/11 Commission, which suggests he is someone who is relatively unimpeachable even by today's woeful standard of political discourse.

In 2010, the Obama White House decided officially to turn a blind eye. The legal memos justifying state-sanctioned torture - the ones that were released - were on their face patently ridiculous, so much so that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended disciplinary action against the responsible lawyers. Obama's Assistant Attorney General overruled the OPR in a stunning display of political cynicism. John Yoo (Bush's Assist. Attorney General who was most directly responsible for justifying torture, and who seemed to revel in his role) continued to double down, insisting that the U.S. president is not bound by archaic constraints like laws when there are wars to fight, including those without end, like our current Global War on Unspecified Threats. And, sure enough, the incompetent newbie lawyers brought into the Justice Department to write the travesties masquerading as legal opinions that enabled these state-sanctioned crimes, lawyers who were barely-trained but nevertheless unleashed on an unsuspecting world courtesy of the Federalist Society and third-rate law schools, have gone on to comfy sinecures elsewhere.

It was at about this time that I lost faith in Obama.

Unravelling

Thoughtful essay from Edward Luce. The money quote:

In daggers-drawn Washington, Democrats and Republicans have been able to agree only on a certain type of spending cut. The bulk are targeted at the one slice of the federal budget that qualifies as investment – “domestic non-defence discretionary spending”, which accounts for only 12 per cent of the pie. This includes research and development, infrastructure and education programmes – areas that matter greatly to America’s future competitiveness. They could be described as the “tomorrow” part of the US budget. The remainder, which is mostly healthcare for retirees, pensions, defence and interest payments on past debt, might be seen as the “yesterday” portion. Yet Washington’s first instinct in the new era of austerity was to shortchange the future. There will be more to come even if Obama is re-elected.

Abiding genius

. . . I continue to wonder at how he gets away with it . . .

Oh, Tommy . . .

You really should have kept your trap shut.

You really have nothing to say about Iraq that has any credibility, unless, perhaps, it's an apology.

You now:

As I never bought the argument that Saddam had nukes that had to be taken out, the decision to go to war stemmed, for me, from a different choice: Could we collaborate with the people of Iraq to change the political trajectory of this pivotal state in the heart of the Arab world and help tilt it and the region onto a democratizing track? After 9/11, the idea of helping to change the context of Arab politics and address the root causes of Arab state dysfunction and Islamist terrorism — which were identified in the 2002 Arab Human Development Report as a deficit of freedom, a deficit of knowledge and a deficit of women’s empowerment — seemed to me to be a legitimate strategic choice.

You then:

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This. . . We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth . . .

We're getting closer to the day . . .

. . . when someone actually writes a book about what actually happened during the Bush administration. I hope I live to see it.

Just like ancient Rome

Paul and his whining:

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile".

At least he attracts good readers with interesting things to say - the comments are better:

As an engineer and a one-time scientist I will tell you that all the admininstrations since Nixon have been anti-science. Oh, I forgot Reagan. He was big on defense science. His time was a boom period for those of us in toy development.

Ever since global warming and the end of cheap energy became obvious to scientist, corporations have been threatened by science. The first move to eliminate government funding of basic research began in 1972 under Nixon. This when the first warnings of the end of cheap oil and the effects of over-population and pollution came to light. A Rand Corporation white paper predicted how a rapid growth in population would produce dire consequences for human kind; that was 1969.

Corporations found it easier to turn down the volume by turning down the funding. That way, the average investor can stay fat, dumb and happy. Then, they started buying scientists to spin their own story. So, here we are with pseudo science to match the few who will speak up. Fortunately, there are more social-leaning governments in Europe to speak the truth.

Listen, the cheap oil started running out in 2003 when the Saudis lost one of their big reservoirs (background: Hubbert's Peak-wikapedia). The ACS published results showing that mercury contamination in fish caught in mountain streams match the levels in those raised in farms --- and, that level is near the danger threshhold. The temperature rise we are measuring annually will accelerate once the ice caps are melted year-round and this will happen in only a couple of dozen year --- and, it can't be reversed.

How do the rich benefit if the earth is over-populated, hungry, and in the dark. The rich always benefit. Look at Rome; you just climb higher over the corpses.

Finally . . .

Someone makes the connection:

"If James Murdoch was giving his lecture this year," Thompson writes, "I'd suggest he amended only one word in that final sentence. The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is not profit. Nor who you know. Nor what corners you can cut. It's integrity."

Better late than never.

Best Fiscal Policy Proposal Yet

To end our long-term fiscal crisis I'm with Paul. I, too, believe that our only option is commence sub-orbital hostilities against the invading Venusian space armada.

Go back to law school

Ain't it the truth - commentary on the 11th Circuit travesty from an always-thoughtful commenter on TPM:

I'm a lawyer. It's hard to explain just how outside the mainstream this kind result would have been just 5-10 years ago.

I graduated a top law school in '02. If you had written something like this on your 1L Con Law exam you would have gotten an F, because it's not just a wrong view, it's a view that ignores 60 years of precedent.

To overturn the health care law is to erase the profound turn that the Supreme Court took in 1937 when it rejected the Lochner Era approach and adopted the modern/New Deal era approach to jurisprudence.

The idea that we're even having this conversation - and the Circuit courts are splitting on this question! - suggests just how far we've come in a very, very short time. The movement conservatives have all come out of the closet - even the ones on the federal bench. They smell a final victory: a return to Gilded Age America.

About that debt crisis, what can I say . . .

Obama's people just can't understand what happened.

If only someone warned them!

Save the Fair Maiden

Courtesy of the BBC today, Rupert inform us of his that his top priority is his red-head at the helm, as opposed to fully cooperating with police and getting to the bottom of what went wrong on her watch. Rupert appears not to be very concerned about the people in this country - other than Rebekah, of course - or their institutions.

Meanwhile, sonny-boy shrugs his shoulders:

On Thursday, News International chairman James Murdoch, son of Rupert, announced the paper would be closing down in the wake of the latest revelations and in its final editorial the paper said: "Quite simply, we lost our way".

News International said James Murdoch had no knowledge of the e-mails that Harbottle & Lewis were asked to review.

Here is a former NoW reporter's description of life in the trenches (also courtesy of the BBC) - an excerpt:

Moral qualms? Rarely. Celebrities, politicians and common-or-garden scumbags were the stock-in-trade and absolutely fair game.

Who would care about the ethics if you exposed a dodgy politician or a paedophile? Certainly not me.

You could put the fear of God into an MP just by phoning and saying: "Hi, I'm a reporter from the News of the World."

Kind of "ignore me at your peril". Definitely a thrill.

And to be honest, we were onto the next thing so quickly that we didn't have time to reflect on the stories and those involved.

All investigative reporters from any paper or TV channel have to cross boundaries to get the story. The end often justified the means.

And the resources? At 10am on a Tuesday (the start of the working week for us), it was: "Dan, go to Heathrow Airport. Pick up five grand in cash from the Amex desk. Get to Sardinia. Now." Boring? No.

But you were only as good as your last story, and I've heard other former journos describe how your bylines were counted up over the year, to see who would get the sack.

Based on demonstrable evidence to date, is it remotely plausible that News International "lost its way"? The only way in which this might be the case is that - for once - they've been caught red-handed and are on the defensive. But fret not: this, too, shall pass. Rupert's here to save his red-headed lass; he's taken the reins and they'll be on their way before you know it. They know exactly where they're going.

I hate the fact I didn't write this

Yes, News International is a "Good" Empire:

. . . I'm over the moon about that the Culture Secretary is about to make News Corporation an even more colossal media empire than it already was (it owns a third of the British newspaper market), despite heavy criticism leveled at News Corp-owned News of the World this week by the liberal media, who resorted to "facts" and "basic decency" in order to ruin this paper's good name.

Read the rest - someone finally puts their finger on the key to the Murdochs hold over governments:

The LAST thing anyone wants is a plurality of opinion and voices in the media. After all, when I said I heard lots of voices in my head, they called me MAD. This government has made the same decision I made -- pick one of those voices and follow it. No matter how INSANE and EVIL publications like News of the World appear to be -- according to "the facts" -- we can rest easy that this noble empire is about to become a lot more powerful, thanks to Jeremy Hunt.

Profound Insights by James Murdoch

James Murdoch today:

"These allegations are shocking and hugely regrettable."

Yes, James, deleting a murdered school-girl's voice-mails during a frantic search for her is pretty damned regrettable. It's good to know that you see this.

Of course, James fully supports the editor in charge at the time:

"Rebekah [Brooks] and I are absolutely committed, this company is committed, to doing the right thing and what that means is about co-operating and working fully with the police investigations into those alleged practices and into those activities. It's also about putting into place the processes, so that we understand what happened and we have a process in place to make sure these things don't happen again. I'm satisfied that Rebekah, her leadership of this business and her standard of ethics and her standard of conduct throughout her career are very good."

Gotta love the Murdochs. Thank God we can look to them to ensure "the plurality and independence of news provision, which is so important for our democracy."

I wonder when the penny drops . . .

. . . and it occurs to people, the media, the politicians and the police, that if you consider the incremental timeline of events leading up to where we are today in the phone hacking scandal, the pattern practically screams denial, deferral, obfuscation, misdirection and repeated, blatant lying by the most senior officials in the Murdoch machine. Consider, for example, how and when the first phone hacking allegations emerged - how long ago? - about the Royal Family. A relatively innocuous News of the World story about Prince William's knee injury was the first indication something fishy was going on at NoW. That story, published in November 2005, prompted fears that the voicemail messages of those closest to him were being intercepted. A police inquiry began. Any reputable organisation would have conducted a full internal investigation and rooted out any rot elsewhere. What was the outcome? In January 2007, two journalists, Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed for hacking. Then-editor Andy Coulson resigned but claimed he did not know about the practice, after which he was brought into the Prime Minister's cabinet (good judgement there by the PM!). What happened next? It was not until two-and-a-half years later, in July 2009, that the claims resurfaced again. The Guardian newspaper reported that NoW journalists had been involved in the hacking of up to 3,000 celebrities, politicians and sports stars' phones. And the police and the Press Complaints Commission had found no new evidence of phone hacking. So with all of that in mind, consider where we are today and consider why we should believe anything anyone in power or in the media has to say on the matter.

Getting kind of ridiculous now

On the whole, it's probably safe to say that the UK's Press Complaints Commission appears not to have performed up to par. But, what do you expect when you are effectively owned by those you are supposed to regulate?

This thing has descended into farce.