Fables of the reconstruction

Comforting Sound

Plutocracy

70 Years Ago

Two fateful mistakes:

Launching the attack galvanized a nation that had been deeply divided on entering the war and transformed it into 133 million people who, as Barbara Tuchman put it, were so angry they were willing to swim to Japan and strangle anyone they found there.

Second, the military blunder of launching the first and second waves of planes against battleships, rather than the oil tanks and machine shops, when it turned out the aircraft carriers were not in port. Killing the infrastructure at Pearl would have accomplished the same objective as sinking the carriers: It would have knocked America out of the Pacific for a year and made the West Coast vulnerable to attack, allowing Japan to consolidate its gains. Sinking battleships was a strategic nothing, but the Japanese commanders were simplemindedly convinced that destroying the maximum number of ships would achieve the optimal result.

The Unflattering Truth

Avedon Carol provides an illustration of why liberals are so bad at politics:

It's lost in the mists of time for me, but does anyone remember who came up with (and who promoted) the idea that liberal ideology is hard to defend and explain because it's all so "nuanced"?

She calls this "the flattering lie" - I'm not sure why it's supposed to be flattering - and says liberal ideology is easy to understand.

One implication of this argument is that anyone who claims not to understand liberal ideology is arguing in bad faith. Commenters reinforce this:

It's not hard to understand, unless you're dead set against understanding. I call it being aggressively stupid. Other people have a more polite term.

Another is that liberals suck:

It's not a question of liberalism being complex, it's a question of so many liberals not really believing in equality, justice, etc. , that the actual substance of liberalism is worth the effort of fighting for and risking any real personal sacrifice for. That's how liberalism has died.

Talk about "the flattering lie". If there is one, it's that things would be going great if everyone else were as principled and morally good as you.

The problem with Carol's argument is that she's talking about rhetoric, not politics. Rhetoric is essential but not sufficient for effective politics. Rhetoric is about getting people to think what you want them to think. Politics is about getting people to do what you want them to do. We've seen time and again that people who agree with many liberal ideas and policies in general still vote for conservative politicians. That's because conservatives can make their politics simple, while liberals can't.

Consider the following:

• Free-market capitalism is the source of all wealth. Anything that interferes with the free market reduces wealth and therefore all regulation of business:

1. should be carefully crafted to avoid undue interference with the market.
2. should be designed to avoid market failures by promoting dissemination of information, reducing barriers to entry, and countering anti-competitive practices.
3. is evil and should be repealed.

Contrast that with:

• The concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of people creates a bias in the political system which caters to the interests of those people and undermines the principles of liberty and equality on which the country was founded. Therefore, as a nation we should:

1. promote institutions that counter the creation or persistence of such bias including campaign finance laws, whistleblower statutes, strong independent oversight, and aggressive investigative reporting.
2. create laws and policies to mitigate the concentration of wealth by placing the greatest share of the cost of government on the wealthy using progressive taxation.
3. kill the rich, take their money, and distribute it to the poor.

I think the point is self-evident: Almost no liberals answering the second question would choose the third answer or vote for politicians who took that position. A majority of conservatives answering the first question would do both. Conservative politics are simple and liberal politics are not.

Liberals value fairness, conservatives value power. A message of power is always easier to sell than fairness. As someone wrote:

World's run by fear, you see. Can't sell pipe dreams, can't rule with charity, no good at all. Not in the real world. Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life.

Conservatives have built a narrative of virtuous strength versus degenerative weakness that is cohesive and, again, simple, and marketed it relentlessly. Liberals could not concoct and peddle such a simplistic story. Again, we value fairness while the other side does not. We refuse to sell what we wouldn't buy; conservative leaders do it every day. A liberal will never be able to appeal to a voter's baser instincts and remain a liberal; a conservative will never be able to appeal to a voter's better instincts and remain a conservative. But it's easier to appeal to the baser instincts, and that's not flattery or a lie.

Message: They're Nuts

releasing Obama's long-form birth certificate won't quiet the crazies. I would guess the Administration thinks so, too, and thinks the GOP presidential candidates will have to continue to cater to them. The media will consider the settled matter really, really settled, and make fun of Trump, et. al. if they continue to insinuate the contrary.

Worst Aspects of the Blogosphere: Two Examples

Item one:

The law firm that Congressional Republicans hired to defend DOMA dropped the representation, and Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy engages in a little propter hoc, saying that the public outcry among gay groups caused the firm "to discard its integrity when placed under fire." He calls this "the New McCarthyism" and says it's "shameful ... particularly given the nation’s sorry history of efforts to prevent effective legal representation of marginalized groups and unpopular causes." He then has to backpedal when it's pointed out that members of the majority party in the House of Representatives are not exactly an oppressed group, and further when it comes out that the lawyer involved didn't follow proper firm procedure in taking on a new, controversial client.  Nevertheless, he still thinks it's McCarthyism.

Item two:

Digby finds a story that the United States is enacting rules regarding how to get a passport that would be almost impossible to comply with, and posts, "Keeping Them Out ---Or Keeping Us In?" and compares it to the Berlin Wall:

This is Big Brother stuff --- they are setting up a series of roadblocks to use "just in case" they want to deny someone a passport. The question is, who and why? Basically, this will potentially deny US citizens the ability to travel outside the country. It may not be a wall, but it functions pretty effectively as one if they want it to.

In comments, a couple people point out that the proposed form is to be used in cases where someone is applying for a passport for the first time and either (a) claims to be a natural-born citizen born outside the countryor (b) claims to be born in the U.S. but wasn't born in a hospital or whose birth wasn't recorded for more than a year. That is, in a rare situation where someone's right to claim citizenship isn't obvious from the record, amounting to about 75,000 cases every year (out of 14 million passports issued annually). Unlike Adler, Digby doesn't even bother to engage the contrary information and the vast majority of commenters run with the paranoia ball.

Most days there is no point in engaging things posted online, which is why I've largely stopped trying.

Update: This from Conor Friedersdorf is fucking idiotic:

The fact that bureaucrats at the U.S. State Department now feel empowered to demand information this personal, cumbersome and detailed as a condition of permitting an American to leave the country is as alarming an example as I've seen of how these people conceive of the relationship between a government and its citizens. There is only one appropriate response to many of the questions they pose: "It is none of your damned business."

As a condition of receiving a document which will be unquestioningly accepted as proof of your identity, yes, you have to demonstrate that you're eligible. 

Unfortunately, also, too, Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice picks up the scare thread from digby without adding anything. But to their great credit, many commenters at the site push back hard on the conspiracy theory.

DOMA: Fantacism For its Own Sake

The law firm that House Republican hired to defend DOMA decided to drop the representation. The lawyer at the firm who agreed to take the case, Paul Clement, quit, saying:

Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do. The adversary system of justice depends on it, especially in cases where the passions run high.

Which I agree with, wholeheartedly.

He also says:

Efforts to delegitimize any representation for one side of a legal controversy are a profound threat to the rule of law.

Here's the fun part.

Clement will join the firm Bancroft PLLC, a small D.C.-based litigation boutique founded by former assistant U.S. attorney general Viet Dinh.

Who is Viet Dinh? Recall:

[Viet] Dinh, [principal author of the USA PATRIOT Act,] now a Georgetown law professor, urged the CPAC faithful to carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government. "The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," Dinh explained, invoking Osama bin Laden.

Dinh brought the crowd to a raucous ovation when he judged: "The threat to Americans' liberty today comes from al Qaeda and its associates and the people who would destroy America and her people, not the brave men and women who work to defend this country!"

(Emphasis supplied.)

So Paul Clement quits over the principle that everyone, including bigots, have the right to due process, and goes to work with Viet Dinh, who doesn't seem to think much of limits on government power when it comes to "national security". And, I'll ask again, just who is Dinh referring to when he mentioned "the people who would destroy America", apart from al Qaeda? Any Americans on that list?

 

 

Actually, Republicans Did Vote to End Medicare

PolitiFact had no basis for saying otherwise. (I've lobbed an email in to them; I'm sure that will make them come around.) I figured the reason for this isn't just a mere fetish for false equivalence. Looking over their "Pants on Fire" ratings, the prior receipients were:

1. Reince Priebus
2. Michelle Bachmann
3. WorldNetDaily
4. Rick Santorum
5. Glenn Beck
6. Chain e-mail
7. Donald Trump
8. Chain e-mail
9. Chain e-mail
10. Tim Pawlenty
11. Bloggers
12. Michelle Bachmann
13. Mike Prendergast
14. CrossroadsGPS
15. American Action Network
16. Dan Coats
17. John Raese
18. Christine O'Donnell
19. Christine O'Donnell

Before we get to a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. (The chain e-mails, bloggers, and anyone else you don't recognize on the list above are all conservatives.) Clearly, there must be an internal rule at PFact that you can't go more than 20 Republicans before dragging a Democrat in for balance.

 

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

If an undead, long-haired, doe-eyed hippie comes shamblin' toward you, push someone else in his way and run like hell.

Republican War on the Poor

Assholes:

Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.  ...

His explanation?

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”

Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.

Hey, thrift stores have some nice stuff, but I don't think it's that much cheaper than Wal-Mart. This amounts to another step in the never-ending effort by rightwingers to humiliate the poor, with the bonus that it diverts dollars to religious organizations.  Grasping Christian fundamentalism continues to spread its tenacles.

See the Change

Pet peeve:

Huge surges among Hispanic populations in the Deep South could mean a political sea change over the next two decades, as immigrants become naturalized and they and their American-born children register to vote. ...

This is the correct usage of the phrase, meaning a slow and complete transformation. It just bugs me when people use it to mean a sudden change.

Philly's Stadium Zone

Duncan laments the fact that the Phillies' ballpark was built where it was:

As with many places, my stupid urban hellhole powers that be located the baseball stadium in-the-city-but-not-in-the-city, that is in a mostly isolated stadium complex not near anything else. It is served by the subway, so there's that, but it doesn't inspire people to come before or stay after and spend money in neighboring establishments because, well, there are no neighboring establishments.

Part of the problem is that nobody wanted it in their neighborhood. Locations considered for the baseball stadium included one just north of Chinatown which that community fought successfully. They saw the ballpark as a threat, not an opportunity, mainly because it would change the character of the neighborhood.

People like making more money, but they don't want anything to change to get it.

150th Anniversary of Attack on Ft. Sumter

At 4:30 a.m., April 12, 1861, a rebel cannon fired the first shot of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. This act plunged the nation into a war in which over 3 million American men fought each other, and 625,000 people died.

Four months prior, a secession convention in South Carolina had issued a document titled "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" which read in part:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

The intellectual and moral heirs of the Confederacy now control the party of Lincoln and still claim the mantle of the Constitution while seeking the destruction of the union and the enslavement of workers.

 

Marketing [Insert Here] at Work

The perils of email marketing:

Crazy Curt in Libya

Oh great, Curt Weldon is in Libya, meeting with Gaddafi. No comment from the White House. Odd and a little worrying.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: 224 Vote Lead Out of 1.5 Million Votes Cast

This is the situation right now in Wisconsin:

Only 3 precincts left to count. Then, I assume, there is a mandatory recount.

Update 3:30 EDT: All precincts are in. AP says Kloppenburg has a 204 vote lead and 1,479,976 votes were counted. That's .01%.

Tastykake May Fold

Tastykake has delayed the filing of its annual report with the SEC because its accountants and lawyers are focusing all of their energy on trying to sell the company. Tasty Baking has been restructing its debt agreements since early January, partly as a result of problems they're having with their new production facility at the Philadelphia Navy Yard but also because of the downstream effects of the bankruptcy of the company that owns SuperFresh, A&P and Pathmark. As part of the restructing deal, Tasty Baking agreed to try to find a buyer by June who could pay the bills.

Tastykake promises to file the annual report within 15 days, and says it will include a warning from its auditors that the company may not be able to continue as a going concern.

Kicking Whole Household Off Food Stamps If One Family Member Strikes Is Not New, Not Workable

Brendan Skwire says that the Republicans' recent initiative to kick all family members of striking workers off food stamps is actually a policy adopted originally ... in 1981.  Why haven't we heard about it? Because, he says, it's largely symbolic:

[W]hile the language is offensive, it’s largely unworkable if the idea is to kick people already receiving [food stamps] off the program. When you apply, there’s a requirement to report if you’re on strike. If you’re already receiving SNAP, it’s a lot harder to determine that, simply due to the fact that the welfare offices where the majority of SNAP cases are handled are overworked, understaffed, inefficient, and in general swamped. ... [N]o one has the time (or for that matter the resources) to go through every applicant’s files to see which ones belong to unions and which unions are on strike at any given time. The only way this “policy” (and I’m using the term charitably) could work is if a striker went into the county assistance office and said “hey guys, those food stamps i’m getting? Cancel them, I’m on strike”.

There you have it: A great example of the real beauty of the internet, where people who actually know things tell other people who don't.

Real Firearms Are Not Like Video Games

Guns are dangerous to the user if you don't know what you're doing:

see more funny videos at FailBlog

Getting smacked in the face by a cruiser-style shotgun is a comparatively gentle reminder that you need to be taught properly how to handle and shoot a gun before you get anywhere near live ammunition.

Set Clocks Forward One Hour

Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. Sunday.  I wanted to set this post to appear at 2:05 a.m. just for the hell of it.  It's a time that doesn't exist! Turns out Typepad won't let me. 

They Don't Use the Richter Scale Anymore

Apparently, the Richter scale was phased out 20 years ago. Today they use the moment magnitude scale, which measures the total energy of the quake. (The Richter scale just measured the distance the land moved.) People still say "8.9 on the Richter scale", but they should say "magnitude 8.9 earthquake."

Obama Declines to Get Involved With NFL Contract Negotiation

Good:

"I'm a big football fan, but I also think that for an industry that's making nine billion dollars a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way," Obama said. "I've got a lot of other stuff to do."

I'm glad.

1. He's right. Presidents should stay out of trivial crap like this.
2. Most white (and a few black) NFL players that I have met or heard talk are raging wingnuts. The overwhelming majority of black players would side with Obama. It would split the union and make a pro-owner result more likely. Also, Republican voters and politicians presumably would take up the cause of the owners more fervently than they already do. If Obama urged compromise (I know, inconceivable), Republicans would call for drone attacks on Kevin Mawae.
3. It would definitely hurt him politically.

 

Things I Think About Instead of Working

1. The French word for "packaging" is "emballage".  I am 12.
2. A GE proofreader can't tell the difference between French and Spanish.

Back to work.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally Tonight at Jose Pistola's, 6 p.m.

Via email:

Join Drinking Liberally Center City tonight at our regular weekly get-together, starting at 6 p.m. in the upstairs bar at Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust & Spruce). Beer specials all evening.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 212 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

The week's events:

•  
  • Tuesday 2/15: Drinking Liberally Center City meets every Tuesday 6- 9 p.m. at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102.
  • Sunday 2/20: Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally meets every Sunday 12:30-2:30 p.m. at Infusion Coffee + Tea, 7133 Germantown Ave..
  • Join Our Facebook Groups: Join the Center City Drinking Liberally group, the Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.

Local Programming: Drinking Liberally This Week

Via email:

We're a week away from when candidates for office can begin circulating petitions to get on the ballot. If you have a preferred candidate, you might consider volunteering as a petition circulator for them. If you don't, prepare to be asked to sign. Remember, you can only sign as many petitions as there are open seats for a particular office. (For example, there are 10 City Council district seats, and 7 at-large seats, so you can sign only one petition for your district candidate but up to 7 petitions for at-large candidates.)

Thanks to everyone who made it out to last Sunday's range outing with Shooting Liberally Philly. We'll be doing it again in March.

Drinking Liberally is a project of Living Liberally, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which builds progressive community through social networks and events. Founded in 2003, Living Liberally has 212 chapters across the country. The Center City Philadelphia chapter of DL was started during the 2004 election and has met every Tuesday night since.

The week's events:

•  
  • Tuesday 2/8: Drinking Liberally Center City meets every Tuesday 6- 9 p.m. at the upstairs bar of Jose Pistola's, 263 S. 15th St. (between Locust and Spruce Streets), Philadelphia, PA 19102.
  • Sunday 2/13: Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally meets every Sunday 12:30-2:30 p.m. at Infusion Coffee + Tea, 7133 Germantown Ave..
  • Join Our Facebook Groups: Join the Center City Drinking Liberally group, the Mt. Airy Drinking Coffee Liberally group and the Philly Shooting Liberally group. It's a good way to get to know the people you see at our events.

Night Landing

 

Ignore the song lyrics and this is really cool.

Jingle for Plastic-Wrapped Snack Cake at Wawa

Never goes bad

Never was good

It's Odious

Odious is the brand name.  That's the joke.

That Never Happens: Egypt Edition

Oh look, the Egyptian military allowed a popular uprising to continue long enough to force the current leader out while installing a successor just as or even more friendly to them, thereby confirming to everyone in sight that they are the ones in charge. Yippee, democracy!

Miss You, Val

Can't believe it's been five years.

$100 for Obama's Birth Certificate

Absolutely brilliant:

In an attempt to end the "birther" myth that President Obama was not born in the United States (and thus not qualified to serve as president), five Democrats on the Hawaii state legislature have introduced a bill that would allow anyone to obtain a copy of President Obama's birth records for a $100 fee.

For that price, they should send the customer a framed copy of the thing, printed on vellum, with a little brass plaque on the frame that says, "He's an American, you stupid asshole."