Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Declan McCullagh reported on the efforts to give law enforcement agencies direct access to ISP traffic. At the end of the article the Cato Institute throws in the towel and admits it doesn’t give a damn about individual liberty. I try to link to right-leaning civil libertarians on my blogroll (Cato was until this morning), but they seem susceptible to putting political considerations above principles. Stuff like this makes them look like frauds.

Cato is off my blogroll, but Marcy and Glenn showed why they’re pretty well cemented onto it at the moment.

A nice note of caution from Steve Benen, but I’d just like to point out Jonathan Alter is not a liberal. He blows with the capitol winds.

You know, Barack Obama has taken steps to close Guantánamo, real ones not symbolic. Here is another one. The fact that Congressional Democrats have still not found a way to stand up to the lily livered, pabulum puking, namby pamby, pants wetting conniptions on the right hasn’t made this task any easier. You’d think it would be pretty easy to defeat the GOP’s dedicated commitment to weakness. You’d be wrong.

Eric Holder cited the previous administration to push back on Republican fearmongering. Reflect on the following: Conservatives have succeeded in making George Bush look enlightened on civil rights. The beast is loosed.

I try to avoid long excerpts, but this (via) from Corey Pein of the Santa Fe Reporter is hard to do justice to in brief. It’s a long article on Samuel Bowles, the head of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and an economist whose theories ought to turn the conventional wisdom on its head.

Zero describes the ultimate level playing field, a nonexistent land in which everyone has all the same stuff. A completely unequal society, in which one person has sole control of literally everything, would have a Gini of 100. New Mexico’s Gini score (45.7) reveals this state is more unequal than most. Utah is the most egalitarian state (with a 41.3 Gini), while the District of Columbia (53.7) is the most economically polarized, according to the most recent Census report, from 2006.

The second figure, 23, is the Gini for Sweden, the world’s most egalitarian country. Whereas most of Europe, Canada and Australia have Ginis in the low 30s, the US has over the past several decades developed inequalities usually found only in poor countries with autocratic governments.

So what? Isn’t inequality merely the price of America being No. 1?

“That’s almost certainly false,” Bowles tells SFR. “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”

[snip]

Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.

The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.

The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. - Mark Twain

James Wolcott had a sublime take on the neocons: “Feeding fiery coals and nameless corpses into their gaping jaws is an endless, inexhaustible task.”

Two longer pieces from later in the week that I’ll be getting to shortly. Jane Mayer on the KSM trial, and Marcy has a first take on it. Then Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story look at Goldman’s relationship with AIG, and Yves Smith and Tom Adams point to the missing actors: the Fed and the Treasury.

How obstruction works: “When there’s a 94-2 vote, it tells us that this was a fine nominee, who shouldn’t have had to wait nine months for an up-or-down vote.”

Pete Hoekstra: Still crazy. If he wins this November he will be the Detroit Lions of governors.

Spencer Ackerman has some details on why cutting military spending is necessary, and why it will be so hard.

Privacy and Security are Complimentary. This is the kind of thing civil libertarians could really make hay with. And liberals could really get some traction with this (via): “If we want more globalization, we must either give up some democracy or some national sovereignty. Pretending that we can have all three simultaneously leaves us in an unstable no-man’s land.”

Finally, LarryE pushes back on Greenwald (emph. in orig.):

We can and we damn well should find that corporations do not have rights of free speech even as we may well want to (and should) say they have rights of due process. If the concern is about the effect of limitations on advocacy groups, we can treat non-profits differently from for-profits (including saying that for-profits can’t set up non-profits to evade the restrictions). The point is, we can choose.

To suggest otherwise, to suggest corporations, by definition, either must have all the Constitutional rights of people or they can have no rights at all, that our only choice is between allowing huge corporations to spend untold amounts of cash in support of political candidates and having the ACLU, labor unions, and the Ma-and-Pa store down the street be at constant risk of being crushed under the heel of jack-booted FBI agents, Is. Utter. Pathetic. Nonsense.

I forgot to link to this last week. Your Sunday funny.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Matt Yglesias: “I congratulate Shelby on fully exploring the logic of the modern United States Senate.”

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

One of my favorite blog posts is L33T Justice by Kung Fu Monkey. Aside from being very funny and concisely getting at an important truth, it seems to represent a tipping point - one that mirrored my own. Prior to that things had been bad; we were lied into a war of aggression that was being planned well before 9/11, intelligence agencies engaged in 4th Amendment-destroying activities that major journalists appeared committed to reporting incorrectly, and of course we had already set up our modern gulags.

It seemed to me the country was frightened enough to disregard Benjamin Franklin’s warning for a while. As a fallback explanation I was prepared to believe we were simply a more bellicose and primitive culture than I had previously thought. By 2005 there was plenty of evidence that America had decided to make all its decisions with the lizard brain. I hadn’t made my peace with this prospect, mind you, but seeing your country willingly hand the reins to those committed to fearmongering and militarism has a way of blunting the sense of righteous indignation.

That is why when the Democrats took back Congress in 2006 relatively minor episodes like the Libby commutation and Gonzales’ deliberately obtuse testimony were more infuriating than the horrors that came before. There was finally a sense that yes, as a country we went crazy for a while but we were finally getting our bearings. It was happening too late for too many, but it was happening. What the summer of Scooter and Fredo showed was: No, it is not and it will not. Revelations began to trickle out, the first verdicts were finally coming in, and it became unmistakably clear that some of our leaders were criminals who were audacious enough to defiantly live publicly guilty lives. Among the rest of our leadership, there was a critical mass that was too cowardly to do anything about it.

That has been the situation for several years now. For the foreseeable future our government appears content to simply ignore the great crimes plainly in its midst. There is no sense of urgency, significant new developments are not acknowledged, and the plan seems to be to resolutely ignore all of it lest some turbulence disturb the ruling class. For those of us who care deeply about these issues it seems the best reaction now is not angry demands for real investigations and real consequences (outrage is difficult to sustain), but placid, ongoing documentation of the atrocities in order to have as complete a record as possible.

All of this is my somewhat awkward attempt to explain my reaction to Scott Horton’s report on detainee deaths at Guantánamo. It alleges war crimes that go all the way to the White House, it has been out for several weeks now, and continues to be developed. Yet there are no investigations, no hearings, nothing. We just postulate that our leaders did it, refuse to talk or do anything about it, and move on.

The problem is that such a corrosively cynical approach to governance causes foundational damage, and typically it is not recognized until the whole thing collapses. No one thinks anything will come of it, but nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse either. In fact, a vignette from that period comes to mind; I recall seeing video of this as reported by the New York Times:

The next day [Romanian leader Nicolae] Ceausescu himself in effect brought the revolt to Bucharest, when a crowd of 100,000 he had summoned to denounce the Timisoara revolt suddenly took up a chant of ”Timisoara! Timisoara!” The last televised image was Ceausescu’s shocked face shouting ”Be quiet!” That moment, all agree, finished him.

The investigations on Iraq in Britain and Guantánamo torture in Spain seem remote and of little interest right now. The erosion of credibility and good will that they symbolize is easy to ignore as well. In fact, the whole thing is. If anything comes of all that, however, we will be oblivious to it - carrying on as if nothing will change until the moment we, like a clueless dictator, look on uncomprehendingly as our world turns upside down.

That probably will not come to pass, though. The odds favor stagnation. I used to think it was a matter of getting the word out, making enough noise, keeping the issues alive and waiting for our political and media elite to finally catch on. Horton’s reporting, and the radio silence greeting it, puts the lie to that. We can - and must - continue to catalog these evils, but out of respect for the historical record and not any expectation that those responsible will be called to account. It’s L33T Justice, baby, and everyone gets a pass.

• The Impolitic
• Prairie Weather
• at-Largely
• 3hive (music)
• Menopausal Stoners
• Secrecy News

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Bruce Schneier writes, “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts.” The bargaining away of our civil liberties in the name of keeping us Safe From Terrorists and Protecting The Children needs to be looked at in light of news like this. Leaders have been attempting (successfully) to exploit our fears in order to seize more power for themselves. It is not surprising, nor are unintended consequences like the Chinese hack of Google. Could we all be grownups and acknowledge this deal with the devil?

Fearmongering is still very popular though. Senators Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, Robert Bennett and John Ensign are still strongly in favor of it. According to ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero they “are essentially calling for Obama administration officials to discard the Constitution when a terrorist suspect is apprehended – as if the Constitution should be applied on a case by case basis.” It truly boggles my mind that our lawmakers have such contempt for due process. I guess for some of them the body can’t turn into the Roman Senate fast enough.

A tissue of lies. Surprised? It served its purpose though - it got us to embrace torture as official policy. The actual truth is a historical footnote, a bit of trivia with no importance or impact.

Speaking of the utility of relentless delaying, my newborn son will be a grandfather before we find out what happened to David Kelly.

Obama administration not terribly fired up about transparency:

Meredith Fuchs, an open-records expert and general counsel at the nonprofit National Security Archive, said she has seen improvement in the amount of material some agencies provide. But in cases her group has taken to court, “it’s more of a mixed bag” with the Obama administration. She suspects that the administration reflexively defends decisions made years earlier to withhold records.

I don’t like this. It’s not illegal or even strictly unethical, but it’s got a bad whiff about it.

Tim Geithner claims that while he was head of the New York Federal Reserve he was unaware it wanted to smother details about the AIG bailout, and the efforts to hide them were treated “like a request to protect matters of national security.” Either he is lying or he is not capable of heading any large agency.

This Week In Speculation:

• The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility may be releasing its long awaited report soon, and it looks like it might be a whitewash.
• The KSM trial might not be held in New York City after all.

  “The administration is in a tricky political and legal position,” Julie Menin, a lawyer who is chairwoman of the 50-member Community Board 1 that represents Lower Manhattan, including the federal courthouse and ground zero, said of President Obama and his Justice Department. “But it means shutting down our financial district. It could cost $1 billion. It’s absolutely crazy.”

  9/11 shut down the financial district too, and cost considerably more than $1 billion. Trials should be held near the scene of the crime, even if it means inconveniencing the most important and irreplaceable people in world history. Notice too the absence of an alternative site mentioned. The Post has an idea though!
• If Jonathan Turley and Glenn Greenwald are OK with the Citizens United ruling then I can’t get too worked up about it. Who knows what the long term implications will be, but it already seems like there’s plenty of soft money in national politics as it is - and media corporations were already exempt anyway. I would like to note, though, that once again the barnstorming umpires went way out of their way to find a game to call.

I wonder if anyone in Washington is paying attention to this:

UN human rights experts warned on Wednesday that “widespread and systematic” secret detention of terror suspects could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.

The American government has a list of its citizens it wishes to murder. That’s probably not a great moment in human rights either.

Hmmmm. This is not a prank, folks. It’s a crime.

Jamison Foser:

I’ve always bristled at the Post’s insistence* that its news and opinion sections are “wholly separate and independent operations.” They aren’t, really. They can’t be truly separate as long as they report to the same people — and, ultimately, they do.

[snip]

* And that of other newspapers, though the Post seems to make this claim more often than most, perhaps owing to the generally poor quality of its opinion pages.

CARTER WATCH, PARTS I AND II: I’ve been seeing rumblings lately from conservatives about Democrats using the tired old playbook of running against George W. Bush. But Republicans are celebrating thirty years of running against Jimmy Carter (he must have been the most powerful president ever!), so I’ve decided to note their ongoing obsession with the man as a reality check for their “don’t blame W!” theme. This, by the way, is not an exhaustive catalog; it starts with new developments and will not dig back for previous ones. That said, I would like to note how the right attempted to blame the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act for the economic meltdown, which is a truly superb bit of historical revisionism.

The first two installments of the Carter Watch come from Mona Charen and Mike Pence.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE watertiger:

It’s not every ophidian, carpetbagging politician who can apologize to a group of potential constituents by insulting them. Besides, I’m sure some of your best friends are Jews bankers New Yorkers.

In the short time since Ford decided to take a territorial piss on this political tree (as a proxy for his BFFs on Wall Street), we New Yorkers have come to delight in the special kind of tone deaf gaffe-a-liciousness from the Joe Lieberman wannabe from Tennessee.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

NOTE: Shortly before I finished this post Ben Bernanke was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Fed chairman. I’m posting this anyway because I think it was a terrible decision that will only look worse with time, and maybe if we are lucky he will not serve his full term - in which case the post is relevant again. Stranger things have happened; you never know.

In December I made the case for Kansas City Fed chairman Thomas Hoenig to succeed Ben Bernanke. It was a mostly speculative post based on Bernanke’s less-than-inspiring Senate appearance and scattered rumblings among activists. Scott Brown’s surprising victory last week appears to have been a “come to Jesus” moment for Washington Democrats, though, and now the astounding unpopularity of Wall Street has made everyone a populist.

The Obama administration is issuing cool assurances that Bernanke will sail through, but opposition has grown. If nothing else, rejecting him would imply a small measure of responsibility. During his tenure he presided over the popping of a huge speculative bubble, the economy went into a tailspin, and conditions remain terrible. People want a scalp, and they want a senior one - not some low level schmuck who was left holding the bag and didn’t have the savvy to cover his tracks.

The tepid support for Bernanke outlined in my previous post has remained lukewarm. Paul Krugman favors it “only because rejecting him could make the Fed’s policies worse,” and after laying out his case concludes it is “not a ringing endorsement, but it’s the best I can do.” He then writes the following, which sums up the corrosive and unworkable conventional wisdom that seems to have set in on even liberal economists: “If Mr. Bernanke is reappointed, he and his colleagues need to realize that what they consider a policy success is actually a policy failure.”

It is hard to imagine a more depressing formulation. He calls for reappointment and then admonishes Bernanke to change course, which gets it exactly backwards. The onus is on Bernanke to admit his policy was a disaster prior to being reappointed. It is pure madness to send the architect back to his post based on the hope, supported by no evidence whatsoever, that he will change course. If Bernanke had gone before Congress, frankly admitted his failure, and outlined what aggressive steps he was planning to correct them if he were fortunate enough to win another term, that might be a different matter. (Might.)

He did no such thing though, and the sensible conclusion is that firmly intends more of the same. We would be better off with not just another nominee but one with another economic philosophy entirely. (The soundness of doing so was further endorsed in the form of egregious dumbass Tim Geithner’s dire warnings against it.)

For those who care about this issue, it is extremely important to get some other names out there immediately. MIT professor of economics Simon Johnson recommends Hoenig. In his Bernanke piece Krugman mentions San Francisco Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen, as has the economics blog Calculated Risk. She may well be a fine candidate, even better than Hoenig, but I heard her name floated just this week. Since I have not had time to familiarize myself with her I will restate the case for Hoenig.

First, the caveats. Hoenig, like Bernanke, privileges inflation over employment. There is no reason to think he would substantially depart from the current fantastically exaggerated fear of it. He could regard the current double digit unemployment rate as undesirable but inevitable. Moreover, he sees inflation in an undifferentiated way; in a 2005 speech on it he noted “businesses may face higher labor cost pressures, and depending on competitive conditions, these costs may increasingly be passed on to consumers.” That such higher labor cost pressures translate into a better standard of living for the labor in question, a situation once known as “The American Dream,” does not seem to matter.

That same speech utters not a word about real estate. It would have been nice to know he was at least aware of that massive time bomb as it ticked towards detonation.

These drawbacks may actually make him a better nominee, though. Last year’s speech “Too Big Has Failed” outlines an attitude towards large financial institutions that twenty years ago would have been unexciting, boilerplate economic conservatism, but now has a revolutionary ring to it. That may be about as sharp a break as the capitol can handle. Maybe it would be more acceptable if accompanied with a dose of familiar, soothing DC orthodoxy and washed down with a cup of Wrong On Housing Too.

There are probably many nominees who would serve the country well. I first became acquainted with Hoenig because of “Too Big Has Failed” and have tried to learn more about him since. People whose judgment I greatly respect like Yellen as a first choice, so she would probably be great too. There does not need to be unanimity on a successor, just that it not be another victim of cognitive regulatory capture.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I keep waiting for some official word on Scott Horton’s blockbuster exposé on detainee deaths in Guantánamo. In the mean time here are two observations on media coverage of this bombshell story. First, Yves Smith:

Anyone familiar with the cognitive bias literature will recognize that the differences in the two renditions (AP US versus AP Canada) make a great deal of difference in their plausibility. Starting as the first one does, with a question, suggests that either rendition might be equally valid. But accounts that provide detail are consistently found in laboratory studies to be seen as more likely than those that are sketchy (the conjunction fallacy, for instance). The limited detail of the first version makes it seem less plausible, while the second (which includes a key element, that the purported “black site” was denied to exist) would be much more likely to be accepted as true.

The premise of both Thiessen and Yoo is that what was authorized was not torture, and that Gitmo is the best of the best facilities for the worst of the worst prisoners. But the possible deaths-by-torture in Gitmo - which explode their lies and spin - do not rate even a mention.

The Office of Legal Counsel is still being used to retroactively legalize criminality. There’s been a decent amount of pushback on the left from people who think some liberals are wrongly and simplistically claiming there is no difference between Bush and Obama. There definitely is a difference (see last item for one particularly substantial one), but this is one of those cases where it really is true.

So the FBI was “simply persuading” telecom companies with a “stream of urgent requests” for their records. The obvious threat behind such requests makes a mockery of the word persuasion, especially considering “Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.” When the government approaches a company and tells it that it is their patriotic duty to break the law in order to prevent the wholesale slaughter of citizens, there is no more persuasion involved than there is for the casting couch. It is intimidation in an unequal power relationship; it is coercion.

Happily, the Post notes the FBI is “confident that the safeguards enacted in 2007 have ended the problems.” Once more, with feeling: It’s time to look forward and not criminalize political differences. Nothing to see here, everything’s been cleaned up, move along folks. Oh, and one more thing: “Among those whose phone records were searched improperly were journalists for The Washington Post and the New York Times, according to interviews with government officials.” Think the Post would have reported it the same way if it was done to some poor anonymous schmuck in the middle of nowhere? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it got the coverage it did, but I suspect the subtext of the article isn’t so much “look at what they did!” as “look at what they did TO US!”

Glenn had a great post about the selective outrage towards government spying on citizens. Then later in the week Hillary Clinton gave a speech that included the following criticism:

In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir - who is thankfully no longer in prison - is with us today. So while it is clear that the spread of these technologies is transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and welfare of much of the world’s population.

The free flow of information is an universal value treasured in all nations, including China, but the US government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.

China’s real stake in the “free flow of information” is evident in its refusal to be victimized by information imperialism.

If the government secretly and illegally spies on you, you have standing to sue. But because it is secret, you are not aware you have standing. If you want to find out if you have standing by filing a lawsuit, the suit will be thrown out because you cannot prove you have standing. A nice, tight circle.

Ron Paul had some interesting thoughts on our military and intelligence services. His willingness to take on entrenched powers gets him a lot of good will in my book.

Cynthia Kouril reported on “a direct attack on the prosecutorial independence of DOJ and a direct attack” on Attorney General Eric Holder. The real news is that this attack came from the legislative branch and not the executive. If Holder gets kneecapped on the KSM trial I hope he considers “resign in protest” one of his options.

Weeks before Tuesday’s election debacle Brent Budowsky told (via) Democrats to get their act together. His message is even truer now. Nate Silver brilliantly diagnosed leadership as “nonchalant in good times and panicky in bad ones.”

If I’m ever thinking of picking a fight with Marcy Wheeler I hope someone who loves and cares about me talks me out of it.

On Thursday Barack Obama fired Donald Rumsfeld. Yves Smith’s take: “Obama Plans to Talk Even Tougher”

Last week I forgot to excerpt this from page 156 of Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis: “The Global Posture Review is a purely military analysis of where the United States might like to have military bases in light of possible future wars, including those we might start.”

Lots of leftover links from the election in Massachusetts. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer:

Nobody in this House believes this next election is a slam dunk, which means they’re out raising money, they’re out in their districts - working hard, communicating on jobs and getting the economy moving.

If Scott Brown wins tonight he’ll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they’ve got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street.

It is grossly over budget and causing the state severe fiscal problems. In short, Massachusetts voters know the shortcomings of government health care.

The White House just couldn’t seem to “get” that the American people could see that they were constantly coming down on the side of the same bankers who were foreclosing people’s homes and shutting off the credit to small business owners, when they should have been helping the people whose homes were being foreclosed and the small businesses that were trying to stay afloat because of the recklessness of banks that were now starving them.

The only we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates. Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country - that’s not going to work too well. [How have the left elements imposed their will? Seriously. Name one thing.]

If Democrats can’t run on their record of passing legislation that makes positive change in people’s lives, they will suffer terribly in 2010.

Hoyer and other Democrats point out that they passed a jobs bill late in the year, pushed through a sweeping energy bill — with a controversial cap-and-trade measure — and helped pass a crackdown on credit card companies.

Spencer Ackerman animates a legislator:

DEMOCRATIC SENATOR
Are you motherfucking kidding me? The issue isn’t Guantanamo Bay! It’s indefinite detention without trial! It’s torture! It’s the betrayal of the Constitution! You could put the fucking facility in the middle of a Thai whorehouse and as long as it doesn’t provide its inmates with access to the courts I’ll oppose it! You could have Reed Richards of the motherfucking Fantastic Four open a portal to the Negative Zone, put the thing there and I’ll oppose it!

Goldman under investigation for its securities dealings. Stay tuned.

I will leave you on an extremely positive note: The Iraq war is quietly winding down. Full credit to Obama for that.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Most of the blame in Martha Coakley’s defeat Tuesday is on her. She had a series of blunders, some of which were such a ridiculous caricature of liberal elitism it makes me wonder if she was a GOP double agent. So: That point, first and most importantly. She ran a terrible campaign and gets the lion’s share of the blame.

There were also undoubtedly statewide issues that we will only know about anecdotally, if at all. For example, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers wrote of Bay State Democrats: “Twice they have fiddled with the election laws in the past five years…to control the process.” That kind of screwing around brings to mind Tom DeLay’s escapades in Texas, and to everyone but partisans such scheming looks plainly corrupt. Another factor may have been gender; so far women are zero for eight in gubernatorial and Senate races there. Presumably it is not a coincidence.

Still, it would be crazy for Democrats to not see some larger warning signs. For one, Barack Obama needs to freshen up his stump speech. He now has a track record, and the populist rhetoric of the 2008 campaign trail is not wearing too well. I listen to his speeches now and contradictory hyperlinks pop into my head. For example:

You know, we always knew that change was going to be hard…there were going to be some who stood on the sidelines, who were protectors of the big banks, and protectors of the big insurance companies, protectors of the big drug companies, who would say, you know what, we can take advantage of this crisis — because it’s going to be so bad, even though we helped initiate these policies, there’s going to be a sleight of hand here because we’re going to let Democrats take responsibility.

Does he not realize that people will increasingly call bullshit on such obvious discrepancies? Is he not aware it will discourage his base, because that is precisely the audience paying the closest attention? Coakley ran a lousy campaign. Know what helps make for a good one? A record to run on, a way to appeal to people’s aspirations and a reasonable expectation that what is being promised on the hustings will be delivered. Coakley was in no position to do any of that.

After his election Obama had energetic supporters champing at the bit to have their idealism harnessed; he continually stoked it during the campaign and they truly were fired up and ready to go. Since then he has made back room deals with the very industries that have been systematically looting the middle class. On health care why was he not constantly banging the drum for the reforms he considered most important, giving speeches in the backyards of recalcitrant lawmakers, urging supporters to contact their representatives, and generally exhorting his base to be passionately involved? It is the most baffling dissipation of enthusiasm since George Bush told the nation to go shopping in the wake of 9/11.

That is where the longer term trends are risky for the Democrats. In the aftermath of the attacks Republicans failed to direct the enormous public willingness to sacrifice, appealed constantly to their fears, and generally discouraged people from being engaged. Is it any wonder the country turned to new leadership a few years later?

Core supporters also became dissatisfied as basic principles of fiscal responsibility, level headed foreign policy and respect for individual liberty were casually disregarded. Then there is perhaps the biggest fraud of all, the promise - promoted loudly for decades - that lower taxes would unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit, lead to economic expansion and still provide adequate federal revenue. Instead it led to the worst decade since the Depression.

To the extent that the Tea Party movement is about pure antipathy towards government or unhappiness with being out of power, it is nothing more than garden variety conservative bellyaching. A good part of it is deep dissatisfaction with having core principles routinely betrayed over a period of years, though, and that should worry Democrats.

Whether it was a failure to stop the Iraq war on retaking Congress, the refusal to act as a check on the Bush administration, the capitulation on FISA, or more recently the inability to even contemplate reform that does not look like a giveaway to favored lobbies, liberals have a damning bill of particulars against their ostensible allies that has been stacking up for years. Martha Coakley has nothing to do with that. The revolt now in full bloom on the right started with pent up frustration and burst on the national scene with a thumping. It is not hard to see the Democrats of early 2010 in a similar danger to the Republicans of early 2006.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Among the problems with torturing detainees is that your choices afterwards are 1) imprison them until they die 2) kill them 3) release them. If you can’t do #1 and you won’t do #2, #3 implies that all the horrific details will be aired in public.

It’s possible that John Yoo would only consent to be interviewed by a comedy show host, and also possible he knew he would get the better of it as well. Still, it’s a pretty scathing indictment of the DC press corps that Jon Stewart is the only media figure to take a real interest in his book. You’d think the Sunday shows would be tailor made for a thorough discussion of this sort of thing. I kid, of course. We know they just want to keep walking.

On a related note, Glenn Greenwald on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s new book, Game Change:

Washington’s journalist class is poring over, studying, and analyzing its contents as though it is the Dead Sea Scrolls, lavishing praise on its authors as though they committed some profound act of journalism, and displaying a level of genuine fascination and giddiness that stands in stark contrast to the boredom and above-it-all indifference they project in those rare instances when forced to talk about anything that actually matters.

If a news organization makes the same mistake repeatedly, eventually it becomes obvious that the problem is not sloppy reporting or inattentive editing, but an institutional commitment to a particular falsehood.

Bloomberg continues to try to get some details on the bailouts:

The ruling by the three-judge appeals panel may not come for months and is unlikely to be the final word. The loser may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court, said Anne Weismann, chief lawyer for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington advocacy group that supports Bloomberg’s lawsuit.

[snip]

“Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public’s right to learn basic information,” Thomas Golden, an attorney for the company with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, wrote in court filings.

Col. Morris D. Davis wrote an article critical of the Guantánamo kangaroo courts and was fired. Now he is suing. Here’s hoping for lots of unintended consequences. Oh and by the way, it turns out civilian courts are better (via) than the tribunals. Not that being right has to do with anything in Washington.

Afghans to Take Over Bagram Prison. Really. The devil is in the details, but on the face of it this looks like a very positive development. Oh, and thanks to the ACLU we also found out who exactly is in there. (The ACLU also got some more documents on the torture tapes destruction, which I’m sure will be the source of additional news as they dig through it. The ACLU is a national treasure.)

Several Iraqis have claimed they were lied to in order to get them to sign settlements for the Blackwater massacre. Given Blackwater’s track record it’s hard to see how this goes well for them if the agreements are tossed.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission chairman Phil Angelides noted that a lot of the worthless paper being peddled on Wall Street went to those “representing pension funds who have the life savings of police officers, teachers.” That got the attention of both Robert Johnson (via) and Cynthia Kouril, who wrote:

This is big stuff, people. It’s admissions like this that set up a climate for regulatory reform. I cannot even begin to guess how much backroom work it took to force Goldman into the corner where they were forced to admit this.

You don’t ask a question like that, and get an answer like that, unless both sides already know that the witness is going to go for his own lungs. Here’s a big CAK shout out to the commissioners and staffers who were able to force that break in the case.

It isn’t just terrorist suspects who get brutalized in American custody.

You know, if you pass something you call fundamental reform, and you really believe it is, there is no need to sell it once it passes. You just need to step back and let people start enjoying the benefits. If you need to crank up a propaganda campaign to convince everyone it’s awesome, it’s probably something less than it’s been cracked up to be.

Paul Krugman had a problem with Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Responded. Krugman minimizes it by saying there was “insufficient care about disclosure,” but that’s a big deal. A very big deal. I hate to see him be so dismissive of it. Also, he really goes off the rails with this:

by claiming that there’s a huge scandal when nothing worse happened than insufficient care about disclosure, Greenwald and the people at FDL are actually reducing our ability to call foul on real corruption. After all, if everything is a scandal, nothing is a scandal.

Speaking of FDL, there seems to be two separate issues with their activism. One is their tendency to accuse anyone who compromises on any issue they consider crucial of selling out. The assigning of bad faith by some of the FDL writers is over the line, and to the extent they are doing so it brings down the discourse and ought to stop. But a good part of the critique has to do with whether or not the reform package is good policy. To the extent that they are arguing (with numbers) that the bill will force people to buy lousy insurance they will get no benefit from, it’s fair game. I’m glad they are agitating in that direction - it just might save the Democrats from themselves.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Jane Hamsher:

The fact is, the people who did the work to uncover the Gruber story were liberals. Neither Fox News nor the right-wing noise machine did that kind of in-depth accountability reporting on George Bush. Stealing our research now and presenting it as their own obscures the fact that there is a profound difference in the way that many liberals respond when “our team” is in office, as compared to the slavish propaganda that Fox offered up in honor of George Bush.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Here is a one paragraph summary of our fiscal policy since 1980: A Republican president cheerfully dismisses probity when lobbying for increased defense spending and tax cuts, with the memorably irresponsible quip “I believe the deficit is big enough to take care of itself.” Then a Democrat comes in and suddenly professional concern trolls are out in force, urging cuts in social programs in the name of responsible budgeting. The Democrat turns the deficit into a surplus, which his prodigal successor dissipates in an orgy of further tax cutting and military spending. The right kicks the concern trolls to the curb, and the sainted GOP predecessor is invoked to justify the recklessness. A Democrat then wins the presidency and balancing the budget is all the rage again.

An absolutely superb specimen of furrowed-brow harrumphing over the parlous state of our nation’s finances was written by Niall Ferguson last month. He hits all the notes with perfect pitch, from his dripping contempt for Keynesians to his dark intimations of yellow peril in the form of crafty Chinamen slyly snapping up America’s vital assets (cf.) to his imperious declaration that “Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget.” And since everyone knows tax hikes are off the table, that leaves entitlement cuts.

Where Ferguson really shines is in his deceptive characterization of military spending. In an article about budgets, notice how he flips the spotlight over to boots on the ground in order to downplay the impact of the defense budget:

We are, it seems, having the fiscal policy of a world war, without the war. Yes, I know, the United States is at war in Afghanistan and still has a significant contingent of troops in Iraq. But these are trivial conflicts compared with the world wars, and their contribution to the gathering fiscal storm has in fact been quite modest (little more than 1.8 percent of GDP, even if you accept the estimated cumulative cost of $3.2 trillion published by Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz in February 2008).

Also note how he conflates the cost of the wars with the defense budget. Look at it in the pie chart here, or run the numbers yourself from the CBO if you are a Wikipedia skeptic. It may even be a substantially larger share than that. What we spend on the military is absolutely enormous, and anyone who refuses to put large cuts to the Pentagon budget on the table is not a good faith actor in the budget balancing discussion.

The Fergusons of the world would also give themselves a little more credibility if they demanded auditing and transparency for our intelligence services. It is reflexively accepted that all monies allocated there are vital investments in the War on Terror, but the details that become public never seem to be terribly well spent. Consider the CIA’s Abu Omar kidnapping fiasco, and this vignette from page 133 of Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis:

The first operative arrived in Milan on December 7, 2002, and stayed at the Milan Westin Palace, according to court documents. The others started arriving in early January and by February 1, 2003, virtually all of them were there. They did not hide in safe houses or private homes but checked into four-star palaces like the Milan Hilton ($340 a night) and the Star Hotel ($325 a night). Seven of the Americans stayed at the Principe di Savoia - billed as “one of the world’s most luxuriously appointed hotels” - for between three days and three weeks at nightly rates of $450. Eating lavishly at gourmet restaurants, they ran up bills of at least $144,984, which they paid for with Diners Club cards that matched their fake passports, which is how police obtained their photos if not their real names. After the delivery of Abu Omar to Aviano, four of the Americans checked into luxury hotels in Venice and others took vacations along the picturesque Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany, all still on the government tab.

Keep in mind we only know about this because a foreign country held a trial for the agents involved and the details came out in the course of the investigation. Is it reasonable to think our money is in the hands of capable stewards everywhere but Italy? We have likely been funding opulent vacations all over the world. The culture of impunity that comes with the complete absence of oversight and accountability virtually guarantees it. Would that the fiscal scolds were as interested in cracking down on that as they are in degrading the medical care of the elderly.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I listen to a technology podcast from CNET called Buzz Out Loud, and on Friday’s show they reported that one Bob Burbach won the Consumer Electronics Association’s “Innovation Movement’s Apps for Innovation” with a site called GovPulse, which “give[s] you a way to browse the [Federal] Register (from 1994 on) and use filters to decide what is important to you. And then act on it.” I first became acquainted with the Federal Register on pp. 68-9 of Barton Gellman’s Angler:

The vice president had an instinct for power and unrivaled knowledge of its junctions around the government. One of his first assignments to his staff was a fast-track review of Bill Clinton’s departing executive orders. That would have been a routine step, sooner or later, but Cheney had the savvy to call a halt to the operations at the Government Printing Office. Not many aides would have thought of it. Cheney knew regulations have no legal force until they are published in the Federal Register. Some of Clinton’s orders, signed in his closing hours as president, never made it.

A couple leftover links from Thursday’s OLC post. Here is the formal withdrawal of the torture memos, and here is a group of OLC memos the ACLU pried loose from the Justice Department.

Here are parts one, two and three of Jeff Kaye’s argument that using the Army Field Manual for interrogation is basically a codification of torture as long as the odious Appendix M stays in it.

Helen Thomas is a tough old broad, and I’m glad she’s on the beat.

The DC Court of Appeals gave away more power to the president. It seems as though a significant part of the judiciary wants to rule itself out of existence. What good are checks and balances when they are entrusted to those with an authoritarian streak?

(This is off my usual beat so maybe I’m way off base.) The recent buyer’s remorse among the Republican establishment for Sarah Palin and Michael Steele seem to be byproducts of the GOP’s inability or unwillingness to honestly grapple with the prospect of real leadership within the party for women or minorities. They roll along with white men running the show, occasionally become acutely aware of the how bad that looks, and in a spasm of diversity optics yank someone manifestly unqualified into a highly visible but largely ceremonial post. When the inevitable failure occurs it’s back to the white men. Say what you will about the heat of the 2008 Democratic primary, you had a woman and a black man battling it out through the party apparatus for leadership. In the Republicans’ “wait your turn” model of succession, does anyone really think it will ever be Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s turn? Can anyone blame ambitious women and minorities for looking at the situation and concluding that the only way to have a shot at really becoming numero uno is to amp up the crazy and work outside the system?

Now, the Palins, Steeles and Bachmanns of the GOP have made their own beds and have to sleep in it; either out of native lunacy or cynical calculation they’ve decided to make that their calling card. But I do have a certain latent sympathy for their circumstances of being where they are now, knowing where they want to go, and realizing that the only way to get there is to be a cartoon.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Roger Lowenstein:

Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage - forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. Is this irresponsible?

Businesses - in particular Wall Street banks - make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral - perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

According to its web site, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “provides authoritative legal advice to the President and all the Executive Branch agencies.” Its home page gives a brief, readable description of its functions, which basically center around guiding the executive branch and its agencies in all things legal. Its opinions are considered binding within those spheres, though that has never been established by the courts.

It has been described as the president’s law firm, and its recent work in that expansive capacity has been of questionable value. Here is Jane Mayer’s take on it as we lurched into the War on Terror:

The Bush Administration’s corruption of language had a curiously corrupting impact on the public debate, as well. It was all but impossible to have a national conversation about torture if top administration officials denied they were engaged in it. Without access to the details of the CIA’s secret program, neither Congress nor the public had the means to argue otherwise. The Bush Administration could have openly asked Congress for greater authority, or engaged the public in a discussion of the morality and efficacy of “enhanced” interrogations, but instead it chose a path of tricky legalisms adopted in classified memos.

Those memos and legalism came from the OLC. Here is how Scott Horton described the outlook of then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former OLC head Jack Goldsmith:

The view taken by Mukasey and Goldsmith is that OLC memos are cloaked with a sort of talismanic significance. It doesn’t matter how stupid or incompetent they are, or that they have turned the OLC into an international butt of ridicule. Government officials are entitled to rely on them absolutely, and they cannot be prosecuted to the extent that they do.

Taken together, these points justify getting rid of the OLC entirely. Its most visible work in recent years has been to provide the framework for the culture of impunity that has poisoned the White House. Its memos are called “golden shields” precisely because the issuing of them has come to be seen as unconditional justification for the activities they cover. The memos are infallible in all but name, a characteristic more associated with religion than civil government for good reason. The idea that OLC lawyers’ work carries complete authority is odious. They might do fabulous work outside of public view but it would take an awful lot of great lawyering to offset that.

President Obama has a curious relationship with the office as well. He nominated Dawn Johnsen to head the office, allowed her to languish for almost a year, then let her nomination die a quiet death. Now there are rumors she will be re-nominated this year. The OLC is in something like a zombie state at the moment, working on a semi-permanent basis without leadership.

If the White House is content to let it cruise along on auto pilot indefinitely, what value does it have? Couldn’t an enterprising law student crank out the legal boilerplate required for executive orders? Or is the president content to let it hibernate, only rousing it if he needs prospective immunity for some dubious enterprise? In a way, his willingness to let is shamble along in this state is even more cynical than his predecessor’s wrenching of if to his dark purposes.

Presidents need legal advice, and they already have it in the form of the Office of the White House Counsel (OWHC). (Lest you think I am being radical, Bruce Ackerman thinks we should get rid of that office as well as the OLC.) Let the OWHC take on the functions of the OLC, only without the omniscience. If an agency like the EPA needs a clarification on something, let it retain counsel or consult its in-house lawyers if it has them. Transferring control of agencies from the executive to the legislative branch might be worth considering too, but that’s another post.

Having groups (the OLC) provide advice to entities (the executive branch) obscures, probably by design, lines of authority and responsibility. The White House doesn’t need legal representation; the White House is a building. It is fine to informally refer that way to the president, or the president’s policies, in news reporting and commentary. As a legal matter, though, it is an absurdity - and asking people to refrain from such shorthand is more than a semantic game or pedantry. It goes directly to our intuitive understanding of how our government works. Individual leaders make decisions, individual lawyers provide counsel. There may be teams of people working on policy or vetting proposed language, but there is ultimately one person signing off. The OLC by its very nature helps to cloud those distinctions. For that reason alone it is worth doing a cost/benefit analysis on it.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The TSA subpoenaed a blogger who posted a new screening directive, then backed down. This doesn’t have as much to do with procedures at the TSA (though it has something to do with that) as the outsized sense of authority that federal agencies increasingly have. The assumption that they can constrict fundamental individual liberties like this should be considered urgently alarming to anyone who is worried about our creep towards police state tactics.

While the original motives for the 9/11 attacks was homicidal rage prompted by the presence of American soldiers in Muslims’ holy land and our policy towards Israel (not because “we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world”), we’ve gone well past animating a handful of nihilists by the wholesale slaughter of innocents. It’s having roughly the impact you might expect, this time on whole populations. And even the most fanciful imagination would have trouble dreaming up some kind of high minded justification for all the carnage.

The revolving door is so 20th century.

Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney have a long report on how the House Committee on Financial Services is “a place for shaky Democrats from red districts to pad their campaign coffers.” Here’s one highlight:

Of the 126 people who have left the financial services committee since the end of 2000, lobbying disclosure forms show that 62 have registered as lobbyists at some point. That doesn’t even include people who did not register as lobbyists but who nevertheless worked for law firms with lobbying departments.

The lobbyists insist they don’t fit the Jack Abramoff caricature of the profession painted by the media; they don’t capitalize on their connections to pervert the legislative process on behalf of big-money clients.In reality, lobbying is more boring: lobbyists visit the Hill for meetings with members and staffers to explain how proposed legislation might have “unintended consequences” that could hurt an industry. Or, lobbyists might be invited to make a large campaign contribution and share concerns with members over a meal. Opportunities to attend such events abound — almost any member of Congress is available for breakfast, lunch, or dinner at some point during the week. And anyone is welcome so long as she or he brings a big fat check.

You probably already knew this, but seeing some detail is nice.

Some good news on the secrecy front, but we’ll have to see how it works in practice. Things like this seem to get announced with lots of fanfare, but the devil’s in the details.

Considering the source it’s best to take this with a large grain of salt, but the fact that even an interested party could not get completely laughed off for making the argument is telling.

There’s been a lot of controversy about Jane Hamsher’s recent activism, and even disagreement over whether she has been too loyal or not loyal enough to the Democratic party. While there’s certainly a strategic argument to be made in favor of what she’s doing, I think she put it best in her own words: Democrats appear to be “unresponsive to popular sentiment,” and that’s all the reason you need to go after them. Unless you want to go all in with a third party (which is perfectly legitimate), the basic model seems right to me: rally behind them in election season and agitate like hell the rest of the time. I don’t think any liberal who lived through the Bush years will think there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, so for the time being at least it’s important to elect D’s, but insisting they have a free hand once in office isn’t helpful either. I’m glad she’s out there doing what she’s doing.

Joe Klein seems to be slightly more aware of political blogging on the internet than most of his peers, but he still doesn’t seem to have digested (or is incapable of digesting) some of the basic critiques on the left. In his limited imagination the “dyspepsia of the left blogosphere” comes from “an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq,” and “Those who were wrong about Iraq can’t be trusted on anything else.” You see, in the hothouse Klein and his fellow delicate petals reside, the response to the most catastrophic, inhumane, brutal and costly foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history is not a thorough investigation of it beginning at the top, with possible punishment up to and including prosecution for war crimes on the table; a permanent discrediting of its intellectual architects and rousting of them from their perches at various respectable and prominent places; an assessment from those lemmings in politics and the press who went along on the stupefying assumption that our leaders would never attempt to deceive us; and some form of rededication in the form of identifying concrete mistakes with actual names attached and a plainly communicated reform plan with credible steps for preventing a repeat of such wholesale failure going forward. No, instead you sweep it under the rug by shrugging your shoulders and declaring everyone (who matters) was wrong so there is no more responsibility for this than there is for an act of God, and marvel at the indigestion it causes among those who were right.

And by the way, those who were wrong about it aren’t to be wholesale mistrusted on everything forever from now on (note the convenient absence of a hyperlink supporting his straw man argument), but those who refuse to make an honest accounting of such a massive failure - who say accountability “has to be set aside” and that “the energy devoted to this will result in…what?” (that’s how you support your argument with hyperlinks, Joey) should be regarded with deep, deep skepticism. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.

The tragedy of Joe Klein is that he is dimly aware this discourse is going on, but his professional standing hobbles his imagination to the point that he cannot process it.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Athenae:

I’ve been waiting for eight years for the judiciary as a whole to stand up and say, “Enough with casting us as either useless or completely fucking useless, you power-crazed lunatic military fetishists,” but I have a feeling that’s a train not coming. Am I getting this? I’m still kind of drugged up.

Introduction

Here are my favorite songs this year from my RSS feeds. I use Sharp Reader as my aggregator but it requires the .NET framework, which older computers may not have. Feed Reader doesn’t need it and is good too. See the “Free MP3 sites” part of my blogroll for my current feed list.

Most weeks I burn as many new songs as I can fit onto a rewritable CD and give it a thorough listen (usually five times), so in that spirit I keep the list under the same limit. In a way 80 minutes is arbitrary, but it’s also respectful of listeners to show some restraint. If you fall in love with my taste in music drop me a line and I’ll get you the rest of the songs I considered but didn’t have room for.

On the reckoning of time

I age songs by release date, not recording date. Until I get my grubby little hands on it, it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned. When it first makes it out to the public it is new, no matter how long it may have been gathering dust somewhere.

Recommended albums

Singles dominate music like they haven’t since the glory days of the 45. And just like then, technology is driving it. This is the age of the 99 cent download and no one mourns paying $17.99 for a CD that has the song you really like and a bunch of crap. Some artists can still knock out an album’s worth of quality music, though. It’s a treat to listen to a longer exercise that hearkens back to the days when, as Roman Candle so poetically put it on another great 2009 song, “ten songs on a record sounded like a string of pearls.” In addition to the ones mentioned in the list here are the albums I enjoyed listening to front to back in 2009:

Assembly of Dust - Some Assembly Required

Fruit Bats - The Ruminant Band

Lushlife - Cassette City

Amanda Blank - I Love You

Those last two are from Philadelphia, as is the artist at #2. Did Philly just have a good year or is it officially A Scene now?

Hype of the year: Yo La Tengo

It would have taken the second coming of Sgt. Pepper to justify the raving that accompanied the release of what was basically an above average alternative rock album. Maybe I’m just not hearing it, maybe it was herd instinct or maybe folks were afraid to appear too uncool to appreciate it, but I got more listening pleasure out of the prefab pop confection “Read Between The Lines” than most of the tracks on Popular Songs. It’s a good album. It has some very good songs. Leave it at that.

Honorable Mention

I usually reserve an Honorable Mention spot for a longer song. Most years there’s at least one 7+ minute song that I like quite a bit, but since I try to get lots of different artists on the list I don’t want a single tune to crowd out several other candidates. When a longer song really blows me away (like “Bushels” by Frog Eyes in 2007) I’ll make room, but overall I prefer to keep my selections under five minutes or so.

”Colossus” - Lightning Bolt (Buy)
This year’s State of Metal address. A nice mini-epic with a suitably outsized title. Black Sabbath doesn’t get enough credit for its continuing influence; the sludgy, noisy beginning traces a fairly direct line back to them. By the end they’ve made it all their own, though. Drummer Brian Chippendale appears to have escaped from a mental ward.

For a slower, quieter Honorable Mention check out “Cruiser” by Red House Painters. Fabulous.

(And yes as proof of concept I burned them on to a CD using Winamp.)

21. “Sometimes” - Donkeyboy (MySpace page)
When I first listened to “Sometimes” I thought, this sounds really good; there’s no way it will hold up. Not only did it hold up, it kept sounding better.

20. “Anyway” - Spady (Buy)
Swing for the fences sir, and Godspeed.

19. “Muscle Cars” - Wussy (Buy)
Ever since Pete Townshend introduced me to the joys of repetition I’ve tried to keep my ears peeled for it. It can turn preference into desire, desire into urgency and urgency into desperation. That’s just how Lisa Walker uses it in the chorus; it gets the feeling across without her having to wildly emote. Between her tentative warble and a beat that chugs along just below top gear, it sounds not like an original as much as a cover by an earnest but raw tribute band. Irresistible.

18. “Rev” - Elusive Parallelograms (Buy)
Fuck the beer. This is Milwaukee’s best.

17. “Magic Show” - Electric Owls (Buy)
Has echoes of “Cinderella Man ” which means (see #1) that I never stood a chance.

16. “Falling Stars” - Sarah Siskind (Buy)
I can’t really improve on Jordan’s take. Production this clean usually makes a song sound sterile, but Siskind makes it work. The whole album is great as well.

15. “Blue Jeans” - Jessie James (Buy)
I like Christina Aguilera. “Genie in a Bottle” is one of the best pop songs of the 90’s and her other singles always sounded good to me too. She has a very full sounding voice, a good range, and enough restraint to not turn every song into an exercise in vocal pyrotechnics. Those are all fine qualities for a diva, and a less common thing than it ought to be. Jessie James sounds like a direct descendant, with the same rich tone that’s at times a dead ringer, a straightforward approach to the vocals and a catchy hook. The country/electronic sound is pretty darned creative too. Long Live Aguilera (her influence, anyway).

14. “Teclar” - Os Mutantes (Buy)
I have no idea what the lyrics are. I don’t really care though; they could be chanting “death to whitey” and I’d put it on the list. A good hook is a good hook, baby.

13. “Smashed on Honey” - Coffinberry (Buy)
Maybe Cleveland pride is getting the better of my judgment here, but I think this is a first rate pop song. It gets in and out in just over two minutes, has a nice driving beat propelling it forward, and singer Nick Cross has the kind of upper register wail that will make you believe in rock and roll.

12. “Gettin’ High” - Rapid Ric (MySpace page)
It’s all a big laugh right now, but in a few years my kids will be old enough to be influenced by delinquents like this.

11. “Fuzzabeth Crackleby” - Shogun Kunitoki (Buy)
Knocked me pleasantly off kilter, like a sneeze.

10. “Halo” - Rachelle Van Zanten (Buy)
By my rough calculation I listen to between 1,300 and 1,500 new songs every year, and over 1,000 different artists. Very rarely a song will instantly grab me; on the first seconds of the first listen my neurons will go haywire and I’ll be like ZOMG THIS IS AWESOME!!!!! That happened to me twice in 2009. “Rev” at #18 is one, and this is the other. (Is it me or do the drums have a Wattsesque kick to them?)

9. “Rarichama” - Machesa Traditional Group (Couldn’t find any purchase page or official site)
I know nothing about the Botswanese music scene. There could be dozens of groups that could kick this one’s ass. The Machesa Traditional Group may be Botswana’s equivalent of Nickelback. I don’t know. That said, I can’t imagine enjoying a song much more than this, from Botswana or anywhere else. It has a great hook, the bendy vocal style that I do not know the name of but that I associate with south African music, and the lead singer has a terrific set of pipes.

8. (2009 Best Tuba) “House Party Time” - Dan Zanes (Buy)
Probably no genre is more likely to be dismissed out of hand than children’s music. All I can say is, don’t be too hip to give “House Party Time” an honest listen. It’s a great song irrespective of its target audience. The theatrical “hellooooo!” at the start of the bridge absolutely slays me.

7. (2009 Best Beat) “4 My Niggaz” - Paybak INC. (MySpace page)
Not just the best beat of this year, the best of the last several. Crazy hot.

6. “Riddle” - Grey Anne (Buy)
Things to dig about Riddle:

• The way her staccato yelps puncture the wheezing, lumbering beat.
• The strategically deployed hand claps.
• “You don’t have to do what they tell you.”

5. “F KENYA RIP” - HIGHLIFE (MySpace page)
The reason I listen to songs five times before deciding on them is because sometimes it takes more than a few listens to get a feel for a song. I’d say my instincts are at least 99% accurate after three listens, but it’s that last one percent that has the most exciting surprises. I literally do not remember listening to F KENYA RIP the first three times; it made no impression, good or bad. When it started on the fourth time around I immediately knew it was one of the best songs of the year. A few “a ha!” moments like that every year justify a lot of listening in my book. Anyway, don’t write this one off if it doesn’t do anything for you right away. It’s worth giving a chance to.(There’s a personal story behind the song that I’ll drop in the comments for those who want to read it.)

4. “Oriental Uno” - Beats Antique (Buy)
Takes an exotic sound and gives it an indigenous makeover. I absolutely love it when music surprises me like this.

3. “You Can’t Force a Dance Party” - Dent May (Buy)
From the 2009 Album of the Year. Dent May is an anachronism, an ancient soul come to us through some tear in the fabric of space and time. He recalls the time of troubadours, when musicians traveled the countryside and sang of the timeless themes of love, destiny, longing and the frustrations of aging tennis stars. Whether for crowds of gentle folk in town squares or in royal courts for the mightiest in the land, Dent May and his soul mates would recount their tales for all who would listen, sharing with them the eternal truths of the human condition along with the occasional reminder that, truly, you cannot force a dance party.

2. “Jumpoff” - Jazmine Sullivan & Waajeed (feat. Coultrain) (Home page)
In the same way that you can’t blame Led Zeppelin for the avalanche of uninspired hard rock created by their would-be successors, it isn’t fair to think less of Aretha Franklin for unknowingly loosing a wave of screeching histrionics from marginally talented wannabes who thought they were nailing the next “Respect.” Your imitators are your imitators and there’s not much you can do about it. When one of them gets it right, though, you have to tip your hat in the original’s direction, and I think that’s the case with “Jumpoff.” Sullivan has a big voice, but she resists the temptation to use it to make the point that I Have A Big Voice. She belts out the verses, but keeps it in a range she can comfortably hit. Then she pulls it back in the chorus, going a little lower and letting the fabulous beat grab a little spotlight. Very nice. I have no idea if the Queen of Soul has heard this song, but if she has I have to think she approves.

1. “That Song” - Tahiti Boy And The Palmtree Family (Feat. Tunde Adebimpe) (MySpace page)
In my musical taxonomy fans of an artist break down into one of the following categories:

• Fanboys/Fangirls: Like everything an artist has done; old, new, popular, unpopular, you name it. I’m a Rush fanboy. I’ve listened to all their studio albums from their first one through Power Windows at least a hundred times. I know their appearances in popular culture are usually in the service of ironic hipster slagging, but I think Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures and Signals is as fine a three album sequence as any group not named The Beatles has produced. Geddy Lee’s voice is at best an acquired taste, but I don’t care. They are brilliant and I won’t hear a word against them.


• Casual fans: Like the hits and not much else. I’m a casual fan of The Police. I spent a good deal of time around Police fans, so I’ve heard all their stuff, but for some reason didn’t get the bug. Give me Synchronicity and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and I have all the Police I need. And please don’t say “oh but you never heard the really good stuff that no one ever talks about like ‘On Any Other Day’!” Yes I have. All of them. Over and over. The charms of their early experiments in reggae/punk fusion are destined to elude me.


• Snobs: The most obnoxious of the bunch. Snobs love the early stuff and have palpable disdain for the music that breaks it big. Something about the experience of being in a small group of intense devotees gets wrapped up in liking the artist, and popularity degrades the music itself in snobs’ eyes. It ceases being Art, they get all bent out of shape, and complain of their heroes going mainstream, selling out and other crimes against The Muse. It never seems to occur to them that perhaps the unwashed masses declined to properly celebrate the earlier work not from having been unexposed to it or from a poverty of imagination but because they heard it and didn’t think it was all that! I’ll admit to being a Peter Gabriel snob. I loved all his work with Genesis and his first two solo albums, particularly the second (Frippertronics!) But on the third one - the one with “Games Without Frontiers” and “Biko,” the one that finally began to break him to a wider audience - I wasn’t impressed; by the time So came along I thought he was just another pop star (though he’s still capable of a fine movie theme, which is more than I can say for some people). Snobs ruin more listening experiences than all the other groups combined.


• Contrarians: The rarest group, and the quietest (even considering their small size). Contrarians like the least celebrated work, usually in the phase that comes after the snobs are long gone and the casual fans have turned their attention elsewhere. I’m a Grateful Dead contrarian; I like most of their stuff, but I think their best album is their final studio effort, Built To Last. “Blow Away” and “Standing On The Moon” are my favorite songs from them. I don’t know why I don’t like their earlier stuff better, but for some reason I don’t. I don’t need any fans instructing me in the error of my ways either. The desire to avoid just that kind of hassle is what usually keeps contrarians quiet.

Sounds like Peter Gabriel before he sold out.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the Wall Street Journal will not have an article on December 30th, 2010 detailing the ways in which various stakeholders attempt to coordinate end-of-life decisions in order to take advantage of the nearly expired estate tax holiday.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The president has been making what I think of as qualified progress on Guantánamo. Detainees have started to move out, but not as fast as they should be. Their fates once they leave is in some cases uncertain; at least one is getting a regular trial in our justice system, while others face military commissions on domestic soil. Considering his questionable record elsewhere on human rights, and his abysmal record on civil rights, Guantánamo has been a relative win for him. That may be why Congress is stepping up its efforts to keep the place open. It isn’t just the big, bad president forcing this stuff. There’s two other branches of government, as well as a burgeoning intelligence/national security infrastructure, pushing these issues. (Spencer Ackerman has an optimistic take on this story.)

Three from Atrios. First, “The policy has been to prop up prices, not people.” That incisive sentence tells you more about the state of politics and the economy than a week’s worth of the Wall Street Journal. Then he pointed to this story, which reads like a parody of clueless traditional media ignorance of new media. It’s like they wanted to top Post’d. Finally, he linked to this by John Holbo:

I think, for some conservatives, the main objection to a somewhat vaguely conceived set of liberal values really is a strong sense that they are inconsistent with a certain sort of hardassery in the virtue ethics department.

Dear Center For American Progress, we do not need propaganda catapulting “Look, liberals! The insurance industry hates it! That means it MUST be really good, progressive legislation!” pieces from you or from anyone else. It just makes you look like Fox Left. The industry loves it, they’re just smart enough not to gloat about it - not on the record, anyway.

Attention would-be political comedians. When you hit something once, resist the urge to repeat it. Unless you have a black belt in humor you will not know how to effectively use repetition to push through the cycle of funny, not quite as funny, getting tired, lame, why won’t you stop, God is this dumb, starting to get funny again, hysterically heart attack-inducing comedy. You’ll likely get bogged down in the middle, stuck with uninspired recycling of the rare spark of wit you manage to stumble across. Enjoy the initial laughs, then let it go. When, for example, you come up with something original like “Louisiana Purchase” to describe Mary Landrieu’s ransom for a vote on health care reform, leave it at that. “Cornhusker Kickback” isn’t nearly as funny; it’s at best a chuckle. When it gets extended to “U Con,” “Bayh Off” and “Botax” it just makes you look like you’re more interested in coming up with clever turns of phrase than dealing with any of the substantive issues facing the country. Which, come to think of it…

This is my last political post of the decade. Prairie Weather gave the most succinct and accurate encomium in what appears to be a dashed off Christmas Day post: this has been “the worst and most humiliating decade for America that most of us have experienced.” Good riddance, get the fuck out, and may we have the courage, determination, energy and willingness to make the next one better.

Last week I quoted James Wolcott, this week I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Lucy Kellaway:

Many of the business books that surround me wear their badness on their sleeve. Last week a book arrived in the office with the title: Waging War on Complexity Costs – Reshape Your Cost Structure, Free Up Cash Flows and Boost Productivity by Attacking Process, Product and Organizational Complexity. I found myself so weakened by the title I couldn’t even open the cover to see what was inside. If the authors really want to wage war on complexity, the title might have been a good place to start.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The filibuster has been all over the news lately, and on the left there is a growing consensus that it should be changed or abolished. For old times’ sake I decided to revisit the last time filibusters were front and center in politics: the Gang of Fourteen compromise that loosened up Democratic filibusters of some of George Bush’s judicial nominees.

My general recollection was that neither side was particularly happy about it. A local conservative columnist (sorry, couldn’t find a link) sourly wrote something along the lines of, “well I guess politics is beanbag after all.” Remember this happened in 2005, which is several geological ages ago on the Right Wing Freakout Timeline. The outraged polemics make for fabulous reading now that the GOP is in the minority. Andrew McCarthy howled that it was “an obstructive tactic that unabashedly nullifies majority rule” and spluttered (emph. in orig.)

the filibuster was not used at all throughout much of the Senate’s history. It is currently unavailable for over two dozen types of legislative proceedings. And it has never, ever been systematically employed in connection with judicial nominations. Thus, it is difficult to understand how altering or eliminating it in that context could credibly evoke visions of mushroom clouds rising above a smoldering Capitol.

Still, “nuclear option” has stuck….With “Armageddon” securely stamped on the rule change — one that would restore a two-century status quo of simple-majority confirmations while guaranteeing nominees only a vote, not a win — those seeking such a change were naturally cast as “extremists.”

There was plenty of other commentary on the right about the undemocratic nature of the filibuster, but it was not much more popular on the left. I don’t recall, and couldn’t find, any prominent voices taking the position of, hey it’s great that the Democrats had the filibuster at their disposal! The closest thing I found was a lukewarm endorsement by Kos on the grounds that it was making conservatives nuts. Digby summed up the feelings on the left best, writing (emph. in orig.) “I want that nuclear option, I need that nuclear option. I’m fucking dying to have that fight.”

Critics on both the left and right noted the intolerably vague language of the agreement that ended the filibuster, and that offers the best clue why the filibuster will likely be retained. It was what used to be called a gentlemen’s agreement, something that wasn’t formalized but that would be maintained through mutual understanding and occasional massaging.

They want to be able to endlessly flatter and indulge each other in the name of comity (in the last few weeks I’ve come to hate that word). They want the Senate to be a place where personalities trump party or policy, where managing relations is the first order of business - like a soap opera or a never-ending episode of a reality show where no one gets voted off. It is no coincidence that the membership of the Gang of Fourteen is a who’s who (Landrieu, Lieberman, Nelson, Collins, Snowe) of the high maintenance, egomaniacal misanthropes gumming up health care reform.

Opposition to it does not break down along left/right lines, but on establishment/outsider lines. The inability to pass health care reform on a simple majority vote highlights the differences on the left between those who ground policy positions in Beltway conventional wisdom and those who do not. Frustration with an opaque, clubby body that to all appearances is in the thrall of lobbyists has begun to peak. It is creating the same kind of anti-DC strange bedfellows who support auditing the fed and (to a lesser extent) opposed the FISA Amendments Act last year. The filibuster is one of the most visible symbols of that broken system.

Norman Ornstein is one of the few people to have defended it. During the Gang of Fourteen episode he argued that failure to keep it would cause the Senate to operate more like the House, which he derided as “a cesspool of partisan rancor.” He did not make a Constitutional case for it, though, or say it provided some essential function to the system of checks and balances. He just likes the way it helps encourage his particular concept of decorum.

The same is true of Senators. They want to maintain a system that maximizes their opportunities to demand to be catered to. Anything that presents more opportunities for obstruction gives individual Senators more chances to exert leverage, and more chances to be fawned over. That, much more so than parliamentary requirements, is what keeps the filibuster in place. Changing it will require a change in the capitol’s very culture, not just some slick procedural maneuvering.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I’ll start with the good news. The Obama administration announced it would buy an Illinois prison for housing Guantánamo detainees. Glenn has reservations; however, getting detainees on American soil is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for getting them in our established justice system and out of the ill-considered netherworld thrown together around them. There was another step in the right direction this week as well.

Spencer Ackerman had the best take on Tony Blair’s extraordinary admission that the reasons for going to war were not as important as getting the thing cranked up:

I suppose it’s past time to start a fund to create Tony Blair’s headstone, just to have this craven, blithe admission of pretext permanently affixed to his legacy. Yes, Prime Minister, “obviously” once the justification for a war that has killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people turns out to be disproven, one must pivot to a new rationale for its existence. What one must never do is recognize that the war is in error and work to correct it.

Because for Blair it’s not an error, “obviously.” Whatever he told us is whatever he needed to tell us at that moment, as the war was a fixed idea.

Here is my contribution to the English language.

divo (n.): A male diva.

The most substantive discussion on health care reform has been on the liberal blogosphere. Nate Silver initiated a back and forth series of posts that really illuminated the details under consideration. Meanwhile, mainstream outlets preferred to focus on the arias being belted out by the preening, narcissistic and sociopathic divos Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. And no, I will not link to any of them.

Tis the season for block quotes.

• David Kravets:

  Google prides itself on doing brave and innovative things that other companies wouldn’t even consider doing, just because it’s the right thing to do.
  
  But instead, Google has chosen to side with the rest of the industry and refuse, on principle, to be open with their customers. That makes us think Google agrees with some peers that suggest that the public simply can’t handle the truth.

  A lot of the objectionable policies from the government wouldn’t be happening without the participation of some of our best known companies.
  
  
• David Paul:

  Our commercial banks are not, and should not be, hedge funds. U.S. dollar carry trades and writing credit default swaps are not core commercial banking functions. They are not necessary to the efficient functioning of our financial system.

• Nathan Hodge on how conventional wisdom gets generated and bolted into place:

  When think tanks are often a revolving door for government service, what happens when reporters who become office-mates of past or future political appointees? How do you keep national security reporting from becoming an echo chamber of the Beltway policy elite?

Lambert alerted me to this. It’s not exaggeration to call it Dred Scott II because the Supreme Court has literally denied the humanity of an entire class of people. It’s more than bad law - it’s evil.

Presidential Medal of Freedom winner George Tenet all but admitted the CIA has been infiltrating media outlets and compromising journalists.

The Department of Homeland Security has been doing exactly what a reasonable person could expect from an agency granted expansive, unaccountable powers.

Would we be better off if women ran Wall Street (via)? Probably in the short to medium term. There would be singular attention on the pioneers, meaning they would be held to actual performance standards. Their traditional exclusion from the top would probably make them more vigilant about cracking down on abuses at first, too. But as time went on and they became increasingly integrated they would become creatures of that culture, not transformers of it - just like in politics (Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln) and elsewhere in business (Carly Fiorina). Still, a temporary improvement is better than none at all, so: Go Ladies!

This is off my beat, but James Wolcott is an astonishingly talented stylist. I couldn’t pull off something this good in my dreams:

Yes, while the rest of us were blithely going on with our Christmassy lives and preparing our aluminum poles for Festivus, an ugly blogwar broke out in the right hemisphere of Godzilla-versus-Mothra scope and fury, featuring volley after return volley of fiery halitosis and hair-splitting pedantry. Escalating a minor dispute into an all-engulfing shit fit, Protein Wisdom’s Jeff Goldstein and Patterico’s Pontifications’ Patrick Frey locked themselves in a mutual-destruction danse macabre that couldn’t be more gaudy and futile if I had scripted it myself, in my recurring role as Mischievous Trickster. The catalyst for this duel at Diablo was an inquiry into whether certain moldy comments written in the nineties by conservative journalist and carnival barker Robert Stacy McCain revealed telltale residue of racism. This evolved into a Goldstein tutorial on authorial intent full of jargon and bluster which was met by Patrick Frey in a tedious display of his own brand of bravado, with ratfucky posters rushing to and fro from the comments sections of the two blogs with pipsqueak Iago poisonings of innuendo and incitement to keep everything at full spite.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

While the different players and events in last year’s financial crisis seem somewhat blurred now that some time as passed, the collapse of Washington Mutual (WaMu) was the biggest bank failure in American history at the time. It was (unsurprisingly) a particularly huge event in Washington state, where the bank was headquartered, so naturally folks there still have an interest in finding out more about what exactly was going on as a major player in its economy disappeared from the face of the earth.

Looking forward may be all the rage in the capitol, and major media outlets may be more comfortable presenting fawning portraits of those directly responsible for the meltdown up to and including Fed Chairman Helen Keller Ben Bernanke, but out in the hinterlands there are local organizations like the Puget Sound Business Journal, and journalists like Kirsten Grind, who are interested in poking through the wreckage.

In the course of an extensive investigation Grind attempted to answer a very basic question: Why was WaMu so hastily forced into liquidation? The immediate retort from various haughty champions of the status quo usually goes something like this: WaMu had massive subprime loan exposure. The writing was on the wall, and considering the turmoil financial markets were in the last thing regulators wanted was to wait until the body actually hit the pavement. Showing an active and energetic Fed that was willing to jump in was better than doing nothing and risking a full blown panic.

Fine, fair enough - as far as it goes. The problem is, it does not go very far. We do not know what WaMu’s subprime exposure was, nor do we know if that exposure was enough to make it insolvent. (It also does not seem to square with current circumstances. Wells Fargo looks to be catastrophically exposed to commercial real estate right now, but no one is arranging a shotgun wedding.) In fact, there is a scarcity of actual facts about WaMu - hence the need for an investigation! If it really was so bad, let the details come out so these assertions are supported by evidence. Such skepticism was once considered a necessary component of journalism and not the mark of a wild eyed conspiracy theorist.

Grind filed FOIA requests with the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) for emails with WaMu officials that she hoped would explain the seizure. The OTS flatly rejected the request, but the FDIC’s response was breathtakingly arrogant: It released, CIA-style, hundreds upon hundreds of almost completely redacted emails. Grind also reports “Both agencies have declined repeated requests to answer questions about how they decided to close WaMu.”

In 1993 Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” to describe the process of “re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.” The same dynamic seems to have been happening in our government since 9/11. For instance, we are defining depravity down: Once upon a time we did not torture. Then we only tortured if there was a ticking time bomb. Now it is acceptable to torture for “vital information” even if there is no ticking time bomb; the unprovable argument that it saves lives has become sufficient.

Look also at federal agencies’ stance towards transparency and the public: First there had to be wholesale redactions because of national security concerns; then they were needed to suppress inflammatory disclosures that could cause hostility towards soldiers in a war zone; now it is being used to keep potentially embarrassing news from coming to light. The fact that the stakes are so much smaller in this case is what makes it so remarkable. It is not even arguably about life and death, but the stonewalling occurs anyway.

The holidays are coming and health care reform is dominating the news at the moment, so the FDIC’s actions have been largely overlooked. Taken at face value it makes sense. The contemptible treatment of a FOIA request from a Seattle business publication does not by itself deserve screaming headlines or urgent attention. It does, however, highlight the continued trend by the federal government of a high handed stance towards us. There is an air of impunity about it, a sense that we deserve to be kept in the dark and cannot know what is being done in our names. Despite the change in party leadership in DC, it is not reversing or slowing down; it is in fact getting worse. And it is driven by a fundamental belief that people serve government, not the other way around.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The president believes the White House is above the law. I don’t care what kind of intrigue or realpolitik is going on behind the scenes - this a shameful and un-American position to take. Barack Obama has an authoritarian view of executive power.

He also appears to be thin skinned and disrespectful of those who smoothed the path before him: “If the President demands that a Democrat who has served in Congress since Obama was four years old, one who paved the way on civil rights issues to make it possible to elect an African American man President, and one who played a key role in Obama winning the primary, just roll over on legislative issues, who is demeaning whom?” I hope Conyers called him “son” at least once during their conversation.

Clive Stafford Smith notes the depressing regularity with which the British justice system is being compromised by the UK’s relationship with America. Sometimes it’s tough to see the upside of being our ally.

Jeff Kaye: “Stephen Soldz has published a devastating critique of the work of the FBI and Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) on the controversial interrogation of Guantanamo prisoner 063, the supposed ‘20th hijacker,’ Mohammed al-Qahtani.” It turns out that inculcating Stockholm Syndrome is not rapport building, and psychologists who decide to take a paycheck for working with our torturers need to either be prepared to disregard their professional codes of ethics or anticipate being fired. And let’s face it, those who think otherwise are either willfully ignorant or surpassingly naive. Having to even address the issue is infuriating - everyone knows these things, and knew them all long. It’s like telling a five year old who stole a candy bar that he shouldn’t have stolen it when you both know he knew that in advance. That’s the level of our discourse.

America: No Prohibition against Monstrous Conduct

Harry Reid compared the effort to slow down on health care with previous efforts to slow down on human and civil rights, and Republicans freaked out. Steve Benen nailed the dynamic perfectly:

If we’re to believe the faux-outrage, the reference to slavery was the rhetorical element that went too far. But this, apparently, is a new concern — the right has been far more direct in making the same comparison. Harry Reid was talking about key moments in history in which the right was wrong, but Michele Bachmann recently called the Democrats’ legislative agenda “nothing more than slavery,” and no one said a word. Indeed, conservatives routinely insist that the left is trying “enslave” America, and the political mainstream just shrugs its shoulders in response.

This is not uncommon. In 2005, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) described the Bush administration’s torture policies and system of secret prisons as being reminiscent of “Soviets in their gulags.” At the time, the media and Republicans were apoplectic about Durbin’s remarks, sparking a week-long frenzy. Several conservatives called on the Senate to censure Durbin, and Karl Rove, at the time a high-ranking White House official, argued that Durbin’s quote was evidence that liberals are traitors. Durbin eventually offered a tearful apology.

But notice that just a few days ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Republican leadership, called Medicaid a “health care gulag.” Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) recently called Dems’ health care reform efforts “Soviet-style gulag health care.” Neither reporters nor other members of Congress batted an eye.

Also note, when Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Republicans are promoting lethal health care policies, it was a huge national controversy. When Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the same thing, no one seemed to care.

Fox News: Our Viewers Are Not Intelligent Enough To Add To 100.

Justin Elliott had a really nice overview on how the government can and can’t locate you by your cell phone.

Christopher Thornberg works for a consulting firm specializing in real estate and the California economy and says Americans are giving themselves a “stealth stimulus” by defaulting on mortgages and becoming renters. I think the near-mythological status of the credit score is breaking down. It used to be considered an absolute disaster to have a bad one, an outlook various players in the credit and financial industries were I’m sure eager to promote. But now lots more people have lousy credit, credit itself is a lot harder to get, and citizens have seen the social contract of paying off your debts absolutely obliterated for the big players. Who can blame them for saying, why not for us too? Take a ding on the credit score for a few years and build it back up. Big deal.

Thinking Outside The Box, Capitol Edition: Instead of having a Goldman exec for Treasury Secretary, how about one from JP Morgan!

Financial news link dump.

• Volcker: “Wake up, gentlemen.” Nice sentiment, but we need to get past the idea that they are capable of reforming themselves. It has to be forced on them.
• Ben Bernanke is now approvingly quoting bank robbers. One of his clients needs to let him know that it won’t do to be that obvious.
• I can’t believe that at the end of 2009 anyone would actually write this, but I guess that shows just what an alternate universe the WSJ editorial page is: “Some argue that high-frequency traders, who reportedly execute 70% of the equity market trades, would pick up the lion’s share of the bill. But high-frequency traders are not villains-indeed, they play an important role in improving market efficiency.” I think we’ve had quite enough market efficiency for the moment, thanks.
• Marcy writes that Wall Street will be incredibly tough to fix, and one big reason is that they get their proxies to do their fighting for them.
• Elizabeth Warren is not impressed with the administration’s foreclosure plan.

Matt Taibbi has a great piece on Obama’s financial team. He got some blowback on it, and Felix Salmon has a nice defense: “I love it that Taibbi exists, and I’m impressed that his 6,500-word screed (into which a great deal of work clearly went) in fact has very little in the way of factual errors, let alone ‘lies’. Yes, Taibbi is polemical and one-sided, and he exaggerates his thesis, and he’s entertaining; I daresay he’s learned a lot from watching Fox News. And no, I would never want to live in a world where everybody wrote like that. But Taibbi is one of a kind, and we can enjoy him and learn from him as such.”

Taibbi can defend himself, of course, and he does so brilliantly here (via). In it he writes:

It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free. Moreover we issued government guarantees for all the least responsible banks in the country - so while you and I have to keep our same old shitty credit scores, all the people who leveraged themselves to the hilt and bet the farm on subprime mortgages that we ended up bailing out now get squeaky clean, brand-new AAA credit ratings to borrow from. The cost of credit for them plummeted thanks to these guarantees, while we’re paying the same old rates to borrow our money.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

At Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation hearing last week he offered this stirring defense of his tenure: “We did not - certainly not do a perfect job by any means. But I don’t think we stand out as having done a worse job than other regulators.” Personally, I’d like the individual responsible for America’s monetary policy to aspire to more than not being the worst regulator alive, but maybe I am too demanding.

He was grilled in the Senate, where several Senators placed a hold on his nomination. Holds are one of those inscrutable parliamentary maneuvers that are nearly impossible to game from the outside. Harry Reid has ignored Democratic holds while being positively reverential of GOP ones; who knows what he will do with this one. The sponsors might just be posturing, too. It could be nothing more than the kind of institutional harrumphing the Senate seems to adore indulging in.

Still, the nomination could derail. He has presided over a disastrous economic period, does not know what the purpose of his job is, and has few defenders. But it would only cheer those who think he has done a terrible job until the next nominee was announced. Bernanke’s solicitousness of Wall Street is a feature, not a bug; the invisible hand of the financial industry would direct the process to another compliant nominee in short order. Reformers would need (among other things) an alternate candidate.

It would almost by definition have to be from outside the political and financial centers. While that would be no guarantee of independence it would be a hedge against it. Moreover, an outsider would more likely have been a dismayed observer of the meltdown instead of a participant in or enabler of it. S/he would need an unassailable résumé, though, because such a stranger would be eyed suspiciously as a potential cause of intolerable friction with the ruling class.

With that in mind I think Thomas Hoenig, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, would be a fine choice. He joined the Fed in 1973 and has been president at Kansas City since 1991. It is a plumb job: There are only twelve such banks in the country. Just like being a judge in a Court of Appeals is often a stepping stone to a Supreme Court nomination, the regional Federal Reserve banks seem a reasonable place to look for a new Fed chairman.

He might have broader political appeal than Bernanke. Right now the Senate seems at best resigned to the latter; no one seems to be coming out with full throated endorsements of him (including the man himself). A new face would have more credibility than someone associated with economic crisis. There is also a small chance Hoenig would attract at least some Republican support. If the nomination was sold as a breath of solid, responsible heartland values being transplanted to the polluted air of Washington it might not be easy for the GOP to rev up the opposition. If nothing else, Chuck Grassley might pause before trashing a native Iowan or Kit Bond a prominent Missourian. Stranger things have happened.

Much more importantly, Hoenig appears to be less than impressed with officials’ response to the meltdown. Back in March he gave a speech titled “Too Big Has Failed” sharply criticizing the bailouts (more speeches are published here). While some details have changed since then, the overall picture has not. And while much of it seems unexceptional, it would sound downright revolutionary in the capitol, e.g.:

• Shareholders would be forced to bear the full risk of the positions they have taken and suffer the resulting losses.
• financial crises continue to occur for the same reasons as always - overoptimism, excessive debt and leverage ratios, and misguided incentives and perspectives - and our solutions must continue to address these basic problems.
• One other point in resolving “too big to fail” institutions is that public authorities should take care not to worsen our exposure to such institutions going forward. In fact, for failed institutions that have proven to be too big or too complex to manage well, steps must be taken to break up their operations and sell them off in more manageable pieces.