PMC Commentary

It's brutal out there, already

We've just concluded a brutal journey through a pre-Black Friday Eve shopping mall and then elbowed of our way through merely one aisle of the grocery store, a veritable hive of human frenzy that was even worse than Consumerism Central.

Thankfully I clearly saw only fragments of it all at the beginning, since our first stop was to pick up my new glasses, which the sales clerk bothered not to inform me would provide a vivid view of the world from approximately 3 percent of both lenses (something the optometry people call no-line "progressive" bifocals; I call it blindness). I also acquired prescription sunglasses, however, which did actually clarify things, although wearing them indoors, at night, converted my public appearance to that of a Sam Giancana.

Well, off to catch some evening news, with shades.

RedState Paradise lost and found and other knickknacks of mild schizophrenia

One little quote from Marco Rubio on the "ambiguity" of scientific fact and Erick Erickson goes utterly, hilariously, exotically crazy:

I absolutely believe it. I absolutely believe if by [judgment] time a person has not chosen Christ, he will end up in a very bad place. I believe in Heaven and Hell and the battle that rages between the two on a higher plane than we can often see.

That's nice. It's also about the time one begins inching away from the speaker. If the tin foil loosens, this dude may become violent.

On the other hand I'm delighted that Erick has so cleverly secured his place in eternal bliss. I very much hope he enjoys his stay there, even as he absorbs the "reality" that his friends and relatives who chose not to "choose Christ" lie rotting and stinking in a burning Hell, forever.

The fiscal choke

On "The Last Word" last night, guest host Ezra Klein was entering a euphoric state of optimism within a rapture of jubilation atop clouds nine, ten and eleven as he rattled off, from a NY Times story, the names of several Republican lawmakers--Peter King, Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn, John McCain, Lindsey Graham--who are defying Grover Mephistopheles's demands and going, or so it seems, all Faustian with the Dems.

Guest Robert Reich responded: I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm with Reich on this one.

Dark and contemptible as he is, Mephistopheles is at least a man of his final word. Contemporary Republicans, on the other hand, shift and slither as they say one seemingly conclusive thing but mean another, or another when they mean one. Sen. Graham, for instance, "said that ... closing tax loopholes and eliminating deductions have to be considered, 'even though that may technically violate the pledge.'" This sounds GOP-unorthodox; real renegade stuff, right? Not really. It still rejects the single most prominent position on which President Obama won decisive reelection: a hike in the top marginal tax rate. And keep in mind--as Lindsey surely does--that the SC senator is looking at being tea-party primaried in 2014. Courage has its pragmatic limits.

Klein's larger argument was that the fiscal cliff or curb or slope might well be avoided. A late December deal awaits, believes Klein. Let's grant, for the sake of that argument, a few Senate mavericks. Yet Klein must further assume some rather sizable GOP apostasy in the House, which is a vision that verges on the utopian. What's more, he must assume that House Democrats will be willing en masse or in large part to accept what will likely be rather grievous entitlement injuries. Unquestionably, some rough equilibrium of bipartisan agreement on averting the cliff will be required. Yet I, along with Reich, just can't see enough insufferable tea partiers shaking hands with enough socialist House devils.   

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Reich is wrong. But if we are, I won't be pleasantly surprised. I'll be pleasantly shocked.

More confused (or confusing) than ever

Am I missing something, or is this merely poor reporting?

CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to "al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack - with the agreement of the CIA and FBI....

"The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack," DNI spokesman Shawn Turner tells CBS News. That information was shared at a classified level -- which Rice, as a member of President Obama's cabinet, would have been privy to [italics mine].

The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before.

So Rice didn't have the unexpurgated version, although she did have the unexpurgated version, although, again, she didn't.

Not that any of this is explosive, but neocon outlets such as the Weekly Standard--which characteristically cuts the quote after the italicized sentence above--are all over this and will remain all over it.

Cruzing to yet another catastrophe

Texas' tea-partying Senator-elect Ted Cruz, demonstrating that even a Princeton University and Harvard Law School education is perfectly impotent in the face of all-consuming ideology:

It was the one time we actually contested ideas, presented two viewpoints and directions for the country. And then, inevitably, there are these mandarins of politics, who give the voice: "Don’t show any contrasts. Don’t rock the boat." So by the third debate, I’m pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama.

If only Romney had stood ultraconservatively firm, such as Texas pols can do (for another few years, anyway).

Which Romney also did, of course, until even Romney's grotesquely inept advisers realized in early October that standing firm was actually kneecapping his campaign. Thus came his Obama-disorienting blows in the first debate--an abbreviated fight for the middle that briefly kept him afloat. His timing was, however, way too belated.

That's the empirical history, the incontestable history, the shortest possible history of the Obama-Romney battle of 2012. Romney was always outclassed and never favored to win, but he could at least have made a better fight of it--had he danced to the center, earlier.

Cruz's pure intellect can easily comprehend this, but ideology has a way of contaminating both fine minds and sound judgment.

Shocker of the day

Politico:

Appearing on Fox News Tuesday morning, [Rep. Allen] West did not rule out a future run for office.

Well, Mr. West, there's always 2014, the midterms, when this nation's majority demographic future who preserved the present will return us to the past by staying home, as they did in 2010.

There is, however, one glimmer of hope: that all those other troglodytes in the House whom West left behind will drag their knuckles so offensively over the next two years that even the famously midterm-indifferent Democratic base will be sufficiently motivated to find a polling booth in 2014.

David Brooks' dreamscape

In his latest, David Brooks' speculative thesis is that since the GOP's politicking-while-blind-drunk pileup on Nov. 6 the party "has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness." There is, online, "a vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation" (none of that stale, "conventional" stuff we heard from "Republican candidates this year"). It is from this robustness--delivered by a diverse intellectual cadre of what Brooks calls Paleoconservatives, Lower-Middle Reformists, Soft Libertarians and Burkean Revivalists--that the "party may evolve quickly."

A few problems.

First, what Brooks describes is merely more fragmentation and incompatibility. What a Burkean Revivalist would be doing in bed with a Soft Libertarian is (beyond the more obvious reason) beyond me, as it would be to these traditionally battling Bickersons. The National Review's Bill Buckley and Frank Meyer's fusionism of the late 1950s and early 1960s and then Goldwaterism and finally the New Right movement heaved them into partnership for purely pragmatic electoral reasons; but such cold, arranged marriages kept together for the children's sake (a broader base) are generally destined to fail. (Consider the open enmity of late between the Santorum and Romney camps.)

Second, Brooks simply assumes that this younger conservative intelligentsia will be more "influential" within the party than were its predecessors of, say, Andrew Sullivan and David Frum. Why? I mean, I know why Brooks assumes it: he must. The question is rather why will it be more influential? Brooks doesn't say. And that's because he doesn't know either the why or the how, any more than the Sullivans and Frums ever fully understood why "the conservative party" so foolishly ignored their jeremiads of years past.

As something of an aside, the above is scarcely anything new under the sun. Intellectuals from Plato to English Fabians to the New Deal's leftist critics have rarely understood why the pols and the people don't just shut up and listen. The political intelligentsia is as old as the oldest profession, and in time their functions are essentially indistinguishable--whoring for real money becomes preferable to whoring for two-penny tabloids.

Last, does Brooks genuinely believe that Louie Gohmert and Virginia Foxx and Jim DeMint and James Inhofe give a right-wing rat's ass that "Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago published an influential book ... that took aim at crony capitalism," or that "Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has argued for family-friendly tax credits"? For starters they'd have to ask Newt Gingrich to read it to them; then they'd have to ask David Brooks to explain it to them; and then at any rate they'd rush out and spew the selfsame, pseudoconservative gibberish and holy-rolling thumperism that they've been spewing for lo these many years, which infinitely pleases the only people who matter: the Republican base, which keeps the Gohmerts and Inhofes in office and on the government's payroll.

My little anti-Rachel: lessons in journalism

So I'm sitting in my office watching Ken Burns' "Dust Bowl" and my eighth-grader comes in and she asks if she may use my computer to complete a writing assignment and I say Sure and she starts the creative project which has a word-count requirement and she's typing and typing some more and eventually she seems to be demonstrating more frustration than thought and I ask What's the matter and she says she's coming up horrifically short on the word count and I say embellish it and she says she's already embellished it by repeating herself and finally she says with no little excruciation, If I say the same thing one more time I'm going to sound like Rachel Maddow.

Some lessons do get through.

Behold ...

It's the first indication of divine intervention into human affairs since Billy Strayhorn's cornering of Duke Ellington in 1938: "Hostess and the union are expected to begin [a court-ordered] mediation process on Tuesday."

Long live Americana.

The pros and the pros of a Rice nomination

Time magazine's Jay Newton-Small itemizes the pros and cons of President Obama's nominating choice of Susan Rice, now that "White House officials are whispering to the New York Times and other news outlets that Rice is currently Obama’s favorite to fill the top cabinet slot" of secretary of state.

The "pro" items are unexceptional, including Rice's youthful zeal, Obama's admiration for her, her popularity among Democrats and her political kryptonite qualities for sane (yeah, I know) Republicans.

Among the cons of Rice-as-nominee: Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have already embarrassed themselves with extravagantly goofy filibuster threats; more than one GOP House committee is planning on making McCain-Graham-like asses of themselves with HUAC-like hearings on Benghazi; Rice might be "too blunt" for the job; and, "as Obama noted in his press conference, the people re-elected him to work with the other side, not get mired in partisan fights," which would delight political junkies like us to absolutely no end.

Wait, those are the cons?

... and a cheesy Moon

So, you think this is bad?

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?
Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man.... Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Yes, Earth's age (4.5 billion years) is just as imponderable as that china teapot possibly in orbit 'round the sun. Damn these infernal mysteries. If only there were a way to solve the wretched things. You know, other than, uh, science?

But, as I was asking, You think that's bad? Well what about this?

GQ: Who's your best friend?
Marco Rubio: My wife. We talk every day.

GQ: Besides your wife.
Marco Rubio: Jim DeMint.

Looks as though Marco does believe in political science--but only the right-wing version, naturally.

They really mean it this time

Chait smells the same fraudulent, smoke-and-mirrors sham of a stinking, hocus-pocusing GOP flimflam that I do:

For the Republican party Establishment, the path of least ideological resistance is to move leftward on immigration ... and then to change on absolutely nothing else.

Perhaps you remember the New New Nixon, who had emerged from the primordial slime of the New Nixon, which was, in fact, just Nixon? Well, welcome to the New GOP.

What do your "events" look like?

The NY Times:

[Jamal Dalu's] sister, wife, two daughters, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren ages 2 to 6 all perished under the rubble [in Gaza], along with two neighbors, an 18-year-old and his grandmother....

When two tiny [surviving] bodies were finally found, rescuers and residents erupted in cries of "God is great!" ...

Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the militant Hamas faction that rules Gaza, condemned the attack as a "massacre" that "exceeded all expectations."

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said it was "examining the event."

All the requisite elements of a brutal, senseless, endless conflict: reinforced generational vendettas, empty religious slogans and theological pieties, partisan propaganda and, of course, Israel's interminable reexaminations of atrocities and a swaggering refusal to accept the goddamn obvious: only a politically negotiated two-state structure that returns dignity, true independence and economic vitality to the Palestinian people will bring an end to this madness.

Of Dionne, Lincoln, and Corleone

Contrary to E.J. Dionne's indefatigable faith in humankind's common senses and sensibilities, managerial types from Michael Corleone to Abraham Lincoln have shared the Chuck Colsonesque wisdom that indeed trusts in others to do the right thing, but first it never hurts to either grab them by the balls or, if necessary, cut them off at the knees, so that other body parts will follow.

"I don't care what Sollozzo says about a deal, he's gonna kill Pop, that's it, that's the key for him," said the deal-suspicious young Michael. And he wasn't dead wrong. On the rather more sublime side, Spielberg's "Lincoln" similarly portrays a chief executive who was more than willing to negotiate with the incorrigible South--after he had thoroughly crushed and constitutionally boxed it in.

Lesson in executive management: never trust the word of a desperate foe.

As does, it seems, Dionne:

Because so many Republicans felt compelled to renounce Romney’s ["gift"] alibi, they had to break with the talk-show far right that actually sees the election just this way.... The GOP thus moved toward a political language more like Obama’s own.

"Moved" ... or feigned?

I don't care what Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie say about a new GOP, they're out to kill positive government, that's it, that's the key for them. It's their existential justification, their only political reason for being. The firebreathers--the talk-show gangsters and far-right rebels--will maintain their nihilistic, ideological authority over the hayseed rabble who will, in turn, tame any wild notions of Reason being voiced by a few desperate pols.

That was no "break," E.J. That was a dyspeptic belch.

The WSJ's cutting-edge paranoia

It finally occurred to the Wall Street Journal editorial board that Susan Rice isn't running for the White House in 2016. Ambassador Rice has built a fine career that is GOP-worthy in every respect for some vintage McCarthyite slashing, but absent any discernible political aspirations on her part, what's the point in destroying her over Benghazi?

It has also occurred to the WSJ that President Obama won't be running in 2016, either. The children at Fox News, the drug-addled Rush Limbaugh, the lobotomized Jen Rubin, the psychotic Glenn Beck and all the other far-right agitators aren't as deeply strategic and analytically complex as the WSJ editorial board, thus the former couldn't know what has dawned on the latter: politically, Obama-as-principal-target ain't the GOP's future, not, anyway, in regard to the GOP's Benghazi Illusion.

As for former CIA director David Petraeus? Sure, he's changed his story to Congress and once flooded its zone with misleading memos which were vacant the necessary disclaimers and disclosures--in other words, he might be the Benghazi Illusion itself. But he's the Hero of Iraq, a reputation which must be GOP-defended at all costs and from all angles; he's the man with the star--several of them, actually--a bit smudged, perhaps, but boys will be boys; and besides, he's a Republican, therefore some "further digging" into his doings, says the WSJ, might be in congressional order (but not really, for Petraeus is "an easy scapegoat").

No, observes the WSJ, this is Hillary Clinton's "bailiwick"--from consulate security to U.S. policy on Libya to U.S. policy on Syria to guns in the hands of al Qaeda to RPGs in the arms of Islamist extremists to, pretty much, the whole Middle East thing. It's all her doing, it's all Hillary's failings, it's all Mrs. Clinton's responsibility--because, as the WSJ finally gets around to noting, she has "[set] her sights on a 2016 Presidential run."

In time, the slow kids--the Foxists and the Limbaughs and the Becks--will catch up; they'll realize, as the WSJ has, that in the right-wing mind a transfer of political accountability must take place. Obama is old news. Everything bad--and everything is bad--is now Hillary's fault.