Category Archives: Politics: US

This may be one of the most cynical ploys in US politics I ever read about. And I read a lot.

New York Times, White House Helps Block Extension of Tax Cuts: The White House helped to block a Republican-brokered deal on Wednesday to extend several middle-class tax cuts, fearful of a bill that could draw Democratic votes and dilute a Republican campaign theme, Republican negotiators said

In other words, the only reason Bush & Co. support tax cuts is to use them as a wedge issue. Give them the tax cuts they ask for bipartisanly, they not only lose interest, but scupper it.

Fortunately, if recent polls are to be believed, President Lincoln was a better judge of the American character than PT Barnum.

Update: Apparently, PT Barnum may never actually have said that there's a sucker born every minute.

Today's NYT “Week in Review” section has a small but remarkably clueless item by Sharon Waxman on the profusion of liberal movie/DVD documentaries being released this year. Lights, Camera, Liberal begins like this:

If talk radio is dominated by conservatives, documentaries must be the preferred medium of liberals. It’s not only “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore’s box-office hit about the Iraq war. A number of films — all left of center — are set to be launched in the coming weeks, as the electoral season gets underway in earnest.

Why so many documentaries, and why now?

The article not only fails to explain “why now” but it fails to connect its lede with the fact it explains: the main reason why anti-Bush documentaries are going to film or DVD is that the broadcast media, largely owned and run by right-wing Republicans, won't make them and won't play them. If even a mildly hagiographic TV mini-series like the Reagan biography gets mau-maued by the right wing, who in the broadcast world is going to dare to speak truth (or anything unwelcome) to power? No one. And most of the cable news networks are overtly or covertly Republican. So that relegates centrist and especially liberal documentaries to independents working through distinctly second-best alternate distribution channels. And even that can be hard, witness the various obstacles film chains have put in the way of 9/11, a money-making film.

Sea Lion Records has made Election Day USA, a CD compilation of anti-Bush, anti-war music, free for download as .mp3s. I'm a sucker for political songs—even those I disagree with, so I enjoyed these even if they're not all musically top-notch. Besides, I agreed with most of them. And, some of them are pretty good on any terms, especially (in no particular order),

• John McCutcheon, Let’s Pretend (I actually heard this one on the radio once)
• The Positive Chi Units, Rise Up!
• Coiler, Rogue Nation
• John Kasper, Conspiracy of Silence
• Kris Penn, Coming Home No More
• Musical Graffiti, Peace Inside
• David Rovics, The War Is Over

… and then there's the Sonofa Bush rap which isn't my sort of thing, but will appeal to some.

Why does all this remind me of The Folk Song Army?

Bonus, funny, equal-opportunity-offender (from jibjab, via half the blogs in the world, which is probably why sever keeps saying it's overloaded): Jibjab does This Land

In Cheney as Grand Vizier, Brad DeLong wishes that the DC Press Corps would give him enough information to choose between competing theories of Cheney:

What I am hearing from senior Republicans I talk to who talk to people who are in the administration is confused. There are three theories about what is going on:

Theory 1 is, of course, that everything is wonderful. Theory 1 is that the Republican Party by accident stumbled upon a secret of American politics: that the presidency is too big a job for anyone. In 1981, therefore, they accidently divided the presidency into two: Ronald Reagan was Head-of-State, and gave speeches, and awarded medals, and went to events, and waved at the American people; James Baker was Head-of-Government, and did the job of running the country and the administration. Things fell apart in Reagan's second term when Baker decided he was sick of having all the work and little of the glory, decided he wanted to be Treasury Secretary, and switched jobs with Donald Regan. But once you got a new and competent Chief-of-Staff—Howard Baker—in as Head-of-Government, the machine hummed once again.

George W. Bush is, on this theory, a second-rate Ronald Reagan: somebody who can do the job of Head-of-State (although he does not excel at it), and leave the running of the government to those who know policy and politics: Cheney as Grand Vizier, with Andy Card as his deputy running the White House, Donald Rumsfeld as his deputy running foreign policy, and (originally) Paul O'Neill as his deputy running domestic policy. O'Neill didn't work out and had to be replaced. Colin Powell has still not quite internalized the fact that Donald Rumsfeld is really in charge of foreign policy—holds the job of deputy to the Vice President for foreign affairs. But otherwise things have gone fine: Cheney has headed up the government apparatus and made the tough and dangerous decisions, while George W. Bush has done the meeting-and-greeting.

Theory 2 is the other side of the coin that is theory 1. It is that George W. Bush is indeed Head-of-State and that Richard Cheney is Head-of-Government, but that Cheney is not a qualified and competent administrator-policymaker but incompetent, irrational, short-sighted, and no longer up to the job: a guy whose theory of government is “who the hell knows? And this will please the base.” If only Cheney could be levered out of power, and a new Head-of-Government installed—a strong Chief-of-Staff (i.e., not Andrew Card)—things would be fine.

Theory 3 is that George W. Bush was supposed to be Head-of-State, but that those who thought he would be satisfied to let other, wiser heads run the government were guilty of wishful thinking: that George W. Bush wants to be Head-of-Government as well. When he makes decisions, he makes snap judgments based on inadequate information (i.e., that the American economy's biggest problem is “SEC overreach”), and he will not revisit a decision once it has been made. Thus the task of managing George W. Bush is a ticklish one. He's not curious enough to seek out information on his own. So you have to (a) present him with a lump of information that will push him in the direction you want him to go and then (b) get him to immediately make the decision you want him to make—all the while guarding against your bureaucratic enemies who want the decision to go the other way.

Brad rejects Theory 1 on the grounds that our current leaders are demonstrably incompetent, but says that it's not possible to tell whether the fault lies in Cheney (theory 2) or in Bush (theory 3).

As an abstract matter, this all seems completely right, and will no doubt be a question of great interest to historians and biographers. Heck, I'm interested myself. Its practical payoff, however, only comes if Bush drops Cheney from the ticket — a choice that pits the Bush survival instinct against the never-admit-error reflex — or if one but not the other of them suddenly leaves office for some other reason. (Incidentally, I bet on the reflex over the instinct.)

Come November, I hope it all will be, well, academic.

David Sklar, Justice Department's Fragile Read-Never Database. This must surely be a candidate for the dumbest FOIA excuse ever:

The Center for Public Integrity filed a Freedom of Information request to get a copy of the Foreign Agent Registration database, which includes information on activities by registered lobbyists on behalf on foreign governments.

The Justice Department said that it couldn't provide a copy of the entire database because doing so could destroy the database.

Meanwhile, you can go to the appropriate office in Washington DC and pay fifty cents a page to make copies of documents. The information is available in (expensive) page-by-page drips, but not as a whole.

I am curious to learn about the quantum database software in use that could subject the data to changes by reading it. Or perhaps the 8 inch floppies that the data is stored on would get too hot and melt if they had to spin so fast to copy entire files?

It's hard to imagine what's behind this. Terminal incompetence? Cussed desire to undermine FOIA? Halliburton provided the equipment?

Or could it be a Rovian fear that someone will cross-index the database with, say, the lists of donors to the Bush campaign?