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Ralph Peters: A History Of Violence

By Matt Duss on Jul 23, 2009 at 3:30 pm

ralphpeters.jpgWhile it’s great that crazy man Ralph Peters is coming in for some public shaming over his atrocious suggestion that the Taliban could “save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills” by simply executing their American captive, Pfc Bowe Berghdahl, it’s important to remember that Peters says ridiculous, offensive things like this all the time. It’s only getting attention now because he had the impressivley bad form to direct his fire at one of our troops.

During the the Maersk Alabama hostage crisis Peters advocated against “proportional” response, calling on the U.S. military to go after the extended families of those suspected of piracy:

Attack their harbors with land, sea and air power. Kill pirates, sink their vessels (including those dual-use fishing boats) and wreck their support infrastructure. The clans behind the pirates must feel sufficient pain to rein in their young thugs. The price for piracy should be stunning.

And we don’t need to stay to rebuild Somalia. End the fix-it fetish now. We need to leave while their boats are still burning down to the waterline.

During the Russia-Georgia conflict, Peters wrote:

The Russians, on whom I have wasted far too much of my life, are drink-sodden barbarians who occasionally puke up a genius.

During the 2007 Annapolis conference, Peters shared his view of the Palestinian people as vagrants:

In the end, the [Israeli-Palestinian] problem’s difficulty can be put in New York City terms: A shiftless, violent family that turned an apartment into a slum was evicted. The new tenants cleaned up the place and made the apartment a showcase. Now the former tenants hate them for it — and want the apartment back.

Frustrated by the Iraqi insurgency in 2006, Peters wrote “If we can’t leave a democracy behind we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies“:

The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: ‘We can’t kill our way out of this situation!’ Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven’t done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance.

Aside from the standard conservative old man bigotry, when you read Peters’ past work it’s actually pretty amazing how many problems he believes can be solved simply through the use of collective punishment and indiscriminate killing.

Interestingly, on Tuesday Bill O’Reilly brought Peters on to his show to explain his comments, from which Peters refused to back down. You might remember that in 2002 O’Reilly picked a fight with rapper Ludacris, who O’Reilly accused of glamorizing a “life of guns, violence drugs and disrespect of women.” Peters, however, isn’t a rapper. He’s only a political columnist, TV commentator, and occasional presidential campaign adviser, so his celebration of mass violence isn’t as big a deal

Yglesias

Adventures in Tax Incidence

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 23, 2009 at 3:14 pm

One enduring feature of the American political landscape is that people seem to have very unsound intuitions about how tax incidence works. Thus, people hear about the idea of cutting the gas tax and they assume 100 percent of the benefit will go to consumers and none to oil companies. But when they hear about taxing “windfall profits” of oil companies, they assume all the burden will be borne by the companies and none by the consumers. That’s not how the world works. But it means you can often take a good idea, and turn it into a more politically palatable one, by messing around with the implementation details to make it seem like a tax on evil corporations rather than a tax on people who buy products from evil corporations.

Thus, via Jonathan Cohn, Barack Obama floats the potentially promising idea of “a variation that goes after the insurance companies, as opposed to directly taxing the benefits.” Given the progressive nature of the income tax, it would probably be difficult to formulate a version of this that’s exactly equivalent to proposals to curb the current tax exclusion of health benefits. Indeed, you’d probably wind up coming up with something that’s somewhat less progressive. But I’m glad to hear folks are poking around in this neighborhood and hopefully they’ll come up with something clever and workable.

Politics

Cheney ‘Got In The President’s Face’ Over Scooter Libby Pardon

By Ben Armbruster on Jul 23, 2009 at 2:50 pm

cheney-webTime Magazine reports today on the “final and painful piece of business” President Bush and Vice President Cheney debated in the waning days of the Bush administration: whether or not Bush would pardon Cheney’s top aide Scooter Libby, who had lied to prosecutors in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. For over a month, Cheney “had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush” to pardon Libby. Aides said Cheney “seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate” of Libby. In the end, he wasn’t pleased with the result:

Cheney’s persistence became nearly as big an issue as the pardon itself. “Cheney really got in the President’s face,” says a longtime Bush-family source. “He just wouldn’t give it up.” [...]

Bush would decide alone. In private, he was bothered by Libby’s lack of repentance. … A few days later, about a week before they would become private citizens, Bush pulled Cheney aside after a morning meeting and told him there would be no pardon. Cheney looked stricken. Most officials respond to a presidential rebuff with a polite thanks for considering the request in the first place. But Cheney, an observer says, “expressed his disappointment and disagreement with the decision … He didn’t take it well.”

Some Bush aides suspected there was “darker possibility” for his motives than simply wanting to save an old friend. As a former Bush senior aide explained, “I’m sure the President and [chief of staff] Josh [Bolten] and Fred had a concern that somewhere, deep in there, there was a cover-up.”

After Bush informed Cheney of his decision, Libby then asked to plead his case to Bush himself, but was directed to White House Counsel Fred Fielding. Three days before Bush’s presidency was to expire, Libby met with Fielding, who “kept listening for signs of remorse. But none came.” Bush finally met with his personal lawyer and trusted adviser Jim Sharp:

If the presidential staff were polled, the result would be 100 to 1 against a pardon, Bush joked. Then he turned to Sharp. “What’s the bottom line here? Did this guy lie or not?”

The lawyer, who had followed the case very closely, replied affirmatively. Bush indicated that he had already come to that conclusion too. “O.K., that’s it,” Bush said.

With just one day left in the Bush administration, Bush again informed Cheney that Libby would get no pardon. In an interview with the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes shortly after leaving office, Cheney expressed his dismay at the decision. “[Libby] was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice,” Cheney complained, “and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision.”

Related Posts

Security

GOP Congressmen Mislead Again: ‘Millions’ Of ‘Criminal Illegal Aliens’ Will Receive Health Care

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Jul 23, 2009 at 2:30 pm

Yesterday, three Republican congressmen continued spreading the poorly fabricated myth that “criminal illegal aliens” will be covered by America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, despite the fact that the bill excludes undocumented immigrants from receiving federal funds to buy health insurance from either a private or government plan.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) and Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) relied on fear and misinformation to garner opposition to both immigration and health care reform to essentially kill two birds with one stone:

AKIN: If before we had trouble with people coming here illegally, if we give them free health insurance and health coverage that’s going to make it more attractive for them to come. So if you don’t like illegal immigration, then you’re not going to like this bill either…

BROUN: We don’t know how many illegal aliens are here — they’re not immigrants — they’re aliens. They’ve committed crimes, so they’re criminals…they’re guilty of many law infractions. This health care plan, Obamacare, is going to give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance at the cost of taxpayers.

Akin and Broun apparently overlooked the section of the House’s health care bill that reads:

“Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

They also should’ve done some research before rattling on about immigration. The global economic recession has shown more than ever that the labor market, not health care, drives migration. Even if foreigners are under the false impression that undocumented immigrants in the US are receiving health care, in most cases it’s not going to be the reason they drop everything and leave.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) took a slightly less antagonistic approach:

AKIN: Is this bill going to give illegal immigrants health care?

FLEMING: About 10 million…that’s 10 million people who either should be here legally and then paying into the system and paying their way or they should go back home because they’re here illegally to begin with and that would not be a cost or a burden.

Though Fleming apparently didn’t coordinate with his colleague Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who put the number at 5.6 million yesterday, he provided a reasonable suggestion. That is, requiring all those in the country illegally to fix their status so that Republicans can stop using the immigration issue to drive a wedge through policy proposals they don’t like. Most undocumented immigrants actually do pay taxes, but maybe passing comprehensive immigration reform would force the “whacko wing” of the GOP to finally stop griping and grumbling about “illegal aliens” and start focusing on solving the issues at hand. Meanwhile, a policy designed to send 10 million undocumented immigrants “back home” would cost taxpayers at least $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually.

Watch it:

Yglesias

Bias, Racism, Being a Jerk, and Abuse of Power

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 23, 2009 at 2:28 pm

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (wikimedia)

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (wikimedia)

One of the biggest reasons why it’s extremely difficult to have a real conversation about race in the United States is that every imputation of a racial dynamic immediately becomes a defensive spat in which the white person in question starts denying that he “is” a “racist.” Now we see the Officer Crowley edition of the saga, as he explains that he once tried to save the life of a black man, so he must not be a racist. And of course the great thing about the contemporary United States is that the number of people who are so racist that they would willfully let a black man die rather than lift a finger to save him is extremely small. But that’s not at all the same as saying that African-Americans don’t suffer from negative implicit biases or explicit “profiling.”

Race, in other words, exists as a negative factor in people’s lives without there needing to be tons of cartoonish racists running around.

Meanwhile, note that racial motivations or there absence have really nothing to do with the nature of Officer Crowley’s misconduct. What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home. Gates, pissed off, offended Crowley. At which point Crowley, even though he was now perfectly aware that Gates was not guilty of anything, decided to exact revenge by manipulating the situation to create a trumped-up disorderly conduct charge. That’s not professional policing, and it’s not a good use of the City of Cambridge’s law enforcement resources. That’s why the charges were dropped, and that’s why it’s fair to say that Crowley was acting stupidly racial issues aside.*

Meanwhile, we see here yet another instance of one of my favorite themes on this blog. The conservative movement, which never ever ever dedicates any time or energy to the problem of racial discrimination suffered by non-whites, thinks it’s very important to draw attention to the social crisis of white people burdened by accusations of racism.

Read more

Politics

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist waffles on gay adoption.

By Faiz Shakir on Jul 23, 2009 at 2:00 pm

cristYesterday, Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL), who is running for Senate, traveled around his state to promote “Explore Adoption Day.” In Tallahassee early in the day, reporters asked Crist whether he’d be willing to change a Florida law that currently makes it the only state with an outright ban on gay adoption:

At first, Crist said it would be the Legislature’s responsibility to change the law. When pressed on whether he would support the effort, Crist said, “I’d have to think about it.”

But later in the day, he traveled to Jacksonville, where he told the local paper, “I think Florida has it right right now.” HRC writes, “It is insulting, frankly, to promote an ‘Explore Adoption Day’ when a group of Florida citizens are expressly banned from adopting.”

Yglesias

Recapitalization Through Profits Isn’t Pretty

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 23, 2009 at 1:43 pm

Wall Street hotshot won't be taking the subway (cc photo by epicharmus)

Wall Street hotshot won't be taking the subway (cc photo by epicharmus)

Reacting to the news that financial sector paychecks are set to regain their boom-era peaks after a single down year, Kevin Drum snarks “As long as bankers are paid obscene salaries and bonuses, all is right with the world. I’m sure we’ll all rest easier tonight knowing this.”

As I’ve said before it’s important to understand this as part of a deliberate strategy. The Obama administration didn’t want large financial institutions to fail. They also didn’t want to try to get congress to appropriate funds on the scale that would be needed to take the banks over, clean house, and recapitalize them publicly. What they came up with was a strategy of implicit and explicit guarantees designed to allow financial institutions to recapitalize themselves through profits. And big profits mean big paychecks. This is an ugly solution to the problem, but for whatever it’s worth it’s working.

But obviously this creates a massive problem of social justice. A problem that, I think, is part of the case for why there should be more tax brackets and higher taxes on rich people.

Politics

Grassley: GOP will take ‘blame’ if we don’t pass health care.

By Nate Carlile on Jul 23, 2009 at 1:20 pm

grassleyweb1Many conservatives are viewing the health care debate as a personal political battle against Obama, claiming health care reform could be the president’s “Waterloo” and advising that GOP members of Congress “resist the temptation” to work with Democrats and instead “go for the kill.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is offering the opposite advice. “If we don’t do something on health-care reform,” Grassley said, “the voters are more apt to blame Republicans than Democrats.” Grassley also expressed his disagreement with the Republican Party of Iowa, which called health care reform an “experiment Iowa cannot afford.” “I would suggest there have been some Republicans who haven’t been looking at the polls,” Grassley said in a weekly conference call with Iowa reporters, in which he announced he would continue to seek a bipartisan bill:

He referred to a poll showing voters would assign blame 30 percent to the health industry, 22 to Republicans, 11 percent to Democrats and only 4 percent to Obama.

“So it seems to me that we have a responsibility to the Republican Party not to be seen as destroying or at least not talking about things that people believe are wrong with the present health-care system,” Grassley said.

Yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) announced he was taking himself out of bipartisan group of Finance Committee members drafting the health care bill. Left in the group are Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mike Enzi (R-WY), and Grassley.

Climate Progress

Like A Pig To The Trough, Washington Post’s George Will Returns To Climate Denial

By Brad Johnson on Jul 23, 2009 at 1:15 pm

George WillWashington Post columnist George Will attacked the “altar of climate change” and “climate confabulations” again today, the sixth such column this year. Post editors Fred Hiatt and Alan Shearer have refused to run corrections for any of these fact-challenged screeds, even as Post reporters, columnists, and cartoonists criticize Will. Without a reference, Will claims that “skepticism about the evidence that supposedly supports current alarmism about climate change is growing”:

Fortunately, skepticism about the evidence that supposedly supports current alarmism about climate change is growing, as is evidence that, whatever the truth about the problem turns out to be, U.S. actions cannot be significantly ameliorative. When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon “young Americans” to “get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon,” another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade.”

Steyn, a Canadian right-winger who writes for the National Review blog, is not exactly a reliable source for climatological data. As Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization explains, global warming “has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years”:

Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.

Jarraud’s letter debunking the myth of recent global cooling was published by the Washington Post on March 21, in response to George F. Will’s February 15 denier column.

It may be true that the “dead baby juice” conspiracy wing of the conservative movement is growing, but Fred Hiatt’s continued publication of George Will’s alternate-universe diatribes is a blot on the Washington Post’s reputation.

Update

More from Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, Ryan Avent, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/07/23/george-wills-crack-fact-checkers-continue-their-nap/'>Carl Zimmer, Joe Romm, The Way Things Break, and Media Matters.

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