New St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll shows incumbent Sen. Jim Talent neck and neck with Democrat Claire McCaskill:
The latest Research 2000 poll for the Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV (Channel 4) found that Talent, R-Mo., has chipped away the edge held by his Democratic rival, state Auditor Claire McCaskill.With a little more than two months left before Election Day, the two are in a statistical dead heat.
The Maryland-based firm's latest poll of 800 likely voters, conducted Monday through Thursday, found that 47 percent backed McCaskill and 46 percent supported Talent. Two percent supported Libertarian Frank Gilmour, while the remaining 5 percent were undecided.
. . .
The firm's last poll, in June, had shown McCaskill with a lead of 6 percentage points.
Talent closed the gap with a six-week TV ad blitz in which he outspent McCaskill by a ratio of 10:1.
--David Kurtz
Walter Pincus looks into the alleged terrorism case against that hapless group in Miami.
--David Kurtz
A Republican strategist privy to much of the polling conducted in House districts said that, at this point, it is not difficult to count enough vulnerable districts to show how Democrats can take control. But he offered a cautionary point: "I don't know of a single target race," he said, where the Republican candidate "has spent more than 20 percent of what they intend to spend. The battle is just beginning. That's what people really forget."
--David Kurtz
The story of Hillary Clinton possibly opting out of the 2008 presidential race in order to be Senate Majority Leader has made it from The Washington Note to the LA Times and now across the pond to London. There are so many ifs, ands, and buts to this story that you would think this was a non-election year and people were desperate for political stories.
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader MD responds to my post below:
In response to your question, "Which press outlets have agreed to those conditions?" I think there are actually a fair number that would take those terms if it meant an interview with Rove -- or any number of good sources of information within the administration or in Congress. Granted, you need to be someone close to power -- a special assistant to the President would qualify of course, but also any number of press secretaries for the more powerful members of Congress, because agreeing to those terms largely means you're going to get a background interview with the person in question. Which can be worth it, if they have good enough information to share.In many cases, it may make perfect sense for a reporter to have a conversation on background so that the person being interviewed will feel more at ease and won't have to constantly be on guard. Speaking on the record is a pretty big pain in the ass actually, since one slip and you've said the phrase that will be the headline. So this allows the interviewer to actually get substantive information, and if there's a great quote that he'd love to print -- either attached to the actual person or sourced to an anonymous official -- he can ask afterwards and will often get what he wants. So this technique serves to grease the wheels of the reporter-source transaction.
That said, in this case it's obvious that this was too big of a demand since Rove was actually the SUBJECT of the story, rather than a press flack who can give some good background and maybe even serve up a juicy quote. I can see why the Times would refuse his demand, but it is interesting that it would call him out on this in the article: this is something that happens in DC; by devoting a whole paragraph to explaining their refusal, it serves to embarrass Rove. Maybe this says something about Rove's weakening ability to intimidate journalists into agreeing to whatever set of demands he dictates to them?
I suppose I mostly agree with MD as to when such ground rules would be acceptable, but I took the White House claim to mean that those ground rules had been successfully applied before when Rove was the subject of the piece.
--David Kurtz
Rove & Company have narrowed the battlefield (or at least that's what they're saying for public consumption):
They have determined that control of Congress is likely to be settled in as few as six states and have decided to focus most of the party’s resources there, said Republican officials who did not want to be identified discussing internal deliberations. Those states will likely include Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, though officials said the battle lines could shift in coming weeks.
--David Kurtz
What is this about?
The White House said that Mr. Rove would consider an interview for this article if it were conducted off the record, with the provision that quotations could be put on the record with White House approval, a condition it said was set for other interviews with Mr. Rove. The New York Times declined.
Which press outlets have agreed to those conditions?
--David Kurtz
Worth a look:
The Pakistani regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been negotiating truces - with the Bush administration's encouragement - with Islamic separatists in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, mountainous tribal areas along the Afghan border where U.S. officials think bin Laden may be hiding.In return, Pakistani officials are promising to restrict the country's troops in the area to major bases and towns and to pour huge amounts of aid - much of it from the United States and other nations - into the destitute region, according to American officials.
But as the truces take hold, separatists have been crossing into Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, according to Western and Afghan officials.
--David Kurtz
I was alerted to another gem from Bush in the Brian Williams interview. When asked about reading The Stranger, Bush explained: "I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read and Laura said you oughtta try Camus, I also read three Shakespeare's."
Three Shakespeare's?
It's as if Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies were President--not a real hillbilly, which I wouldn't much begrudge someone, but a Hollywood spoof of a hillbilly.
--David Kurtz
Who says Bush ever linked Iraq and 9/11? Why just this week he very carefully distinguished between the two in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams:
WILLIAMS: Do you have any moments of doubt that we fought a wrong war? Or that there's something wrong with the perception of America overseas?BUSH: Well those are two different questions, did we fight the wrong war, and absolutely -- I have no doubt -- the war came to our shores, remember that. We had a foreign policy that basically said, let's hope calm works. And we were attacked.
WILLIAMS: But those weren't Iraqis.
BUSH : They weren’t, no, I agree, they weren't Iraqis, nor did I ever say Iraq ordered that attack, but they're a part of, Iraq is part of the struggle against the terrorists.
Convinced?
Update: From Reader AS:
You left out the best part: "Now in terms of image, of course I worry about American image. We are great at TV, and yet we are getting crushed on the PR front. I personally do not believe that Saddam Hussein picked up the phone and said, 'al-Qaida, attack America.'"After denying that Iraq ordered the attack, it seems to occur to Bush that he wasn't quite specific enough in describing his straw man -- or that he didn't quite nail this week's talking point -- and so he comes back around to take a firm stand against something that exactly zero people believe.
The unfortunate part of that interview, though, was that Williams had Bush right in the crosshairs when he began to ask him what led him to read "The Stranger". Bush says that Laura recommended it, but then Williams unfortunately wanders where Bush wants -- into a discussion of the other books he's read, low expectations, etc. If only Williams had given Bush some more room to talk -- or asked a followup like "What about the book made her think you'd like it?" -- he might have gotten closer to what people really want to know, which is whether Bush actually read Camus. Sigh.
--David Kurtz
As we noted here earlier today, a new front has opened in the war on Republican corruption--Alaska. (If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here.)
Some 20 search warrants were executed in a series of raids Thursday across Alaska. Not all of the locations searched have yet been identified, but the offices of six state lawmakers were among those searched, including the office of Ben Stevens, son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), himself already in the news this week after being unveiled as the senator who put a secret hold on a bipartisan bill that would create a publicly available database of all federal grants and contracts.
Already the Alaska Affair has contributed one of this new Gilded Age's most memorable episodes. Among the items federal agents were looking for in state lawmakers' offices were garments, including hats, with the logo "Corrupt Bastards Club" or "Corrupt Bastards Caucus."
Used to be that it was the coverup that got you. Now it's the bragging.
--David Kurtz
Greg Sargent and the folks over at TPMCafe's Election Central have been doing a bang-up job covering the mid-term elections--and, with Labor Day now upon us, things are set to really get rolling.
If you haven't yet ventured over to Election Central, check it out. All the latest polling is featured on the front page, along with a convenient drop-down window towards the top of the page that lets you scroll through the various races they're covering. If you want to keep tabs on the political horse races, Election Central is your spot. And if you have scoop on any races in your neck of the woods, pass it on. Election Central will be TPM's clearinghouse for election year 2006.
What a whacky campaign season it has been already--thanks in no small part to Florida. Greg has a new post up this evening about Florida's 24th, where the Republican incumbent, Tom Feeney, is touting Democrat Clint Curtis as his likely challenger even before the Democratic primary, claiming that Curtis' primary opponent is MIA.
--David Kurtz
Time for me to go.
Well, folks, it's been fun, but it's time for me to sign off. The myserious DK will be with you over the weekend, and then I believe Josh will make his return next week. As for me, this is not only the end of my guest-blogging stint, but actually the end of my time as a member of the TPM Media team. It's been a great experience, and I very much admire the whole enterprise, but for various reasons I've decided to return my blogging to its original state -- a single site -- at the easy to remember URL MatthewYglesias.com; please check it out.
As a parting thought, let me just observe that not only has Bush made a mess of domestic policy, and a stupendous mess of national security policy, but he's also overseen the continuing humiliation of USA Senior Men's Basketball at the hands of sundry foreign elements. It's a truly pathetic record.
--Matthew Yglesias
Kill the poor? Elizabeth Warren observes:
When I talk with families about politics, I often hear a variation on this theme: "Democrats care most about the poor. They tell me I'm better off than the poor, and that I should give up more of my money to help the poor. Well, I'm stretched to the breaking point, and I just can't do it any more." Whenever a Democrat stands up and says, "I'll help every child go to college," then cuts off benefits at $20,000 a year, the message just burns deeper.
Now, no doubt Warren does hear this from people. Nevertheless, it's worth mentioning that it's not actually true. Which Democrat, for example, has proposed a college assistance program with a $20,000 / year family income cut-off? Indeed, as part of the innovation agenda, the House Democrats formally committed themselves to "Make college tuition tax-deductible for students studying math, science, technology, and engineering." This, it's worth noting, will do exactly nothing to help poor families. Their kids, for one thing, are very unlikely to go to college, thanks to inequities in the secondary school system and various other challenges. What's more, if you make less than $20 grand a year and have kids, your income tax burden is going to be extremely low. A standard middle class family will send their kids off to state school and making tuition tax deductible will save them a couple hundred bucks a year.
A rich family, by contrast, is going to send their kids to an expensive private college where tuition will run almost $40,000 a year. And since the family is in a high tax bracket, the deduction will be worth thousands of dollars.
Now, politics is all about perception, and so it's very possible that the Democrats are perceived as favoring narrowly targeted programs that only help the poor. Insofar as that's true, it's a noteworthy fact about the country. But the perception is wrong and that's worth pointing out.
--Matthew Yglesias
College gives financial aid to students from poor families while the wealthier ones pay their way, right? That's the point, after all. Well, not so much and the trend is getting worse.
--Matthew Yglesias
With the FBI raiding his son's Alaska State Senate office, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) might want to review his own ties to the company which has drawn the feds' curiosity.
--Justin Rood
Chris Van Hollen does his penance for mild dissent from the AIPAC line.
--Matthew Yglesias
"[Iran's] progress is far less than expected," said David Albright, a nuclear expert who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "Whether it's because of technical problems or self-restraint it's hard to gauge, but I don't think the U.S. can deliver on its promise to get hard sanctions when Iran is barely progressing."
There's still an issue here, a real one. The spread of nuclear weapons is against the interests of the United States and the creation of a viable global non-proliferation framework is very much in our interests. But there's no need for panic and paranoia, sentiments that are being fed in this country by a combination of GOP political needs and the fact that many of the Bush administration's leading lights just are panicky and paranoid in their approach to the world.
--Matthew Yglesias
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is writing a book about himself! But will he cry on Oprah? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
The wages of confusion. Bush today:
If America were to pull out before Iraq can defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable — and absolutely disastrous. We would be handing Iraq over to our worst enemies — Saddam's former henchmen, armed groups with ties to Iran, and al Qaeda terrorists from all over the world who would suddenly have a base of operations far more valuable than Afghanistan under the Taliban.
I and everyone else have been complaining awhile about Bush's habit of conflating various groups. We see here, though, that this isn't just some matter of intellectual fastidiousness. The idea here is that absent the US military, we would be handing Iraq over to some nefarious -- and, admittedly, it would be quite nefarious -- coalition of Baathists, Iranians, and al-Qaedists, presumably joined by Dr. Evil and the Cobra Commander. Back in the real world, though, these groups are fighting each other. What's more, the "armed groups with ties to Iran" include the political parties that comprise the Iraqi government. So what is it our troops are accomplishing amidst this frothy mix of bad actors?
In all seriousness, what? Because here's the rub. If we were looking at a situation where maybe the decision to launch the war didn't look like such a hot idea, and maybe the reconstruction had proven much more difficult than we'd hoped, and maybe the slog so far had been long and hard and looked to continue to be long and hard for a while, I still could easily see myself convinced that the best thing to do was stay firm and continue with the policy. But looking back over, say, the past three years since the end of our first summer in Iraq, it doesn't appear to be the case that the situation has improved at all with regard to the problems Bush is pointing to. So what, honestly, is the point? What about the events of the past year makes it look like things will be better one year from today? Already, the apparent gains from the Baghdad security initiative are looking mighty short-lived, just as every skepticism-minded person predicted.
--Matthew Yglesias
Yup, there was a second hold on the porkbusting database bill -- Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV).
In a new statement, Byrd admits to placing the hold and says he's now released it.
--Paul Kiel
Whoa! New poll shows primary challenger Steve Laffey way ahead of incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), 51-34.
Update: And that's despite the hefty sum spent on the race by the Republican National Senatorial Committee to defeat Laffey.
--Paul Kiel
Recently, we learned that a "nice little Guatemalan man" paints Sen. Conrad Burns' (R-MT) house. Now we learn that terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime."
A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations responds.
--Paul Kiel
Cato welfare dude Michael Tanner argues that "since Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty in 1964, the poverty rate is perilously close to where we began more than 40 years ago." He notes that if "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. What does that say about our welfare policy?" But look at the historical tables in 1964, 19 percent of the population was poor. Today, that's 12.6 percent. There are around 300 million people in America, so the 6.4 percentage point diminution in poverty is worth about 19.2 million non-impoverished people. By comparison, just 17.8 million people live in Florida.
Back to the table, though, and you'll see that poverty actually fell quite rapidly from 19 percent in 1964 to 12.6 percent in 1970. Throughout the seventies, the average poverty rate was about 11.8 percent. At around the end of this period Ronald Reagan falsely claimed that the war on poverty had failed (as you can see, poverty rates fell dramatically) and curtailed anti-poverty programs. As a result, since then poverty rates have largely bounced up and down roughly in step with broad macroeconomic trends, but have never re-reached the seventies-vintage lows on a sustained basis.
So, yes, whether or not you favor spending money on giving stuff to poor people, it remains the case that -- surprise! -- poor people benefit from those services.
--Matthew Yglesias
More on the "dramatic decline" in SAT scores. S.M. writes:
I've been tutoring high school students for a number of years now, helping them prepare for their SATs. In the current discussion about the decline in test scores, it's important to note that not only was the test lengthened and a writing section added, but the actual content of the reading and math sections was changed. The analogy section (in my opinion as a linguist, the most interesting and insightful part of the old test) has been replaced by questions based on short reading selections, and the math problems are mildly more difficult in the moderate/hard range than they were just a few years ago. The changes in the reading are such that more students, often very good ones, don't have enough time to finish a section. Add to all this the fact that the overall length of the test is dramatically increased and it's no wonder that average scores are declining a bit. I'm actually surprised that the reported decline is as small as it is.
A.B. concurs:
While making shockingly little money at my first job in DC, I worked at second job at a test-prep firm in Bethesda. As part of my job, I took the new SAT last year. And, much to my chagrin, I did worse than I did in high school -- way worse. This may be a product of the fact that I have already been to college and didn't have a lot riding on the test, but I think it also had something to do with the fact that the new test is hideously long. I have had students who probably would have tried the test a second or third time to raise their scores, had the first one not been such a miserable experience. No matter what the College Board says, fatigue is a factor, and students who have had professional preparation to deal with that fatigue are going to do better. (Students who have had professional counseling on how to convince the College Board to let them take the test over several days are way out front on this.) We shouldn't just be worried about a small dip in the scores, we should be worried about the achievement gap that changes in the test is opening.
I haven't heard from anyone with relevant experience taking the Post's alarmist line.
--Matthew Yglesias
Is there a second "secret hold" on the porkbusting database bill? And does it come from a Democrat?
--Justin Rood
Back to Iran. Talk of a unified Qaeda/Iran/Hezbollah/Syria menace is nonsense as a casual scan of actual Sunni jihadist views will make clear. As Fred Kaplan notes, if Churchill and FDR had operated with the Bush mentality, "they might not have formed an alliance with the Soviet Union (out of a refusal to negotiate with evil Communists), and they might have therefore lost the war."
It's worse than that, though -- they might have proposed attacking the Soviet Union in the middle of the war because Bolshevism and Nazism were both species of Eurofascism.
--Matthew Yglesias
Reader M.E. reminds me that The Washington Post is part of the same business enterprise as the Kaplan test prep company and therefore has a large financial interest in spreading paranoia about SAT performance.
Normally, I don't like to fling these kind of "follow the money" accusations around without evidence, but it is true that I don't see the country's other major newspapers describing a 0.7 percent decline in scores as "dramatic."
--Matthew Yglesias
Okay. Forget about Iran for a moment. Why is The Washington Post panicking about SAT scores?
The dramatic decline in SAT scores announced yesterday raises the issue of whether there is something wrong with the new test or, even more worrisome, with the lessons being taught in high schools.
Sounds bad. But how dramatic was the drop? Well, reading went from 508 to 503 and math went from 520 to 518. That doesn't sound especially dramatic to me. Say you knew two families with kids applying to college. One kid gets a 1028 on his SAT and the other kid gets a 1021. Are you really going to say something dramatically different to the parents of Kid B? If Kid B's parents were all freaked out because their kid did seven points worse than Kid A, wouldn't you tell them to chill out? Certainly, I would.
What's more, they changed the test. They added a new writing section. Adding a new section to the test means, presumably, that this year's round of kids spent slightly less time studying and preparing for the math and reading tests than did previous cohorts. And so they did slightly worse. Seems to me it's about what you'd expect. If we see a years-long trend of continued decline, then you can call me and worry. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned with the quality of American high schools, but I don't see any dramatic new evidence of a worsening problem. What's more, the students who are being worsed-served by the system are almost certainly the ones who aren't taking the SAT.
--Matthew Yglesias
If you're interested in a somewhat more scholarly, even-toned effort to defuse Iran-related hysteria, I would recommend this PDF report on the subject from the Royal Institute of International Affairs (i.e., Chatham House) in the UK.
--Matthew Yglesias
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), the chamber's top video-based medical diagnostician, will likely face punishment for lying on his medical license renewal form. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
National Republican Senatorial Committee panicked about Dem Sherrod Brown’s challenge to endangered GOP incumbent Mike DeWine?
Here's how much the NRSC has spent on the Ohio race to date this year: $656,054.58. And a new NRSC-sponsored ad campaign is saturating the Ohio airwaves – a “huge buy,” a Brown adviser concedes.
--Paul Kiel
Why did Alaska GOP Sen. Ted Stevens (the $250 million "Bridge to Nowhere" Ted Stevens) say he's holding up a $15 million proposal to create transparency in government spending?
He's worried about the cost.
--Justin Rood
Charles Krauthammer sure does see an awful lot of Hitlers on the horizon.
--Matthew Yglesias
Ah, the "lessons of history." Reader C.B. reminds me that "One of the huge mistakes that the democracies made with regard to Hitler was that they refused to take seriously what he said... until it was too late." In turn, "We dare not do that again-- especially when we are talking about nuclear weapons that can be packed in suitcase or stuck on the end of a Katuysha rocket." Interestingly, I was just reading (via Robert Farley) this great monograph by Jeffrey Record of the Army War College about the West's pre-war approach to Hitler and the abuse of the lessons thereby learned by subsequent American presidents.
At any rate, it's certainly the case that the leaders of the United States, Britain, and France erred in their estimates of Hitler's strategic ambitions. It's also certainly the case that, in retrospect, we can see that Hitler outlined those ambitions in advance, in Mein Kampf and elsewhere. People have, however, a terrible habit of overinterpreting these data points. In particular, they want to propose that the 1930s teach us the lesson that we should always take foreign leaders at their word.
Except, of course, that nobody actually thinks we should take that lesson away. I hope I won't rob anyone of their innocence by making this observation, but politicians lie. In particular, along with telling the truth about his strategic ambitions, Hitler lied about his strategic ambitions. One reason people underestimated their scope was that Hitler put some time into trying to deceive people. He said different things at different times. Similarly, you don't hear the people arguing that we need to take Ahmadenijad's public statements more seriously arguing that we need to take his public protestations that Iran's nuclear program is for civilian purposes more seriously.
So the "lesson" people want to draw from the 1930s isn't that we should take people's statements more seriously. Rather, the "lesson" they've learned is that we should always adopt the most alarmist possible interpretation of every given situation. But, of course, they never put it that way. Why don't they? Well, because when you put it that way it sounds like a stupid lesson. Which, obviously, it is. If you want to draw lessons from history, you need to really look at history as a whole. Have countries, as a general matter, been well served by adopting maximally alarmist interpretations of events abroad? I don't think that's a remotely justifiable view. If anything, history teaches the reverse lesson.
--Matthew Yglesias
The Iran debate has really become rather surreal. You have the "Islamofascist" locution jumping from the fever swamps of rightwing punditry into the mouth of the President of the United States. You have the Secretary of Defense issuing dire warnings of another Munich. These things are being done by the exact same people who, four years ago, were utterly dismissive of claims that invading Iraq was likely to serve Iranian interests better than American ones. Indeed, you have the exact same people who two years ago were assuring us that it made sense to commit American blood and treasure to fight Sunni insurgents on behalf of Iranian-backed Shiite militias now saying we need to commit more blood and treasure in Iraq to stop . . . Iranian-backed Shiite militias.
You have Richard Cohen, who backed the Iraq War and came to regret it, turning around and saying it's time to party like it's 1938. Meanwhile, this entire view of the world has, as best I can tell, no relationship whatsoever to reality.
Via Kevin Drum, David Ignatius is in Iran and reports that though "you might expect that Tehran would feel like a garrison town" it's actually surprisingly relaxed. But why might you expect that Teheran would feel like a garrison town? Well, you would if you've been following the media's dubious, highly-spun coverage of the issue. But you wouldn't if you asked yourself some basic questions. For example, if Iran is preparing to mount a Hitler-style bid for world domination they must be engaged in a big military build-up, right? But there is no such build up. Maybe there's no need for a build-up because the Iranian military is already so vast and mighty? Well, no. Iran has a defense budget of about $6 billion a year.
The United States spends over 50 times more than that. But perhaps comparisons to the USA are misleading. Lets compare our would-be regional hegemon to its neighbors. Well, Israel spends $9.6 billion and Saudi Arabia spends $25.2 billion. Pakistan, immediately adjacent to Iran and nuclear armed, actually has engaged in a recent defense buildup. What kind of quest for hegemony is Iran supposed to be on? Ignorant American pundits and television personalities may be unaware of these facts, but surely Iranian military and intelligence officials have noticed that Iran has no capacity whatsoever to conquer the region.
Meanwhile, the freaky and unpredictable Iranian regime has actually been in power for a very long time. Since before I was born. The regime is not only long-entrenched, but quite corrupt. Mightn't this lead you think it's being run by reasonably comfortable men who enjoy the fruits of power, intend to stay in power, and know a thing or two about maintaining their power rather than by irrational lunatics who've been waiting in the wings for 27 years preparing to spring their bid for world domination upon us without first having acquired so much as a single modern tank?
And then there's the small matter that our purported would-be Hitlers in Teheran were trying to reach a comprehensive peace agreement with the United States as recently as 2003. Their proposal was rejected by the Bush administration. Not rejected, I remind you, because the Bushies found the details of the proposal inadequate and Teheran refused to compromise further. No! It was rejected without any effort at negotiation because, at the time, the administration was busy threatening to overthrow the government of Iran as the second or third item in an ambitious plan to overthrow every government in the region.
So, here's Iran. Outgunned by its two leading religio-ideological antagonists, Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the region. One immediate neighbor is Pakistan, with a larger population base and a nuclear arsenal. Another immediate neighbor, Afghanistan, is occupied by soldiers under the command of an American president who has spurned peace offers and threatened to overthrow the Iranian government. A second immediate neighbor, Iraq, is occupied by a larger number of soldiers from the same country. The Iranian military's equipment is outdated and essentially incapable of mounting offensive operations. So Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Under the circumstances, wouldn't you? Don't you think a little deterrence capability would serve the country well under those circumstances?
I'm sorry to have gone on at such great length here, and a little nervous about stepping outside the "sensible" zone with my commentary on this topic, but somebody needs to call bull$#*t on the prevailing elite consensus about Iran. Of course it would be better to find a way to persuade, cajole, whatever Iran out of going nuclear -- the spread of nuclear weapons is, as such, bad for the USA. But there's no need -- absolutely no need -- for this atmosphere of panic and paranoia.
--Matthew Yglesias
Which Supreme Court judge took a trip on Time Warner's dime? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
What is it with Bushies and horses? Ken Tomlinson, in charge of public broadcasting, seems to have been using his office to run "a horse racing operation".
Heck of a job, Kenny!
--Matthew Yglesias
And then there was one?
It's Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), according to Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) comments a couple of weeks ago, recorded in a small Arkansas paper.
--Paul Kiel
Harry Reid strikes back at Don Rumsfeld:
Secretary Rumsfeld’s reckless comments show why America is not as safe as it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to the war in Iraq. If there's one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it's Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to succeed. Under this Administration's watch, terror attacks have increased, Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin. We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong since the start of the Iraq War? Or, do we change course in Iraq and put in place new leadership that will put the safety of the American people ahead of partisan games? For the sake of the safety of this country, it is time to make a change.
That's not bad.
--Matthew Yglesias
Accepting the Bush administration's view that the more dangerous the Bush administration makes the world the more we need to keep on keepin' on with the Bush approach is, as I said, absurd. Still, it's one thing to slam the incumbents and another thing to offer ideas of your own. And, naturally, people disagree.
Recently, we've been hashing this out a bit at The American Prospect Online. Shadi Hamid got the ball rolling with a two part series arguing that a certain form of democracy-promotion (though not the invade-conquer-occupy-democratize model) really should be at the heart of American -- and liberal -- national security policy. Spencer Ackerman fired back arguing that the emphasis on democracy is misguided and rather dangerous. The primary concern, he says, should instead be human rights. Ernest Wilson, meanwhile, weighed in on TPMCafe arguing for a more holistic approach and outlining a somewhat complicated view.
On the subject of the Ackerman-Hamid dispute, I tend to side with Spencer, though not quite with his level of vehemence and conviction. For my part, I think their disagreement is focusing on somewhat the wrong issue. I don't buy into the strict academic realist view that the internal politics of foreign countries are irrelevant, but I don't think they can reasonably be made the main focus of what American foreign policy tries to accomplish in the world. Rather, the main issue at hand is the nature of the world order. Wilson specifically argues that "Having a [progressive foreign policy should require more than declaring oneself in favor of a 'liberal international order,'" which I guess is right, but I actually think declaring oneself in favor of a liberal international order would be a pretty good start. Perhaps I'll spell out what that means down the road.
--Matthew Yglesias
Minimum amount spent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee on direct mail against Steve Laffey in Rhode Island: $181,587.66.
Amount spent by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Connecticut: $0.
Update: I should have been clearer about this - the figures above refer to the Republican primary in Rhode Island versus the Democratic primary in Connectict (not the general election).
--Paul Kiel
For his latest trick, in a speech to the American Legion, Don Rumsfeld gives the full wingnut monte. America faces an undifferentiated fascist menace. Bush's critics are appeasers who don't understand the lessons of history who blame America first and hate freedom. The media is treasonous and a free press is a luxury we can ill-afford in this time of crisis. Etc.
This, I think we can assume, is the fall campaign. The idea is to psyche the Democrats out. To make them think they can't win an argument about foreign policy. To make them act like they can't win an argument about foreign policy. And to thereby demonstrate to the American people that even the Democrats themselves lack confidence in their own ability to handle these issues.
It's essential that the debate be joined, and joined with confidence. Rumsfeld is a buffoon. A punchline. A well-known liar. He and his bosses -- Bush and Cheney -- are running around the country trying to cite the failures of their own policies as a reason to entrust them with additional authority in order to continue and intensify those same failings. We're witnessing the bitter, bitter fruits of the Iraq War. Other nations learned that they must seek nuclear weapons as soon as possible to safeguard themselves from a newly trigger happy United States of America. Muslim opinion was sharply polarized against us. Iran and Syria were told that their cooperation against al-Qaeda was no longer needed because their governments would topple soon enough. A power vacuum was left on the streets of Baghdad that parties aligned with Iran have rushed to fill. The Arab-Israeli conflict was sidelined as something that would magically resolve itself once Saddam Hussein was out of the way. And America's allies were taught that our government was not to be relied upon -- that we operated with bad intelligence and initiated wars of choice without any real plans or ideas about how to cope with the aftermath.
That's how we got here. By listening to Bush. By listening to Cheney. By listening to Rumsfeld. The idea that we should keep on listening to them is absurd.
--Matthew Yglesias
Porkbuster countdown: 79. Just 20 more denials to go to find out who's holding up the Obama/Coburn bill.
While you wait, why not catch up on the curious history of the Senate's secret hold? (No, that's not a wrestling move. But it should be.)
--Justin Rood
A Sweden update. Reader K.M. informs me that the country is less homogenous than I thought -- 13 percent are foreign born. About a third of those are from elsewhere in Scandinavia and Western Europe, another third from Eastern Europe and the former USSR, and a final third from outside of Europe.
Shows what I know. I'll also add that I think The Cardigans are underrated.
--Matthew Yglesias
More CPS analysis here from ThinkProgress. Median earnings are down, the number of uninsured is up, the poverty rate is approximately unchanged.
--Matthew Yglesias
New Current Population Survey income, poverty, and health care data out. Average household income finally rises! It's not clear whether that's a rise in wages or a rise in hours worked.
--Matthew Yglesias
The United States of America is a substantially wealthier society, on average, than is Sweden. Nevertheless, the poorest Americans and the poorest Swedes have essentially the same amount of money income -- both get about 39 percent of America's median income. Tim Worstall at TechCentralStation takes a gander at these numbers and concludes that even leftwingers should find nothing to admire about the Swedish model as opposed to the American -- after all, the poor do the same in both places!
The trouble, as Max Sawicky points out, was right there in the text accompanying the chart (it's in the new edition of The State of Working America) where Worstall found his data, "To the extent that these countries provide more social and economic support to their citizens than the United States, these numbers provide a somewhat incomplete comparison regarding the living standards of low-income people." Obviously, however, the whole point of something like the Swedish welfare state is precisely that it provides more social services to its citizens. A more subtle and technical point would be that the chart compares incomes in terms of purchasing power parities (PPP) rather than market exchange rates. PPPs work by comparing what actual baskets of goods cost from place to place and thereby avoids distorting the picture with transient exchange rate fluctuations and captures the fact that consumer goods are generally cheaper in the USA than in Scandinavia. One downside of this method, however, is that "PPPs do not account for the cost of non-market social goods, such as education, health care, or child care, which are much cheaper for completely covered by public spending in many European countries relative to the United States."
Now, as it happens, the United States is so different from Sweden in so many ways that I'm not sure this is an especially useful comparison. The United States isn't going to become a small, highly urbanized country with an ethnically homogenous population and the Swedish economy has various non-replicable features, etc. Canada, by contrast, actually does resemble the United States in a lot of ways and its poor are substantially better off than are Americas poor, even while the American rich do better than the Canadian rich.
--Matthew Yglesias
Bush's new plan to control federal spending -- delay federal payments 'till October when they'll count as part of a different fiscal year. Amateurish and insulting.
--Matthew Yglesias
Update: the Porkbuster Countdown is going strong into day two. So far, 59 senators have denied placing a "secret hold" on legislation to create a public, user-friendly database of all government spending. Thanks to the many TPM readers who have called senators and gathered responses. Check out our rolling tally -- and help unmask the secret senator.
--Justin Rood
Don Rumsfeld says he's ready for another war despite existing commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
--Matthew Yglesias
A whistleblower uses YouTube to expose flaws in Homeland Security technology. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Obviously, it's my name and email address posted up there at the top of the page. Nevertheless, a certain number of the posts are actually written by Paul Kiel or Justin Rood of TPM Muckraker. If you have something to say about one of the projects they're working on (this mystery senator business, for example) you crshould send your email to tips at TPMMuckraker dot com rather than to me. Sorry for the confusion, but just check for the byline at the end of the post and you'll see who wrote it.
--Matthew Yglesias
"The Yes Men" strike in New Orleans: political hoaxsters create fake persona of a HUD official to announce millions in public health efforts, and billions in private grants for wetlands rebuilding. The administration calls the stunt "sick, twisted."
--Justin Rood
From the annals of irrationality, reader T.T. tells me "enough with the links to TNR and Weekly Standard." Why?
If I didn't know better, I'd think you were working for AIPAC given the number of links you're putting up to their media wing(s) today over at TPM.Please stop it.
A previously loyal TPM reader,
But I linked to those articles in order to criticize them.
In the spirit of non-seriousness, what's the deal with AIPAC's website? It's pretty crude, no? You'd think they could do better. The ideologically similar Israel Project, by contrast, has an elegant site courtesy of Kintera.
Late Update: T.T. writes again -- "That was a joke..."
And I, it seems, am an idiot.
--Matthew Yglesias
Update on the "masked senator" effort: TPM readers have helped gather denials from 50 lawmakers who say they aren't the ones obstructing the Obama/Coburn anti-pork legislation. Add the co-sponsors to that total, and we've got just 47 more to call before we learn who's keeping us from finding out where our tax money goes.
Update: Our official tally is here.
--Justin Rood
Jon Chait has a smart column about how U.S. politics isn't a zero sum enterprise. It's perfectly possible for conservatives to keep failing to make the government smaller without that meaning that liberals are achieving our goals.
Folks would do well to consider the applicability of this observation to the international realm as well. Lee Smith, for example, takes Hassan Nasrallah's statement of regret that the recent Israel-Lebanon war as evidence that the CW is wrong and Israel did just fine. Noam Scheiber leans a bit in the direction of embracing that interpretation as well. I suspect the truth is more depressing. War is typically a negative sum endeavor that leaves both sides worse off than they would have been had the war not begun. Think of Iraq -- the US seriously damaged our interests by invading, but Saddam Hussein didn't benefit at all from the war.
It sounds sufficiently dippy that I hesitate to express the view, but the simple fact of the matter is that going to war is rarely a good idea. The benefits of international cooperation -- or simple lack of active conflict -- are sufficiently large that there are almost always alternatives that would have been more conducive to both sides' interests.
--Matthew Yglesias
The government spends or gives away hundreds of billions of dollars each year. But there's no easy way to see where it goes.
Two senators have championed a searchable database of federal spending and grantmaking. But now that it's on the brink of becoming law, an anonymous senator has stepped in to block it.
Help unmask the culprit.
Update: We'll be updating the post as reader responses come in.
--Justin Rood
Boyd Blundell plays the Katrina "blame game" (a.k.a., holding people accountable for their actions) and does it well.
--Matthew Yglesias
M.J. Rosenberg on Tom Lantos blocking promised aid to Lebanon. Sometimes you really have to wonder what Israel's soi disant friends in Washington think they're doing. The idea that we should engineering a situation where Lebanon's economy and infrastructure have been battered by U.S.-made Israeli weapons and then rebuilt through Iranian dollars funneled through Hezbollah is going to serve our interests or Israel's is daft.
--Matthew Yglesias