I think I wound up taking my first take on an Armistice Day post down a bit of a blind alley. What I should have said was something closer to Jacob Levy’s sentiments here:

A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake. Of course, no continuously-existing government (US, UK, Canada) is likely to create a day officially dedicated to pointing out that its predecessor contributed to the deaths of millions for no good cause. But we have the capacity to remember lessons other than the official ones.

John Quiggin says something similar here. Jim Henley notes that Armistice Day was originally “dedicated to the cause of world peace,” before being transformed into an additional day of celebration for the military.

Joshua Partlow for The Washington Post reports on various indications that Mullah Omar and his Taliban are looking to distance themselves from al-Qaeda:

The shift appears to reflect Omar’s growing confidence that his group can operate on its own, without al-Qaeda as its patron. “The Taliban have got the expertise, they have got the resources, they have got the momentum,” said Richard Barrett, coordinator of the U.N. Taliban and al-Qaeda Monitoring Team. [...]

“We assure all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others,” Omar said in a written statement in September.

The messages from the Taliban leadership since the spring amount to something of a “revolution,” said Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who was a Foreign Ministry official under the Taliban government. “Al-Qaeda’s path is now different from the Taliban’s path, and they are growing more separated.”

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman says that Leah Farrell, former al-Qaeda specialist for the Australian National Police, has a blog that’s “attracting ever-more attention in U.S. defense circles.” That said, I think we can predict here and now that she’s going to stop attracting attention in U.S. defense circles since she thinks we should withdraw from Afghanistan and that al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. forces are a deliberate ploy “forcing a surge in American troop numbers” and creating a situation in which “Mullah Omar’s legitimacy would be jeopardised were he to publicly disassociate from al-Qa’ida and guarantee he would not again provide it sanctuary.”

She’ll stop attracting attention because, as Spencer writes in that very same post, there’s absolutely no constituency for withdrawal of American forces inside the Obama administration. Instead, the debate among civilians runs from “we should stick with the increase in troop levels that Obama has already executed” to “we should engage in large additional increases in troop levels.” And within the uniformed military it seems that everyone wants large additional increases.

I think we really saw this movie in Iraq already. Clearly, there’s a lot of uncertainty endemic to thinking about this kind of issue. What’s not uncertain, however, is that as long as U.S. troops remain in theater, we haven’t “lost”. It’s also clear that you don’t achieve “victory” by withdrawing under fire. Consequently, those considerations will predominate. As I’ve said before, it would be very different if military planners were expected to come up with deficit neutral proposals capable of attracting 60 votes in the Senate—that would end the war in the blink of an eye.

Brian Beutler talks to House Whip James Clyburn and reports that according to Clyburn the inclusion of Stupak’s amendment flipped a total of ten votes in favor of health reform that otherwise would have voted no. Given the closeness of the vote, that still would have been enough to make a difference. But it’s a lot smaller than the 40-vote bloc you sometimes see reported. And some of the “no” votes came from liberals like Dennis Kucinich and Brian Baird who might be relatively easy to persuade to vote yes on an un-Stupaked conference report.

Tom Shannon is a career foreign service officer. He’s also US Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. Has been since 2005. Was appointed to the job by George W Bush. Five months ago, Barack Obama appointed him to be Ambassador to Brazil. He’s obviously well-qualified. He sailed through committee. And then because Jim DeMint is a bad human being, he was subjected to a months-long hold. Then DeMint relented. So now it’s Senator George LeMieux of Florida’s turn to screw things up with a hold.

Neither DeMint nor LeMieux invented the abuse of the hold procedure, but the Republican Party of the 111th congress has taken this to such new heights that it’s about time the Senate take some responsibility and start organizing itself like a legislative body of an important country and not like a country club. The ability for one senator to delay confirmation of key executive branch personnel indefinitely for no real reason has never been a good idea. At times, this power has been abused to advance policy goals I believe in. Oftentimes it’s used to advance bad policy goals. More recently, it just seems to be being used as a matter of principle—maximum feasible obstruction. It needs to be changed.

Remember on Friday when unemployment rose and 190,000 jobs were lost? Floyd Norris points out that even though these events were widely reported they didn’t actually happen. Instead, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of jobs went up and the unemployment rate went down. But then a seasonal adjustment factor was applies, and put things into negative territory.

Brad DeLong was inspired to make similar observations in mid-October when the media reported that new unemployment claims had fallen when, in fact, they rose and then were seasonally adjusted into negative territory:

One issue here is that in unusual times the seasonal adjustment process based on the recent past is probably not going to give you the best results. That said, I don’t think dumping the process would help, the labor market really does exhibit a lot of seasonality. But I think responsible journalism should report both numbers fairly prominently. Even if an uptick in economic activity turns out to be purely seasonal, it’s still a real occurrence in the world.