Taking On Right Wing Mythologies

Are there still rational conservatives? Yes, you can sometimes see them on TV: they have a look of astonishment, they chuckle as if they're not hearing right, then their jaw drops open followed by a bout of spluttering until they can't help themselves and say, "You can't be serious..." to some right wing talking head. Of course they then worry about getting a call from Rush Limbaugh or some other right wing enforcer. It is an unfortunate fact that rational conservatives have allowed themselves to be shoved aside by the right wingers who clearly are dominating the Republican Party these days.

I'm always astounded at the mythologies on the far right. Sarah Palin's admirers, for example, look at her as if she's some sort of savior. I noted some months ago that she probably quit her job as governor of Alaska in order to avoid ethics problems and otherwise cash in. And that's exactly what she's doing.

Why is it so hard for so many Americans to recognize that Sarah Palin likes two things: attention and money? For her, governing Alaska was obviously a bit of a bother. So she quit. Nevertheless, she is taken seriously by the far right as a potential candidate for president. Why? Largely because she effectively feeds their mythologies and is never particularly bothered by facts .

One of the more shameless charges made by Sarah Palin was the fiction that death panels would be the result of passing health care reform. The reality for some time has been that if you do not have health insurance and you have a health problem, the odds of your survival are already diminished without any panel of any sort being convened. Health insurance companies used to be focused on providing service. Now they're focused on money. That of course is something Sarah Palin can understand.

Given all the politics that has gone on, Sarah Palin is a mere sideshow compared to all the other mythology surrounding health care reform. And the right wingers conveniently ignore who is supplying much of that mythology: insurance companies and others making obscene profits. Naturally any number of lobbyists, pundits and political consultants are trotting out slick conservative arguments, many of which were used against Medicare in one form or another more than forty years ago. Fortunately those arguments did not succeed in the 1960s. We can only hope those arguments will not succeed in the current environment.

S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion does a terrific job of addressing some of this. Here's just one part of his response to a right wing commenter trotting out a familiar and misleading argument about moral hazard:

Did Social Security cause people to quit saving/investing on their own for retirement? If you think so, explain the explosive growth in mutual funds and 401k’s over the last 25 years. Has the fact Medicare gives most of the 65-and-older set a chance to buy health insurance they can begin to afford ruined insurance companies’ chances to make money off these people? Hardly, as all the supplementary and Medicare Advantage plans make clear.

Give his post a read.

World Oil Reserves Not Being Replaced

The biggest clue that we are facing a major energy problem is that worldwide we are using more oil than we are finding to replace it. This has been going on for some years though there have been ways in which the problem has been somewhat ignored, partly because of places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that are not only known for their large reserves but that are known for having inflated their reserve numbers in the last twenty years. Of course, American oil companies are particularly motivated to publicly minimize the problem.

Here's a story from Oil Online:

The world is currently producing more oil annually than it is replacing with new reserves. That sobering conclusion emerges from a new survey of global liquids reserves published by Energy Intelligence.

In contrast to the gradual rise in global oil reserves that has been reported annually in most surveys based on public sources, the new assessment shows that the trend in worldwide liquids reserves is actually one of stagnation and modest decline. The PIW Reserves Survey shows global oil reserves declining by almost 13 billion barrels, or 0.9%, over the last two years to 1.459 trillion bbl at the end of 2006 on a "proved plus probably" basis. Global oil reserves are liquid hydrocarbons, natural gas liquids, tar sands and crude oil, that are economically recoverable at current prices.

The PIW survey uses a somewhat broader definition of reserves than the other surveys based on public sources and it applies that definition consistently and systematically across all countries, fully accounting for production declines and new additions.

There's been some industry flimflam that things like oil sands are adding significantly to our reserves but that appears not to be happening at the rate touted in industry p.r. Bush's war in Iraq is a major historical fiasco but Bush's biggest fiasco in the judgment of years to come may be his refusal to deal rationally with a growing energy crisis faced not just by the United States but by the world. We have lost six years in that growing crisis and we are likely to lose another two years before Washington begins to come to grips with possibly the largest threat to our nation's economy and future.

I can't emphasize enough that cheap energy is no longer being found in anyone's backyard. Today, most new oil is coming from deep sea drilling or remote areas in the arctic or in the few last unexplored remote regions of the world. Cheap oil, especially light sweet crude, has reached the end of an era of growth. We may or may not have reached the era called peak oil but we are certainly in for a bumpy ride in the next five to ten years.

Bush and Cheney are oil industry appeasers. They have chosen to leave things to market forces but there is no sign whatsoever that Big Oil is ready to transition to new energy sources (the oil industry has had the numbers for years and essentially has known for thirty years that we have a problem). We need government action and major cooperation with a variety of industries to develop new sources of energy and greater efficiency with the energy we have. Like the Republican appeasers of the 1930s, the current Republican leadership has its head in the sand. Danger is approaching and it may be the biggest challenge our nation has faced. I might add that stealing other nation's oil does not solve the long-term problems. It's time we get our act together.

Bush's Ideological Presidency Exhausting Itself

The next two years could get ugly and it's not clear that the fever of right wing Republican gibberish has truly run its course. But any notion that the ultraconservatives have anything useful to offer the overwhelming majority of Americans is over, it's done, it's finis. Scandals, corruption, cronyism, corporate favoritism, incompetence and sheer strategic failure are among the many dismal hallmarks of the Bush presidency. If the Republicans have anything to offer, it can only begin by disowning George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and any number of others presently caught up in their dark, self-serving vision.

Here's a post from Mahablog that I highly recommend because it puts things in important historical perspective while highlighting a possible road to the future:

... Kuttner closes, “How many times does conservatism have to fail before we get a successor who reclaims American liberalism?”

That’s a good question. The last time conservatism failed utterly and spectacularly was at the end of the 1920s. Franklin Roosevelt won four presidential elections not only because conservative domestic policy enabled the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, but because right wingers of the 1920s and 1930s for the most part were isolationists who thought Hitler and Mussolini were reasonable guys we could do business with. The Great Depression and World War II provided overwhelming empirical evidence to the American people that the Right had been wrong.

Although moderate Republicans (e.g., Dwight Eisenhower) emerged from the FDR years with some appreciation for what he had accomplished, the more extreme Right nursed a seething, resentful rage against all things New Dealish. The Cold War gave them a means to rehabilitate themselves. By a campaign of “hysterical charges and bald-faced lies” the Right persuaded much of the country that Democrats were soft on communism and lax on national security. And in the 1960s through the 1980s the Dems’ association with civil rights, equal opportunity, and antipoverty programs caused a flood of white middle class Americans to switch their votes from Democratic to Republican.

In part through skillful manipulation of mass media the Right has been able to dominate our national political discourse since the late 1970s. In spite of the Right’s incessant whining about “liberal media,” Americans have had the right-wing perspective of just about everything pounded into their heads lo these many years, whereas real liberals and progressives (as opposed to moderate-to-conservative political hacks who play “liberals” on television) were all but banished from public view. Were this not the case, I think liberalism would have been reclaimed years ago. ...

There's much more but then I would have to post the whole article. Better yet, give it a read and give a look at Robert Kuttner's article.

Henry Waxman and the Valerie Plame Hearing

Someday, the Republican Party will rebuild itself and they'll start electing officials to Washington again who are interested in governing and enforcing the law in a reasonable manner. One of the bizarre qualities of the Republican Party these days are the numbers in Congress and the White House who are more interested in a right wing game of winning 'technical' points in some sort one-upmanship with rational conservatives, moderates and liberals while ripping off the American people for pure personal gain and some distorted sense of prestige. I've never seen so much outright lying, corruption and delusional thinking. Those are words many of us were reluctant to use five years ago but how else to describe what we're seeing with our own eyes?

Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby outed a CIA covert operative for a petty game of payback because they didn't like having their lies about a supposed Niger/Iraq connection exposed. That's the bottom line. Well, actually, the bottom line is worse. Even if we manage to stabilize Iraq before we leave, the war was a waste of money, time, lives and national credibility. We now know that you never put right wingers in charge of a government. Even conservatives, moderates and liberals require oversight, checks and balances and accountability if we're to get anything good out of our government. I prefer liberals and moderates since they often have been the source of real reform in our country and we're clearly in need of reform at the moment.

If we're to have reform, we're going to need more people like Rep. Henry Waxman who has always been an effective watchdog in Congress. Emptywheel of Firedoglake has a casual though excellent summary of the Waxman hearings on Valerie Plame and the irresponsible disclosure of classified information by the White House:

I was skeptical, at first, about a Friday hearing. Democrats have ended the Republican practice of 2.5 day work weeks. But Congressmen do need to be home in their districts on weekends for constituent services. Which means if you’re going to hold a 4 hour hearing on a Friday, you’re really asking your members to jump through hoops to attend the meeting. And Waxman got that commitment from enough of his members to make it an effective hearing. Whereas Davis couldn’t persuade enough Republicans to attend even to give him a chance to launch his bid at closing the hearing.

The result reminded me of the rump hearing the Democrats had on the intelligence leading to the Iraq War—for most of the hearing, Tom Davis was the only Republican present. With cameos, of course, from Congressman Westmoreland so he could leer at Valerie. In truth, the Republicans were most consistently represented by a never-named attorney, a tall guy who sat right next to Davis in Congressman Dan Burton's seat. The lawyer had a look of “oh shit” on his face for the better part of the hearing and he kept swallowing his lips when he thought. For much of the hearing, Davis and GOP Counsel were sitting there, huddled with two aides, which really added to the look of desperation. And by the end, for most of Victoria Toensing’s appearance, the only one (aside from a few aides) sitting on the Republican side was GOP Counsel. That’s what they’ve come to—sending their lawyer in their stead, to protect them from the oversight they’re supposed to be exercising.

(snip)

The truly great part of the hearing was the pairing of Bill Leonard and James Knodell. Because Waxman and Hodes and the rest of the committee grilled Knodell, but they did so using the standards Leonard established. Leonard's one of those stiff law and order types, so it framed Knodell as breaking Leonard's laws, not Knodell's. It was like a game of tennis which the Administration lost, badly. Mr. Leonard, what should happen when there is an unauthorized leak of classified information? Mr. Knodell, did that happen? Mr. Leonard? Mr. Knodell?

And, as we now know, between July 24, when the CIA first voices its concerns about the leak, and September 16, when DOJ finally decided to launch a criminal investigation, the White House did not conduct the Administrative investigation that is required by law in cases of unauthorized leaks of classified information.

(snip)

Which leaves us, two days later, to reflect on what the Hearing accomplished. Importantly, Waxman gave Valerie Wilson an opportunity to correct, under oath, many of the fictions the right has propagated about her in the last four years. Just as importantly, the Hearing served to remind us (as Patrick Fitzgerald did in his closing statements) that Valerie Wilson is a person, not an argument. Not only does she have kids and a husband. But she used to have an important role in protecting our country from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She served our country, and the gratitude our country showed her was to expose her, her family, her colleagues, and the assets she recruited to a great deal of danger.

Actually, our entire nation has become endangered by right wing partisans more interested in winning bizarre 'technical' points than in the truth, the facts or responsible behavior. We can only hope the American people will continue to catch up to the complete failure and uselessness of today's right wing philosophy, even as the most partisan of Republicans continue to write fictions for Fox News or other right wing outlets. The only reason right wingers continue to write and speak their fictions is that they got away with it for the better part of fifteen years. It's time to turn the page on America's future.

Symbolism of Bush's Visit to Mayan Site

The shrillness in the last few days of those who defend George W. Bush, Scooter Libby and the Republican Party suggests a growing crisis among right wing conservatives. The worst of them can't compute. They have been drinking what some critics call the White House 'Kool Aid' for so long that they either believe the nonsense that comes out of the Republican Noise Machine or they're so angry at the world that they delude themselves with word games to somehow twist things in a shape that excuses their failures and the failures of the president. Make no mistake: those who are still powerful among right wing Republicans are like wounded bears—they're desperate and they're dangerous. And their rage makes it impossible for many of them to see straight as their mythological conception of the world falls apart. We can be thankful that many independents, rational conservatives, and a few rank and file Republicans are steadily shying away from the most ideological of the right wingers (that includes, among others, the president and particularly the vice president).

To be honest, I'm not sure what rank and file Republicans think of their leaders these days and I suspect there is a range of views and that some of those views are complicated. But I found an AP article on The Huffington Post that seems symbolic of how Bush and his fellow Republicans are viewed by the world:

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

(snip)

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. ...

I know Republicans who will sneer at this story as irrelevant or maybe just phony showmanship and that would be their mistake, and an historic mistake at that. Ronald Reagan and the senior Bush made a mistake ignoring the Indians of Central America. In their zeal to deal with communists, Republicans have frequently failed to note that communists are about the only people who pay attention to Indians in Central America. Just as it has been bad foreign policy to have a naive view of the Middle East, it has been a bad foreign policy to ignore people who are often marginalized by those who dominate their country.

Their record was not perfect but Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter understood that fighting communism during the Cold War, or taking on the other foreign policy issues of their era, required winning people over rather than just using military force to impose our demands. Without American involvement and help in post-World War II Europe, any number of countries might easily have gone communist. It was, despite Republican mythology, a cost-effective foreign policy (by the way, as intertwined as they were, it was the totalitarian and ideological nature of communist regimes that tended to come into being that always bothered me rather than specifically a somewhat impractical economic system).

In the early 90s, the senior Bush missed an enormous opportunity to help Afghanistan after the Soviet Union left in 1989; helping Afghanistan might have had far reaching effects and might have forestalled the rise of al Qaida and the Taliban. But the failure to help the Afghans, who after all had been our allies and proxies in the war against the Soviet Union, was an inevitable outcome of a kind of Republican indifference that we have seen too often, especially since Reagan came into office. Having been raised in a conservative community, I have heard Republicans over the years utter a hundred variations of "What's it to me?" or "What's in it for me?" A certain shallowness and the failure to think down the road is something the senior Bush and his son have too often shared. It's something we can no longer afford in our leaders.

But let's get back to the Mayans. Like billions of people around the world, the Mayans do not trust George W. Bush. And that does not help us. Bush's trip to South America is almost a waste of time. If he had credibility, his trip might be useful. But millions of people in South America worry about what Bush is really up to—that anxiety is real and is a direct consequence of Bush's lies and arrogance. And it is yet another sign of a profoundly flawed foreign policy and president.

Cheney Turns Up the Arrogance

Cakewalk Cheney is trying to change the subject as the jurors continue to deliberate in the Scooter Libby trial (if anyone has doubts about what the issues are, see Why the Libby Trial Matters). Despite working secretly behind the curtain, Cheney's arrogance has been plain for all to see. I still recall on 9/11 when Cheney was challenged on his authority to tell Congress what to do, he said, "We have the helicopters." That's the kind of statement that invokes images of coups and not the kind of statement that respects three co-equal branches of government. There have been periods when Cheney has watched the tone of his statements, but in recent weeks, he clearly has turned up his arrogant rhetoric as the Libby trial got underway and as it becomes increasingly clear what a failure the Bush presidency is.

The International Herald Tribune has a Reuters story on one of Cheney's latest broadsides:

The U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney, expressed concerns Friday about China's military buildup, and he also questioned whether North Korea would follow through on its commitments in a recent nuclear deal.

In a speech in Sydney, Cheney also stressed the importance of U.S. forces' remaining in Iraq to stop "jihadists" gaining a base from which to spread violence across the Middle East.

(snip)

"The notion that free countries can turn our backs on what happens in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or any other possible safe haven for terrorists is an option that we simply cannot indulge," Cheney said in his speech.

I'm dumbfounded that Cheney would complain that some would turn their back on Afghanistan. That's exactly what the Bush Administration did as it turned to Iraq and gave us a war we did not need and let Osama bin Laden slip away while events in Afghanistan started sliding downhill. The inner circle of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld considered Afghanistan too small for their enterprise and put Afghanistan on the back burner to pursue a more ambitious and radical agenda that has done nothing for the United States except damage our country and our position in the world. Anyone who thinks the removal of Saddam Hussein was worth $2 trillion and the deaths that have resulted and the enormous damage done to our reputation and credibility is a fool, but Cheney thinks it was worth it. That's the nature of right wing authoritarians: they are usually the last to admit they were wrong. The reality is that Cheney's priorities are different than mine and different than those of most Americans.

And look at his arrogance towards the Chinese. We are the most powerful nation in the world but there are limits to our power and clearly Cheney and Bush are not doing such a hot job in Iraq. When you don't have much credibility, serious talks with our economic partners, as the Chinese clearly are, would be what's called for if there are issues to clear up. Instead, Cheney's arrogant posturing is not useful and simply reminds everyone of his poor judgment. Here's what James Fallows has to say in The Huffington Post:

What is clear is that the worst-positioned person to scold China about its behavior is the one who just did: Vice President Dick Cheney. In his speech yesterday in Australia, the Vice President helpfully observed that the satellite test, plus the buildup of China's military (with a budget still a tiny fraction of America's) was "not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise."

Let's assume, for argument, that China intends to convert its growing economic power into military strength. Let's assume that its strategic and territorial ambitions are at odds with America's. Let's assume that it intends to upset the international order in countless ways. Let's assume a lot of other things that I don't think are true.

Even if all those things were true, there could be no less effective spokesman for American concern or for the interests of international order than Cheney. This is the man who has refused to answer to his own public for -- well, for anything. For his insistence that everything has gone just as planned in Iraq. For his claim before the war that "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." For his claim after the war that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes." For his role, as described in prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's closing statement, as the central, unindicted malefactor in the Scooter Libby case. Even for shooting his friend in the face. ...

Dick Cheney, the man who is accountable for nothing, is the person who will tell other countries what is "consistent" with a peaceful image in the world?

If you haven't spent a lot of time outside the United States recently, you may not been made aware in a painful, humiliating way of how grievously America's moral standing has suffered because of Guantanamo, Abu Grahib, and the general carnage in Iraq. It's hard in general to get non-Americans to listen to lectures about seemly behavior these days. It's hardest of all when the lectures come from the man who, to the rest of the world, personifies America's squandering of the qualities that made it special.

It's been obvious for some time that the blunders by Bush and Cheney make it impossible for the United States to have much credibility when talking to other nations about any number of issues but particularly human rights. Any number of countries are still violating basic human rights and their answer to Bush or Cheney is very blunt and summed in two words: Abu Ghraib.

Did I mention that the Russians are concerned that we're in an arms race and that Stephen Hadley is having to ease their concerns? The most useful thing Dick Cheney can do for the American people is resign.

Doubts Behind Bush Administration Facade

Several Bush Administration figures, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, came to Washington in 2001 with fat resumes going all the way back to service under Nixon. In the last six years, we have learned the hard way that experienced right wing Republicans don't do well without close supervision. And the fiasco continues.

Here's the story from Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post:

The success of the Bush administration's new Iraq strategy depends on a series of rapid and dramatic political and economic reforms that even the plan's authors have little confidence will work.

In the current go-for-broke atmosphere, administration officials say they are aware that failure to achieve the reforms would result in a repeat of last year's unsuccessful Baghdad offensive... ...

(snip)

A pessimistic new National Intelligence Estimate released Friday described the Iraqi government as "hard-pressed" to achieve sectarian reconciliation... ...

(snip)

Several sources expressed concern that the administration, by publicly rejecting a "containment" option -- withdrawing U.S. troops to Iraqi borders to avoid sectarian fighting while preventing outside arms and personnel from entering the country -- has not left itself a fall-back plan in the event of failure.

I wish DeYoung had said how many sources expressed concern. We've had a situation several times now where good advice is ignored and the Bush Administration will come up with spin that their decision was the only one possible and the only one that most people they consulted agreed on.

At this point, only the Iraqis, either now or later, can create a government with legitimacy, but only if we stop micromanaging their affairs. It won't be pretty but that is where we are, that is where President Bush has led us. We could start drawing down in Iraq in three months if an effort were made to get some kind of a political settlement, but the war will go on. At some point in the next eighteen months, the spin could easily be this: that we have accomplished what we set out to do by toppling Saddam Hussein and that we're going to have peace after the 2008 election...if Americans elect a Republican. It doesn't get any more cynical or more incompetent than just that. Just listen to John McCain whose moral compass, thrown out three years ago, is now stuck at the bottom of a quagmire.

We need a foreign policy that advances the real long-term interests of our nation, not the short-term interests of politicians or political parties incapable of understanding the times or dealing with the growing issues of our nation and the world. Even the defense industries better start thinking about what they're doing to our country with their campaign contributions and their incestuous relationship with Washington (read about the Duke Cunningham scandal because that's exactly what it was about). Republicans in the White House and Congress have truly failed our nation.

The Real Core of Bush's Ultraconservative Base

Bush's numbers keep sagging and the numbers are curiously becoming more discriminating in terms of what they reveal. Here are the numbers from the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll:

In the survey, Bush’s job approval rating stands at 35 percent... ...

Perhaps more significant, a whopping 65 percent believe that Bush is facing a longer-term setback from which he’s unlikely to recover. That’s compared with 25 percent who think he’s facing just a short-term setback, and 7 percent who believe he’s facing no setback at all.

What’s more, only 22 percent say they want the president taking the lead in setting policy for the nation. Fifty-seven percent say they would prefer the Democratic-controlled Congress holding the reins.

The first thing to notice is that 90% of Americans don't think Bush is doing well—that's a staggering figure. But there's still that diehard 7% who seem to think he's doing great; those are the hardcore Bush Republicans, the base as it were. But Bush's approval rating is 35% which means a large number of Americans feel honor-bound to approve of Bush despite acknowledging that he is facing setbacks. And only 22% of Americans are willing to say they have enough faith in Bush to continue taking the lead in setting policy. That's a 13 point gap; it's as if the members of a family business have decided they're still fond of Uncle George but don't think he should be running the business anymore!

Look at those numbers one more time. Bush's hardcore loyal Republicans are somewhere between the 7% who don't think he's suffering any setbacks and the 22% who say they want the president to take the lead. Those are dismal numbers. Bush is still capable of a great deal of mischief but his presidency is over.

Right Wing Philosophy Leads to a Staggering Level of Incompetence

Bush's cake-walk war never came to pass. Instead, he continues to dig a hole and insists it's the road to victory. In 2002, the Bush Administration cherry-picked through the evidence to come up with a case for war despite a preponderance of evidence that contradicted its claims. Now we have a situation where the Bush Administration is beginning to approach the war a little differently by cherry-picking a menu of tactical options, most of which should have been implemented three years ago as part of a coherent strategy run by pragmatists instead of right wing ideologues.

And we're now about to send troops to Baghdad with the hope that Iraqi insurgents, Islamofascists, jihadists, militia soldiers, murderers, Iranian proxies, corrupt moles among government troops, angry revenge seekers, Baathist dead-enders and/or 'terrorists' (what new labels will right wingers give us any day now?) will stand still and let us shoot them when it is likely they will go underground or disperse to other Iraqi cities until our troops leave Baghdad. The latest strategy has been concocted largely by neocons inside and outside the administration despite their record of failure and despite the strong objections of many in the military and the Iraqis themselves. The new tactics largely ignore the Iraq Study Group, the Democrats and the American people. The 'new' plan or whatever it is also ignores the Iraqi government, or rather dictates to the elected government in Iraq what will be done (no wonder Brzezinski talks about a new colonialism).

I bring these things up because there are signs that Bush is finally recognizing some issues that have been on the table for the last three to five years. The time to have dealt with these issues was three to five years ago. It's as if a large building is burning down and an incompetent fire chief by the name of Bush keeps ignoring his lieutenants who keep telling him he needs to bring in extra fire companies immediately. They tell him several times and it's become obvious not much of the building is going to survive when Bush the decider-in-chief finally calls in a couple of extra engines. Shortly after the extra fire engines arrive, the building collapses and he turns to his lieutenants and says, "But I did what you told me."

Now metaphors are exaggerations but it's very close to where we are. What we have been witnessing for some years are right wing ideologues very adept at concocting stories but nothing else. The Republican noise machine is proficient at concocting stories after the fact and they get away with it to some extent because Americans sometimes forget even recent history. The radical right wingers have an explanation for everything, an excuse for every blunder and scapegoats coming out of their ears, but they have no capacity to look in the mirror and see what's truly there. The Republican Party has for decades tended to be conservative but at least it had a reasonable number of pragmatists in power. In this era, the pragmatists are a dwindling minority.

Going to war in Iraq was a strategic blunder in the first place. But once there, we had an obligation to get it right. As I said, some problems have been obvious for a long time. In Squandered Victory, a book published in 2005 by democracy expert Larry Diamond, he writes:

If Iraq is to become a democracy, it must avoid becoming ... another Lebanon. When I was traveling around southern Iraq in March 2004, an experienced CPA hand pointed out to me that Iraq had "all of the major ingredients" for a Lebanon-style civil war: deep ethnic and relgious divisions that were intensifying, a society with a power vacuum, strong neighbors interfering in the conflict for competing purposes, and (another) U.S. intervention. One could have added the absence of national leadership, the rise of militias, the economic implosion, and the struggle over resources.... "This is heading toward Lebanon and the Congo writ large," he warned. ...

Now here's an article in The Washington Post by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (emphasis mine):

Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them."

He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned. The U.S. occupation administration in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), placed ideology over pragmatism, he believed. His boss, viceroy L. Paul Bremer, refused to pay for repairs needed to reopen many looted state-owned factories, even though they had employed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Carney spent his days screening workers for ties to the Baath Party.

"Planning was bad," he wrote in his diary on May 8, "but implementation is worse."

(snip)

The decision to send Carney back to Iraq -- and to abandon the policies that so rankled him in 2003 -- represents a fundamental shift in the Bush administration's approach to stabilizing the country. Desperate for new approaches to stifle the persistent Sunni insurgency and Shiite death squads that are jointly pushing the country toward an all-out civil war, the White House made a striking about-face last week, embracing strategies and people it once opposed or cast aside.

(snip)

The plan unveiled by Bush last week calls for many people who lost their jobs under Bremer's de-Baathification decree to be rehired. It calls for more Sunnis, who were marginalized under the CPA, to be brought into the government. It calls for state-owned factories to be reopened. It calls for more reconstruction personnel to be stationed outside the Green Zone. It calls for a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes providing security to the civilian population over transferring responsibility to local military forces.

Carney believes such measures could have been effective three years ago. Today, he worries they will be too little, too late.

I highlighted the factories because it seems such an obvious thing to deal with, regardless of whether they were state-owned or not (if that were the issue, though sheer incompetence is the more likely answer). The shut factories are in a sense no different than the complete paralysis of the Bush Administration during more than the sixteen months that have passed since Hurricane Katrina. Too many officials in the Bush era seem to come up with ideological reasons to do nothing or to ignore anyone outside their 'base' (though some seem devoted to handing out lucrative contracts that do little for those who need help). Republicanism, under its current leadership, is mean-spirited, at times indifferent, at times corrupt, and frequently incompetent. It is philosophically dead. Those politicians, including some Democrats and independents, who give a nod to such idiocy need to think long and hard about why they choose to ignore the many failures of the current Republican era. If we do not make our way to an age of reform, the current Republicans in power will continue to weaken our democracy, our economy and our position in the world.

When Reality Ignores Republicans....

For six years, we have noticed a disconnect between what right wing Republicans claim and what the facts are. For example, it took a bipartisan report led by James Baker to make it clear that conditions in Iraq are, unfortuantely, not quite the way our president would like to paint them (Bush would like nothing more than to paint a rosy picture before handing his failed policies in Iraq off to the next president). To be honest, it's not always clear when right wingers believe what they're saying and when they're just playing politics; either approach, however, is detrimental to our nation.

Chris of Americablog notes that right wing Republicans in Congress like to say there's nothing real to Global Warming, but the insurance companies are betting that there probably is and are increasingly refusing insurance to homeowners in low-lying land close to the ocean:

With the seas warming, it's no wonder they want nothing to do with insuring properties in the danger zone. The storms are getting worse and moving up the coast, but the GOP doesn't believe global warming is an issue. When a Fortune 500 company makes a move like this, you would think some might take notice.

Laura Smitherman of The Baltimore Sun has the story on the growing problems of insuring coastal property:

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected

(snip)

This has been happening for years in states such as Florida, where homeowners saw rates multiply or lost insurance altogether after Andrew flattened much of South Florida in 1992. Now the trend is edging north.

There are still plenty of Republicans and even conservative Republicans who reasonably have both feet in the real world. After all, in the business world, those who operate like the late Kenneth Lay of Enron don't usually last long. But where in the world are these right wingers coming from and why are they still in Washington peddling their foolishness on issue after issue? It's important to remember that while the Democrats won in November, most of the Republican politicians in Washington are still very right wing and very out of touch.

Do Oil Companies Agree with Rep. Barton?

I recently wrote a post on the $100 million campaign the oil companies are launching to improve their image. Is it possible for the oil companies to improve their image without dealing with pollution and Global Warming? I doubt it. There are plenty of signs that the American people have had enough and it's not just about the price of gasoline (though there are a few holdouts, most Democrats in Congress get it).

If the oil companies want to improve their image, they need to explain themselves if they still agree with Texas repesentative Joe Barton who calls Global Warming science nonsense; here's the story from Think Progress:

For six years, Congress has done nothing to address the climate crisis, thanks in no small part to the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “Smokey” Joe Barton (R-TX). The 110th Congress will have new leadership, but Barton has pledged to continue fighting against legislation intended to address the problem.

(snip)

Barton says his action is justified because global warming science is “pretty weak stuff.” Barton added, “But for us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer in my opinion is absolute nonsense. It’s not going to happen.”

For a little more background on Barton, here's this from SourceWatch:

Barton, a former consultant for Atlantic Richfied Co., serves as the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was the primary House author of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. A number of his former staffers are now lobbyists for the energy industry. The Washington Post reported that, "In his quest for the chairmanship... A network of former Barton staff members-turned-lobbyists-including Jeffery M. MacKinnon (clients: Reliant Energy, Philip Morris, MCI and at least 36 others), Stephen Sayle (American Chemical Council, AT&T and 19 others) and Stephen Waguespack (Duke Energy, Ford Motor Co. and eight others)-worked the crucial corporate and trade association community on Barton's behalf." [Washington Post, 4/14/05]

"Since 1997, oil, gas, electricity, nuclear, coal and chemical companies have contributed $1.84 million to Barton, more than to any other House member." [Washington Post, 4/14/05]

There are Republican conservatives and Republican ultraconservatives (sometimes we just call them right wingers). When it comes to energy, the environment and Global Warming, Barton is the kind of ultraconservative who subscribes to the Republican blowhard style of making his case: if he says something loudly and repeatedly, it must be so even if any evidence he offers is largely worthless. A blowhard can be a blowhard based on principles, whatever they may be, or he can be motivated by his connections to those with a vested interest in his position. Readers can make their own judgment.

But let's go back to the oil companies. What's it to be? A $100 million campaign to continue business as usual while painting a pretty picture? Or a $100 million campaign with some reality to it? Democrats are committed to jobs, good business and a strong economic future (though a few Democrats with vested interests will require close monitoring). No matter what policies come out of Washington, the oil companies will continue to produce oil and they will continue to make money. Will the oil companies join together in protecting the environment and limiting CO2 emissions and cooperating on alternative energy or will they continue their foot-dragging on these issues? The times are changing. It may be time for the oil companies to part company with people like Rep. Joe Barton.

The Need to Rebuild Our Foreign Policy

George W. Bush's defenders too easily forget that the president inherited a functioning foreign policy that was developed and used by the last eleven presidents with varying degrees of success and emphasis. There's no question that at any point in the last sixty years, our foreign policy could have been better. And there's no question mistakes have been made by both Democratic and Republican Presidents. But, when a president radically changes our foreign policy, he's obligated to have something better.

Early on, Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that as the most economically powerful country in the world, we have responsibilities (if, as an example, other countries turn to us for help, we have to decide when to be involved and when not to). As we acquired a powerful military, it hasn't always been clear what our responsibilities are and how much we should act in our own interest and on what time scale we should act in our own interest. One thing we learned early on is that military action is costly, even for a superpower. And once nuclear war became possible, we had to be careful how we proceeded. There have been foreign policy experiments in the last sixty years, some successful, some not. Eisenhower, for example, understood the costs of war and tried to use the C.I.A. as a kind of old-fashioned shortcut for such foreign policy goals as regime change; more often than not, Eisenhower's policy had long-term consequences that we're still dealing with. There are reasons why most presidents, most of the time, have emphasized diplomacy and multilateral efforts to deal with difficult issues. And there are reasons why we listen to intelligence analysts and experts

If a president is going to take our foreign policy in a radical direction, he better have some very good reasons to give up a functioning foreign policy and at the very least have some results to show for his radical change after six years. After almost six years of Bush's failures, we need more than 'gut feelings' and perpetual foreign policy speeches that say the same things over and over.

Earlier this week, Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory had an excellent post on what passes for a foreign policy among right wing Republicans:

One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration's foreign policy -- arguably its most disastrous hallmark -- is the literal elimination of diplomacy as a foreign policy instrument for dealing with hostile nations. They actually believe, and overtly argue, that diplomacy and negotiations are worthless when it comes to many countries which are acting against American interests.

(snip)

...Instapundit himself adds that "diplomats tend to overvalue dialogue," and he then cites to an interview Diane Sawyer conducted yesterday with Donald Gregg, the Ambassador to South Korea under Bush 41, in which Gregg argued that it was a mistake for the Bush administration to refuse North Korea's repeated requests for direct negotiations. In response, Reynolds says that the Gregg interview "made me very grateful that he no longer has a hand in formulating U.S. policy." ...

(snip)

Where a country like North Korea is engaged in conduct that we would like to stop, we have three options:

(1) wage war against them;

(2) engage in diplomacy and attempt to reach a negotiated solution; or

(3) do nothing.

If we remove option (2) from the list -- as Bush followers want to do in almost every case and as the administration repeatedly does -- it means that only options (1) and (3) remain. And where option (1) is not viable -- as is the case with the U.S. vis-a-vis North Korea (mostly because we already chose option (1) with two other countries and are threatening to do so with a third) -- then the only option left is (3) -- do nothing. That is exactly what we have done while North Korea became a nuclear-armed power, and we did nothing because we operated from [the] premise that diplomacy and negotiations are essentially worthless, which left us with no other options.

The list Greenwald gives us is simplified but still accurately describes Bush's foreign policy. Here's another take by TPM Reader DK of Talking Points Memo:

I have no doubt that there are genuine hardliners within the Administration who urged covert and overt military action against North Korea early in the President's first term, and certainly in response to the breakdown of the Agreed Framework. Every Republican Administration is going to have its share of Curtis LeMays.

But those true hardliners have not prevailed in the internal Administration struggle over whether the U.S. should lead with the carrot or with the stick. What has emerged as U.S. "policy" is inertia. No carrot. No stick. No nothing, unless cheap rhetoric about what is "unacceptable" counts for something.

(snip)

The sad truth is that we have virtually no good options for putting the North Korean nuclear genie back in the bottle, and I am quite convinced that our military options at the moment range from bad to worse (and that the current Administration would be unable to competently execute any military option).

But in the same way that it is a mistake to conclude that the Clinton Administration offer of a carrot was a failure, it is a mistake to conclude that the stick has failed, too. Both may be needed in the future.

All that we can say with any certainty is that paralysis has failed to achieve our objective of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. And paralysis, if I may say, is unacceptable.

The only quibble I have with DK is the slight confusion between 'hardliners' and the use of the 'stick': most hardliners don't think through the consequences of their actions: hence, the fiasco in Iraq. Effective diplomacy with countries like North Korea requires the use of the carrot and the mutual knowledge of the stick, whether economic or military; I don't like that diplomacy too often requires the real potential of the military option but that has remained somewhat unavoidable since the fall of the Soviet Union. Those who understand how to do foreign policy manage to keep the exercise of the military option to a minimum and effectively get results by way of serious face-to-face negotiations.

It was a serious strategic mistake for Bush to go to war in Iraq without finishing the job in Afghanistan; he would have had far more foreign policy leverage the past four years if our military had not been tied down by the Iraq adventure. It's too bad our president, since bungling Iraq and increasingly Afghanistan, prefers to sit on his hands except when waving them while making fatuous speeches. Whether it's inertia, paralysis or incompetence in the White House, we have a problem.