The edited NYT's "Duopoly Guide to Presidential Behavior"

The duopoly, face to face on many issues

The New York Times editorial board just published its "The Republican's Guide to Presidential Behavior."

In the desire for true bipartisan honesty — or rather, true anti-duopoly honesty — I've edited it, with italics about similar behavior by Bill Clinton and/or Barack Obama, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in cases where such applies.

Or, in the case of the Times' "Putin Did It" bullshit, simply written in "bullshit."

So, herewith, the Congressional Republican’s Guide to Presidential Behavior.

If you are the president, you may freely:

• attack private citizens on Twitter

Didn't Bill, and Hillary, do this pre-Twitter? The "vast right-wing conspiracy" was a mix of truth and bullshit, esp. since Hillary's never ever explained her cattle future killings.

• refuse to take responsibility for military actions gone awry

Killing civilians, and not calling them "civilians," but "collateral damage," as Obama did, works well.

• accuse a former president, without evidence, of an impeachable offense

Or accuse a former president's Veep or others of an impeachable offense, then as president, for the first of a jillion times, say, "I'm looking forward now."

• employ top aides with financial and other connections to a hostile foreign power

BULLSHIT.

• accept foreign payments to your businesses, in possible violation of the Constitution

Al Gore as Clinton's Veep, for the 1996 re-election campaign. Remember the Chinese donor solicitations on official government property? The NYT has the top Google search story on "Frank Giustra" + "uranium" + "Clinton Foundation." And Ken Silverstein has yet more on presidential-level Dems feeding at the the foreign capitalism hog trough.

• occupy the White House with the help of a hostile foreign power

BULLSHIT.

• intimidate congressional witnesses

NOT a "threat" or "intimidation" in normal use of the word. Besides, Sally Yates gets a separate ding for advising Obama not to commute Leonard Peltier's prison time. Strange that the name "Leonard Peltier" never even gets mentioned by the NYT.

• allow White House staff members to use their personal email for government business

Hillary's private email server.

• use an unsecured personal cellphone

Obama had to be "nudged" off his BlackBerry.

• criticize specific businesses for dropping your family members’ products

• review and discuss highly sensitive intelligence in a restaurant, and allow the Army officer carrying the “nuclear football” to be photographed and identified by name

Going back far longer, but JFK ditching the nuclear football to fuck bimbos.

• obstruct justice

Bill Clinton and "is." Clinton asking Monica Lewinsky to perjure herself. Barack Obama and refusal to pursue war crimes cases, if not a legal definition of "obstruction of justice," an ethical one.

• hire relatives for key White House posts, and let them meet with foreign officials and engage in business at the same time

Hillary Clinton running Bill's Hillarycare plan.

• collude with members of Congress to try to shut down investigations of you and your associates

Clinton did not, that I know of, do this with members of Congress, but did with WH staff.

• repeat untruths

Clinton, many a time. Remember how members of your own op-ed board loathed the start of his administration? Obama, repeating half-truths many a time on drone strikes, as well as full untruths at other times, like the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.

• lie

See immediately above.

If you’re a Republican legislator, stick this list on the fridge and give it a quick read the next time you get upset at a president.

If you're tired of the duopoly, and the MSM's bullshit, stick this modified list on your refrigerator.

Counterpunch has yet more on Obama's and Clinton's (or Clintons') behavior, but notes that they had a certain liberal style. A je nais se quois? That allowed them to get away with Republican policy actions.

Things like this are why intelligent, independent-minded people who know politics laughed at the Times' aggressive post-election circulation drive and related news and opinion, long before its hiring of Bret Stephens gave us reason to laugh more and to say Eff You at the same time.

The NYT inadequately criticizes American exceptionalism

It's nice that the Old Gray Lady ran an op-ed mentioning it, even mentioning how, although it's more prevalent among the right/GOP than the "left"/Democrats, it is indeed bipartisan. It's also nice that they mentioned the statistics, often cited by Democrats as well as those further left, undercutting the idea that America is exceptional in many ways.

It's even nice that Scott Shane explained a bit about its background and how problematic it is:

“People in this country want the president to be a cheerleader, an optimist, the herald of better times ahead,” says Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “It’s almost built into our DNA.”

This national characteristic, often labeled American exceptionalism, may inspire some people and politicians to perform heroically, rising to the level of our self-image. But during a presidential campaign, it can be deeply dysfunctional, ensuring that many major issues are barely discussed. Problems that cannot be candidly described and vigorously debated are unlikely to be addressed seriously. In a country where citizens think of themselves as practical problem-solvers and realists, this aversion to bad news is a surprising feature of the democratic process.

However, I think Shane still doesn’t go quite far enough.

First, he doesn’t viscerally depict the fetid stench of what is honestly a species not of bullshit, but of the fouler-smelling human excrement.

Second, he could note that American exceptionalism arose from the American Revolution plus the Constitutional Convention, not just John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” Puritanism but that white America’s treatment of Native Americans plus Britain’s freeing of slaves had already put paid to American exceptionalism by the 1830s. (And that the treatment of Native Americans had Northern as well as Southern roots.

Shane then says this, near the end:

Of course, the reason talking directly about serious American problems is risky is that most voters don’t like it.

Which was preceded by this:

In a country where citizens think of themselves as practical problem-solvers and realists, this aversion to bad news is a surprising feature of the democratic process.

But again, no further examination of either one.

So actually, to someone not so “embedded” from the mainstream media into the bipartisan establishment, this isn’t surprising at all. Rather, it’s quite expected. Again, from both Tweedledee and Tweedledum voters. I’d be more surprised, actually, if Americans wanted to be honest about where we stood in the world.

Beyond that, there’s further reality that has escaped Scott Shane.

Reality? The Dunning-Kruger effect, the social scientific term for Garrison Keillor’s comment that everyone in Lake Wobegon is above average, is at play.

All Americans think they know better, even when they don’t. Again, this runs deepest among conservatives, but many Democrats/liberals exhibit it, too, at least among the “laity.” If I picked an average, white-collar, college-grad self-identified liberal off the streets, he or she probably wouldn’t know bupkis about the Trail of Tears or the Long Walk, would overestimate foreign aid spending (though by less than conservatives) and probably think America is generally better, by international measuring sticks, than it actually is, though less so than conservatives would, and less reflexively.

But, try to re-educate that person, especially if they’re entrenched in American majoritarian social structures, and you wouldn’t do a whole hell of a lot better than with a tea partier from Kansas.

What was it the old cartoon character Pogo once said? Ahh, yes: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” American exceptionalism has developed as an incestuous relationship between a public that is largely a mix of self-righteous and self-delusional and a ruling class invested in keeping the public self-delusional, while milking the self-righteousness.

And, it’s fair to point the finger at the American populace beyond this, too. And at people who are smarter and more internationalized than the average American, too.

I think above all of American businessmen, many of whom assume that the American way of doing business, grounded in the twin cults of worship of the CEO and worship of extroversion, is the only way to really do business right. And, of course, that’s not true, including and starting with the humongous income gap that this American style is used to justify.

Or American think-tankers assuming that America’s version of capitalism is better than the more social-democratic variety of much of continental Europe, and not asking “developing nations” for their opinion. Or, how many Americans of the political establishment look down their noses at parliamentary government systems. Of course, that may be because they’re afraid it will someday finally be desired here.

Shane also falls short in failing to look at the role of luck in American exceptionalism. That includes the luck of Euro-Americans stumbling upon arguably the most fertile of the continents, overall, and one blessed with much more natural resources than Europe. Add in the ability to kill off 90 percent of the natives via transmission of European diseases, more natural resources than Central or South America and better climate than Canada, and it was a piece of baklava, to riff on Max Klinger in a MASH episode.

Of course, to do a more serious riffing, taking off on Ann Richards’ comment about George H.W. Bush: “(White) America was born with a silver spoon in its mouth,” or to riff on Barry Switzer, not Ann Richards, that “(America) was born on third base and thinks it hit a triple.”

This second column partially dovetails with it, but is too kind to Obama, who really, when push comes to shove, believes in a kinder, gentler American exceptionalism in foreign policy. (Actually, on foreign policy, I suspect many a Green-type does, too, to be honest.)

Specifically, even as it’s been announced that the US is in talks to keep 25,000 troops in Afghanistan, David E. Sanger claims that Obama is “out of the occupation business.”

Yeah, right.

And, of course, THERE is where the real problem with modern American exceptionalism lies — the mainstream media’s attachment to the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that supports it abroad.

Of course, the human excrement will get spread deeply Monday night by both Tweedledee/Goody Two-Shoes/Mitt Romney and Tweedledum/Dear Leader/Barack Obama.

Why I'm no big fan of Think Progress

Corrected Feb. 15: I meant to refer to Think Progress, not Media Matters, in this whole story. (That said, while Alan Dershowitz becomes more neo-con all the time, MM may be iffy on wanting to do oppo research on Faux broadcasters.)

Via Memorandum, the Think Progress story I was blogging about was immediately below Dershowitz's rant about Media Matters talking about doing personality-based oppo research on Faux broadcasters, and I conflated the two. This post is now edited.

Think Progress is Democratic Party establishmentarian mixing a bit a celebrity politics and cherry-picking from the Green Party to make a cheap political point, which ignores real politics, shows that TP is ultimately just another Democratic Party shill, and, like the mainstream media it professes to sometimes despise, willing to play horse-race politics coverage.

So what if Roseanne Barr (who is on the Green Party presidential ballot) would pull 6 percent against Mitt Romney and Barack Obama? In the real Green Party world, she didn't even win 6 percent of the Green Party vote in the Greens' first primary, in Ohio.

And, Think Progress folks KNOW that this is just celebrity name recognition. If they know she couldn't pull 6 percent in the Green primary, then they're guilty as hell of setting up a straw man. If they DON'T know that, they're even more guilty of political ignorance in the name of focusing on the bipartisan duopoly.

Yes, they're riffing off a poll by Public Policy Polling, and it's just a blog post, not a full story. But, this Alyssa didn't have to go there. And, she certainly didn't have to "go there" without actually writing about the Green party. That's because the same arguments against including Barr, two paragraphs up, apply to PPP just as much as TP. Ditto, the condemnations of TP in the paragraph immediately above apply to PPP. When folks like this refuse to take politics outside the bipartisan duopoly seriously, I refuse to take them seriously.

Jill Stein, who won the Greens' Ohio primary with 90 percent of the vote, is nowhere mentioned in the poll.

But, the burden is more on Think Progress. It didn't have to have a silly blog post about this. It didn't have to play all these political games. But it did.

Obama, health care, Cheney, energy

Or, let's call this post: "Let's make a government transparency deal."

President Obama politely told the Congressional GOP to fuck off when it asked for records from White House staffers' meetings with various interest groups, including drug companies and hospitals, in the run-up to crafting Obamacare.

Yes, Obama is a hypocrite, after saying health care overhaul issues would be discussed in public.

But, this is exactly what Vice President Dick Cheney did with his secret energy task force, and that's exactly the same response he gave to Congressional Democrats.

So, let's not have either "lamestream" political party posturing; let's not have their partisans posturing, either. Call this a schadenfreude alert for both parties.

Tongue-in-cheek of the subhead aside, I'd love a political deal where all of Obama's wheeling-dealings were released AND all of Cheney's. But, as a matter of political reality, this not be done until after November 2012.

The warmongering bipartisan duopoly

Over at Truthout, Andrew Bacevich has one of his best commentary pieces in a long time.

Reflecting on Obama's State of the Union address, he explains why we won't have actual cuts in defense spending any time in the near future.

Bacevich first tackles the situation at hand:

The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any time during the Cold War. ... What are Americans getting for their money? Sadly, not much. Despite extraordinary expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by U.S. forces), the return on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive. The chief lesson to emerge from the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to no ability to translate “military supremacy” into meaningful victory.

And, looks at the situation at hand close up, too:

The problems are strategic as well as operational. Old Cold War-era expectations that projecting U.S. power will enhance American clout and standing no longer apply, especially in the Islamic world. ...

And the why, first with a twist on "bread and circuses:

to distract attention from the fact that patriotism had become little more than an excuse for fireworks displays and taking the occasional day off from work -- people and politicians alike found a way to do so by exalting those Americans actually choosing to serve in uniform. ...

In effect, soldiers offer much-needed assurance that old-fashioned values still survive, even if confined to a small and unrepresentative segment of American society. Rather than Everyman, today’s warrior has ascended to the status of icon, deemed morally superior to the nation for which he or she fights, the repository of virtues that prop up, however precariously, the nation’s increasingly sketchy claim to singularity.

Politically, therefore, “supporting the troops” has become a categorical imperative across the political spectrum.

Result?

The duopoly of American politics no longer allows for a principled anti-interventionist position. Both parties are war parties. They differ mainly in the rationale they devise to argue for interventionism. The Republicans tout liberty; the Democrats emphasize human rights. The results tend to be the same: a penchant for activism that sustains a never-ending demand for high levels of military outlays.

Bacevich adds that by demonizing the "losing side" of debate before Dec. 7, 1941, we haven't learned enough from WWII:

In this sense, American politics remains stuck in the 1930s -- always discovering a new Hitler, always privileging Churchillian rhetoric -- even though the circumstances in which we live today bear scant resemblance to that earlier time. There was only one Hitler and he’s long dead. As for Churchill, his achievements and legacy are far more mixed than his battalions of defenders are willing to acknowledge. And if any one figure deserves particular credit for demolishing Hitler’s Reich and winning World War II, it’s Josef Stalin, a dictator as vile and murderous as Hitler himself.

Until Americans accept these facts, until they come to a more nuanced view of World War II that takes fully into account the political and moral implications of the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union and the U.S. campaign of obliteration bombing directed against Germany and Japan, the mythic version of “the Good War” will continue to provide glib justifications for continuing to dodge that perennial question: How much is enough?

Anyway, I've just presented a summary. Read the whole thing.

Bipartisan seating at State of the Union?

Really? Really? Dems and GOP sitting mixed at Obama's speech is supposed to actually do something?

Symbolic. And. Trite.

That's the problem with today's Democrats.

When they do try to go the PR route, there's no steak behind the sizzle.

And, the sizzle is lukewarm, transparent and near-odorless.

If you want REAL PR, do something like getting all the citizens whom Obama invited to the healthcare bill signing last summer and seating them on the floor of Congress? Or put Lt. Dan Choi there?

The healthcare people, or Choi, could be saluted by Obama, but NOT within the presidential gallery.

New Year's resolution from the Prez

Preznit Kumbaya says: "More bipartisanship."

Dude, Speaker Permatan John Boehner can't even spell the word. Mitch McConnell certainly can't.

And, bipartisanship in the last few months? Yeah, it got us the New START treaty, and an on-paper start to the end of of DADT. It also got us the first non-electrifying touch of Social Security's third rail, a deficit increase through extending tax cuts for the rich, and other illiberal financial positions.

My new year's resolutions for President Hopey Dopey?

Balls, two. A user instruction manual to go with.

And, the scarecrow's brain to develop some principles over which to use them.

Douthat gets out teh bipartisan stupid

Ross Douthat is back to his junior David Brooks worst, spinning imaginary story lines that just aren't true. The newest entry? His lauding the bipartisanship of the lame-duck Congress.

First is the backstory that the midterm elections killed a "liberal fantasy." What's liberal about Obamacare, a sellout to private insurers? Answer: Zero. Other than Obamacare, what major item on his agenda could you call liberal? Cap-and-trade rather than straight-up carbon taxes were going to be a sellout to certain lines of big business. Obama's worse than Bush on civil liberties.

So, this "liberal fantasy" was actually a wet dream of the semi-nutbar Douthat and the full-nutbar GOP.

Now, the "bipartisanship"? A good majority of the GOP voted against cloture on the New START treaty. A still-strong majority voted against the treaty itself. The DREAM Act was NOT, contra Ross, killed by bipartisanship, unless a curmudgeon, GOP-in-drag Democrat like Ben Nelson counts as "bipartisan."

The "bipartisan" tax deal? Only "bipartisan" because Democrats have no balls. If that's part of how we define "bipartisan," well, stand by for plenty more.

More Americans want a third party - I'd settle for a second one

So says Gallup.

And, it's understandable why. We have one political party (GOP), its Dark Shadows alter ego (Tea Partiers) and a GOP Jaycees slouching toward Gomorrah (Democrats).

Unfortunately, the "third party" most Americans want is something between what Republicans are and what Democrats are stereotyped as being. In that case, we actually have a third party now in existence - THE DEMOCRATS.

Sad to say, though, we don't have a second party at the moment.

The economic crack-up WAS bipartisan

In vetting the claims in President Obama’s State of the Union address, the Washington Post takes him to the fact-checking woodshed on a couple of issues.

One of them was his subtle, or not-so-subtle dig at the GOP, attempting to lay all the blame for the current economic situation at its feet.

Guess B.O. didn’t want to throw the name of his own “economic czar,” Larry Summers, into that mix now, did he?

The Larry Summers who, as Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, pushed so hard for financial dereg in general? Or the folks like Sen.-Banking, Chris Dodd, or Sen-MBNA, now Veep-Stanford Investments, Joe Biden, who were okey-dokey with loosening the reins of federal regulatory oversight, right?

I’ve said in the past and will say again, my rule-of-thumb blame-assigning on this issue is 2/3 Republican, 1/3 Democratic.

More on Obama’s non-SOTU State of the Union speech

B grade overall; less than that on content

Sorry to Mike Madden as well as Josh Marshall and others. It’s always been called SOTU for previous first-year presidents.

Weirdly, the Dallas Morning News Sunday weekly TV insert called it SOTU, but its daily prime-time programming list on Tuesday didn’t.

That said, from what I’ve read about it (I was at a Joan Baez concert!), and my overall impressions of Obama already, I’d give it a straight B. Better than that on delivery, a bit lower on content.

I don’t believe his claims that his proposed housing bailout bill will distinguish “underwater” honest buyers from spec buyers, because it has no mechanism to do that! (And, I’m far from the only person to point that out.)

Nor, given his administration’s ambiguous-at-best, temporizing-at-worse stance on Guantanamo- and rendition-related issues, do I believe his “We don’t torture” claim.

Why did that get so much GOP applause, anyway? Does the Congressional GOP have a sense Obama will strongly oppose the Leahy-Conyers “truth and reconciliation” drive? Will he try to eviscerate such a bill in Congress? Will he have AG Holder ignore it if passed? Would he even dare veto such a bill?

Beyond that, Obama’s subtle, or not-so-subtle, attempt at GOP-only blame-casting for the financial excesses of this decade gets taken to the fact-checking woodshed by the Washington Post.

Guess B.O. didn’t want to throw the name of his own “economic czar,” Larry Summers, into that mix now, did he?

Public: GOP more to blame for incivility

Obama’s bipartisan outreach attempt on his economic stimulus package has gotten some favorable upside from the American public. By 10 percentage points, it finds the GOP more to blame

James Fallows gives 1964 Senate a pass on Tonkin Gulf

Atlantic Monthly writer James Fallows, on the mag’s blog, had a contest today for stupidest bipartisan policy clusterfuck of the past 50 years.

BUT, he excluded the U.S.Senate’s 88-2 vote for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964.

Why?

The US Senate's 88-2 vote in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 doesn’t count: they didn't know what lay ahead.

To which, I call bullshit.

Here’s what I e-mailed him:

I disagree with Fallows ruling out Tonkin Gulf from consideration.

The Senate should have known, whether it actually did or not, about both the stupidity involved, and the 2,000 years of Vietnamese-Chinese history (illustrated again in 1979) that showed just how ridiculous the "domino theory" was.

Hell, if Senators would have read the Geneva Accords that we refused to sign in 1954, it was clear Ho was a nationalist as much as a communist.

So, sorry, Tonkin does count. And, as Vietnam affected the 2004 presidential election, and Swift Boating entered our political lexicon, it should have been part of your contest

Krugman nickel tale on financial crisis a nickel short on info

Yes, Krugman’s right that financial institutions did an end run around much of post-Depression economic regulation.

BUT, he fails to mention — willfully fails to mention, I’m sure, because Krugman isn’t an idiot — that it was a bipartisan Congressional and Presidential decision to extremely help out with this, above all through things like Gramm-Leach-Bliley overturning Glass-Steagall.

He’s being disingenuous.

He’s being I don’t know what, then, with his butt-kissing praise of Big Ben Bernanke, the Worst Fed Head Since Greenspan™:

I believe we’ve been lucky to have Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman during these trying times. He may lack Mr. Greenspan’s talent for impersonating the Wizard of Oz, but he’s an economist who has thought long and hard about both the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s, and he understands what’s at stake.

So, kids, the lesson is, that while Paul Krugman can be a good liberal in many ways, at end point, he’s a good Democrat first.