NBC released a poll tonight showing that the majority of Americans object to recent White House attacks comparing Iraq war critics to Hitler appeasers. Asked about the recent “appeaser” language, NBC’s Tim Russert said the poll showed this rhetoric “did not resonate with the American people.” Watch it:
Full transcript: Read more
The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) dangerously flawed bill that would abolish all limits on the president’s eavesdropping powers. But the committee also approved two competing bills, including strong legislation from Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) that would bring the entire NSA program before the FISA court. Glenn Greenwald sorts out the details.
I can’t say I’m surprised to find that Martin Peretz’s new blog The Spine is utterly uncongenial. I do, however, find it at least somewhat noteworthy that he’s chosen to dedicate his energies toward pushing particularly disreputable rightwing causes defending The Path to 9/11 and and Scooter Libby. There’s nothing up there nearly as predictable as a post about how Israel roolz and Palestine sux, it’s like there were whole never-before-explored corners of darkness in his mind. Words of “wisdom”:
Everyone has a spine. But some people are spineless. I mean this in several ways. One is a common and simple thought. If you shy away from saying what you believe, most especially when men and women are being counted, you are spineless. Spinelessness is an affliction of our civilization. Sometimes it is called “prudence.” Even if that’s what it is called, it often seems to me weak and pithless. But spinelessness is also an expression of social politics. It is called being “correct,” even if what one is saying is palpably false. The choice in such a circumstance, people who calculate this way seem to think, is either to be correct or to offend. While I don’t claim to be especially brave, I know that I am not spineless. I do not set my course by other people’s lights. And this is one reason why I’ve called my blog The Spine.
The good news, obviously, is that it’s now much safer to read The Plank so, on the whole, one has to count the Spine Era as a positive development.
Yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that if bin Laden is caught tomorrow, “it is five years too late.” She added, “He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But in fact, the damage that he has done is done. And even to capture him now, I don’t think makes us any safer.”
Pelosi is now under attack for her statements about bin Laden. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said Pelosi’s comments “can only have a demoralizing effect on American troops and intelligence personnel who are currently risking their lives in the rugged mountain ranges and deserts of the Middle East in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.” (More here and here.) Pelosi’s words, however, are no different from what the White House, many foreign policy experts, and the 9-11 Commission have said consistently:
9-11 Commission Said Capturing Bin Laden Would Not End the War on Terror. “The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In this way it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Ladin may be limited in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts. Yet killing or capturing him, while extremely important, would not end terror.” [9-11 Commission Report Executive Summary]
Bush Said Bin Laden Was “Not the Issue.” Bush: “We are patient, we’re deliberate. Oh, I know the news media likes to say, ‘Where’s ol’ Osama bin Laden?’ He’s not the issue. The issue is international terror.” [Bush Remarks, 2/5/02]
Cheney Said “You’d Still Have a Problem With al Qaeda” If Bin Laden Were Killed. “He’s not the only source of the problem, obviously, Tim. If you killed him tomorrow, you’d still have a problem with al-Qaeda, with Zawahiri and the others.” [Cheney, 9/10/06]
Probably the most annoying tick you see frequently from liberals is what I can only describe as a kind of hysteria about efforts to mobilize Christian sentiments in order to advance conservative political goals. Rather than simply noting that the religious right is composed of people whose policy agenda liberals mostly disagree with on the merits and who, therefore, liberals wish had less political influence the tendency is to paint an alarmist portrait of the looming menace of theocracy. Everyone, genuinely, needs to take a deep breath and put this all in perspective. The good news is that two recent book reviews — one by Peter Steinfels in The American Prospect and one by Paul Baumann in The Washington Monthly try to bring some calm to the table.
All to the good. I wonder, though, has anyone seen anything like that coming from the pages of National Review or The Weekly Standard? Obviously, lots of over-the-top rhetoric goes in the other direction, too, as secular liberals get accused of all manner of absurd sins. I feel like I never, ever see conservative intellectuals trying to bring a sense of proportion and calm to the table about that. Which, really, is too bad. There’s a fairly constant pressure on the progressive pundits of the world to do our best to become more intellectually dishonest and less willing to take on our own side’s quirks and sacred cows. The thinking — and I don’t think the thinking is mistaken — is that liberal politics has been hampered by a sense that a lot of the spokespeople for “our side” have been playing with one arm tied behind our backs and need to learn to play by the right’s rules and that party discipline needs to be applied to liberal writers. That, for obvious reasons, is an outcome I’d sort of prefer to avoid, but, again, I can’t say that I think the analysis is mistaken.
For the past few weeks, members of the Bush administration have argued in speeches and television appearances that because al Qaeda views Iraq as a “central front in the war on terror,” America should too. They are effectively outsourcing our national security strategy to bin Laden. Watch a video compilation:
The facts on the ground, not the opinions of terrorists, should guide our military policy. Iraq has become a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda. In fact, the bin Laden trail has gone “stone cold” as our soldiers are caught in the middle of sectarian violence in Iraq. It is time to redeploy our troops out of Iraq to more effectively combat Islamic extremists.
Transcript: Read more
A bunch of American Progress dude point out some serious problems in The New Republic:
But the decline in equipment readiness is nothing compared with the growing manpower crisis. The Army is trying to keep the dam from breaking, but it is running out of fingers and toes. After failing to meet its recruitment target for 2005, the Army raised the maximum age for enlistment from 35 to 40 in January–only to find it necessary to raise it to 42 in June. Basic training, which has, for decades, been an important tool for testing the mettle of recruits, has increasingly become a rubber-stamping ritual. Through the first six months of 2006, only 7.6 percent of new recruits failed basic training, down from 18.1 percent in May 2005.
Alarmingly, this drop in boot camp attrition coincides with a lowering of recruitment standards. The number of Army recruits who scored below average on its aptitude test doubled in 2005, and the Army has doubled the number of non-high school graduates it can enlist this year. Even as more allowances are made, the Government Accountability Office reported that allegations and substantiated claims of recruiter wrongdoing have increased by 50 percent. In May, for example, the Army signed up an autistic man to become a cavalry scout.
This is clearly no good. The sort of counterinsurgency war the administration says it wants to keep fighting in Iraq, and that I agree we need to keep fighting in Afghanistan, probably requires a somewhat higher standard of soldier than was widely available in the pre-9/11 regular Army. Instead, we’re reaching down to a lower one. This strikes me as among the good reasons to withdraw from Iraq sooner rather than later to create the circumstances under which we can start reconstituting our forces. For the longer term, though, it’s long past time to look seriously at revisiting the ratio of spending between the military’s different components. Simply put, the current international situation puts relatively less strain on the capabilities of the Air Force and the Navy and relatively more on those of the Army and Marine Corps than did the Cold War. Fewer ships and planes and more, better-trained, better-compensated infantry would serve the country well. Similarly, within the Army there’s a need for less firepower and more manpower than what we currently have.
This is no particular knock on the Air Force and Navy. Rather, it’s simply a fact about the world that different situations call for giving different relative weights to the different services. The United States doesn’t face any serious rivals for control of the sea or the air and, what’s more, the foreign countries with the most capabilities in those arenas are our close allies.
Furious over Sacha Baron Cohen’s (aka Ali G) portrayal of Borat, a fictional bumbling Kazakh TV presenter, Kazakhstan’s president plans to bring up the episode with President Bush when he visits the United States this month. “The bottom line is we want people to know that he does not represent the true people of Kazakhstan,” said a spokesman for the Kazakhstan embassy.
UPDATE: According to Al Franken, Air America did not file for bankruptcy Friday. We regret the error. See our correction here.
Air America Radio will announce a major restructuring on Friday, which is expected to include a bankruptcy filing, three independent sources have told ThinkProgress.
Air America could remain on the air under the deal, but significant personnel changes are already in the works. Sources say five Air America employees were laid off yesterday and were told there would be no severance without capital infusion or bankruptcy. Also, Air America has ended its relationship with host Jerry Springer.
The right wing is sure to seize on Air America’s financial woes as a sign that progressive talk radio is unpopular. In fact, Air America succeeded at creating something that didn’t exist: the progressive talk radio format. That format is now established and strong and will continue with or without Air America. Indeed, many of the country’s most successful and widely-syndicated progressive talk hosts — Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, for instance — aren’t even associated with Air America.
Radio giant Clear Channel is so committed to progressive talk radio that, this week, it will announce a partnership with the Center for American Progress and MSS Inc. to conduct a nationwide search for the next Progressive Talk Radio Star.
UPDATE: Air America responds.
If Air America had filed for bankruptcy every time someone rumored it to be doing so, we would have ceased to exist long ago; it may be frustrating to some that this hasn’t happened. No decision has been taken to make any filing of any kind, we are not sure of the source of these rumors and frankly can not respond to every rumor in the marketplace.
UPDATE II: Comments have been temporarily closed to decrease stress on our server, which is under load. We’ll open them back up when traffic returns to normal levels.
UPDATE III: Comments have been reopened.
Everytime I see John McWhorter’s byline I’m prepared to become infuriated, but he’s devilishly clever and totally correct about The Wire. David Simon has a lot of political opinions that strike me as somewhat unsound and that strike him as reflected in the show, but the actual content of the show is so good that it actually supports much more nuanced interpretation than the one Simon seems to have.
I do, however, worry a bit that Season 4 may get unsound in a heavy-handed way. In particular, there’s something of a cliché out there where we’re supposed to think that the reason kids get involved in drug dealing is that the school system isn’t good enough. The truth is probably more like the reverse — it’s more-or-less impossible to teach kids effectively when they’re too busy dealing drugs. School outcomes tend to follow socioeconomic conditions rather than determining them. I hope the show avoids that pitfall.
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