Eugene Robinson: 'The spoiled-brat American electorate'

Not much in the way of intro is needed. Eugene Robinson at his thoughtful best:

In the punditry business, it's considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it's impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats....

The nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to long-term, structural problems. While they're running for office, politicians of both parties encourage this kind of magical thinking. When they get into office, they're forced to try to explain that things aren't quite so simple -- that restructuring our economy, renewing the nation's increasingly rickety infrastructure, reforming an unsustainable system of entitlements, redefining America's position in the world and all the other massive challenges that face the country are going to require years of effort. But the American people don't want to hear any of this. They want somebody to make it all better. Now.

Magical thinking with magical results — the amazing vanishing future.

Then there's this sweet music, and the right reason for it:

The richest Americans need to pay higher taxes -- not because they're bad people who deserve to be punished but because they earn a much bigger share of the nation's income and hold a bigger share of its overall wealth. If they don't pay more, there won't be enough revenue to maintain, much less improve, the kind of infrastructure that fosters economic growth. Think of what the interstate highway system has meant to this country. Now imagine trying to build it today.

From your pen to Rahm's ear, sir.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Corruption is now OK in Afghanistan, provided it's not too much

With money being so tight in the US and Republicans doing their best to prevent helping unemployed Americans, how it this acceptable? The situation is never going to improve there so why keep throwing money at the problem?

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate some corruption in the country but target the most corrosive abuses by more tightly regulating U.S. contracting procedures, according to senior defense officials.

American officials here have not spoken publicly about countenancing potentially corrupt local power brokers. Such a stance would run somewhat against the grain of a counterinsurgency doctrine that preaches the importance of building competent governance.

But military officials have concluded that the Taliban insurgency is the most pressing threat to stability in Afghanistan and that a sweeping effort to drive out corruption would create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit.

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Jimmy Breslin: 'The aimless babbles of this Beck'

Jimmy Breslin is a national treasure. Born in 1929 (or 1930), he's perhaps the best journalist I've read in my life. He's got Mike Royko cred and an ear like an angel.

(Sample: "The first funeral for Andrew Goodman was at night and it was a lot of work. To begin with they had to kill him.")

At age 79, his style has entered transcendence. He's just written in Harpers about "this Beck" and what he's connected to. You see, Breslin was in the kitchen when Bobby Kennedy was shot. He's one of the guys who smashed Sirhan Sirhan to the ground.

Here's Breslin on Beck and crew, just a taste of this marvelous piece:

[N]ow in New York they are turning an empty lot of the old World Trade Center and a mosque that isn’t built and probably never will be, into national fear. Omaha fights the mosque in Manhattan! Some foamer named Jones says he burns the Koran, and he actually is treated as news. All day on television yesterday you had the aimless babbles of this Beck, who looks like he eats Bibles.

They all come with the double barrels of a Low IQ and High Color Fear let loose on cable stations and e-mail, of which yesterday you read in disbelief.

Let me tell you what a life spent running after news like this has left me remembering....

And remember he does. This short piece is filled with well-told stories. Here's how it starts:

There are these sudden loud noises in the hotel kitchen, one, two, three, probably a tray falling, and then there is so much screaming and a hand holding a gun high in the air and Robert Kennedy, who had walked into the gun, is on the floor with his eyes seeing nothing. On this June night in 1968 he has just won a Presidential primary and suddenly he is fit only for a gravedigger’s dirt.

Please, if only for the style, read this piece. ("Some foamer named Jones" — magic.)

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Pre-Judging the Afghan Election

There is a term that is often thrown around in reference to how elections, in any nation around the world, should ideally be conducted: "free and fair". When much of the world is watching an election and trying to gage if it is a good election, we look for evidence that people were able to vote without intimidation or any other undemocratic obstacle, and that the results of the vote were processed without irregularities. If this does not happen, then the reports start coming in, and we all sort of collectively decide that whatever elections a nation claims to have had, they were not up to the "free and fair" standard and therefore are not really a democracy.

Here in Afghanistan elections are only 2 weeks away. It is no secret that the government does not control the entire country and a war continues to be waged. Last month the announcement came that due to the strong risk of fraud and violence in certain regions, 900 polling stations would remain closed on election day. In a city like Kabul, Afghan National Police (ANP) run checkpoints throughout the city and there is the undertone of fear of being attacked or kidnapped by both foreign and local people. All-in-all, the task of holding an election in two weeks time is obviously going to be difficult and not without some problems.

The conclusion many observers in the media, governments, and perhaps you reading this right now, is that based on the aforementioned problems, the election is a failure before it even takes place. They take the standard of "free and fair" and they look at the poll closings, the threat of violence, and the recent attacks on political candidates, and they say - nope, Afghanistan's election is a failure.

Yet the situation could also be looked at in another way. We could look at the 19,942 other polling stations that will be opened and look at the examples where people are voting when election day comes. We can look at the long list of 2,556 candidates from diverse backgrounds, including 405 women, running for parliament. Because looking at election with an interest in what goes right, not only what goes wrong, should also be part of the story that is Afghanistan today.

"Free and Fair" is certainly something anyone would want in an election, and if we were honest, we would admit that this doesn't exist anywhere in the world. In the end we aim for an election that is as free and fair as possible within its context. The Afghan context is no doubt one of the most difficult in the world right now, but to be able to carry out an election, even one wrought with problems, should also be worth something on the road to stability. Read the rest of this post...

Sam Seder on the BS at the Glenn Beck rally

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Jan Brewer: no more debates

And it was just starting to get fun in Arizona. Arizona Daily Star:

Incumbent Republican Jan Brewer said Thursday she has no intention of participating in any more events with Democrat Terry Goddard. She said the only reason she debated him on Wednesday is she had to to qualify for more than $1.7 million in public funds for her campaign.

"I certainly will take my message in a different venue out to the people of Arizona," she said.

Brewer said she has been in elective office for 28 years, and Goddard has held office for nearly that long. "I think it's pretty defined what he stands for and what I stand for."

Anyway, Brewer said, she believes the debates help Goddard more than they benefit her.

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Rachel Maddow on White-washing Civil Rights

I recently wrote about "White-washing Civil Rights" — the attempt by Movement Conservatism to take the moral high ground away from progressives and Dems by muddying their race cred.

And progressives have considerable race cred. Unlike any other issue (Social Security, for example), the morals of swinging strange black fruit from trees is, well, black-and-white. You can spin Social Security as "socialist"; you can't spin race-murder as anything but race-murder.

Enter the Big Lie.

And right on time, comes Haley Barbour, climbing the Beckian tree to reshout the Beckian Lie. Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson are on it. This is a thing of beauty:



As I wrote earlier, this Big Lie has legs. And Robinson's right — this isn't an attempt to get black votes; that's beyond their reach with this argument.

No, it's an attempt to give beleaguered white suburbanites — from the out-there racist to the not-at-all racist — a balm to soothe their conscience, or a lie to tell their neighbors, when they vote Republican.

"I'm not racist; I'm actually expanding the Civil Rights movement to white people. Son of Lee Atwater just said so." Amazing how that works.

GP

(By the way, we don't have to be strategy-blind. There are many ways to use the lizard brain, which they have so carefully nourished, to our advantage. Start by considering this VoteVets ad.) Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's Labor Day Weekend, the last long weekend of summer. The President is at Camp David. He'll spend Labor Day in Wisconsin.

This morning, his weekly address is on "Honoring the American Worker."

And, I have to give a shout out to Nico Pitney and Karina Newton who are getting married tonight. They really are a great couple and are just very, very good people. Love 'em both. Congrats! Read the rest of this post...

More Hindi Zahra

It's a sunny but cool Saturday here in Paris. I really didn't adjust well from the high temperatures in Spain (mid to upper 90sF) to chilly Paris which has been stuck in the upper 60s and low 70s. There's nothing quite like a summer cold. I'll try getting back on the bike again today but even that has been spotty. A small (and silly) crash in Spain led to a hospital visit and broken rib so that completely derailed my plans for lots of exercise. Sitting around wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend August. Read the rest of this post...

Roubini: half of troubled US banks will fail

The bailout was necessary to prevent an even worse crisis though again, the implementation was a failure. The US now has over 800 banks that are listed as troubled and it's rising quickly. Besides failing to tie bailout money to lending or long term pay, it also only helped a few select banks. The majority of US banks have been in trouble and only a few (the ones who were bailed out) remain profitable. We're now facing even more consolidation in the industry which will mean fewer consumer choices and a greater risk of "too big to fail" in the banking industry.

This crisis was not a simple hiccup that could be resolved overnight. Outside of Washington more and more people accept that this crisis was in fact the end result of decades of poor economic policy. Reaganomics and trickle down economics always sounded like voodoo and yes, it was. Throwing credit on top of credit on top of credit and then selling it is not "innovative" as Wall Street likes to think. It's greed and it's as fake as Bernie Madoff. CNBC:

Even if the US and European economies manage to avoid a double dip, it will still feel like a recession, while more than half of the 800-plus US banks on the "critical list" are likely to go bust, according to renowned economist Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics.

The second half of the year will remain weak as tailwinds become headwinds, Roubini told CNBC on the shores of Lake Como, Italy at the Ambrosetti Forum economics conference.

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Mariner Energy had 13 incidents on oil rigs since 2006

But remember, offshore drilling is safe. We know this because Mariner says so during their protests.

Mariner Energy has been involved in a string of at least 13 offshore accidents since 2006 in Gulf of Mexico waters -- including a blowout and four fires -- that were investigated by the Minerals Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement). Possible violations were reported in at least seven of the reported accidents and Mariner has paid at least two separate civil penalties related to accidents, records show.

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