P.M. Carpenter

Yemen, and what McCain-Graham (and others) would have us do

As Yemen splinters into pro-Iran Shiite and Sunni al-Qaeda factions and descends into a north-south civil war and extremist breeding ground, here in America we await McCain-Graham's inexorable demand for aggressive U.S. intervention. If we don't fight them there … You know the spiel. For now, Fareed Zakaria gently recalls that "in the 12 years between Sept. 12, 2001, and the end of 2013, the number of Americans who died on U.S. soil due to terrorism was 42…. Meanwhile, in one year alone, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 32,351 Americans died because of firearms."

September 11th killed 3,000 Americans. McCain-Graham's logic of Middle East intervention — meant to revenge 9/11 and somehow "defend" American freedoms — has, to date, killed approximately 6,700 Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. These interventions also spawned the creation of thousands more anti-American extremists, against whom we have redeployed thousands more American troops — so far, in Iraq only. Syria remains a question mark, though not to McCain-Graham.

Sound logic would seem to be on the extremists' side. They act, we overreact, and our costs are vastly greater than theirs. Indeed, our costs appear to be exponentially proportionate to their gains. We intervene and kill and then we kill some more, and they multiply like rats.

To President Obama's credit, our-reintervention has been restrained. He understands McCain-Graham's degenerate logic, and appreciates the soundness of the extremists'. Nothing would greater please Islam's sectarian fanatics or swell their numbers more than tens of thousands of fighting Americans lathering Iraq, Syria, Yemen, what have you, and quite possibly tackling Iran. The costs in American lives and to the public treasury — atop the 6,700 already dead and trillions of dollars mortgaged — would be staggering almost beyond imagination, and unquestionably beyond our tolerance.

Obama, it seems, harbors the political will to resist the madness of McCain-Graham's logic. For the next two years, we seem safe in his restraint. So the present isn't the decisive problem; the problem is the future — the problem of neoconservative excess, which has infected to varying degrees the leading successors to Obama's judiciousness.

 

Chait ponders the "unhinged"

Jon Chait:

The Republican Party confidently and forthrightly rejects the firm conclusions of science on [climate change]. Isn’t that a completely disqualifying position? If a candidate for a managerial job at your office insists that two plus three equals seven, it wouldn't matter how well-qualified this candidate may be at any other aspect of the job. Even if you agreed with everything else the Republicans stood for, how could a party so obviously unhinged be entrusted with power?

Well, because the "hinged" don't vote? Which I suppose makes them, too, at least a little unhinged. And when the marginally unhinged — via their democratic nonparticipation — join the abjectly unhinged — via their devout participation — the product is one of the "obviously unhinged" entrusted with power.

All of which amounts to Republicans' Great White Hope: the abundant and almost inexplicable apathy out there, one so profound it can conceivably upend — or at minimum threaten — even staggering political leads by what is commonly referred to as the lesser of two evils. The marginally unhinged must be inspired to vote in their own interest by rhetorical heaps of populist mumbo-jumbo, while the abjectly unhinged require no such motivation. The latter vote with passion, and like clockwork.

The immediate result is a bug-eyed, Bible-quoting, science-denying lunatic in the chairman's seat of the U.S. Senate's Environment Committee, and the potential result is a President Romney, or heaven help us another President Bush. Either of those potentials is, admittedly, slim — very slim. But that they're potentials at all is what should shiver your rational timbers. It sure as hell does mine.

 

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Sam Harris on Islam, and me on you-know-who

Sam Harris' latest podcast (text, below, via Raw Story) deserves maximum exposure. I quote at some length:

It’s astonishing the media can’t do the one thing to keep it and everyone else safe. It can’t do the one thing that would have kept the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists safe — which is to publish, en masse, all of these cartoons to present a united front against this creeping theocracy.

The response of liberals — and it’s so depressing to have to use "liberal" in a pejorative way, but liberalism has completely lost its moorings on the topic of Islam. Needless to say, we have all the usual suspects — Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, Chris Hedges, Karen Armstrong — and as unreadable as these people have become, you can’t help but notice the stupid things they say about Islam even in the aftermath of an atrocity like this. As will come as no surprise, they will tell you this has nothing to do with Islam or heartfelt religious convictions, but that it has everything to do with capitalism and oppression and minorities and the racism of white people in Europe, and the racism of cartoonists at a magazine like Charlie Hebdo. That is the cause of this behavior. That is what will cause someone to pick up an AK-47 and murder 12 cartoonists and scream "Allahu Akbar!" in the streets.

That is an absolutely insane analysis. If you grant everything that’s completely wrong with capitalism and the history of colonialism, you should not be able to deny that these religious maniacs are motivated by concerns about blasphemy and the depiction of Muhammad and consider their behavior entirely ethical in light of specific religious doctrines.

There's a definite something of Occam's razor in Harris' slashing analysis: When mass murderers make a point of shrieking "Allahu Akbar" before, during, and, when occasion permits, after their acts of senseless carnage, it's a pretty good bet that religion lies at the heart of their unpleasantness, much more so than European racism or capitalism's oppressions or what have you — or, rather, whatever Greenwald and friends have to offer as alternative explanations.

Still, as much as I agree with Harris, I'd go farther. I'd argue that religion is but one subsidiary of ideology, which to me seems the deeper monster: the uncompromising belief that one's convictions — religious or political — are absolute in their virtue and therefore absolutely correct. Parenthetically, our homegrown variety of this inimical species is too self-evident to bother identifying by name (OK, it's movement conservatism), but at its nonviolent core is the frightening fanaticism of such absolute certainty that no facts, no countervailing evidence, no nothing will ever change its mind. Reaganu Akbar! Or is it Goldwateru Akbar, or some other pseudoconservative deity these days?

 

The GOP House's early blundering

One simple, straightforward demonstration of why diversity within political parties is absolutely crucial:

Wednesday night, GOP leaders decided to pull an abortion bill banning the practice after 20 weeks of pregnancy because of complaints from a group of GOP House women, who were worried the legislation could turn young people and women away from their party.

Reps. Renee Ellmers (N.C.) and Jackie Walorski (Ind.) pulled their sponsorship over concerns about language requiring rape victims to file police reports to gain an exemption to the restrictions.

This outcome is a magnificent embarrassment to House GOP leaders, although they should be thankful the women saved them from themselves. We, on the other hand, can be thankful for this rarity. Now it's on to bigger and even better demonstrations of the modern GOP's angry-old-white-guy essence.

 

Hillary's huge leads: or, How can she fuck this up?

Reading WaPo/ABC News' polled preview of the 2016 presidential election is like reading a history of Harding's 1920 thumping of the obscure James Cox. It portends a wipeout. Although only registered and not likely voters are queried (too soon for the latter), that fact only marginally subdues the poll's breathtaking results.

In the assorted match-ups imagined, it's a massacre; Hillary Clinton leads Mike Huckabee by a perfectly understandable 17 points, but more surprisingly she leads Mitt Romney by 15 points, and Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Chris Christie by 13 each. Most astonishing is the gender breakdown -- not that of women, but of men: 

Female voters favor Clinton by 20 to 24 points while men split more closely, although no Republican has a numerical advantage among this group. Romney won male voters by 52 percent to 45 percent over Obama.... Clinton edges Romney by 50 percent to 46 percent among male voters in the new poll [italics mine].

Again, caveats abound. Clinton's male advantage is within the margin of error; this polling is frightfully early; campaigns have a way of narrowing demographic gaps; and actual turnout is always the final and indeed only key factor (except, of course, in Florida). For now that she leads at all among men, however, is a striking indicator of Republicans' mass unappeal. It also undercuts a significant chunk of Jim Webb's raison d'etre.

Hillary goes on to edge her opponents' in the partisan vote -- she's supported by 90 percent of Democrats, while GOPers garner "less than 80 percent" of their crowd. She wins independents (Romney won them); she remains "strong" among minorities, the young and the poor; and, as one might expect, she does quite well among those "who rate the economy positively" (that is, unblinkered Obama supporters). Whites, overall, still go Republican, but only by "three to seven percentage-point margins" -- somehat within that of error. 

The Post reports that Hillary intends to announce in either March or April. I was once in agreement with David Plouffe that she should instead proceed immediately with said announcement, given that the waiting game has become downright silly. (Some journalists still insert the risible "if she runs" when reporting on her candidacy.) But with numbers like those above, and in the absence of any noisy, internal competition, Hillary should perhaps remain in the shadows and postpone her declaration until, oh, let's say early January 2016. Because as soon as she opens her unscripted mouth, these numbers will blow up.

 

Sure seems as though Biden is out

Joe Biden told George Stephanopoulos this morning that "Yes, there is a chance" he will oppose Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, but added "There's plenty of time" — he's postponing a decision until summer.

I read that as a pass, which is most unfortunate (the pass, not my reading of it). There is now less than one year to go until the Iowa primary, and Biden's sawing off of nearly half that time is anything but an indication of his jumping in. There's money to be raised,  local sachems to be schmoozed, and Iowa dinners and living rooms to be retailed, all of which should have begun last year at the latest. Delaying the groundwork now until the corn is ass high is, therefore, an effective "No," not a "Yes."

Of course Biden has always been a problem candidate, not so much because of who he actually is, but because of how he would have been so easily portrayed by his foes: as a goofy, gaffe-laden senator and vice president. He would have suffered Al Gore's publicity horrors from the get-go.  But still, his opposition to Hillary would have been something -- something in opposition to Hillary's disagreeable waltz to the nomination.

Martin O'Malley? I continue to see him as a Veep-seeker, and Sen. Warren appears to be out. Which leaves Jim Webb. I suppose Biden's suggestive delay -- or disastrous dithering -- could be of benefit to Webb, whose current primary chances I'd put at maybe 5 percent; with Biden out, maybe 6?  Where the odds go from here is more unknowable than they seem: Hillary could plunge into another series of massive missteps; her courtiers could once again make a mess of things; her migraine-pounding "inevitability" message and general hawkishness could in short order simply piss off a lot of curmudgeonly Iowa Democrats, opening an opportunistic gap for Webb.

I don't know, and obviously I can't know, how things will develop. What I do know -- in my bones -- is that Hillary needs some major, internal pushback. A commenter recently expressed no little disgust for my "cheerleading" of Jim Webb, and I can understand that perception. But I'm no cheerleader, never have been, it's not what I mean to do, and I'd be lousy at it if I tried. Hackery just isn't my bag. I have, on the other hand, and as objectively as I could, promoted the concept of a Webb chance of credibly challenging Hillary. Why? Because I honestly believe such a chance exists. Slim, but detectable, real, and God knows much needed.     

 

Boehner's tantrum of a Netanyahu invite

Tell us again, John, just who is proceeding with autocratic power and rejecting decades of policymaking tradition?

Rebuffing President Barack Obama on Iran, House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday he had invited Israel's prime minister to address a joint meeting of Congress next month about the threats from Tehran and radical Islam….

Typically, requests for foreign leaders to address Congress are made in lengthy consultations with the White House and the State Department.

As for disruptive sanctions:

Boehner also told a private meeting of GOP lawmakers that Congress would proceed on new penalties against Iran despite Obama's warning that any legislation would scuttle diplomatic negotiations over the country's nuclear program.

"[Obama's] exact message to us was: 'Hold your fire.' He expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran.

"Two words: 'Hell no!' ... We're going to do no such thing," the speaker said.

What comedy of terrors might come with the emotionally unstable, tea-partying House, along with Ted Cruz's Senate, in self-appointed charge of U.S. foreign policy? For one, a resurrected Iranian nuclear program, and thus a U.S.-Iran war, which the neocons have craved for years.

2016 can't come fast enough. We've two years of this Republican Congress's antics and tantrums to suffer, some of which could be quite lethal.

 

The GOP's switcheroo

Deception to the end.

The GOP has … announced it will be offering a Spanish-language rebuttal [to President Obama's SOTU address], which will be delivered tonight by freshman Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a young conservative from a diverse Miami congressional district. But there's a wrinkle. According to a press release from the House Republicans, Curbelo will not be sharing his own thoughts and words with the public. Instead, he will only be reading a Spanish translation of Ernst's speech. Curbelo's office confirmed that he will not be delivering his own remarks.

Yet,

Republicans sent mixed signals on immigration in their two official rebuttals to President Obama Tuesday night: Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s rebuttal made no mention of the topic, but the Spanish-language version of the rebuttal, delivered by Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, said Republicans wanted to work with Obama to fix the immigration system.

Wouldn't want the bigots and xenophobes, known as the GOP base, to hear that, now would they.

This may be a first in American politics. One of the two (somewhat) major parties has now taken to lying not only to the American people at large, but simultaneously to its base and those outside the base it desperately needs to bamboozle — but very, very quietly, lest the base find out that rational albeit disingenuous overtures have been made. In brief the GOP is now lying to … everyone.

It will be interesting to see how long Republicans can keep their triangular, antithetical plates spinning.

 

Obama's SOTU offensive — precisely what Republicans asked for

In the wake of Obama's defiant SOTU address, the NY Times reminds us of a familiar fret: The president "signaled … that he and fellow Democrats may adopt a form of the [Republican] 'No' strategy as their own," although "he and Congressional Democrats have to figure out how to assert themselves without becoming subject to the same label they have given Republicans: obstructionists."

I really don't understand this worry. Never have. Republicans have proved there's no price to pay for obstructionism, certainly not among one's base. Rank-and-file Democrats won't punish congressional Democrats or Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb for obstructing Republican balderdash any more than rightist religionists and Hayekian hayseeds and neocon nitwits have punished Republican pols for obstructing anything that's moved on Capitol Hill since 2009. And since there are far fewer fundamentalists and hayseeds and nitwits than there are ideologically diverse Democrats … and since most "independents" are but Democrats and Republicans by another name … and since fractional "pure independents" have no friggin' idea as to what's going on anyway … and because numerically superior Democrats actually vote in presidential years … What's to worry?

Rep. Jason Chaffetz — the new Darrell Issa — said Obama's speech contained "a most curious list of where he thought we could work together," and added, "I didn’t understand where he was going with that or what he was trying to do." Run Chaffetz's squealing through the GOP Flimflammery translator and out comes "Obama's speech contained a politically astute list of what he knows will assemble no bipartisan support, and where he's going with that and what he's trying to do" is shove down Republican throats precisely what they have been screaming for: presidential leadership.

Would that Obama had begun his campaign of defiance, Beltway independence and in-their-face leadership two years ago. Many of his congressional allies just might have followed rather than risk an open, internal rupture; 2014, in turn, just might have gone down easier — it certainly could not have been any worse. The American voter admires boldness and positively expects economic credit-grabbing, which is why the president's approval rating has steadily upticked amid Republicans' outraged howls about Obamian dictatorialism. But, 2013 and 2014 are now history, thank God.

Last night, Mitch McConnell whined that the president had "almost without exception indicated he’s not for much of anything the American people voted for last November." Exactly. It's why Obama is on a roll.

 

Obama's SOTU address

Another annual Obamian appeal for congressional cooperation, and another annual Republican response of crossed arms, menacing frowns, and proverbial thumbs up the ass.

At one point the president said it isn't enough for government to just not get in the way of our vastly improving economy, but watching the dyspeptic, scheming visages of the GOP audience, I'd settle for that. Those boys are in the foulest of moods, and nothing makes them more combative than a triumphal President Obama. And God help us, they're in the majority this year.

Early in his speech, Obama said he wouldn't tick off the customary laundry list of political objectives. He went on to itemize enough sensible ones, though — from an increased minimum wage to addressing climate change — for us to know that none of them will go anywhere. Not in this Congress; not with the sour, antagonistic bunch in the majority opposition, who see their job not as one of loyal opposition, but of reflexive, monolithic hostility.

The president concluded his address with what to many of us was a heartbreaking plea for mere reason and common purpose; he reached back to his 2004 convention speech to find national unity and beg for an end to the divisive and truly insane politicization of … everything. It was heartbreaking not in its yearning, but in what virtually everyone knows to be its destiny: more disunity, more senseless divisiveness and more political insanity, all sponsored by we-know-who. What a waste.

***

The very first Twitter message I saw after wrting this post? From Mitt Romney: "True to form, the President in his State of the Union speech is more interested in politics than in leadership." That sets the expected GOP pace. Now on to Joni Ernst. Let's hear a Chris Matthews' Ha! 

(Checkers is so yesterday. Today we have Joni's "bread-bag boots" speech.)

 

Cheer up, Rep. Duncan. You're all nuts.

Largely out of historical ignorance, South Carolina tea-party congressman Jeff Duncan is in despair, telling Politico that

The tea party gets [factionalized] in primaries a lot because the tea party is just really a large group of average Americans who believe in limited government, free markets and are frustrated with Big Government.

No, that would be his forebears' Republican Party, which, along with Democrats, shared a disdain for unlimited government, a centrally planned economy and wasteful, inefficient Big Government. This shared disdain provided the basis for consensual, progressive-conservative governance that further provided for world-astounding advancements in socioeconomic fairness, research and development, expanded civil rights and other societal improvements throughout the postwar era. They were the political miracles of pluralism in action, in which, of course, allowances were made for partisan hostilities and exorbitant tub-thumping.

But Jeff Duncan's Republican Party is as chain-rattlingly dead as Jacob Marley. Its ideological framework (to be kind) is so bankrupt, I can't even say what contemporary Republicans do disdain — except, it seems, pretty much everything. They've heaved empiricism overboard and find the Enlightenment a rather grand historical mistake; they squander their days with denunciations of a fictitious president, they shriek distressingly obsolete macroeconomic theories, and, to nearly a man and a woman, they gear up for war, endless war.

It would be gracious and pleasant indeed if Rep. Duncan would lead his tea partiers of nihilistic hysteria into a third-party movement, so that maybe, just maybe the Grand Old Party, shorn of its more notorious lunatics, could return to its Eisenhowerian essence. Where I despair, however, is in the realization that it's probably too late. Duncan's tea partiers may be losing these days to the party's establishmentarians, but when one can't tell the difference between them …

 

Bobby Jindal's no-go zombie campaign

Even though British Prime Minister Cameron said "When I heard this, I frankly choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools Day," and even though Paris' mayor, Anne Hidalgo, foolishly but almost understandably told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that she intends to sue Fox News for its chronic imbecility, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal "doubled down on his assertion that 'no-go zones' exist" in Europe, when interviewed yesterday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

The governor could not provide examples of where "no-go zones" are located.

"I knew by speaking the truth we were gonna make people upset," Jindal told Blitzer.

Of course what Jindal actually "knew" was that he'd make national news — again — because crazy sells in the spumous, snipe-hunting world of right-wing paranoia. There, he was correct. Jindal also believes that crazy is his only ticket to the GOP's presidential nomination, but there, he's just not grasping that the competition is too immense.

 

The GOP, going down?

First Read:

The public gives the GOP a 25%-46% [favorable-unfavorable] rating, down from 30%-45% a month ago…. You can hardly tell from our NBC/WSJ poll that the Republican Party was the big winner from the midterm elections just two months ago. Somehow, Obama and the Democrats stole the Republicans' post-election honeymoon. Or the Republicans somehow lost it.

My guess is a third option: the economy stole it, which Obama & Dems have only finally exploited, causing Republicans to lose it -- in both senses of the phrase. But whichever it was, further upswings in the GOP's favorability rating will likely be as rare as a Boehner-Cruz hug. The House leadership still includes a Dukean albatross, which is a real, long-term drag; God only knows what ideological hijinks are in the House's hopper; Mitch McConnell must cope with a Senate caucus as fractured as the early 1960s Democrats'; and the GOP's presidential wannabes (I've lost count) are doing a capital job of neutralizing each other's potentially party-unifying message.

Republicans are less a political party than an affiliated aggregation of Obama-haters, Dixiecrats, Randian rubes, rabble-rousers, klieg whores, propagandists, jingoists, fiefdom lords, future Fox News hosts, unexceptional demagogues, science deniers and math killers. Is it any wonder the public already regrets not voting last November?

 

The clarity of "American Sniper"

It's been fascinating to follow the controversy American Sniper has stirred, which is summarized here by the Washington Post:

After days of nationwide screenings … the film was subject to widespread praise among conservatives for depicting an American soldier at his best and condemnation among some liberals who question the admitted pleasure Kyle took in killing and dehumanizing Iraqis.

I saw the film Saturday, and I can't say I fall in either camp. What I saw was Clint Eastwood's thoughtful portrayal of a man who was lost in the fog of a war he never understood. To me, the movie's most poignant — and telling — scene was that of sniper Chris Kyle encountering, in Iraq, his uniformed brother leaving it, the latter muttering that we should "get the fuck out" of this country (as I recall hearing the line); we had no business being there. Chris stood silently, trying to comprehend his brother's sentiment — but no such comprehension was ever forthcoming.

Eastwood seemed to link (with subtle condemnation) the Bush administration's deliberate obfuscation of our reason for being there to, what else, 9/11. In the film, Kyle joins the Navy Seals because of a prior bombing of an American embassy — he wanted to fight for our "freedoms" — but watching the 9/11 attack unfold on American television that horrible morning redoubled his commitment to assassinate terrorist "savages" — although Kyle is unmistakably oblivious to the lack of any link between Iraq's savages and 9/11's killers. As I saw it, Eastwood was only employing metaphor in American Sniper: Kyle's confusion was the American public's.

Like millions of his fellow countrymen, Kyle never comprehended the real crime of Iraq, which was our own. That's what Eastwood's film said to me. I saw no cinematic treatise on martial heroism or war's dehumanization. I merely saw incomprehension.

 

Obama's SOTU and Republicans' squalor

When all else is sure to fail, Republicans always have this: "I see [the State of the Union address] as the president returning to the theme of class warfare."

That's Rep. Adam Kinzinger's version of his party's autopiloted bugabooism. When the NYT called for a quote, catching Kinzinger in a disoriented moment of crisis (he was wondering why in God's name his new caucus will have a KKK/neo-Nazi-schmoozing majority whip in the nationally televised SOTU audience), his thoughts instantly turned to Frank Luntz's ready glossary of GOP horseshit — Oh yes, here we are, this one's a peach of a chestnut: The president is a stratocidal Bolshevik.

How do they do it? How do Republican pols bear the monotony of such absurd rhetorical retreads? I think I know the answer, helpfully supplied, as it was, by Kinzinger's follow-up comment: "I think, frankly, [Obama is] out of ideas if he is unwilling to work with Republicans." And there you have it; the seasoning of stale retreads with zesty non sequiturs. Ordinarily I'd try to rescue such twaddle from its own incoherence, but that one's a goner.

Another pre-reaction(ary) comment in the NYT's SOTU preview came from Mitt Romney's former strategist, Stuart Stevens. "We just had an election in which the president said his policies were on the ballot. Hard to see what is different today than 60 days ago." Right. A real mystery. Other than Fox News and Limbaugh & Assoc., the media of late have been brimming with stories of not merely a recovered, but a robust, economy: GDP is up, unemployment is down, financial markets are thriving, and even wages have shown signs of inching northward. These gains are not "hard to see"; in fact they're impossible to miss. Which is why Stuart despondently reached for a retread.

No survey of Republican banality would be complete, however, without some quotable drivel from that master of the dreadfully dull, Reince Priebus. Knowing this, the NYT's Peter Baker plunged into the RNC chairman's Twitter page, and came up with this: "[Obama's] proposals are so out of touch you have to ask if there is any point to the speech." Most years, Priebus would himself have a point, since most SOTUs lack one, other than "This needless folderol is nonetheless constitutionally required." But this year? This year's SOTU is President Obama's fling with gloating — and he damn well deserves it.