I'm Sure Cooler Heads Will Prevail

GLENN Kessler:

We have only scratched the surface, but a pattern is emerging. As with President Obama’s budget, the Ryan budget plan relies on dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures. The ideas may be bold, but the budget presentation falls short of his claim that he is getting rid of budget gimmicks.

Oh, do tell:

Mitch Daniels gave Ryan's plan a glowing tweet. "The first serious proposal produced by either party to deal with the overriding issue of our time."

It is, of course, a measure of the unseriousness of our times that anyone takes Mitch Daniels' word about anything, let alone enough to retweet some. And that's before we get to the idea that a man, and a party, conducting a permanent game of chicken with the total ruination of a country in order to prove their sort of disaster is superior to any other has something "serious" to say, or would go about saying it via bullhorn and grandstand if it did.

"Let's cut everything but our ever-burgeoning War Department and let Ayn Rand sort it out" is not a serious proposal. It's a religious slogan. The fact that some people are serious about Dead Carpenters, UFOs, or two-bit novelists has nothing to do with whether the ideas themselves are serious. It's like being forced into having a never-ending debate about the real powers of vampires.

"Under threat of government shutdown?" What's the threat? If we avert the threat by enacting the Brave Ryan budget the government shuts down anyway, except for the IRS and the War Department. (Look, Teabaggers: stupid's fun, an' all, but those of you who aren't in on the gag might want to consider just when government officials, even those government officials you love, are going to stop picking your pocket to line their own.)

Hey, if you demand a "serious" proposal for dealing with the budget in precisely these terms you have it: it's called "Simpson-Bowles", and it was almost as delusional, but it raised taxes as part of the "solution". It's serious as a collapsed lung. I don't recall any Republicans manning the barricades over that one.

The Republican party has lost its mind. This is nothing new, or particularly shocking, to anyone who's been conscious the last thirty years. It's just another opportunity to note that things have gone so far downhill since then that the "reasonable" Presidential candidate, and the "moderate" New York Times columnist both endose as "serious" a piece of political kabuki which, if enacted, would shred the social fabric on the off chance that the upper 2% of income earners might benefit from it.

And this despite the fact that it's had exactly the opposite effect for the last three decades, and despite the fact that the utter fucking insanity has been clear for at least two.

Do you really want a serious proposal about the deficit? Okay. Ready? Raise taxes. Raise taxes to compensate for all that's been lost over the past thirty years, give or take a Clinton administration, through incontinent tax cutting for the wealthy, which was enacted by the same people who refused to make tough, public decisions about cuts in services, and who refuse to admit to them now, even as they blow the same goddam trumpet again. Add in a surtax designed to create the Trickle-Down Nirvana this era was supposed to usher in. End of serious proposal.

I doubt a serious discussion will ensue.

So here's a modest proposal, free of charge. Let the House shut down the government. At the stroke of midnight, Joe Biden declares himself the Fourth Branch of Government, acting on a National Emergency, freezes the assets of the entire financial sector based on the Dick Cheney clause, and uses that money to continue the normal, or "normal" operations of government until such time as it is restored. Meanwhile we comb the books. Over/under on budget compromise: 12:03.

Or, hell, just shut the fucker down. The Republican party needs it a lot worse than I do.

Greetings From Tit Town!*

POSTING may be light last week.

Kevin Drum surveys the Republican Presidential field and spots a tiny contender:

But the usual question remains: how does he get through the primaries? When he hops over to Iowa, they'll expect him to denounce sharia law, make jokes about Obama's Kenyan birth, throw himself wholeheartedly into the culture wars, pretend that global warming is a liberal conspiracy, and make dire remarks about the specter of socialism taking over America. In other words, he'll have to act like a public clown, and if he doesn't do it, he'll lose.

First, when all about you are shouting Socialist! saying "Statist Big Government Nanny-Stater" in a normal tone of voice isn't proof of reasonableness; it's just trying to attract attention by setting up your tent a little off to the side, and hiring a receptionist with all her front teeth.

Now nobody knows better than I that you can't chase down every jot and iota from these guys, even if you have nothing better to do; if nothing else there's the Catch-22 thing, where the intelligence required to form shapes into letters and words into sentences would glaze your eyes over ten minutes into The Collected Utterances of Newt Gingrich, and weld them shut in self-defense a quarter-hour after that if you persisted. But, Kev, it really is best to assume that the sky is blue and grass is green and anything you see looking otherwise is Photoshop. Mitch Daniels is a Republican. That's not an accident. As such he has already denounced global warming science, on C-SPAN last year, about the time The Coyness Campaign was shifting into second gear:

There’s been nothing but dubious news about the science about this for about a year. Meanwhile we’re still left with a situation that if zealots had their way and the most extreme methods were taken by their own computer models we don’t move the world thermometer at all.

Now, the best possible fucking light you can put this in is Daniels pimping for Trans-Global Cupidity, which is at least consistent, and the best use of his talents. But the man was all for reducing carbon emissions when that sounded like a good selling point for his pals at Big Ethanol.

Look, Kev, I've seen the man close up. Consider yourself fortunate. If there was any way Daniels could pretend to be a Birther, a Crusader, or a Right-to-Life bomb-thrower and not scare off Boardroom America or shut off its money spigot, he would. After that "Culture Wars on the back-burner" thing became a national flapdoodle--as it was intended to, Kevin--the Campaigning Non-Campaigner went to Laura Ingraham not to reiterate his call for the religious wing of his wingnutty party to shut up and vote for him, but to tell her, and her massive listening audience, that he was Indiana's most anti-abortion governor, ever. As was also intended, Kevin. Mitch Daniels is never gonna out-Palin Sarah Palin; for one thing, he looks ridiculous when he tries. The man's been a Republican insider since the 70s; he watched the Rise and Co-opting of the Religious Right from his perch on Dick Lugar's shoulder.

And no one else who watched the same thing can mistake where this is headed. Should Daniels win the nomination the religious nuts will get their audience, their baksheesh, and their Attorney General; no one observes the niceties of Mob territories more fully than the Capitalist on the make. And for chrissakes, if you imagine we'd spew one less cubic liter of carbon during a Daniels administration than during a Trump administration you're just writing "Mrs. Kevin Daniels" over and over across your composition book. For the life of me, political insiders are like wine merchants: in order to take one seriously you have to pretend he knows everything about the current crop, and absolutely nothing about anything he doesn't have to sell.

Speaking of which, one of the things I did last week instead of completing a post was catch up (a little) on David Weigel, reporter:

• Teabaggers can't be blamed for any government shutdown.

• Trump's birtherism is uncomfortable for Republicans, who'd hoped the issue "would either 1) go away or 2) come up only in town halls where they could dispatch it." [Curious how "Republicans" want an issue to go away when 58% of them believe in it.]

•Sarah Palin is "horrifically unpopular", but her tweets remind people there's an election coming up.

• Newt Gingrich is horrifically unpopular, but his latest retelling of the Great Government Shutdown of '95 proves that a government shutdown today wouldn't be blamed on Republicans, and, especially, Teabaggers.

• It's, like, totally understandable that a full-fledged lunatic like Michelle Bachman would raise huge amounts of cash from Republicans for a Presidential run, because she's a lot more exciting than Mitt Romney, so this should not be taken as evidence that Republicans would actually support a loon for President. Again.

• According to a poll, Teabaggers are, like, total hypocrites on Defense spending. The obvious conclusion, here, is that Teabaggers are not so powerful that people who just want to avoid paying personal taxes without signing up for an Amway distributorship can't share a party with them in good conscience. (I dunno; you read it and explain the argument to me. Seems to me that if someone says "Government shouldn't spend my tax dollars, except on my favorite projects" the first part of the argument is rendered null and void by common fucking sense. But I was educated in a previous century.)

• Rand Paul is a legislative genius for pulling a one-day parliamentary delay in legislation over an issue no one, including Rand Paul, really believes in except as it scores a one-day gabbing point over a weekend when nobody is paying attention, not that anyone with any sense would. Take that, people who laugh at libertarians.

• The idea of balancing a budget in wartime (as defined by that DOA "Balanced Budget Amendment" which exempts military conflict when so defined by 3/5 of both Houses) is frivolous, as any good Teabagger knows. The idea that 3/5 of the Congress could rubber stamp a war it hadn't actually declared gets a free pass.

Look, just tell me how you come by this entire suite of ideas independently. Or any other way other than taking incoming Republican talking points, deflecting them one or two minutes from True, and publishing the results as reporting. Skip that; just tell me how you come to believe in the existence of something called The Tea Party as anything separate from Republican Bidness as Usual. 'Cause damned if I know.

______________

*My Poor Wife watched Behind the Burly Q over spring break, presumably as part of her Free Pay Channel marathon, and reports that Indianapolis was known as "Tit Town" in that golden era, because it loved it some mammaries. I have never been prouder of my slightly Klan-tinged heritage. Although that really isn't saying much.

Flunkies

WaPo Editorial Board, "Cheating allegations can't mask real gains in D.C.'s schools" March 30

I GUESS it's one of those things I'll always remember: "Where where you when you wondered where was Michelle Rhee when the entire house of cards that is her nascent anti-union empire crashed to the ground under the pressure of some good investigative journalism and basic diligence?" (Ans: In Indianapolis, same place where she was playing second-fiddle to the recorded voice of Mitch Daniels at an anti-union rally. Daniels could not personally attend the rally, supporting what he recently called the centerpiece of his 2008 campaign, "because he was traveling in Southern Indiana", which is a good sennight's drive from the state capital.)

(Say this for Daniels' handlers: they recognized fairly quickly that their man handles heckling about as well as Michael Richards does. As does Rhee, apparently--there's a shocker--since when she finally responded to USAToday it was to accuse them of "not believing test scores for poor children could improve without cheating".)

Somehow the Washington Post, which, of course, has been a major pom-pom shaker for Rhee, along with every other bad fucking idea in American public life for the past twenty years, got wind of the story, and responded with the editorial ("Yes, Cheating Appears To Have Occurred, But You Must Admit That Scores Went Up") excerpted and ridiculed below. (Full disclosure: The Post made $2.6 billion last year off Kaplan, Inc., the country's major peddler of test prep materials. Fuller disclosure: the Post doesn't bother to disclose that.):

ANYTIME THERE is a suggestion a school may have cheated its way to showing improved student achievement, there is reason for serious concern.

Y'know what? No. A serious concern exists when there is the potential transfer of large sums of public money or other forms of remuneration which might encourage people to cheat; see Cadillac, Legendary Welfare. What you have here in D.C. is reason for suspicion of felonious activity, which can only be described merely as "serious" by those who aren't facing incarceration themselves. Michelle Rhee is in Indianapolis right this minute helping to fuck with the livelihoods of several hundred thousand people; she's here through the grace of the serial misrepresentations of her accomplishments as a second-grade teacher and the Chancellor of D.C. schools. That is, by anyone's definition, beyond serious. Even if one believes that high-stakes testing tells us something about public education one is obliged to recognize the potential for gaming the system, and the far-reaching consequences that result. Not only was cheating going on under Rhee, there was no effort being made to watch for it.

That’s why D.C. school officials hired a high-priced outside expert to investigate what appeared to be anomalies on a number of student test sheets.

Who just happened to clear them.

It’s also why it is prudent for the system to take another look at the schools where tests were called into question.

That, and the fact that the whole program got caught with it pants down, its wiener rampant, and with a couple dozen nearby ewes wearing hipboots.

But to use the issue of erasure marks at a handful of schools to disparage the very real improvements made in recent years by D.C. schools is irresponsible.

Then call me irresponsible. (Is this the Obama Doctrine in action, by the way? We shouldn't let a few examples of the massive corruption underlining our every action dissuade us from the serious business of making headlines?)

Acting Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on Tuesday asked the city’s inspector general to determine whether there were any improprieties at eight schools on standardized reading and math exams in 2009. Her request follows disclosures by USA Today of suspicious rates of erasures in which wrong answers were changed to right ones. The report centered on Crosby S. Noyes Education Center in Northeast Washington, credited with dramatic boosts in student achievement. There were extraordinarily high numbers of erasures for three years at the school. One Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on a 2009 reading test when the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than one.

Y'know, first, there's a difference between being a whistleblower and turning state's evidence, and part of that is in whether they're entitled to the hosannas of the crowd. Henderson calls for an investigation after a little leg work by USAToday turns up a stinking pile of cess. That's not leadership, or responsibility, its the human instinct for covering an exposed body part being worried by a pack of hounds.

Second, the fact that there are four schools with cookie crumbs all over their collective face doesn't exonerate anyone else. It condemns the whole fucking system, like it or no. Anyone who was trying to obey the rules--despite the best efforts of Miracle Michelle--should have seen the high potential for abuse and responded accordingly, and in public. Otherwise, they're no better than Dönitz.

Experts caution against any simplistic reading of erasure rates;

Just as we would caution against listening to any experts willing to mouth that sort of flummery in public. Provided we had names.

there are many innocent explanations for changed answers.

And at 13 per student--all changed from wrong to right--you're gonna need all of 'em. Repeatedly.

Indeed, it was the finding of Caveon Consulting Services, the testing security firm hired by D.C. schools, that there were plausible explanations and no evidence of misbehavior at Noyes and the other schools investigated.

Five words: Arthur Andersen, Limited Liability Partnership.

John Fremer, president of Caveon, described the investigations — which included interviews with school personnel and data analysis — as “a thorough job working with credible data.” He told us that if there were reason to believe something was amiss, the company would have advised further action. Further scrutiny will show whether the city got its money’s worth on this investigation.

Yes, it would be premature at this juncture to jump to any conclusions based on the fact that a simple erasure test caught everyone red handed.

That the schools were cleared by an outside firm seen as premier in its field

"So Good We're Insured By The American International Group, Inc.!"

or that they represent just 2 percent of the system’s total testing,

And a mere 100% of what USAToday looked at,

hasn’t stopped critics of the reforms begun by then-Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee from seizing on the situation as evidence that the improvement in D.C. schools is a myth.

Well, whaddya expect from a bunch of racists, anyway?

Other tests — including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, about which there are no questions — showed significant gains in reading and math by D.C. students between 2007 and 2009. That’s evidence of progress that can’t be erased.

There's much to admire about the NAEP, but that doesn't allow it to confer blanket integrity to every test it's lumped with in an editorial. Nor does it make it systematic. Those figures are not actually available on the NAEP site, where the fourth-grade results are listed as "not available" and the eight-grade results show improvement in line with that nationwide--an ongoing improvement among African-American students which never gets mentioned as part of our National Trail of Shameful Public School Failure, by the way--but ex-Mayor Fenty and ex-Miracle Worker Rhee did announce those results last spring. So it's gotta be true, right?

And May God Bless

THE Internets are now closed:

Who is going to give the Democratic response to Obama's speech?

--ifthethunderdontgetya at wonkette

It's tempting to begin a discussion of the President's speech by noting that it followed tricky diplomatic bargaining with ABC, and balanced the nation's Right to Know with its Right Not To Have Dancin' With The Stars preempted. In fact, it's tempting to end the discussion there, too.

A White House spokesman, Joshua Earnest, sent a statement by email:

“The White House routinely works with the networks, as a group, in circumstances like these to find a time that’s respectful of both the networks and their audience – while ensuring that the President has the platform he needs to deliver an important message to the American people.”

Because if you think this is some facile, bench-jockey comment that's pre-empted by the dictates of "the real world", the one where the President "was forced to make a decision," then I've got a war for you. Another one, that is. If you miss out you'll have to wait 2.5 years on average for your next opportunity. Otherwise, we don't have anything to talk about. Sending US troops into battle is now less important than a fucking television show. *

Reasons are reasons, and excuses are excuses, and what the President offered were the latter, not that that's any surprise. For all the chatter about how despicable Gaddafi is, and how funny he dresses, and the sort of threats of door-to-door violence he was making...

(Which, by the way: surely there's enough money in it for some PR firm to school these guys, isn't there? I'm not looking for a kinder, gentler, more tele-friendly Ahmadinejad, or a better-dressed Kim Jong Il; I'd just like to know why the tenth-rate international shitheels we decide to pick on routinely talk like teenaged spree killers on Facebook. Maybe they really do, maybe it's something in the translation; at any rate, it sure is convenient for everybody. And despite my relative disrespect for the ability of the US--I mean global allied coalition--to conduct and maintain a successful ground invasion outside the Carribbean, I would not personally be tempting it--them--to bomb the shit out of me. That they're fairly good at, if by "good" we mean "able to do something similar for an indefinite period".)

those are excuses; the reasons are 1) oil; 2) oil; and 3) because we can.

This is not 1950, or 1956, or 1961. All the blather about whether or not we can make a moral case for raining tons of metal from the sky on this pissant du jour is just that. We can't. Or rather, we could, but we decided to trade the moral high ground in for global economic hegemony and military-industrial complexifying sixty years ago. If you don't like the fact that there's an immediate, and powerful, counter-argument to any publicly-acknowledged bombing campaign in the name of Good, take it up with Harry Truman.

This is not a tricky moral dilemma we find ourselves in because we're a Leader, Mr. President. It's the sort of tricky moral dilemma we find ourselves in because we insist on being the sort of Leader who bombs the shit out of people so we can prove we're a Leader. Just as we sometimes find ourselves with (Democratic) Presidents who are forced to prove their leadership by standing to the right of Curtis LeMay. I know that's not an answer, exactly, but then I'm not the guy who's suggesting he has 'em. I have no idea who the Libyan rebels are. I suspect you don't know much more than I. I don't believe the fact that they opposed Gaddafi puts 'em on the side of the angels, and I don't believe that the fact that Gaddafi was able to respond with force makes them martyrs. It may just make them impatient and overly simple. I do know something of our track record in such matters.

And I know I probably shouldn't have to explain this to you, Mr. President, but then again it did happen before the Reagan administration: Nobody bombed the Alabama State Police to even up the battle for Civil Rights in this country.

Y'know, Mr. President, if bombing Libya was the right thing to do--and I'm going to leave off the question of whether that means we should be bombing Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, and Bahrain, since we all know the real answer--then it's the right thing to do without the same sorts of arguments about why we were doing the right thing in Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan (and not Budapest, or Prague, or Tiananmen). And there were good arguments for why Britain and France could've done the job themselves if they were so fucking gung ho. They may be right, or wrong, or something other than black and white, but they are, clearly, our cover story of the past six decades, and our cover was long since blown. I didn't expect you'd get though a term without starting a new war or escalating an old one. I did think that maybe, maybe, we'd hear some justification that approached thoughtful. Or at least that avoided business as usual.

__________

* And it's been that way for thirty-five years, at least. The difference is that now we can't even pretend it's any different.

The Devil Has All The Good Tunes. But He Has To Outsource The Lyrics.

I'M NOT sure why I'm so adrift. I understand that the country at large is mazed by current events, accustomed, as it is, to the combination of "Japan" and "nuclear radiation" being automatic Big Box Office, and its periodic alarums and excursions bombing sand being preceded by a much better, and louder, trailer than the one it got this time. I'm not part of the intended audience for such things. I know, for example, that Barack Obama is, in fact, about six months late in starting his own war, given our post-WWII average. Somehow I'm not placated by this.

ITEM: It might be that I'm trying to figure out how, in 2007-2008, one could have designed the inevitable Democratic administration which would follow the worst, most venal, and least competent administration in the history of the Republic and yet manage to put the Pugs back in power within two years.

Look, you can think anything you want of the President: quiet, competent, embattled maker of tough decisions and godawful compromises, or Yet Another Corporate Democratic Centrist; you may even feel that, on a scale of Kosovo to Vietnam, enforcing yet another No Fly Zone is more Necessary Evil than Regular Evil. To me, if you profess an admiration for Ronald Reagan--however rephrased later--and you are not a) one of his legion of hagiographers, or b) too fucking young to have a clue, then you are suspect; if you profess an admiration for Ronald Reagan, gain the Presidency, and then behave as if an aura of competence is the way to recreate his legacy then I, like Donald Trump, would like to know where you grew up. Yes, indeed, Reagan had the advantage of knowing that there was little likelihood of a major conflict during his Presidency unless he himself created it, so he could sputter like Yosemite Sam on the international stage while killing off a few thousand Mexicans and US Marines to keep the faithful happy. But the point is he did it. I'm not quite sure how you manage to get this backwards, how you send in the Marines without conducting a victory parade first. Fer chrissakes, recall Ollie North, give him a helicopter, and send him in in a blaze of glory. At least you'd have Victor Davis Hanson on your side.

I'm a lefty. In American politics, to me, "bone" is a verb, not a noun. Maybe you could throw me one, Mr. President, just to see if I'd know what to do with it. Just fucking explain why we don't care about democracy in Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. C'mon. We all know the answer. Just come out in public, one time, and say it. Th' fuck's it gonna matter?

ITEM: Do I have to? Is there some difference between this David Weigel piece ("Michele Bachmann for president? Among Republicans, she's more popular than you think.") and a Jonah Goldberg thunker that 5 IQ points doesn't explain? Really, the implied You here being smarty-pantsed liberal-on-social-issues Slate readers with a modicum of language competence, and the explicit Popularity being what twenty-six Iowans (likely future straw-casters, of course) told Frank Luntz when he went there on FOX News' dime. Oho! No answer for that, is there Mr. Rational?

She'll push the Republican field to the Right! which, from my perspective, anyway (full disclosure: Michelle Bachman is a fucking loon, and, furthermore, an ignorant fucking loon, and nothing whatsoever can change that) means they'd all take the stage in tinfoil hats and bandoliers while walking on Muslims. She'll fill the hole left by that is Sarah Palin! Y'ever play that game as a kid where you repeat a word or phrase until it lost all semantic meaning? Try repeating "But as that Luntz focus group showed, Bachmann is taken more seriously than Palin in some circles." and see if the reverse is possible.

Someone, please, explain to Dave Weigel just what it is that someone who's been conscious of American politics for more than his seventeen years would have to have acknowledged if the rubric "Seems popular with the idjits in Iowa" were applied across the board. And, look, I ain't kiddin': if "popular among Republican voters" were the arbiter, Martin Luther King Day would now be known as "another Monday in January".

ITEM: I couldn't figure out how to single this out yesterday; today I don't care:

To fund her cause, [Michelle] Rhee announced in December that she would create a counterbalancing interest group called StudentsFirst, modeled on the NRA, for which she is hoping to raise $1 billion.

I know I've mentioned this before, but in the perpetual Fast Food advertising war we've turned public education into (on the grounds that it's all we understand anymore) Indianapolis Public Schools was the only major metropolitan district which jumped feet first into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Small Schools Initiative. IPS completely reorganized every high school in the system over the course of a single summer to participate in a program which had, at its center, an untested and frankly absurd little homily about "small learning communities" (absurd because all the suburban schools IPS is compared unfavorably to are the size of blimp hangars). The thing lasted about two years before it was quietly done away with, but in the interim not a single dime of the Foundation's money found its way to the classroom. It went for teacher training, administrative junkets, and the costs of administering the program, which was done by a local college. Michelle Rhee wants a billion dollars, not for poor children, not for poor school districts, but for Michelle Rhee. That is the "cause" she's funding. How did we get here?

A Modest Fucking Proposal. Or Two.

ANNE Applebaum writes an entire thunk piece on the President's masterful handling of the PR campaign against Libya (by, basically, doing nothing, Obama assured that the French and the Brits would be on hand to hold our coats! This is, after all, Slate) while completely ignoring the question of whether we should be there at all, unless I dozed off and missed it. Meanwhile, best-selling author and worst-ever Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld is offering free advice, John Boehner is demanding to know if we'll ask for Suddenly Evil Supplemental Funding of the Illegally Undeclared Not War (which, by the way, prompts the former newspaper known as The Washington Post to announce:

Unforeseen military operations that require expenditures such as those being made for the Libyan effort normally require supplemental appropriations since they are outside the core Pentagon budget. That is why funds for Afghanistan and Iraq are separate from the regular Defense Department budget.

And this is not some puppy with no inkling of anything that happened before 1998; it's Walter Fucking Pincus, Pulitizer Prize-winner Walter Fucking Pincus, who really might be expected to know that, prior to the Bush administration hiding the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq for as long as it could by extorting blank checks from a compliant Congress, those supplemental funds were expected to be paid back, the way your plumber is supposed to subsume his "Basic service fee" in the labor costs for that $600 project he winds up doing. He's not supposed to say, "Wait uhminnit. You didn't tell me I'd get shit on my hands." What exactly is the Navy for? Okay, fine, I agree, the real point of 330,000 naval personnel, a dozen aircraft carriers, 300 other warships, 3700 planes, and enough ordnance to put Japan back where it was two weeks ago is showing off. But it's like Tim Durham's car collection. Sure, it makes you swing like you've got a big dick, but if you need some bologna, and it's Armand's afternoon off, it's possible you might have to get in one and drive somewhere), all while Michelle Rhee is a respected educational reformer, Ron Paul is Presidential timber, Mitch Daniels is competent, and Donald Trump is interviewed.

As a topper, this is a headline in today's Indianapolis Star:


I'm not from the Apocalyptic wing of Protestantism, but I could swear "Woozy" and "Tweeter" are two of the Four Horsemen.

So, look, can't we all just get over this awful political divide and admit there's nothing left here worth saving? Let's go nuts. Let's all drop acid and go skinny dipping. Instead of Tomahawk missiles, let's just give Gaddafi his own teevee show. That goddam box is bristling with threats to the existence of humankind, and we ignore all of them with no problem.

Further, since we have established, beyond dispute--again--that Republicans will say absolutely anything, and that there is no national Democratic party, or at least none that has the efficacy of the Indiana state Democratic party, once thought extinct if not wholly illusory, I'm for handing the keys to Ron Paul, provided that every Federal position not specifically mentioned in the Constitution be eliminated before he can take the Oath. What could it hurt?

Tuesday Olio

• If you're in the market for this sort of thing, Indiana's got a Toll Road to sell you:

Mitch Daniels signs a book deal. The AP reporter asking if this maybe signals that he's running for President like he's already been doing for eighteen months hears this:

“There’s nothing I can say except ’not so'. The idea of writing a book came together well before anybody suggested to me that I was a candidate for anything. I can’t keep people from leaping to that conclusion, but they’d be wrong.”

Governor? Governor? If you'll get back on the two soapboxes it requires for you to make a meaningless public announcement, I have a couple of followups?

First: Do we really have to hear this routine every last fucking time somebody mentions The Coyness Campaign? Second: how much of you indecision is due to the fact that you began your Presidential campaign two weeks after telling Hoosiers you'd never seek another public office, and how much due to the legal maneuvers required to keep all the really big bucks rolling in to that PAC of yours?

Finally: that explanation might have worked if signing an oddly-timed book deal was all you did; coming in the midst of regular campaign weekends stretching back to January, a new right-wing-rag profile every month, and the rumors about the recalcitrance of The Lovely Cheri getting loud enough that she had to come out in public, well, no; it just raises the question of just how stupid you imagine everyone else to be. We've all heard by now you'd be the shortest President since Madison, and the only one ever to lie about his height, but we don't know if anyone's keeping a record for Most Contemptuous Candidate Since Nixon.

[Off the record, Guv: that "If anyone's built for jockeying, it's me" line was pretty good, but if you're really gonna do this you need someone on the campaign with the instincts to add, "Although now I'm probably going to hear from the PC height-police. Har har har."]

• Dear God, just shut th' fuck up:

Speaking of Daniels' scriptwriters there's David Brooks, who kills god knows how many trees to say this:

These days we are all co-religionists in the church of multilateralism. The Iraq war reminded everybody not to embark on an international effort without a broad coalition.

Yet today, as an impeccably crafted multilateral force intervenes in Libya, certain old feelings are coming back to the surface. These feelings have been buried since the 1990s, when multilateral efforts failed in Kosovo, Rwanda and Iraq. They concern the structural weaknesses that bedevil multilateral efforts. They remind us that unilateralism may be no walk in the park, but multilateralism has its own characteristic problems, which are showing up already in Libya.

For motherfucking cryin' out loud, it's already beyond despicable that the buttboys of Presidents Bush, Cheney, and Kristol, once seen Voguing for Joy (in 2001!) atop our glorious victory in Afghanistan, still have opinin' jobs. Now they get to pretend to be all thoughtful about military interventionism!

I'd like to mention this again: it's always the people who profess, if not their personal subscription to Bronze Age superstition at least their abiding respect for its omnipresent superiority to all other modes of thought, who are the first, and most blatant, tempters of a wrathful God.

• Now here's Julie Margolis with a report on the different between shitting on gold and shitting on stainless steel…

Fraudulent Republican Money Spigot Tim Durham bails out of LA lockup to head home and face securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy charges; his slow-motion white Bronco fall from grace prompts someone to give 8's Debby Knox a line musing about the depths of that fall. Or maybe she ad libbed it. At any rate, the current score:

Overpaid sounders-out of teleprompter inanities commiserating with lavish-lifestyle pig who lost the multi-million-dollar car collection he bought with other people's money: 1

Public expression of concern for the lifestyle changes forced on the 5000 people he robbed of their life savings: 0

There was a bit of fun in the event, since Durham's $1 million bail ("It should have been much higher! The old Tim Durham would have wanted it that way!") was coughed up by his ex-wife Joan SerVaas and her father, former Indianapolis City Council Kingpin, Saturday Evening Post publisher, and anti-fluoridationist crank Beurt SerVaas. It was nice to see the old gent getting some press now that the mere mention of his withered bunghole doesn't cause news hairdos to instinctively pucker.

Here's my favorite SerVaas story: his mansion is surrounded by acres of woodland. Only they're not his. It belongs to a charitable trust he established, and once a year--once a year!--for an afternoon disadvantaged children are allowed to roam free there, after which it returns to its pristine state, the way God intended, for another 364 days: free of property taxes.

Durham, by the way, is described on 8--inevitably described on 8, which has an unlimited amount of stock footage of his earlier, more piratical career since it was frequently invited to fawn over it--and did--as "embattled financier" Tim Durham. It's funny how, during that day's rundown of meth lab busts you never hear anyone referred to as an "embroiled chemist".

You Get What Other People Pay For

WHO said it?

“Given the costs of a no-fly zone, the risks that our involvement would escalate, the uncertain reception in the Arab street of any American intervention in an Arab country, the potential for civilian deaths, the unpredictability of the endgame in a civil war, the strains on our military, and other factors, I am doubtful that U.S. interests would be served by imposing a no-fly zone over Libya.”

Why, it's Nixon's Favorite Mayor and Erstwhile Senatorial Surrogate Daddy to Freshman Barack "Hussein" Obama, Indiana's own Senior Statesman, Richard Green "Aren't Eagle Scouts Supposed To Tell The Truth?" Lugar, who also demanded that the President “first seek a congressional debate on a declaration of war.”

Sure, sure, that "potential for civilian deaths" is a dead giveaway. Still, the preteritio-minded among us would probably avoid mentioning that, since "Dick" Lugar assumed that Senate seat of his, shortly after the earth cooled, the United States has intervened militarily in Iran, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Honduras, Iran, Libya, Bolivia, Iran, Libya, the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and now Libya again without Dick Lugar demanding a war declaration vote, or much of anything else in the way of debate.

Not me, though. I'd like to point out that while, yes, Dick Lugar has supported every military intervention, crypto military intervention, quasi- proxy- and private-military intervention that's come down the pike since he got his sinecure, he did manage to mutter something under his breath about Bush the Dumber's Iraq II adventure being "perhaps a skosh hasty" a couple days before he voted for it anyway, and later he fearlessly reminded someone who bothered to listen to him that he'd been overheard saying just that. That was in 2005, when the whole thing was long since revealed as a bottomless pool of cess, after which Lugar voted to fund The Surge and went back to sleep.

Sure, some may call this hypocrisy, but I find it depressingly consistent. And allow me to point out that this is the United States Senate, where rubber-stamping Defense bills and blank-check military excursions is almost as popular as golf, semi-automatic weapons, and the perineums of copy boys. Dick Lugar is one of the longest-serving Senators in United States history. If he doesn't teach the younger members how to go along, our Traditions may be lost.

Plus it's entirely possible that Lugar imagines he was in the Senate in 1941, the last time we voted on a declaration of war. Shit, sometimes I have that feeling myself.

Local "news" organizations, however, have attributed Lugar's sudden, perimortem interest in Constitutional law to the re-nomination challenge posed by Teabagging State Treasurer Richard Murdock, whose reelection campaign ads--and by the way, when your State Treasurer runs campaign ads it is either time you seriously got the money out of politics, or considered abolishing Television--touted the fact that he had managed to earn interest on Indiana's accounts. And not just that, he said this as though it had never been done before, and he had accomplished it through some arcane process he'd invented. As far as I can tell I'm the only man in Indiana who saw in this a sign of the Apocalypse.

And here's the thing: when Dick Lugar was elected to the Senate they were still making Studebakers in South Bend. If Dick Lugar polled 105% of the vote I wouldn't find it suspicious. As much as I'd love to see Lugar's final act involve sinking under the weight of the wingnut faction he's pandered to his entire Washington career--and in mid-pander, no less--it ain't gonna happen. Lugar knows it ain't gonna happen. The local pundocrats know it ain't gonna happen. Murdock knows it ain't gonna happen. It's just a good way to create a little employment, always a good idea during a Republican administration, and a chance for Lugar to show his true colors for once, which was really all that was necessary. I'm sure his old pal Barack Hussein Obama understands why he's in the subject line of every one of Lugar's press releases these days. Like the old saying goes, scratch a politician, get a good reason to go get that finger disinfected.

At Least There's That

I'M sure I don't have to tell you that there's precious little of the usual fun to be had when the public display of transparent official bullshit is being overrun by news which devastates a nation and claims thousands of lives. We have gone from idiots announcing--simply because they wanted to--that the Japanese nuclear industry survived the earthquake without a scratch, to the sorry and familiar spectacle of statements becoming inoperative before they make it to YouTube. There are easier ways to prove what liars we're surrounded by. For that matter, it's not like there's any great need at this point.

I have to admit, however, to a certain residual satisfaction that the latest, perhaps greatest, threat is proving to be lack of water in the spent fuel pool, which the Japanese apparently did not know should just have been shoved under a desk.

Well, to return to a properly serious attitude: at least we managed to get the Ronald Reagan out of harm's way in time.

Give The Money Back, Governor

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THE FEDS perp-walked Indiana Ponzi Schemer and Republican Money Spigot Tim Durham and two of his henchmen (sorry, alleged henchmen) yesterday, sixteen months after they raided Obsidian Financial, the Indianapolis-based center of his extensive car- yacht- and hooker-purchasing empire.

They were charged on twelve counts of conspiracy, securities and wire fraud each, in connection with the looting of Fair Financial, an Akron-based financial company Obsidian bought in 2002. 5000 investors lost more than $200 million. Well, "lost" is the conventional term. Y'see, they know where the money went. To Durham's collection of penis substitutes, among others.

And $200,000 of it went to the campaign of Indiana Governor Mitch "Pockets" Daniels. Asked last year by the bankruptcy trustee to return it, Daniels said, and I am not making this up, "That money's already been spent."

The Indiana Republican party, which received even more than that, said essentially the same thing. Daniels' mouthpiece was a bit more circumspect; he said that if the allegations proved true, and the money did turn out to've been stolen, then it might be proper to look around and see if any of it was left. Sometimes you wish attorneys did not speak English.

Other recipients of Durham's largess with other people's money include Indiana Speaker of the House and Self-Appointed Holy Man Brian Bosma, and Durham's former roomie, ex-Marion County Prosecutor Carl "Sleeze" Brizzi. None was available for comment.

And this isn't a question of violations of campaign finance law (though it should be). Nor is it a question of funds coming from a source which later proves "questionable". It's money which belonged to small investors in Ohio, who gained no benefit from influencing Indiana elections, not that they had any choice. It was their property, and they no longer have it. Say whatever you want about Durham's presumption of innocence before the Bar, there is no alternative explanation for what undeniably did happen, except "malevolent Trickster god".

And so there is no earthly reason why those criminal proceeds should not be returned to their rightful owners. It's a drop in the bucket, to be sure. But if these people don't deserve every last bit of recovery, then the whole fetid financial system deserves to be brought down on the heads of the politicians who've helped turn it into one big criminal enterprise.

Is that not what's right, Governor? Or what is right? Is there such a thing as ethics, or not? You've been required lately by the dictates of that Presidential campaign you're not running to try to emphasize your own Christianity (and Randian apostasy) when necessary. What's the Bible say about theft? What'd Jesus have to say about sticking to the minutiae of the law, and ignoring what is right? Tim Durham was living cartoon-large on other people's money. He gave some of that money to you. I'm sure I don't have to explain to a Big Entrepreneurial Brain such as yours that money is fungible (which is why, besides the fact that your lips were moving, that we knew you were lying when you pulled that "it's already been spent" routine). $200 grand. What was that, two days' ad purchases during your interminable 2008 telemarketing campaign? Give the money back. And apologize for not ordering your minions to do so sooner. Put this financial Ponzi scheme behind you, so you can get on with the intellectual Ponzi scheme of your Presidency.

Monday Olio

• In the mid to late 80s I had a friend, now deceased, who was some sort of engineer (he had long since retired; if I ever knew what sort I don't know now, but it wasn't "railroad") who had, as a young man, worked on the Fermi chain reaction project at the University of Chicago.

It being the 80s, a frequent topic of our conversations was the (literally) dissolving Marble Hill Nuclear Plant which I, as a young man, had worked to stop. Shortly before we met the project had been halted; throughout our acquaintance it hung in the artificially-created limbo all such expensive mistakes--the Edsel, the Palace of the Soviets, the Bush administration--inhabit at first, while the people responsible search for some respectable cover. The fact angered him, and he blamed trendy and unlettered Fear of Nuclear Power.

(Let's note, here, that while pure opposition to nuclear power was part of the general opposition to the plan in the 70s, it was supported by concerns over the environmental impact, by the utility's inflated public pronouncements of the need, and by a serious, and obvious, tap-dance around the cost that rivaled most of Bill Westmoreland's assurances about how that Vietnam thing was working out. In the end it was cost-overruns (from, roughly, $1 billion to $7) and the discovery of substandard concrete work (!), not witless tree-hugging, which halted the thing.)

You'd'a thought the concrete business would have given him pause; else you'd'a thought my habit of asking every time he brought it up whether all the nuclear waste from the reactor could be stored under a desk (it's another Reagan howler, for you kids out there) might've eventually caused him to give up, but it remained, for him, what the Kennedy assassination or the Designated Hitter is for a different species of aficionado.

I grew a little tired of being accused of nuclear Henny Pennyism even after I explained howevermanytimes that I agreed that nuclear power was safe, and that the problem was, rather, how exponentially unsafe it became, relative to almost all other human endeavors, if there was an accident. He'd reply in roentgens, with a side order of The Lousy Commies Cut Corners, Which We Would Never Ever Do. (By the way, science illiterate that I am, I've always enjoyed the "You get more radiation at the dentist's" rejoinder, as though proper dental care obligated you to be dosed at unspecified intervals with the same or lower levels at the whim of anyone with a billion dollars of someone else's money in his pocket.) And one day I suggested a compromise: build all the nuclear reactors you want, but everyone involved in the project has to live within a half-mile radius of the place. And can't run in the case of a leak.

This ain't one of those cabbie stories, with an O. Henry ending. The argument didn't faze him. But it's still mine. And I wish he were still around to explain what's really going on in Japan.

•Who: AARP

What: 15,473rd unsolicited mailing to me since I turned 45, none of which I've answered

Contents: six page come-on plus not one but two plastic pre-membership cards, pre-embossed with my name

Legend on envelope: "Please Recycle"

• I had a long discussion with Brendan over the weekend (which is to say that he wrote me a couple lines and I sent back a novel) about David Weigel, erstwhile linker to this decrepit piece of blogostate, in which he argued, with a perceptiveness and an economy I can only gawk at, that Weigel resembled the late Dean Broder, in that he was "forever excusing the whack-job stuff that comes from Republicans and forever deploring 'the left' for everything" while maintaining an air of Let's Split the Difference and Do It My (Centrist) Way. (Which, I believe he'll agree, does raise the question of how Weigel got to Slate so late.) That was in reply to my own contention that he, and others, occupy the George Eff Will Media Sinecure, after the insertion of Ronald Reagan's debate coach into This Week to balance the liberal triumvirate of David Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and Mrs. Steve Roberts. Nothing comparable has ever happened with the Left, through the Reagan, two Bush, and two centrist Democrat administrations, unless you count Alan Colmes. In thirty years now we periodically get "balancing" "conservatives" thrust up the national anus (David Brooks, Tucker Carlson, Bens Stein and Domenech), with no further justification, as though Sam Donaldson was so fucking liberal that he still reverberates, like the Big Bang. And I think the latest generation is rewarded just for making the same motions. I mean, Weigel was born in 1981. I'd like to know when he's even seen a Leftist, outside of one of our more progressive Social Studies textbooks; I'd like to know when he thinks one has ever made, or influenced, a piece of legislation enacted since he started tying his own shoe. I don't have any difficulty with the things Weigel writes. I have a difficulty with the concept of David Weigel, with his, and Mitch Daniels', apparent insistence that one can remain a Republican after experiencing the Reagan and/or Bush II years, and maintain that the rabid elements of the party are just there to make noise and vote. Either we're mired in all that crazy shit, or we ain't.

• Look, I'm tempted to reply to this groundswell of Book support with "Three words: America's Most Wanted". Instead, okay, so I'm a bit intrigued. There's this:

1) I am the most indolent and ill-tempered of men. Those are my good points.

2) As I've said before, I am an Inuit carver without the talent. Most mornings I stare at a blank TextEdit page, then chip away everything that doesn't resemble one of the voices in my head. Then I break camp and forget it.

3) Similarly, I started blogging as a lark. Now it's mostly an excuse not to masturbate so much.

4) Kordo, you, and/or a million internet monkeys can comb the nits from this site and whack me over the head with the jar you put 'em in. I promise to notice. Seriously. Just don't go overboard, and remembering who you're doing it for, do so only to avoid doing something you should be doing and don't wanna.

5) I do read comments. Really. I'm just frequently a couple days late. It's all the carving.

Forget It, Jake. It's Slate.

KEVIN, in comments yesterday:

I don't know, I really don't see much problem with Weigel's piece here. I mean, did you expect him to be super-duper insightful or point out every flaw? If you want that, go to someone who actually *does* that. Weigel simply covers the conservative movement, and fairly well and with a bit of snark. I actually enjoy most of his work and it's nice to look into how the other side works. It could be a hell of a lot worse. He's not exactly Fox News material. I don't ever remember him being dishonest or even remotely evasive. I'm just not sure what the point of this was. That Weigel isn't perfect? I dunno, I usually enjoy your work, but I found this kind of pointless.

First, lemme just mention what every experienced woodsman knows: it takes a little experience, a little time, and a small amount of effort to put a keen edge on an axe. Dulling one, on the other hand, is hard fucking work.

Anyway, I'm from Indiana. My senior Senator--he was also my grandfather's senior Senator; we like our traditions--is a guy who made his bones as "Nixon's Favorite Mayor" (of Indianapolis), where he spearheaded Republican bills, state and local, which extended the city limits out to the county line, expressly for the purpose of diluting the growing African-American vote. (This is still working. I live in the Congressional district which serves the old city; my Representative is not only an African-American, he's a Muslim. The mayor and City-County council, on the other hand, are Republicans.)

Since he's been in the Senate he's voted with the increasingly radical Right (increasing, with Nixon as a starting point!) 80 some percent of the time. Never voted against a Defense appropriation (in other words, he's a Senator). This, of course, makes him a moderate, and a distinguished voice for nuclear disarmament.

Then there's my Governor, of whom you may have heard me speak at. As Bush the Dumber's first OMB Director he inherited a Federal budget which had shown a surplus for several years, and turned it into what we have today. He then came to Indiana, put on a plaid shirt and a seed cap, and was elected Governor. He announced that the state's budget shortfall was a Huge Big-Spendin' Democrat Evil, when, in fact, to the extent it existed (on paper) it was mostly due to the high unemployment ushered in and carefully husbanded by his previous employer. That shortfall has been variously estimated, depending on how heroic he needed to sound in overcoming it, but the general "consensus" is half a billion dollars. Keep that figure in mind. Using techniques he had apparently, and unfortunately, learned after helping destroy the national economy, he single-handedly slashed our way to solvency, such that today, despite the devastating effects of the Robber Baron Recession, Indiana is one of the few states in the nation, and the only one in the upper Midwest, whose budget is in the Black. Assuming, that is, that you ignore the $2 billion it owes the Federal government in loans, interest, and penalties. Combine that with the $1 billion in Stimulus money he reluctantly accepted, and the perpetually disgruntled might note that in six years he's run a deficit of a half-billion per year. He, of course, is known as "a competent fiscal manager".

We can go on, but don't get me started on Mitch Daniels, Tax Cutter, or Mitch Daniels, Champion of Property Tax Relief. My point is simply this: I'd pretty much had my fill of happy-face Republican liars before David Weigel was born, and every day I get to take another bite.

Better Blogs Than This One routinely take on, and demolish, the moronic Right. I can't compete with Roy, or Scott C. and s.z., or the Sadlys, to name three, and why would I? I barely have the stomach to read the excerpts. And besides, I really do feel that the weaselly enablers of everyone from Dick Nixon to the Competent Republican Managers and Beyond are a special class of Evil unto themselves. It doesn't matter to me that, given the power, David Brooks or David Frum would permit gay marriage. What matters to me is that they manage to come up with reasons to apologize for the party that makes banning gay marriage a battle cry. What matters to me is that, given the power, they'd install Zombie Ronald Reagan as Emperor for Life. What matters is that they continue to voice support for Defense Spending that's beyond Insanity, and the insertion of the US military into every region that looks at us crosswise, no matter the cost in other people's lives, and call it Self-Defense; they continue to champion the accelerated accumulation of this nation's vast wealth in the hands of very few, and call it Economic Freedom.

And it would work. And Centrist Democrats, and Ezra Klein, would still get to point to them--though not as much as they point to themselves--and say, See, not all Republicans are like that!

This isn't the beginning of the Reagan "Revolution". It's 2010, or 2011, or something. It's not even the goddam aftermath of the Reagan "Revolution", when you could at least understand someone lying to protect the legacy. Anybody defending this crap today has to poke his head out from under a foot of ash to do so. I don't give a shit if they're snarky, or cutesy, or seem like they'd make nice neighbors. They're blind, and they're fucking willfully blind, and unless it's a congenital defect, they're that way for money.

Y'know, it's easy to be a snarky libertarian. It's not just tennis with the net down, it's no lines on the court, and if your opponent still manages to hit one past you you get to pretend he didn't, or he's just an old hippie, so it doesn't count. The real trick is to be a smart one. I'll let you know if I see any.

In the meantime, how fucking difficult is it to be a Republican while criticizing Sarah Palin? I guess it depends: if you're Mitch Daniels it must be really tough, because he's yet to do so; he did risk his combover long enough to suggest he might delay the culture wars a few months, after which he immediately reiterated his support for the culture wars. If you're David Brooks, or David Frum, or David Weigel, so what? All you've done is enhance your reputation with Centrists, who for some reason are easily impressed with a Republican who says something that doesn't sound like the party line, and you know the Yahoos are still going to vote for your tax cuts. I know that Weigel piece wasn't an in-depth analysis. What it was was the umpteenth fucking time I opened that Slate blog thing of his and found a sorry-assed excuse for why the really execrable element of his own party isn't really as bad as all that. And the simple response is, Yes, yes it fucking is. Forgive me, but I simply do not believe that you can look at that shit with one eye open and find any reason to say, "Y'know, maybe Newt helped himself with that really astute performance if you look at it right". Because the only angle from which it looks that way is the angle you take if you don't want any real questions to be asked about your party affiliation. It's entirely nonsensical. The ability to pretend to supplicate yourself and gain the approval of everybody else who's in on the scam is about 1800 years old now, not something Newt jes' thunk up. No adult can possibly believe that what Newt Gingrich did there was to bravely confront a problem! just as no one could actually believe that Andrew Ferguson and David Brody are busy getting us the real story by pretending to pitch softballs. The average, normal person with no agenda doesn't buy Jimmy Swaggert's tears. He knows that the whole thing's for show, and that it's only for show because the story was found out in the first place. This is as apodictically certain as anything in life. We know these things. The average person knows this. Newt would be convicted 9 times out of 10 on that testimony, and the exception would mean the jury had a delusional die-hard who couldn't be budged. How much more so does a professional journalist understand this? And yet, how often does one play it the other way?