Charles Krauthammer doesn't know science

By Frank Moraes 

Going back briefly to the Jonathan Chait article I mentioned earlier, there is one thing that Charles Krauthammer said that really bugged me. It's been quoted various places but no one seems to have noticed the contradiction, so I figured that I should point it out.

The thing is that Krauthammer wants it both ways. Pure science that has no political implications is just fine, but applied science that indicates something that conservatives don't want to do must be held to an impossibly high standard. He wrote:

99 percent of physicists convinced that space and time were fixed until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not. I'm not impressed by numbers. I'm not impressed by consensus.

He is arguing that since Einstein changed physics, we can't know that global warming is true. The problem with this is that there was this thing called the ultraviolet catastrophe. The entire physics community was worried about it. There was also the Michelson–Morley experiment. The entire physics community was worried about it. In the decades leading up to Einstein, physics was in crisis. It wasn't the case that that physicists were sitting around thinking that they had it all figured out. It was quite the opposite.

On the other hand, now there is a consensus on relativity and quantum mechanics. But why should Kruthammer accept that consensus? After all, he just disregarded the consensus that he made up about late-19th-century physics. Why is the new consensus any more believable than the old consensus? Scientists can't be trusted!

His argument is very simple if we assume that his historical examples are correct (which they aren't). There was a wrong scientific consensus about relativity before Einstein. Then the scientific community learned the truth and developed a new consensus, which is the truth. Thus, the consensus on global warming is wrong because the consensus in the past was wrong (even though it wasn't).

What Kruthammer's argument comes down to is that he doesn't want to accept global warming as a fact because it will hurt the oil companies and others who he works for. Thus, he will say anything at all to avoid admitting the truth. And in 20 years, if he's still alive, no one will treat him as the evil lobbyist who helped to stop the world from addressing its most pressing problem.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

L. Ron Hubbard

By Frank Moraes

It's the birthday of a couple of conservatives I find repellent: Charles Krauthammer (63) and Jamie Dimon (57). And yes, I know Dimon is a Democrat, but that doesn't mean he's not a conservative. As I write about a lot: the democratic party is not liberal; America does not have a liberal party. I would be happy if either of these guys died, but I'd be more happy if it were Dimon.

It is also Neil Sedaka 74th birthday. I never stop being amazed that he isn't gay. And the Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee is 92.

But today is a big day because L. Ron Hubbard was born 102 years ago! Now he was a total hack. I'm not talking about Scientology, here; I haven't read Dianetics or any of its successors. But I do think this video is pretty cool. It must have happened:



(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Wishful thinking

By Mustang Bobby

David Brooks sees a glimmer of hope for the Republicans: 

Over the past month, the Republican Party has changed far more than I expected. First, the people at the ideological extremes of the party have begun to self-ghettoize. The Tea Party movement attracted many people who are drawn to black and white certainties and lock-step unity. People like that have a tendency to migrate from mainstream politics, which is inevitably messy and impure, to ever more marginal oases of purity.

Jim DeMint, for example, is leaving the Senate to go lead the Heritage Foundation. He is leaving the center of the action, where immigration, tax and other reforms will be crafted, for a political advocacy organization known more for ideological purity and fund-raising prowess than for creativity, curiosity or intellectual innovation.

Second, politics is being reborn. For a time, Republican candidates like Richard Mourdock of Indiana proudly declared that they didn't believe in compromise. Political activists spent more time purging deviationists than in trying to attract new converts.

But that mania has passed. There are increasing signs that House Republicans are willing to unite behind Speaker John Boehner so he can cut a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff." There has been an epidemic of open-mindedness as Republicans try to win minority votes and create a version of their party that can be competitive in states like Connecticut and California.

[...]

The Republicans may still blow it. If President Obama is flexible and they don't meet him partway, Republicans would contribute to a recession that would discredit them for a decade. But they are moving in the right direction and moving fast. These are first steps, and encouraging ones.

In other words, when you've had the snot beaten out of you with a sockful of horse manure by an electorate that is tired of your demonization, racism, and xenophobia, it might be a good idea to rethink your business plan. 

Read more »

Rubio's young earth fantasies

By Frank Moraes

Marco Rubio has made a bit of a stir with comments about his young earth belief. It isn't so much the beliefs; they are standard fair in the conservative movement. What is most appalling is his relativistic statement in support of these beliefs, "At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all." If I didn't know what he was thinking, I would yield the point. The truth is there are different theories and I think it is a great idea teach them all. But I'm talking about actual scientific theories and this is not what Rubio is talking about. He wants the Genesis myth to be taught as science.

I'm not kidding about this. He goes on to say, "I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries." No. It isn't one of the great mysteries. The earth was not created in 7 days and I don't know what an "actual era" is. These are the words of a man who can not back up his beliefs. His religion tells him that the universe is not the way we know it to be so he claims that we should teach "all sides of it": the side that's true and the fantasy he wants to believe. This isn't even handed. This is simple distortion of the truth.

Digby dug up a 2009 article about what Rubio was saying then, via Little Green Footballs:

Rubio added, "And for me, personally, I don't want a school system that teaches kids that what they're learning at home is wrong."

Rubio, a Cuban-American, made a comparison to the strategy employed by the Communist Party in Cuba where schools encouraged children to turn in parents who criticized Fidel Castro.

"Of course, I'm not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro," he quickly added, while noting that undermining the family and the church were key means the Communist Party used to gain control in Cuba.

What I find most offensive about these words is how they fit into the context of my lifetime here in the United States. There is only one party that ever acted in this way. It was the Republican Party under Reagan and Bush that encouraged children to turn their parents in for drug use and dealing. I remember Bush praising a grammar school child for having turned her cocaine dealing parents into the police. So to have a Republican claim that teaching evolution is somehow going to turn children against their parents when his own party worked to do that very thing in the name of their useless Drug War makes my blood boil.

It would be nice to think that anyone as delusional as Rubio couldn't become president. But we know that isn't the case. Well over half the people of the United States believe the same disproven rubbish that he spouts. There really are facts in the world, however. But the modern Republican Party will have none of it. And as we know from Charles Krauthammer, the only thing the Republicans need to change about themselves is to be a little less vile regarding Latinos. So don't be surprised if roughly 50% of the country votes for a Cuban young earth proponent in 2016.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

What impact does serial lying have on a presidential campaign? I'm talking to you, Mitt.

By Richard K. Barry

Yes, that looks like Churchill.
Better check with Romney, he's the expert.

When someone lies as much as Mitt Romney, people stop paying attention. Worse, they just shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to ''politics." I suppose people have such a jaded view of the discipline that nothing matters, especially relatively trivial fabrications.

A few days ago, during his most fabulous tour of England, Romney declared he would return the bust of Winston Churchill to the White House if elected, which, he said, had been given back to the British when Obama became president. The problem, as Jennifer Epstein at Politico points out, is that there will be no need to return the bust to the White House because it never left.

Snarling right-wing pundit moron Charles Krauthammer picked up on the Romney lie on Friday and ran hard with some absurd claim about how this reflected badly on White House leadership and was disrespectful of our relationship to Great Britain, yadda, yadda. This prompted the White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer to take the unusual step of responding to a rumour by calling it "patently false":

Though President Obama did move the bust out of the Oval Office -- and replaced it with a bust of President Abraham Lincoln -- it's still in the White House, just moved to the residence, outside the Treaty Room. "News outlets have debunked this claim time and again," Pfeiffer wrote in an unusual fact-check blog post on the White House website.

Pfeiffer then offered up a 2010 photo of the president and British Prime Minister David Cameron looking at the bust, to remove all doubt (above).

It's a small thing, I know. But it never ends. Romney lies about everything hoping that the 6 percent of the electorate that can be persuaded one way or the other will pay just enough attention, and not a bit more, to what's going on around them. He is hoping they will believes the lies and then fall back asleep without having sought the truth. We've become used to this. Steve Benen has been doing a great job cataloging the lies Mitt has been telling so I won't repeat them here. It is a very long list.

At least as bad as the common public response is the fact that the media treat a lie as just another perspective, as if there is no such thing as truth. Mitt Romney has benefitted greatly from this kind of journalistic laziness.

The Romney campaign has hit on something, and they know it. The electoral is too lazy or cynical to care about the lies of politicians and the media, perhaps in a misguided attempt to be "fair" or because they really don't know any better or because they are too lazy to care, give lies as much air and light to grow as the truth.

It almost begs the question, do you take the high ground and combat lies with the truth or do you combat lies with lies because it might be the only way to win? I'm not sure what I think anymore. Well, okay, I still know what I think but I'm very frustrated.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Republicans think Americans are too stupid to recognize a lie

By Richard K. Barry

A short while ago, President Obama made the reasonable point in an interview that American policy-makers have been lazy about attracting businesses to our country. This is exactly what he said:

We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.

Seems pretty clear that he was pointing to a certain complacency among those in government responsible for making investors understand that America is a good place to set up shop. It's clear if you're not a lying right-wing bastard, who has a compulsive need to contort the truth for narrow political gain.

One of the first lying liars to enter the fray on this was Charles Krauthammer, who said this on Fox:

When you call your own country "lazy" when you are abroad and you call it unambitious and soft when you're home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-concealed contempt.

Obviously, Obama didn't call the citizens of his own country lazy, but, hey, who needs the truth when bullshit is so much more useful? (For a great take, see Michael's post here). 

And then came GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who just couldn't help himself, so he had to take Obama's comments out of context and put them in a political ad (see below).


Remember, Obama's words in this clip are cited above. That's the complete statement. What Perry is doing, what Romney did in his own ad, what the eventual GOP nominee will do, is smash the truth because these guys don't think the truth matters. They either don't think Americans are smart enough to know the difference between lying and telling the truth or think that Americans won't care. 

I have a good feeling they are wrong about that.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

For GOP and health-care reform, politics trumps leadership

By Nicholas Wilbur 

Republicans may sometimes demonstrate a butter-finger grasp on reality, but they're not so deranged that they sincerely believe that pigs will sprout wings and fly or that hell will freeze over anytime soon.

And yet, they're knowingly pissing into the wind by trying to overturn what is arguably the most historic piece of social legislation since civil rights. The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill this week to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. It's doomed in the Senate, where Democrats maintain majority voting power, and even if Republicans managed to lure enough Democratic Senators to the dark side and join them in their repeal efforts, there is no doubt that President Obama would veto it.

Odds are everything in legislating, and they aren't looking good right now for Republicans. But what if legislation isn't the goal?

There is ample evidence to support the claim (made here, by me) that Republicans aren't in fact suffering from the romantic idealism of some deranged dream wherein they believe they will actually succeed in their efforts to repeal health care. They know it's doomed.

The media arm of the Republican Party admitted as much after the vote Wednesday. In a moment of uncharacteristic accuracy, Fox News ran a story describing the House vote as "largely symbolic":

The newly muscular House Republicans voted Wednesday to overturn President Obama's health care overhaul – a move that is largely symbolic because the Democratic-controlled Senate is poised to ignore it while Obama is certain to veto it should it somehow pass through Congress.

And two of the GOP's leading anti-hope pitchmen admitted it a day before the votes were cast.

In an interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer gave worried Tea Partiers a glint of hope in the possibility that Republicans could convince enough Democrats in the Senate to overturn the law. The goal is not to then rev up the lobbying machine and persuade the president against a veto. The goal is to make it a political issue for Obama in his 2012 re-election campaign:

[T]here are 23 Democrats [in the Senate] who have to be re-elected in 2012, and a lot of them are in red states. You could get a majority on that. Now, of course, it's not going to get enough to override a veto, but the whole purpose of this –- nobody expects that ObamaCare will be repealed in the next two years – but it will be one of the major issues in the presidential election, and that I think is what it ought to be.

Because of the presidential veto, the repeal bill won't become law even if it gets the nod from both chambers of Congress – Tea Partiers can thank the Constitution for that one – but Republicans are making sure that health care is a political issue for the president in his re-election bid.

Is it completely accurate to say that Republicans drafted this two-paragraph repeal bill to replace a 2,300-page reform law only because they wanted to make it a campaign issue for Obama in 2012?

Yes. They knew it couldn't pass.

Are we surprised?

No. This is the Republican messaging machine in action, two years early.

Despite the staunch anti-reform rhetoric, Republicans actually have no hopes of repealing health-care reform. They care only about the potentially negative political effects health-care reform would have for those forced to defend it during the next election. They are using the legislative process to erect election hurdles for the president and the Democratic Party. It may prove an effective engineering tactic in crafting 2012 talking points, but it will also remind Americans why they so loathe the vile and manipulative world of D.C. politics.

Democrats spent the last two years earning the title of the most productive majority party in Congressional history. Republicans spent the last two years obstructing the legislative process by filibustering more bills than any other minority party in history. We thought they did this because they legitimately opposed the legislation proposed by the majority party. With this repeal bill – the first significant piece of legislation drafted by the majority Republican Party – we know the truth: that Republicans have no use for policy; they care only about politics, whether they're in the minority or the majority. Considering that their politicking resulted in a near sweep of the 2010 midterm elections, there's no reason to expect any less. What would be the point in tackling actual issues when partisan demagoguery has proven effective enough in garnering public support?

We often use "lawmaker" and "politician" interchangeably, and while some have successfully toed the line between the two by exercising the tactics of the latter in order to pass laws that earn them the title of the former, Republicans are evidence that there is, in their case, a stark contrast between legislating and politicking.

At least now we know.

(Cross-posted from Muddy Politics.)

Hopelessly devoted to Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Charles Krauthammer thinks that we liberals are obsessed with Sarah Palin and that we think "she is and will always be the only representative of conservatism of any importance."

Obviously, that's not true. She may be the de facto leader of the Republican Party (move over, Dear Leader Rush), she may be the brightest Republican star (without necessarily being bright), and, with the Tea Party all around her, she may be the new mainstream of the GOP, but certainly there are other important conservatives out there. Like, um, well... Krazy Kristol and the neocons are still important, and then there's Rand Paul... uh, and James Inhofe... and...

No, she's it. For the right, she's The One.

And Americans should know that if they vote Republican and want conservatism to rule, she's what they're getting. Because she's bigger than McConnell, Cantor, and the rest of the Republicans on Capitol Hill, and she's bigger than Romney, Thune, Pawlenty, and the other wannabes for 2012.

So are we obsessed? No, just watching what's going on over on the right, often with great amusement. And I, for one, am hopelessly devoted.

This is a couple of years old, but it's still fresh, especially as we look ahead to a possible Palin presidential run. Enjoy, and have a lovely Sunday.

Craziest Conservative of the Day: Robert Knight

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

As I've mentioned here before, one of the interesting (and sometimes unpleasant) things about being a blogger (and member of the political commentariat) with a public e-mail address is that I find myself on many different mailing lists. Like, for example, those of a number of (mostly Democratic) Sens and Reps on Capitol Hill.

And of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

And of the theocratic right-wing Coral Ridge Ministries, founded by D. James Kennedy. Which the other day sent me this:

Dear Media:

In this Washington Times opinion piece, Coral Ridge Ministries Senior Writer Robert Knight challenges the moral relativism of columnist George Will and others who support allowing open homosexuals to serve in the military.

Please let me know if you would like to speak with Mr. Knight about this column.

Andrew Scott [e-mail address] or [phone number]

The "opinion piece" is pretty much what you'd expect, a conservative religious rant against gays in the military, and against homosexuality generally, and in support of right-wing Christian theocracy:

And what about the Creator of the Universe? It is God's moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years. God's intelligent design – marriage – is the glue that holds it together.

It's just more of the same old biblical bigotry that we've come to expect from the religious right, and it hardly deserves a response.

But what's amusing, in a way, is that Knight calls Will, one of America's leading conservative commentators (and, in Knight's words, "one of the smartest men in Washington"), a moral relativist for suggesting (rightly, I would add) that "homosexuality will soon be a non-issue in the military," that is, for not being a fellow bigot. Similarly, Knight accuses Charles Krauthammer, another die-hard conservative, of being "aboard the gay express" (whatever that is), before ignorantly claiming that "the myth persists that science has established that people are 'born gay.'"

All those who do not agree with the biblical bigotry of Knight and his ilk, you see, a bigotry that is common in Knight's Christian circles (as well as in Republican circles), are moral relativists -- including some of America's leading conservatives. But this is where the religious right is, well to the right of the more establishment, more secular conservatism of Will and Krauthammer.

How truly enjoyable it is to sit back and watch conservatives, however extreme, however crazy, attempt to commit fratricide.

How the conservative critics of Clinton's trip to North Korea are both heartless and stupid

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I tweeted a bit on this last night, but I must stress again: The right's response to Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea to free the two American prisoners is simply appalling. Apparently, Krauthammer, Bolton, Morris, and their cruel and unusual ilk would rather Laura Ling and Euna Lee have rotted away in a totalitarian labour camp.

They claim, without actually knowing any of the specifics (they're full of idle, partisan speculation, as usual), that the U.S. must have given up too much to secure the prisoners' release (more on this below), but what they can't abide, and will not acknowledge, is that Clinton, Gore, and Obama actually succeeded. Had Bush done something like this, they would have kowtowed before his diplomatic ingenuity with genuflective obeisance. Forget, as Jon Stewart rightly noted last night (hilariously, and with indignation), that Iran-Contra was an egregious and illegal diplomatic quid pro quo. Forget that famous shot of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, or Reagan's support for any number of tyrannical regimes around the world. What these conservatives want us to believe is that Clinton's trip, along with whatever concessions were required to secure the release, was an expression of American weakness, and that, basically, the U.S. should have sacrificed the two women for the sake of its own image (and for the neocon agenda).

This is silly. First, what exactly do they think the U.S. gave up? A lot, according to Krauthammer, who doesn't have a clue (again, speculation). (What, did Clinton give them Mississippi or something? Did he promise them some of the Wall Street bailout money?) But is the U.S. really so incredibly weak that it can afford to give up nothing? Hardly. It is possible to negotiate from a position of strength, which is precisely how the U.S. ought to approach North Korea. (Indeed, diplomacy now would allow the U.S. to take a harder line, if necessary, down the road, especially if/when international support is required for sanctions.)

Second, did the trip grant North Korea any of the legitimacy in the international community it so desires? Look, whether we like it or not, North Korea is a sovereign state. Either you deal with that fact, or you don't. If you don't, all you have is your bullying righteous rhetoric, which won't do anything to help solve the problem, which is not just that North Korea is a totalitarian regime that brutalizes its own people but that it is a relatively powerful nuclear state with the capacity both to disseminate its technology to more formidable foes and to destabilize the region (not to mention to retaliate against South Korea and possibly Japan in the event of an American attack).

The only viable solution rests with serious diplomacy, and what is important here is not what Clinton may or many not have been authorized to give up (such as an apology) for the sake of the release but what a gesture of good will his trip may have signalled. Fred Kaplan has more on this at Slate. Just as Jimmy Carter's trip to Pyongyang in 1994 paved the way for the Agreed Framework, which could have been effective had Bush not dismantled it, Clinton's trip may pave the way for serious diplomacy between the U.S. and North Korea down the road. In that sense, the trip may have been not just about the release of the two journalists but about the bigger picture of relations with North Korea, specifically focused on its nuclear program. The release was obviously a good in and of itself, but there is now the possibility that the whole incident could have provided the opportunity for progress with respect to one of the world's most pressing crises.

No wonder conservatives are aghast. They want nothing to do with such diplomacy, for any sort of negotiation, let alone a one-on-one deal, between Washington and Pyongyang. But what other options are there? It will be diplomacy, and a deal, or it will be nothing -- and, if it's nothing, the problem only gets worse.

These conservatives aren't just heartless, they're stupid.

So much Palin, so little time

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning to comment for a few days now on Sarah Palin's recent reemergence in the news, specifically on that huge, meandering, and only vaguely satisfying Todd Purdum piece in Vanity Fair, on all the Republican infighting (specifically the Kristol-Schmidt squabble and Schmidt's role in the Todd-Palin-AIP issue back during the campaign -- Palin comes out of it, as you might expect, looking like a self-absorbed moron), and on the still-ongoing Palin '12 hype (with conservatives still circling the wagon), but I'll leave it here to the usually nonsensical Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News, to serve up some common sense, and, yes, I realize that I rarely have any praise for C-Kraut, but when credit's due, credit's due. Here you go:



Contrast Krauthammer's common sense, as his usual partisan self, with Fred Barnes's Kristol-like nonsense (the two Weekly Standard-bearers are nothing if not enamored with Palin to the point of mental breakdown. Let me just be clear, though, that I do not think that the criticism (or "attacks") on Palin were or have been unfair. Given what an ignorant twit and arrogant thug she has been all along, how she handled herself during the campaign and how she has handled herself since, she has brought the negativity upon herself. If anyone deserves all the ridicule, it's Sarah Palin.

Conservative contradictions: The right-wing assault on Obama over Iran

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The other day, TNR's Michael Crowley effectively captured the contradiction at the core of the conservative assault on Obama over Iran:

So Now Obama Really Is Moses?

For more than a year conservatives have ridiculed the alleged belief that Obama's special rhetorical powers can do anything, including parting the waters. Now they're all clamoring for him to change he course of Iranian history by leveraging what Paul Wolfowitz calls "his enormous political prestige." In other words, by giving a fancy speech.

Similarly, Christopher Orr noted that conservative Andrew McCarthy situates Obama at both extremes of the spectrum -- "fanatical ideologue" and "bloodless pragmatist" -- according to whatever suits his present assault. (Obama is either A or B. In either case, he's wrong. It's a way of attacking Obama no matter what.)

In general, it's not just that these anti-Obama conservatives have no real arguments, it's that their full of shit. As Orr noted elsewhere, for example, leading assaulter Charles Krauthammer has slammed Obama, both on Fox and in the WaPo, for referring to Khamenei as Iran's "supreme leader." Just days before, though, Krauthammer himself referred to Khamenei as "the supreme leader."

The point is, it doesn't matter what Obama does. For these conservatives -- Krauthammer, McCarthy, Kagan, Bennett, Wolfowitz, etc., as well as Republicans like McCain and Graham -- Obama can do no right. He could launch an all-out military attack on Iran, of the sort the neocons have been pushing for, and they'd still find fault with him for something, and they'd still assault him with all the ideological and partisan fervor they could muster.

It's what they do. It's who they are.

And Obama should just ignore them.

The ticking time bomb

By Mustang Bobby

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is also a psychiatrist, justifies torture by saying that the ticking time bomb scenario (as in Jack Bauer and 24) is real, gets results, and he uses an example from a case in Israel to bolster his claim.

On Oct. 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel's existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered this enhanced interrogation (as we now say) explained without apology: "If we'd been so careful to follow the [1987] Landau Commission [guidelines], we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."

Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin's moral calculus.

Except his example isn't exactly a ticking time bomb, and the hostage they were trying to rescue ended up dead. Oops.

I'm sure that a lot of torture freaks can come up with other time bomb examples. However, there's one small factor they're leaving out: in none of the justifications for using torture under this scenario have they ever cited a case in the current war situations, either in the 9/11 investigations, the war in Iraq, or the war in Afghanistan, where there has existed such a scenario. As far as anyone can tell, they're all talking theoretically and coming up with extreme situations to make their case: "Terrorists have captured your wife and children and have strapped them to a speeding bus that will blow up if it drops below 50 mph unless you reveal the ingredients to Col. Sanders' secret recipe. You have twenty minutes to get the location of the bus from a captured chicken dinner delivery boy. What then?" And then they use their situational morality to justify it: we were desperate! But has anyone stepped forward to cite a real case that provided actionable evidence that actually prevented something from happening?

Oh, but it might, the defenders of torture say, so therefore we shouldn't tie our hands -- so to speak -- and rule it out. Yeah, and we might get struck by an asteroid, too, or get attacked by the Borg, or by the monster that lives under my bed. So far all we know is that the Bush administration administered torture to try to get the captives to confess to a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, and that's just execrable.

It sounds to me that Dr. Krauthammer is just a little too enthusiastic about torture, if you know what I mean. Hey, whatever gets you through the night; some people are into that kind of kink. But I'd really rather not have it be the policy of the United States. Save it for your fetish parties.

(Edited to re-insert a paragraph that was inadvertently dropped in cross-posting.)

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Quote of the Day: Roger Ebert on (to) Bill O'Reilly

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Chicago Sun-Times, hardly a long-standing bastion of liberalism (whatever its pro-Rooseveltian founding purpose), recently dropped Bill O'Reilly's syndicated column. In response, O'Reilly, ever thugish, called for an advertising boycott of the newspaper. In response, Roger Ebert, who has more humanity in his right thumbnail than O'Reilly has in his entire being, penned an epistolary comeback that includes this line:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently.

Recently? Thumbs down for the understatement, Mr. Ebert (a film critic whom I have long admired, most of all for bringing Ozu and Kieslowski to American audiences). You make some good points, but you could, should, have been a lot tougher.

Thumbs down, too, for being nice to Conrad Black, hardly a good and decent man.

Thumbs even further down for your characterization of Charles Krauthammer as "admirable." Did you mean that in relative terms? As in, Krauthammer is more admirable than, say, Bill Kristol? Even if you did, "admirable" just isn't the right adjective. Krauthammer may be less of a right-wing hack than some of his peers, which isn't saying much, but he's still a blowhard with a detestable ideological agenda.

Still, well done for standing up to O'Reilly, and for noting that his columns are "composed of knee-jerk frothings and ravings." He is himself little more than frothings and ravings, both on television and in print, and a newspaper without him is so much better for it.

Guillotine! Guillotine!

By Capt. Fogg

It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. They report, you decide.

One doesn't expect the spokesmen for conservative interests to be using the French Revolution as a model for future action. Of course, I'm no kind of cynicm and so all the calls for blood, all the evocations of victims carted off to some public square to be guillotined or of some Supreme Court justice bleeding to death in his bathtub like Marat aren't at all hilarious to me when I watch Fox News.

Whether it's terrorism, international crises, domestic crime or, in this case, excessive corporate greed, some conservatives seem unable to see problems as anything other than a nail for which the only solution is a hammer,

says Think Progress. Fox's solution is a Krauthammer.

Charles Krauthammer, who like so many Fox denizens looks like he's overdone the Botox, told us all yesterday that we should hold public executions for AIG executives whose contracts include a bonus:

Have it in Times Square, invite Madame DuFarge. You borrow a guillotine from the French and we could have a party. If that's what it takes to maintain popular support, let's do it.

Conservative Mort Kondrake just wants to boil them in oil.

Okay, so it's hyperbole, although with paralyzed faces like these guys have, one has to make some guesses as to what they really mean. But inflammatory rhetoric in such times as these is like flicking your Bic with gasoline all over the floor. Put them together with Ann Coulter, who has advocated poisoning judges, and with Rush, who would rather have the country collapse than accept any offense to his "principles," and we have not only an assemblage of rogues but a perfect example of people who are not conservatives any more than were the Parisian mobs cheering as heads rolled in the Place de la Concorde in 1793.



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Charm offensive: Obama at dinner with the conservative punditocracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning all day to comment on Obama's dinner with Will, Kristol, Brooks, and Krauthammer -- the four horsemen of the right-wing apocalypse? -- but I just don't have much to say about it. On Obama's part, it was an exceptionally smart move. Why not, as the soon-to-be president, make nice and break bread with four leading conservative political commentators? If nothing else, as Michael Crowley stressed, "Obama will surely choose his words carefully and avoid saying anything that causes him trouble. He's certainly not going to make any new promises to appease the right. And a little personal charm" -- or a charm offensive? -- "is sure to buy him a few pulled punches among the columns and punditry of these men." No, they won't go soft, but maybe at least they'll show him some respect and take him, and his efforts at outreach to the right, seriously. (Remember that the Clintons did themselves no favours by attacking the media, including liberals, early on, setting a negative tone that only hindered the Clinton presidency. Obama may be stuffing his administration with Clintonites, but he has certainly learned from some of Clinton's mistakes.)

And liberals, by the way, aren't all that troubled by the dinner. Take Steve Benen and Kevin Drum, for example. And, again, I feel much the same way.

As Jon Chait argues, though, and I think he's right about this, conservatives wouldn't be nearly as understanding if the situation were reversed:

I actually don't find it terribly surprising that liberals haven't shown any outrage over Barack Obama's dinner party with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and David Brooks. I'll get to my hypothesis why liberals aren't upset in a moment. But first imagine this counterfactual: George W. Bush (or maybe a victorious John McCain) sat down before his first inauguration with Paul Krugman, E.J. Dionne, and Frank Foer. Would conservatives have reacted with the same equanimity? No, I think they'd have gone nuts. And the reason is that they wouldn't have confidence in Bush or McCain to be surrounded by liberal ideas without being deeply influenced by them. I don't think they'd have reacted this way if, say, a President Mitt Romney did the same thing.

And that's why liberals aren't having a cow. They know that Obama understands far more about policy than any of his right-wing dinner companions, is used to being exposed to opposing ideas, and won't come out of that dinner telling his staff, "Hey, did you know we cut half the capital gains tax and raise more revenue?"

A separate issue is why Obama didn't pick some conservatives with a bit more intellectual integrity than, say, Kristol and Krauthammer. The problem, of course, is conservatives like that tend not to rise to positions of high influence.

Right, I don't think there's any concern, despite existing (and, in my view, wrong-headed) concerns among some progressives that he's a centrist of sorts, that Obama will surrender to conservative pressure or otherwise reveal himself to be a Republican. If nothing else, we have confidence in Obama's firmness. And we understand, I think, that it makes good political sense, at this time, with the economic stimulus package soon to be up for a vote and with health care, energy, and education reform looming on the horizon, to reach out not just to potentially friendly Republicans in Congress but to key figures, key opinion-shapers, on the right. Which is why he picked these four. Two of them, I agree, may not have much intellectual integrity -- I'd say Will is the only one with much of it, and Brooks has more than Krauthammer and far, far more than Kristol -- but there's no denying their lofty places in the conservative food chain. (But at least more despicable figures like Limbaugh and O'Reilly weren't there. That would have been too much even for generous and understanding liberals to take.)

This is one case where it is best to trust that Obama knows what he's doing. I have no doubt that he does.

Krauthammer vents, Weld backs Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Does anyone care that Charlie Krauthammer will be voting for McCain?

Oh, no, he's not one of those "wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years," as if that's the only reason so many of them are lining up behind Obama, he's the courageous, trend-bucking conservative who sees things as they really are: it's Obama who's gone negative, not McCain, and, yes, it's McCain who is "the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate," who "not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory." (Actually, McCain's an angry, impetuous, stubborn man who has embraced a radical, militant neoconservative -- i.e., Krauthammer's -- worldview.)

What a waste of time. (Why have I wasted my time on it?) It's such an over-the-top endorsement of McCain, with all the usual anti-Obama smears. He means it seriously, of course, but it reads like a parody.

There's a reason many Republicans and conservatives, including Colin Powell and Ken Adelman, are supporting Obama. A Republican newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, made the case for Obama extremely well. Needless to say, and as per usual, Krauthammer finds himself screaming into his own partisan void.

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Meanwhile, back in reality, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, a generally moderate Republican, is endorsing Obama:

Senator Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America's standing in the world. We need a president who will lead based on our common values and Senator Obama demonstrates an ability to unite and inspire. Throughout this campaign I've watched his steady leadership through trying times and I'm confident he is the best candidate to move our country forward.

As far as endorsements go, this one doesn't mean all that much, or at least won't affect the race much, but it's yet another sign both of Obama's incredible appeal and of a Republican Party in collapse.

Vanity, thy name is Krauthammer

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's all part of the Republican Smear Machine's ongoing efforts to brand/label Obama. Hillary helped out during the primaries, desperately trying to make the case that he isn't ready to be president, but the Republicans are on to the next stage of the game.

The Rev. Wright story had some staying power, though Obama diffused it both with his brilliant speech on race and by effectively distancing himself from his former pastor. With McCain running on his experience, as if being around a long time is qualification enough to be president, the Republicans are, like Hillary before them, arguing that Obama is unprepared. Which should be a worry for Obama. Whatever McCain's actual record and policy positions, the media have accepted his claim that he has what it takes to be commander-in-chief from the get-go, what with his "experience" in national security and foreign policy. And the American people, fed by these media, are still buying it.

But the Republican effort is actually much simpler than that, because, as with Republican efforts past, it's mostly about straightforward character assassination. Obama is a tougher target than, say, Dukakis, but the smears are flying: Obama is an elitist. Obama is an egotist. And now, via Krauthammer, Obama is an audaciously vain lover of self. Why? Because he wanted to speak at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate (he's speaking elsewhere, by the way) even though he's done nothing to deserve it (unlike, say, Reagan, in Krauthammer's estimation). And because he has an "elevated opinion of himself," because his campaign is all about himself (not the people: 'I,' that is, not 'we'), because he immodestly thinks of himself as a saviour, as Jesus-plus. Or so says Krauthammer.

All of which is nonsense, of course. Obama has a high opinion of himself, to be sure, but most politicians do -- and certainly anyone seriously running for president must be confident that he or she has what it takes, that he or she can look in the mirror every morning and say, "Yes, I want to be president." There is always the worry that self-promotion can cross the line into narcissism, or that popularity can breed a cult of personality, but Obama, despite a few missteps (talking about Whole Foods and arugula in Iowa, the stupid quasi-presidential seal, etc.) has been admirably modest even while being swept up in a wave of enthusastic support and victory -- even while turning into, and leading, what has become a massive grassroots movement to reform American politics.

Of course, some of it, much of it, is about Obama himself. He's the candidate running for elected office. But the "we" is not royal, as Krauthammer suggests, changing pronouns and taking Obama out of context, focusing on the line "We are the ones we've been waiting for" while missing Obama's meaning altogether. As Hilzoy puts it: "It's about the need to take action for oneself, rather than waiting for saviors to parachute in and do it for us." Obama wasn't saying, "I'm the one," he was saying, "We, with me as your candidate, we together..."

But Krauthammer keeps pressing his case: "Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?"

One name comes to mind (as it does for Hilzoy): George W. Bush. Think "Mission Accomplished." Think the Second Inaugural, where he presented himself as the spreader of freedome and democracy and the liberater of the world's oppressed masses. Think "I'm the decider." Think how he has been turned into a Christ-like figure by some of his supporters, and how he has bought into it.

But if it's immodesty, vanity, and narcissism you're looking for, how about Krauthammer himself? What does he do but pontificate without expertise in newspaper columns and on the Sunday talk shows, dishing out partisan hackery and vicious smears without ever being held to account?

The Republican Smear Machine will keep churning out its attacks, of course. And Krauthammer and his ilk will be there to spread the word.