Monday, March 31, 2008

Rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Hindenburg (3:26 pm)

Krugman lays out what should be obvious: the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform is utter bullshit.

To reverse course now, and seek expanded regulation, the administration would have to back down on its free-market ideology — and it would also have to face up to the fact that it was wrong. And this administration never, ever, admits that it made a mistake.

Thus, in a draft of a speech to be delivered on Monday, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declares, “I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil.”

And sure enough, according to the executive summary of the new administration plan, regulation will be limited to institutions that receive explicit federal guarantees — that is, institutions that are already regulated, and have not been the source of today’s problems. As for the rest, it blithely declares that “market discipline is the most effective tool to limit systemic risk.”

Good thing McCain’s people understand how to right the ship ….

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Race and social democracy (11:39 am)

It’s an argument that’s been made time and time again, but one that I think is too often pushed aside in our general political discourse. America isn’t a strong social democracy because of racism and the politicians who exploit our differences for their gain. White Americans love a strong safety net and programs that protect the general welfare until they are framed as welfare for the “other.” Then, they are abhorrent. Eduardo Porter makes the case quite convincingly in the Times.

As obviously sensible as Mr. Obama’s proposition might be in a nation of as many hues, tongues and creeds as the United States, it struggles against self-defeating human behavior: racial and ethnic diversity undermine support for public investment in social welfare. For all the appeal of America’s melting pot, the country’s diverse ethnic mix is one main reason for entrenched opposition to public spending on the public good.

Encouragingly, in his big speech on race, Obama addressed this reality with more clarity than any Democratic politician in some time. The Clinton campaign, through their tacit race-baiting strategy, have only heightened these tensions. In doing so, they might be inhibiting the progressive economic programs so many have lauded.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

The production function of “Notorious” (11:25 am)

Fox Searchlight Pictures began filming “Notorious” last week, a biography of the famous wrapper, Christopher Wallace, otherwise known as Notorious B.I.G.. The movie intends to document Mr. Wallace’s life struggles and tribulations. The New York Times quoted George Tillman Jr., the director of the film, about the production’s function.

[It] follows Mr. Wallace from childhood in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn through his death, and various scenes will capture the spirit and reason for certain things without making detailed accusations.

What seems interesting about Mr. Tillman’s artistic spin on Mr. Wallace’s career are the specifics of Mr. Wallace’s public image. Although an extremely successful musician, collaborating with other rap artists such as Sean “Puffy” Combs, Tupac Shakur, and Mary J. Blige, Mr. Wallace was detained several times for misconduct. On March 23, 1996, he was arrested outside a Manhattan nightclub for chasing and threatening to kill two photographers who were trying to get his picture. He smashed the window of their fleeing taxicab and proceeded to beat a fan unconscious who was watching the event. Again in June of 1996, Mr. Wallace was arrested for drug and weapon possession outside his home.

Not only were Mr. Wallace’s arrests made public without apology, but he seemed to reinforce this disfavored reputation through his music. In his hit song titled, “Ten Crack Commandments,” he divulges protocol for selling drugs. The introductory lyrics say:

“N*gga can’t tell me nothing bout this coke
Can’t tell me nothing bout this crack, this weed,
To my hustlin’ n*ggaz
I been in this game for years, it made me a animal.”

Although Mr. Wallace exhibits a poor image from his actions while highlighting his less than perfect lifestyle in his music, his reputation is purposeful. I, therefore, find it hard to be in favor of this production that doesn’t “make detailed accusations” about Mr. Wallace’s life. Mr. Tillman seems to be making a weak attempt at honoring a young rapper’s life and tragic death by ignoring his societal (and truthful) image.
—Suzanne Block

posted by Intern | start the discussion

That Bell Curve is wicked crooked (11:08 am)

Daniel Gross redirects our focus the dangers of the overclass, a group that if you pull the lens back, resembles the much-dissected American “underclass.”

Conservative critics constantly carp that the culture of poverty has encouraged a sense of dependency on Washington. Of course, in recent months, the bureaucracy—the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac—has generally ignored the struggles of poor homeowners. Yet it vaulted into action to save the bankers from their own disastrous bets. When Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank, approached insolvency, the Feds orchestrated JPMorgan’s acquisition of it.

As Yglesias points out, working folks aren’t getting massive relief because, unlike these Titans, they aren’t seen as “too big to fail.” Just world, ain’t it?

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Alley fighter (10:38 am)

There was a really affecting essay in the Times this weekend by James Glanz, a fellow Chicagoan deployed in Iraq.

Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.

Indeed. (h/t THFTNR)

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

U.S. Troops and Torture (10:31 am)

Here are some new, troubling allegations:

[Murat] Kurnaz [a German citizen of Turkish descent] claims his interrogations at Kandahar turned to torture. He told 60 Minutes that American troops held his head underwater.”They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything,” he says.

“They were hitting you in the stomach while you’re head was underwater so that you’d have to take a breath?” Pelley asks,

“Right. I had to drink. I had to…how you say it?” Kurnaz replies.

“Inhale. Inhale the water,” Pelley says.

“I had to inhale the water. Right,” Kurnaz says.

Kurnaz says the Americans used a device to shock him with electricity that made his body go numb. And he says he was hoisted up on chains suspended by his arms from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar for five days.

“Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down. And the doctor came to watch if I can still survive to not. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart. And when he said okay, then they pulled me back up,” Kurnaz says.

“The point of the doctor’s visit was not to treat you. It was to see if you could take another six hours hanging from the ceiling?” Pelley asks.

“Right,” Kurnaz says.

“I suspect you know that the U.S. military will deny this happened. The U.S. military will deny that you were shocked. It will deny your head was held in a bucket of water. It will deny that you hung from a ceiling for days at a time,” Pelley remarks.

“Doesn’t matter whatever they will say. The truth will not change,” Kurnaz says.

Not surprisingly, he was guilty of nothing.

posted by Brian Beutler, Media Consortium | start the discussion

Friday, March 28, 2008

GI-John, American HERO! (2:43 pm)

With the release of his first national campaign ad today, we caught a glimpse of what John McCain’s general election strategy might look like: a supremely classy attempt to paint himself as authentically “American.”

But could it backlash? Ed Kilgore argues it might.

McCain may be in the process of making the same big mistake his friend Kerry made in 2004—making his biography the overriding centerpiece of his national security message. Sure, McCain’s war record attests to his character and patriotism, but hardly means he’d be an effective commander-in-chief. If that were the case, we’d only have military leaders as presidents. What McCain has to say about national security issues will, over time, have as great an impact on how he’s perceived by persuadable voters as endless clips of him in uniform or returning from the Hanoi Hilton. The tragedy of the Kerry campaign was that the man did have a pretty powerful grasp of national security challenges and what to do about them, but it never much got a hearing thanks to the back-and-forth about his own “story.”

This seems plausible, but let’s remember that 2004 is a much different race than 2008. Kerry was swift-boated to hell and back, so his American war hero narrative was skewed. He also was campaigning against Bush, a candidate whose own military failings were obscured when juxtaposed with that of a “pointed headed Northeastern elitist Winter Soldier.” This time around, we have the old, white, POW presumably battling a bi-racial “pointed headed elitist” who a significant portion of the population still thinks (!) is a Muslim. I don’t think McCain will win, but my guess is his war experience won’t have much to do with it.

posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment

Shifting blame (2:16 pm)

There aren’t too many things more repulsive in our national political dialogue than blaming the Iraqis for continued violence in their occupied country. Think Progress uses Condi as an example.

But just like any other good Iraq war supporter, Rice deflected blame for the “long, hard slog” in Iraq away from the Bush administration and onto other pre-war factors. Rice said the United Nations sanctions killed Iraq’s agricultural sector and the “structural problem” of Saddam Hussein’s regime is dissuading Iraqis from making political progress:

– On the continuing struggle in Iraq Rice said she thought it was more of a “structural problem.” […] The secretary warned that “authoritarian regimes are not going to create the condition for the emergence of moderate parties [in the Middle East].”

– “What we didn’t know was how truly broken the society was,” she said. Although Saddam Hussein’s regime was mostly to blame for that, she said that U.N. sanctions contributed as well, because as a result of them, “agriculture is virtually dead in Iraq.”

Apparently, the “shock and awe” bombing campaign had little responsibility for “breaking” Iraqi society.

Don’t forget our decisions to promote de-Baathification, disband the Iraqi military, and close massive amounts of state-owned industries. Sadly, as Atrios points out, Dems fall into this trap too, and it’s an campaign talking point they best avoid.