I thought about posting something yesterday, but it just didn’t feel right. As if I’d somehow be exploiting the day for page views. I know, it’s a dumb thing to think, but I just didn’t feel like piling on top of all of the rest of the posts.

So I’ll answer my own question. What did I feel? Well, angry, yes…but I wanted revenge. Plain and simple. I’m sure many of us felt similarly and that’s why we eventually went off the rails and plunged ourselves into two wars without finishing the first one. But I remember that the day after I saw this cartoon and thought, “Yes!”

I also felt an amazing sense of unity in this country and one I doubt I’ll feel in my lifetime unless something crazy like this happens again. That seems unlikely since the last time an attack this significant happened was Pearl Harbor.

But that sense of unity felt real and sustained. I’d say that for a good two or three months we were all in this together. We hit Afghanistan and were winning. The Taliban was on the run. A new government was starting to form.

And then, well, we all know what happened then.

But that’s just me. That’s how I felt.

How about you?

The story of Margaret Thatcher is set to hit the big screens in 2012 and here’s a glimpse…

I think it’s a winner.

Your thoughts?

I have a new book that came out a few weeks ago on presidential leadership, aptly titled “Presidential Leadership: 15 Decisions that Changed the Nation.  I’m claiming that as my excuse for not blogging much on this site since the 2008 election.

I mention it because the final two chapters of the book are Reagan and Obama, two topics of particular interest to the Donklephant crowd.   Overall, the book is an examination of the ‘hows and whys’ of some of the most momentous decisions of the presidency, including Washington’s squelching of the Whiskey Rebellion, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Teddy Roosevelt’s building of the Panama Canal, FDR’s passage of the Lend-Lease bill, Truman’s use of the atomic bomb, and a bunch of others.

It’s getting some pretty good reviews, I think in part because it’s a fairly even-handed accounting of the presidency and its occupants.

Which is where Reagan and Obama come in.  Some have questioned how I could applaud both men — Reagan for his ‘Evil Empire speech’ and Obama for healthcare reform — in the space of two chapters.

Well, it was pretty easy.  The book is a study of bold, transformative, office-stretching decisions that elucidate a particular aspect of leadership.   Irrespective of what side of the aisle you sit, it’s hard to deny that Reagan’s Evil Empire speech wasn’t a seminal moment in the cold war.  With that simple phrase, he successfully accomplished what no other president had:  branded the Soviets as evil.  And in doing so, it allowed him to redefine the cold war as morality play, with the United States on the side of right.

What I found particularly interesting about the episode was that few around Reagan wanted him to use the line.   The moderates — Jim Baker, David Gergen, Al Haig and others — thought it was impolitic, inflammatory and un-presidential.  Reagan felt differently, however.  He had been itching for 25 years — ever since his days as a surrogate for Barry Goldwater — to expose the Soviets as evil.  He had tried previously in 1982, only to see the phrase scrubbed from his speech at this last minute.  But with the nuclear freeze movement gaining momentum in the spring of 1983, he decided the time was right.  And it changed the trajectory of the cold war.

President Obama’s decision to push forward with healthcare reform, even after Scott Brown’s election in January of 2010, is equally as impressive, though for other reasons.   He could have easily scrapped his reform plan, re-introduced a scaled back version, cajoled it through Congress without much resistance, and declared victory.  That’s certainly what Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod were counseling.   But the president, far from backing off, doubled-down his bet on comprehensive reform by going the reconciliation route, or the ‘nuclear option’ as some have likened it.  He knew it would be contentious — and it was.   And though it arguably cost the Democrats control of Congress, even in retrospect the president believes it was the right thing to do.   Time will tell.

Rick Ungar digs up an argument ender for the idea that the Founders would never be in favor of mandated health care.

They were…because they passed a VERY similar law in the 6th Congress.

Rick…take it away…

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed – “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

And when the Bill came to the desk of President John Adams for signature, I think it’s safe to assume that the man in that chair had a pretty good grasp on what the framers had in mind.

So why did they do it? Were they secret socialists? Of course not. But they had a crisis on their hands so they crafted some common sense legislation to address it. And, by the way, it was way more “socialist” than what Obama got passed.

For example…

When a sick or injured sailor needed medical assistance, the government would confirm that his payments had been collected and turned over by his employer and would then give the sailor a voucher entitling him to admission to the hospital where he would be treated for whatever ailed him.

While a few of the healthcare facilities accepting the government voucher were privately operated, the majority of the treatment was given out at the federal maritime hospitals that were built and operated by the government in the nation’s largest ports.

As the nation grew and expanded, the system was also expanded to cover sailors working the private vessels sailing the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

The program eventually became the Public Health Service, a government operated health service that exists to this day under the supervision of the Surgeon General.

That’s right…a sailor couldn’t even go to the hospital unless the government knew they had been paid…and the treatment was in government owned facilities…for people employed by private companies…who were required to buy insurance.

Now some will say that this doesn’t say people are required to buy private insurance. That’s right, it doesn’t say that. And if you want to split hairs between private and public insurance, well, we can go there but that again paints the Founders as far more socialist than the current legislation, thus negating the argument we’ve heard time and time again by the Repubs.

My answer? Ummm…no.

Well, at least with anything political. I’d trust him to borrow a garden hose, but that’s about it.

Because if even one tenth of what’s in the new book ‘Game Change’ is true about Edwards (and his wife) it would be enough. The book paints Edwards as a reckless opportunist, an ego monster, a guy who’s so blinded by the need for power that he would do nearly anything to get it.

For instance, after it was well established inside the Edwards camp that he was having an affair, it didn’t stop him. Not for a moment. In fact, he became even more brazen. So much so that he proposed the following deal to Obama after Iowa…

Yet Edwards had no intention of going quietly into any good night. He had a contingency plan. Two months earlier, he had asked Leo Hindery, a New York media investor who was one of his closest confidants, to convey an audacious proposal to Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader and a mentor to Obama: If Edwards won the caucuses, Obama would immediately drop out of the race and become his running mate; if Obama won, Edwards would do the converse. Wounding though a loss in Iowa would be to Hillary, she might be strong enough to bounce back. The only way to guarantee her elimination would be to take the extraordinary step of uniting against her.

Hindery had presented the proposal to Daschle, with whom he’d long been friends. Daschle brought it to the Obama campaign. The talks were tentative; nothing had been decided.

Now, with the results of Iowa in, Edwards determined it was time to make the deal. A little while before taking the stage to deliver his concession speech, he summoned Hindery to his hotel suite and issued a directive: “Get ahold of Tom.”

Hindery considered the timing miserable. Obama just frickin’ won Iowa, he thought. Give him a chance to savor it. But Edwards wanted to set the wheels in motion—immediately.

Edwards knew that the Rielle Hunter affair could explode at any moment, but his ego was willing to pull the entire Democratic party down with him. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s world class douchebaggery at its very douchbaggiest.

Thankfully Obama rejected the offer. After all, he was on a roll and Edwards didn’t bring a lot to the table. Also, it’s not like he added very much to Kerry’s ticket in 2004. The deal made no sense.

Oh, but that didn’t stop John…

Clinton’s astonishing comeback in New Hampshire put an end to Obama’s hopes of a quick finish to the nomination contest—and led Edwards to believe that there was still an opening to strike a bargain. On the eve of the South Carolina primary two weeks later, he again dispatched Hindery to make a revised offer, this time a trade for Edwards’s endorsement.

“John will settle for attorney general,” Hindery e-mailed Daschle.

Daschle shook his head. How desperate is this guy?

“Leo, this isn’t good for John,” Daschle replied. “This is ridiculous. It’s going to be ambassador to Zimbabwe next.”

When Obama heard about the suggested quid pro quo, he was incredulous. That’s crazy, he told Axelrod. If I were willing to make a deal like that, I shouldn’t be president!

Indeed.

By the way, the entire excerpt about Edwards is well worth the read over at New York Magazine. Because it’s not just about the the affair. Lots of behind the scenes revelations, including the difference between the public Elizabeth Edwards and the private one…who appears to be just as egomaniacal and power hungry as her husband.

The Daily Show lampoons Glenn Beck’s, Sean Hannity’s & Bill O’Reilly’s clarion calls to the right about how America is being transformed into something scary and unrecognizable.

Enjoy…

And scene.

As the saying goes, “May you live in interesting times.”

On Decemeber 31, 1999, who would have thought that…

• …George W. Bush would be elected president…by the Supreme Court?
• …he would then go on to win two terms?
• …the Twin Towers would no longer exist?
• …we would declare war on Afghanistan and Iraq?
• …Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger?
• …blogging would become such a force in politics?
• …a little known Governor from Vermont could excite millions over the internet, raise millions and become an overnight sensation…but would ultimately flame out because he lacked any true organization?
• …the housing markets would completely implode?
• …credit would freeze up?
• …the world economy almost came crashing down? (Well, besides Peter Schiff.)
• …a little known Congressman from Texas could excite millions over the internet, raise millions and become an overnight sensation…but would ultimately flame out because he lacked any true organization?
• …a little known junior Senator from Illinois could excite millions over the internet, raise millions, become an overnight sensation, outmaneuver Bill & Hill to win the Dem nomination and then run against John McCain and win?
• …Sarah Palin?
• …Obama would win North Carolina?
• …we’re still talking about Sarah Palin?
• …Senator Al Franken?

So then…what do the Tens (or whatever we’re calling them) have in store for us?

Some of my predictions…

• The emergence of a true third way fueled by new social organization tools and a serious candidate with gobs of money who can bypass the traditional campaign finance rules. But it won’t happen until 2016. Because the field will be wide open at that point. And his name will be Michael Bloomberg.
• And yes, I do think Obama will get a second term, but it’ll be a nail biter. Romney will be his opponent, with Bobby Jindal riding shotgun.
• Obama’s lack of a supermajority in the Senate or House will be good for his second term and deficit reduction will be a key focus.
• This blog will still be going strong.

What are yours?

To Charles De Gaulle…

To the wife of Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Gronchi…

To Pope John XXIII…

Maybe he just liked to sneak a peek at their shoes?

(h/t: Gaucho Politico & Lawyers, Guns & Money)

Bernie Madoff being pinned to the wall by a huge, farting bull…which is supposed to represent Wall Street.

All from the mind of Chinese artist Chen Wenling.

I mean, come on…that is AWESOME!

A question…if you had to create a sculpture that summed up what happened last year…what would it look like and why?

(Photo: BBC)

“Sometimes you have to make the tough decisions. If you think this has to be done, you have my blessing. But someday you guys are going to need to tell me how we ended up with a system like this. I know this is not the time to test them and put them through failure, but we’re not doing something right if we’re stuck with these miserable choices.”
- George W. Bush on September 16, 2008

That’s from an upcoming 19,000 word piece in The New Yorker entitled, “A Reporter at Large — Eight Days: The battle to save the American financial system piece.” It will be a must read for anybody interested in seeing how things went so horrible, terribly wrong, but as the Bush quote hints at…deregulation is why we were stuck with miserable choices.

If this raises your conservative/libertarian hackles, well, tough. It’s time to accept the fact that markets are not self regulating and never can be due to the very nature of capitalism itself.

Why do I bring this up? Well, this fall Obama is set to propose much tougher regulations on banking and the marketplace. So I want everybody to remember why we find ourselves in the economic situation we’re in and why we need to never let it happen again.

Until then…

The latest Carnival of Divided Government – Labor Day Edition has been posted at my home blog. The carnival is an irregularly scheduled compilation of links to new and traditional media commentary on the topic of divided government. I’ll highlight one link here.

This excerpt is from a 1959 letter written by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and referenced in a recent New York Times Op-Ed by Max Blumenthal – “Ike’s Other Warning“.

Eisenhower wrote the letter in reply to one Robert J. Biggs, a WWII veteran. Biggs was dissatisfied with the level of discourse in Washington D.C. and thought the President was not projecting sufficient strength and certitude. He goes on to say that Americans need “more of the attitude of a commanding officer who knows the goal and the mission and states, without evasion, the way it is to be done.” Ike took the time to write a long, thoughtful and honest letter to Mr. Biggs:

“As you know, for four years our government has been a divided government, with the Administration confronted by a Congress controlled by the opposition–and the two working, if not in opposition, at least at cross purposes much of the time. An example is the sparring that seems to go on constantly over our defense situation–and specifically over our missile position. It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness except as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resort to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

As an exercise to the reader, I suggest rereading the above paragraph substituting “health care reform” for “missile position” and “defense situation”.

Ike continues the letter, explaining in more detail the burden and responsibility that our messy, democratic government puts on the citizenry:

“Even if this division in the government did not exist, I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed. Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life. This is to me what Lincoln meant by government “of the people, by the people, and for the people. … But while this responsibility is a taxing one to a free people it is their great strength as well–from millions of individual free minds come new ideas, new adjustments to emerging problems, and tremendous vigor, vitality and progress.”

The legion of bloggers and pundits complaining about the tone of the health care debate, and the difficulty of passing a health care reform bill because the masses seems insufficiently appreciative, would benefit from reading Ike’s letter.

H/T – Septimus at The Whig Blog

More at Divided We Stand United We Fall

” I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told me that. I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And so — and I believe that information according to the FBI and others could have been gained through other methods.”
- John McCain on Face The Nation today

Yes folks, torture became a recruitment tool. And it’s apparently yet another reason we got bogged down in Iraq. Again, from McCain…

“Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in Camp Bucca, where there’s the 20,000-prisoner camp. We met with a former high- ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, how did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions? He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that’s al Qaeda.”

Does this surprise anybody?

The question now…will we learn?

Everybody’s abuzz about the new Wash Post story today that starts off with the idea that Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) was turned into some type of “terrorist professor” because he was waterboarded.

And away we go…

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.

“What do you think changed KSM’s mind?” one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. “Of course it began with that.”

Yes, of course it began with that. Why? BECAUSE IT BEGAN WITH THAT.

Also, KSM didn’t start giving these terrorism lectures until a full 2 YEARS LATER. The waterboarding lasted one month. Think maybe building rapport and trust with him over the next couple years did more than making him feel like he was drowning?

Not only that, during this early period KSM gave us a bunch of false information…

Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.

“During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time,” he said.

When will people begin to understand that there is an inherent paradox in the idea of torture: you don’t know what you don’t know. So somebody can make up ANYTHING to get you stop torturing them and you’ll waste your time.

Of course the vast majority of interrogators will tell you this time and time and time again, but the opposition finds a few people who were able to beat some actionable intelligence out of somebody and that makes it alright for us to do

And that gets me to the real point of this post. Torture works? Again, no. Because it completely undermines the values that we’re fighting to defend. America is not a TV show. Fighting terrorism doesn’t work like that. And if you don’t understand that having policies that allow us to kidnap and torture anybody we want makes us look like the big bullies they accuse of being, makes it easier for more people to hate us and therefore makes us less safe, well, please think on this some more.

Seriously, really dig into the cause and effect of what we’re doing. Because “blowback” is real, and I fear that if we don’t stop what we’re doing we’re in for yet another round of it.

Listen, I truly hope that the Dems don’t use the reconciliation process to try and get the health care reform bill passed. Why? Well, it seems if they took this path they’d have to break up the legislation in two pieces, the budget portion and the insurance reform portion. The budget they could do via reconciliation no problem. But the insurance reforms? Well, since they don’t have anything to do with earmarking money, this couldn’t be done via reconciliation. And so the breaking up of the bill. So there’s a good chance the second piece might not get 60 votes b/c Blue Dogs would be angry enough to simply say no.

Still, to hear Republicans talk…reconciliation is this scary new thing that’s never been used.

Well, surprisingly, the folks over at Fox News put the lie to that…

Let’s repeat that Judd Gregg quote against for posterity…

Reconciliation is a rule of the senate that has been used before for purposes exactly like this on numerous occasions. Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so. The point, of course, is this…if you have 51 votes for your position you win.

51 wins. From one of the more moderate Republicans in the Senate. And he’s right. Majority rules in everything, especially elections. Why not here? Why do we have to get to 60 votes in order to pass anything without giving the other side the option to block it indefinitely with procedural stall tactics?

Long story short, Republicans set themselves up for this during Bush and if Dems decide to go the reconciliation route, well, tough.

Whether you love them or hate them (it’s hard to be indifferent), there’s no doubt that the Kennedy brothers are still the people you think of first when talking about political dynasties.

MSNBC has put together a documentary of John, Bobby and Teddy and it’s set to air soon.

Here’s a preview of some of the interviews they got…

As I said, love them or hate them, if you’re a history geek like me you’ll be tuning in.

Our first head of the Department of Homeland Security has written a tell all and it’s more of the same we’ve heard from insiders about the former administration. They politicized nearly everything and made the wrong decision and nearly every turn.

From US News:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored;

Never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings? The director of the government agency that was created in the aftermath of 9/11?

WTF??????????

So yes, that’s a bombshell, but the one in the title seems to be even more craven…

and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Yes, 3 years after the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history, Bush and company were scaring people into voting for him. I think that tells you all you need to know about the guy and his crew.

My question…we finally going to get some mea culpas from the right or will Tom Ridge simply be smeared like Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke and Scott McClellan?

I’m not holding my breath.

Many of us are already regard the Bush administration as a bad, distant memory, but today we’re reminded of just how morally bankrupt they were.

From Wash Post:

The dismissal of U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove.

A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state GOP officials and Republican members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded that he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that could help then-Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R) in a tight reelection race in New Mexico, according to interviews and Bush White House e-mails released Tuesday by congressional investigators. The documents place the genesis of Iglesias’s dismissal earlier than previously known. [...]

The House panel focused most of its attention on Iglesias, a rising star in New Mexico who came to displease his political patrons. Miers told investigators that Rove called her in September 2006, “agitated” about the slow pace of public corruption cases against Democrats and weak efforts to pursue voter-fraud cases in the state. In the call, Miers said, Rove described Iglesias as a “serious problem” and said he wanted “something done” about it. Miers testified that she called then-Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty to pass along the concerns.

Yes, Rove didn’t say “I want Iglesias fired!”, but this is much more than nudge nudge wink wink. Miers admits that Rove said he wanted something done. That was September 2006. Two months later in November, Iglesias’ name was placed on a list for dismissal. In December he was fired.

Rove’s response? As if you even have to read it….

In a statement Tuesday, Rove asserted that he “never sought to influence the conduct of any prosecution” and did not decide which prosecutors were fired. He also accused Democrats of making “false accusations and partisan innuendoes.”

The only problem here with Rove’s hacky answers is the fact that Harriet Miers is now the one supplying the accusations and innuendoes. To me this is game, set, match.

Moving on…

Doug points this one out, and if true, well, no wonder France took a pass on backing us in Iraq.

French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice recounts the tale in his book release in March, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny).

From Secular Humanism:

President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

Again, if true, I think it speaks for itself.

And given Bush’s insistence on saying he was chosen by God, etc., we have every reason to believe that something like this is not only plausible, but also highly likely.

Ugh.

The Wall Street Journal uncovers what happened, but we’ve discussed it quite a bit here already. The banks were allowed to over leverage themselves to the point of failure. Sure, relaxed rules on home ownership were a contributing factor to the downfall, but that was a symptom of the disease of easy credit, not the sickness itself.

In this first part, note around the 4:15 mark how the era of easy money was at its worst during the period from 2002 to 2006.

Part One


A vitally important segment in this second part is Greenspan’s testimony around the 2:30 mark. He admits that he and his deregulation focused colleagues got it wrong and it nearly collapsed the world’s financial system.

Part Two


There’s another part to this series and I’ll post that when it becomes available.

Yes, the very same actors…but this time they might actually help get health reform passed.

Also, from the sound of the script, it appears as if they’re putting more pressure on Republicans to pass this than Dems…

As Louise and her “husband” — actually Harry Johnson — sat around the kitchen table, they pounded the message that Americans should not abandon health reform this time. “Looks like we may finally get health care reform,” Harry says. “It’s about time,” Louise responds. She complains about the cost of health insurance: “We need good coverage people can afford, coverage they can get –” Harry, finishing her sentence, says, “– even if they have a pre-existing condition.” Louise wraps up the conversation by urging a “little more cooperation and a little less politics, and we can get the job done this time.”

One additional thing that’s different this time around is the fact that the original Harry and Louise ads ran for nearly a year and encompassed a bunch of different spots. These new one seem to be only running for a couple weeks at most.

So is this what happens when you bring interest groups to the table early and often?

(h/t: National Journal)