Category: Politics

Over at No More Mister Nice Blog this week, Steve’s been giving full coverage to recent nasty rumors about Barak Obama that have been circulating through the Internet and various right-wing news outlets. Based on information about where Obama went to school when he was 6 years old, the intent is to plant the seeds of fear in people and thereby scuttle his potential presidential run in 2008. To borrow a techie phrase, it’s classic FUD.

I find the whole thing despicable, not least because the real fear-mongering part of this crap is based on the concept that all Muslims are somehow part of a vast, evil, and powerful worldwide conspiracy. Replace the word “Jew” for “Muslim” and this is the exact same horrible lie that’s been lobbed against the Jews for centuries.

The sad part is, it was a highly effective lie. People still believe it today. And at least some of them will believe this too.

Starting off the morning, I noticed that Glenn Greenwald links to an NPR audiocast wherein longtime conservative Rod Dreher expereinces a crisis in his political faith.

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic. But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did. The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

I turn 40 next month — middle aged at last — a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully. I did not expect Vietnam.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative – that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word – that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot – that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

Powerful stuff, and I feel for the guy. It is not easy to admit that you were wrong and question yourself after so many years of believing you were right.

The Mahablog, picking up on the theme, muses:

The problem is, as it is with so many of his fellow travelers, that his understanding of politics remained childish. He seems to have retained a child

By way of Paul the Spud, this bit of news is worth spreading around:

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

“He wanted to use a Koran that was special,” said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison’s 5th District, was happy to help.

Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn’t the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies — the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.

Very nice touch, linking to Koran to the author of the Declaration of Independence. I like it.

From yesterday, but still worth quoting:

With the minimum wage in the air, I see the Econ 101 trolls are out in force. Look, unless you believe that the labor market is accurately characterized as perfectly competitive then not only is it the case that the minimum wage doesn’t necessarily, reduce employment, it’s actually quite possible that small increases in the minimum wage will increase it. To the extent that firms have market power, and there’s plenty of reason do think they do, the impact of small minimum wage increases can potentially be either “paradoxically” to increase employment or to just basically be a wash. You can read Alan Manning’s book if you’re interested in more, or if I’m extra inspired later I’ll given you the Econ101 version of monopsony (sadly, not always actually taught in Econ101) so that even smart Ph.D economists can understand.

The real point is that if the minimum wage has small or negligible employment effects, and there is both theoretical and empirical support for this idea, then it’s a pretty effective and inexpensive poverty reduction program. Obviously if poverty reduction programs for poor people interest you less than, say, poverty reduction programs for oil executives then you don’t much care about that.

The 2008 campaign season, I mean.

Vilsack’s in.
Feingold’s out.

I’m sad about Feingold. I’m not sure he could have won, but I really wanted to see him try.

Who’s next?

It’s so very, very nice to actually feel good the day after Election Day! I didn’t get a heck of a lot of work done today, but I’m smiling a lot. I wonder if I’ll feel this happy in 2008?

Glenn Greenwald has a lengthy “day after” piece that is worth a read. Here’s an excerpt:

The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function. Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists — well-intentioned though they may be — need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them (a refusal to re-evaluate one’s beliefs in light of conflicting evidence is a defining attribute of the Bush movement that shouldn’t be replicated).

Karl Rove isn’t all-powerful; today, he is a rejected loser. Republicans don’t possess the power to dictate the outcome of elections with secret Diebold software. They can’t magically produce Osama bin Laden the day before the election. They don’t have the power to snap their fingers and hypnotize zombified Americans by exploiting a New Jersey court ruling on civil unions, or a John Kerry comment, or moronic buzzphrases and slogans designed to hide the truth (Americans heard all about how Democrats would bring their “San Francisco values” and their love of The Terrorists to Washington, and that moved nobody).

All of the hurdles and problems that are unquestionably present and serious — a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising games — can all be overcome. They just were.

Indeed.

Now, onward and upward!