person of interest of the year

of course soon-to-be-impeached-president donald trump deserves to be awarded time magazine's coveted "person of the year" cover!

however.

the editors at time dared think better and gave its feature to 16-year-old swedish climate activist greta thunberg:

never to be outdone by any female anywhere, particularly a minor, trump took back what belongs only to him (via twitter, of course) in the only manner befitting the leader of the free world:

[time magazine] is asking that a framed cover image of trump be taken down from the walls of several golf clubs.

that's because the cover hanging in several trump organization clubs is a phony, a time spokesperson confirmed to nbc news.

washington post reporter david fahrenthold, who broke the story, said he had tallied seven locations where the cover was spotted as of wednesday morning, and was continuing to look for additional sightings.

thank you for your concern

con•cern troll |kən'cərn trōl|

noun

a creature out of greek mythology; a pretend pal, notorious for bearing gifts of dubious merit:

one and done: to be a great president, obama should not seek reelection in 2012

president obama must decide now how he wants to govern in the two years leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

by douglas e. schoen and patrick h. caddell
the washington post

in recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country's problems. at one point, he spoke of the need for "mid-course corrections." at another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. and before this month's midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve "hand-to-hand combat" with republicans, whom he also referred to as "enemies."

it is clear that the president is still trying to reach a resolution in his own mind as to what he should do and how he should do it.

glad you asked, mr president! we just happen to have a great idea you're just gonna love ...

this is a critical moment for the country. from the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, america is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. under these circumstances, obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. the only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

to that end, we believe obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

that's right! quit — for the sake of the country! look how happy everyone is after sarah palin quit!

if the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. but by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

we do not come to this conclusion lightly. but it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. the midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the obama presidency. and even if it was not an endorsement of a republican vision for america, the drubbing the democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in obama and his party. the president has almost no credibility left with republicans and little with independents.

... and no one cares what democrats think!

the best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as americans, rather than the politics of the moment — or of the 2012 campaign.

quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible. obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president's political prospects.

obama himself once said to diane sawyer: "i'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." he now has the chance to deliver on that idea.

no need to thank us, obama ... this was all your idea! really!

in the 2008 presidential campaign, obama spoke repeatedly of his desire to end the red-state-blue-state divisions in america and to change the way washington works. this was a central reason he was elected; such aspirations struck a deep chord with the polarized electorate.

obama can restore the promise of the election by forging a government of national unity, welcoming business leaders, republicans and independents into the fold. but if he is to bring democrats and republicans together, the president cannot be seen as an advocate of a particular party, but as somebody who stands above politics, seeking to forge consensus. and yes, the united states will need nothing short of consensus if we are to reduce the deficit and get spending under control, to name but one issue.

because, after all, we can't — and shouldn't! — expect republicans or anyone else to rise above politics!

forgoing another term would not render obama a lame duck. paradoxically, it would grant him much greater leverage with republicans and would make it harder for opponents such as senate minority leader mitch mcconnell (r-ky.) — who has flatly asserted that his highest priority is to make obama a one-term president — to be uncooperative.

and why would the GOP back down? duh! because we say so, that's why!

and for democrats such as current speaker nancy pelosi (calif.) — who has said that entitlement reform is dead on arrival — the president's new posture would make it much harder to be inflexible. given the influence of special interests on the democratic party, obama would be much more effective as a figure who could remain above the political fray. challenges such as boosting economic growth and reducing the deficit are easier to tackle if you're not constantly worrying about the reactions of senior citizens, lobbyists and unions.

moreover, if the president were to demonstrate a clear degree of bipartisanship, it would force the republicans to meet him halfway. if they didn't, they would look intransigent, as the gop did in 1995 and 1996, when bill clinton first advocated a balanced budget. obama could then go to the democrats for tough cuts to entitlements and look to the republicans for difficult cuts on defense.

on foreign policy, obama could better make hard decisions about iran, north korea and afghanistan based on what is reasonable and responsible for the united states, without the political constraints of a looming election. he would be able to deal with a democratic constituency that wants to get out of afghanistan immediately and a republican constituency that is committed to the war, forging a course that responds not to the electoral calendar but to the facts on the ground.

if the president adopts our suggestion, both sides will be forced to compromise. the alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. while we believe that obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that president george w. bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided americans in ways that still plague us.

and why would anybody else back down? duh! because everyone loves a quitter, that's why! (and because we say so!)

obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign. indeed, we were among those millions of democrats, republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012.

should the president do that, he — and the country — would face virtually no bad outcomes. the worst-case scenario for obama? in january 2013, he walks away from the white house having been transformative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. he will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic recovery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to our international challenges. he will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. history will look upon him kindly — and so will the public.

and everyone gets a pony!

it is no secret that we have been openly critical of the president in recent days, but we make this proposal with the deepest sincerity and hope for him and for the country.

[snicker]

we have both advised presidents facing great national crises and have seen challenges from inside the oval office. we are convinced that if obama immediately declares his intention not to run for reelection, he will be able to unite the country, provide national and international leadership, escape the hold of the left, isolate the right and achieve results that would be otherwise unachievable.

---

patrick h. caddell, who was a pollster and senior adviser to president jimmy carter, is a political commentator. douglas e. schoen, a pollster who worked for president bill clinton, is the author of "mad as hell: how the tea party movement is fundamentally remaking our two-party system."

ok, everyone can stop laughing now.

no rewards for failure

the washington post:

the latest NBC/wall street journal poll suggests the country is slipping back into the pessimism it felt before last year's presidential election with just one in three american saying the country is headed in the right direction while 55 percent said it was off on the wrong track. less than three in ten (27 percent) said life would be better for their children than it is for them and six in ten agreed with the statement that the country was in a "state of decline." democratic pollster peter hart, who helps conduct the NBC/WSJ poll, called the results evidence that "optimism has crashed through the floor board." remember that much of obama's appeal is centered on the ideas of hope and change; if voters see his administration as overseeing more of the same, there could be considerable backlash from voters against democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

this is GGRRREEEEAAAAATT NEWS FOR REPUBLICANS!!!! ain't it?

or maybe not ...

daily kos, on the same poll:

the bad news for the GOP: voters still trust president obama more than republicans, even on health care. the numbers: economy, obama +12; health care, obama +7; afghanistan, obama +12; energy, obama +10. what's the lesson? even though americans disapprove of president obama's record on many domestic policy issues, they do not see the republican party as a viable alternative. at some point, that may change, because the GOP is also the only alternative, but for now, the country is not looking for president obama to be more like republicans — they are looking for him (and the democratic congress) to deliver on the change they voted for in 2008. if the white house can deliver, the GOP will be left out in the cold, partying with the teabaggers.

the GOP won't be winning any rewards for sitting out a constructive debate on health care reform. had they developed a real plan and defended it honestly, instead of dangling promises of pretend plans while screeching "no!no!no!" to everything else and patting themselves on the back while cheerleading failure, they might now be looking like a credible alternative.

but of course, that would require the GOP being interested in reform in the first place.

observing 9/12

matt yglesias @ thinkprogress:

as we know, back in november most people voted for barack obama. most people voted for a democratic house candidate. and most people voted for a democratic senate candidate. today, most people prefer obama’s approach to the approach of congressional republicans. but this is a very large country. and a large minority of the population is out of step with the views of the minority [sic: matt meant "majority"]. you’ve got your anti-abortion guys, your tenthers, your birthers, your medicare-hating congressmen, etc. something called the ayn rand center for individual rights is among the sponsors of the rally. and so, fine, there are a lot of people with far-right political opinions. but the idea that this is actually some kind of response to specific things barack obama has done is pretty off-base. it’s just the usual suspects getting fired up.

mark mckinnon @ the washington post:

mark mckinnon, a former adviser to sen. john mccain (ariz.) and other republicans, said there is an "opportunity for republicans" to tap into legitimate fears about an overreaching federal government. but he said that "right-wing nutballs are aligning themselves with these movements" and are dominating media coverage. "it's bad for republicans because in the absence of any real leadership, the freaks fill the void and define the party," mckinnon said.

alex pareene @ gawker:

on 9/12, people in new york (and DC) did not feel as "great" as glenn beck. they just felt like shit. they felt scared and confused and depressed ... and only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01. and eight years later, normal people, with brains and souls, have decided that some emotional distance from that disaster is healthier and wiser than trying to recapture the dread. so thank fucking christ that the commander in chief is no longer subjecting the nation to death porn. no, this year it’s limited to a nutty little cult leader on basic cable who is encouraging his radicalized band of fanatical followers to invade the cities where the tragedy actually happened in order to shock the populace back into fear. glenn beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-qaeda in america.

(art by rottenart @ daily kos)

update: reader feedback

sigh.

i'll type s-l-o-w-l-y so even hillary can understand.

you said that he is on "basic cable"....are you saying that FOX news is "basic cable"...just asking. i mean, what does that even mean???

1) alex pareene said "basic cable". i'm quoting him.

2) basic cable = tv networks "generally transmitted without any scrambling or other special methods and thus anyone connected to the cable tv system can receive them". l-i-k-e f-o-x n-e-w-s.

GLENN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE 9/12 MARCH!!! it was put together by a completely different group of people who told glenn about it.

from glenn beck's the912project.com:

9/12 SATURDAY – FINAL UPDATE – MORE NEW STATES & EVENTS FOR 9-12-09 ... GLENN WILL BE ANCHORING THE COVERAGE OF 9-12 EVENTS, LIVE ON FOX NEWS ... SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 FROM 1-3PM Eastern time. many have asked about the event in washington dc on 9-12, here are a couple links to help you find out more information from the people who have organized the event and are helping people find the best way to participate. ... HOW DO I FIND A LOCAL GROUP OR EVENT? we have tried to list, by state, every single 9-12 event that we know about. we may have missed one so please share your information with us. you can also look online here. if you cannot go to DC — there are probably events happening CLOSE TO YOU. glenn has always suggested using meetup.com to find like-minded souls in your area and we also suggest looking there for local events that are not listed below. get off the keyboards and on your feet. ... HERE ARE THE LOCAL EVENTS WE HAVE HEARD ABOUT FOR SATURDAY 9-12-09 (SORTED BY STATE, ALPHABETICALLY) [etc etc ]...

"nothing to do with it" must not have anything to do with sponsoring, organizing, promoting and covering it. glad you helped clear that up.

thanks for visiting my little stake on the intertubes. it's nice to have fans, even if some of them are m-o-r-a-n-s.

read arguing with idiots. read common sense. read SOMETHING.

please, hillary, watch something besides glenn beck. a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g.

a record-breaking transition

and too long in coming ...

bush's final approval rating: 22 percent president bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new cbs news/new york times poll showing mr. bush's final approval rating at 22 percent. seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way mr. bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years. mr. bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago. the rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents bill clinton and ronald reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to cbs news polling. recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than mr. bush. his father george h.w. bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while jimmy carter's rating was 44 percent. harry truman had previously had the lowest end-of-term approval at 32 percent, as measured by gallup.

nation's hopes high for obama, poll shows obama will take office tuesday as the most popular incoming president in a generation. he also will enter the white house with a broad mandate to act that was missing when george w. bush was elected by the narrowest of margins in 2000. more than half of all americans have high hopes for his presidency, almost three-quarters of the public say obama's proposals will improve the struggling economy, and about eight in 10 have a favorable view of him — more than twice the percentage now holding positive views of bush. about seven in 10 say obama understands their problems, and a similar proportion say his victory gives him "a mandate to work for major new social and economic programs."

poll finds faith in obama, mixed with patience president-elect barack obama is riding a powerful wave of optimism into the white house, with americans confident he can turn the economy around but prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces starting tuesday, according to the latest new york times/cbs news poll. ... as the nation prepares for a transfer of power and the inauguration of its 44th president, mr. obama’s stature with the american public stands in sharp contrast to that of president bush. mr. bush is leaving office with just 22 percent of americans offering a favorable view of how he handled the eight years of his presidency, a record low, and firmly identified with the economic crisis mr. obama is inheriting. more than 80 percent of respondents said the nation was in worse shape today than it was five years ago. by contrast, 79 percent were optimistic about the next four years under mr. obama, a level of good will for a new chief executive that exceeds that measured for any of the past five incoming presidents. and it cuts across party lines: 58 percent of the respondents who said they voted for mr. obama’s opponent in the general election, senator john mccain of arizona, said they were optimistic about the country in an obama administration. ... his favorable rating, at 60 percent, is the highest it has been since the times/cbs news poll began asking about him. overwhelming majorities say they think that mr. obama will be a good president, that he will bring real change to washington, and that he will make the right decisions on the economy, iraq, dealing with the war in the middle east and protecting the country from terrorist attacks. over 70 percent said they approved of his cabinet selections.

snark of the week

jim henley @ unqualified offerings:

the following appeared this week in the new york times, the washington post, slate and the new yorker in a parallel universe ... how i got it right: looking back at a time of justified opposition to a mad, violent enterprise so many publications have expressed such overwhelming interest in the perspectives of those of us who opposed the iraq war when it had a chance of doing good that i have had to permit mutliple publication of this article in most of the nation's elite media venues — collecting, i am almost embarrassed to admit, a separate fee from each. everyone recognizes that the opinions of those of us who were right about iraq then are crucial to formulating sane, just policy now. it's a lot of pressure, so please forgive anything glib or short you read herein: between articles, interviews, think-tank panels and presentations before government agencies and policy organs i'm not permitted to mention, i'm a little frazzled. on the bright side, and i can confirm that my experience has been similar to those of my fellow prophets, being the object of so much attention, being repeatedly quizzed by eager interlocutors on the same basic points, encourages one to distill one's thinking to its essence. as kenneth pollack asked me the other day, "what the fuck was so special about you, anyway?" "for one thing," i said, "i am not sprawled on a sidewalk next the mcpherson square metro station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt i own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize me beneath the matted beard and tangled hair." "but my thigh hurts!" he said. "shut up," i consoled him, "or i'll kick it again." still he had a way of arriving at the essential question: "what the fuck was so special about me, anyway?" why did i have the sense to oppose the us conquest of iraq when so many of our great and good supported it? sometimes i think the other question is almost more interesting: what the fuck were those other people thinking? alas, answers to that one are hard to come by, since understandable shame has closed many mouths. so my own side of the story will have to suffice. why was i right and you, if you were a powerful politician or respected pundit in 2002-2003, wrong? some guesses follow. i'm really very bright. i don't like to brag, but my iq places me in the 99th percentile of americans. odds are, for instance, that i am smarter than you. and if i'm not, you're probably not that much smarter than i am. and even if you are, it would be unseemly for you to say so. what are you, stuck up or something? you aside, i'm certainly smarter than the president, or doug feith, or joe klein. i am seventeen times as smart as senator joseph lieberman. i am twenty-five hundred percent brighter than gop presidential candidate john mccain. my superior intelligence is a superficially plausible explanation, and i don't discount it, but two immediate objections suggest themselves. first, and less crucially, it simply raises another question: how did i get so smart in the first place? the shortest answer is, "because my parents were smart, and their parents were smart too." it's very hard to say why that matters: iq appears to be substantially heritable, but it's hard to disentangle the genetic component from the environmental nevertheless — i was reared by my parents, and not, as you know, by yours. if i'd been reared by yours i'd have gotten more toys as a kid. we were poor and you, somewhat spoiled. distressingly, there's no practical program for improvement there. "be smarter!" we might say to doug feith, "you'll make better policy!" but doug feith can't go back in time and be born to other people. but in light of the second objection to the "intelligence theory," that probably doesn't matter. second objection: you didn't have to be all that bright to oppose the iraq war in advance. heck, polls suggest that most americans were dubious about the idea until the war became obviously inevitable. real enthusiasm was confined to the elite media, the bipartisan defense-policy establishment and a bunch of republican quasi-intellectuals who had spent ten years casting about for different countries to have a war — any war — with. i mean, for crying out loud, at one point our rulers declared that saddam hussein might attack america with remote-controlled model planes. you didn't have to wait to bounce that one off the folks at your next mensa meeting to judge its likelihood. nor did you have to puzzle overlong, if someone tried to put that one by you, how much stock you should put in anything else that came out of their mouths. conclusion: my manifest intelligence was definitely not necessary to opposing the iraq war. it may not have been sufficient either. i wasn't born yesterday. i had heard of the middle east before september 12, 2001. i knew that many of the loudest advocates for war with iraq were so-called national-greatness conservatives who spent the 1990s arguing that war was good for the soul. i remembered elliott abrams and john poindexter and michael ledeen as the knaves and fools of iran-contra, and drew the appropriate conclusions about the bush administration wanting to employ them: it was an administration of knaves and fools. people will object that the project for a new american century had heard of the middle east before september 12, 2001 too, so just knowing some things wasn't enough. and hey, true, but if you read"warbloggers"back in 2001-2003, the thing that really jumped out was how new all this foreign-policy stuff was to them. people without much knowledge on the subject went looking for someone to soothe a very real hurt they felt in september 2001, and the first people they ran into were raving, nationalistic morons with a preexisting agenda, clustered around the wall street journal and the weekly standard. libertarianism. as a libertarian, i was primed to react skeptically to official pronouncements. "hayek doesn't stop at the water's edge!" i coined that one. not bad, huh? i could tell the difference between the government and the country. people who couldn't make this distinction could not rationally cope with the idea that american foreign policy was the largest driver of anti-american terrorism because it sounded to them too much like "the american people deserve to be victims of terrorism." i could see the self-interest of the officials pushing for war — how war would benefit their political party, their department within the government, enhance their own status at the expense of rivals. libertarianism made it clear how absurd the idealistic case was. supposedly, wise, firm and just american guidance would usher iraq into a new era of liberalism and comity. but none of that was going to work unless real american officials embedded in american political institutions were unusually selfless and astute, with a lofty and omniscient devotion to iraqi welfare. and, you know, they weren't going to be that. finally-er, being neither republican nor democrat meant that i wasn't unduly impressed when even tom friedman, or even some clinton administration hack, assured everyone that the tinpot ruler of a two-bit despotism eight-thousand miles away would and could destroy us if we didn't get him first. here there are a number of objections. all too many self-described libertarians supported the iraq war, with that noxious fervor for which we are notorious. these people were led astray by a combination of noble and base tendencies within libertarianism. saddam hussein was a vicious tyrant, after all, and some libertarians let a commendable hatred of tyrants overrule their common sense. some libertarians remembered that war involved guns, and lots of them, and figured it must be good. and many feared that if the united states did not go to war, it might make some hippie, somewhere, happy. the more telling objection is that you didn't have to be a libertarian to figure out that going to war with iraq made even less sense than driving home to east egg drunk off your ass and angry at your spouse. any number of leftists and garden-variety liberals, and even a handful of conservatives, figured it out, each for different reasons. this objection has the disadvantage of being obviously true. what all of us had in common is probably a simple recognition: war is a big deal. it isn't normal. it's not something to take up casually. any war you can describe as "a war of choice" is a crime. war feeds on and feeds the negative passions. it is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. various hawks occasionally protested that "of course" they didn't enjoy war, but they were almost always lying. anyone who saw invading foreign lands and ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies and delusions of the time. it's a heavy burden, i'll admit. but the riches and fame make it all worthwhile.

comment of the day

from the washington post, whose editors still don't believe we've heard all the relevant facts about john edwards' $400 haircut, the man behind the scissors and sassoon is feeling a bit let down:

beverly hill stylist joseph torrenueva: i'm disappointed and I do feel bad. if i know someone, i'm not going to say i don't know them ... when he called me "that guy," that hit my ears. it hurt.

quoth legalize @ tpm cafe's election central:

dude, get over yourself. you cut the man's hair; it's not like you massaged each other and did meth together in denver hotel rooms. sheesh.

a crazy li'l thing called credibility

as greg sargent @ talkingpointsmemo.com demonstrates, once it's gone — it's gone, baby:

as you can see, over the past four months the percentage of respondents who think the us "must win" in iraq for the sake of the broader "war on terror" dropped eight points. meanwhile, the percentage who think victory is not necessary to it has gone up a surprising ten points. this is striking — because in that four months or so since dems took power in january the overriding message that the white house, the gop and all of their lackeys and shills in the media have been blaring at the electorate in every conceivable forum is that (a) victory is absolutely essential in iraq and failure is not an option lest america become less secure; and (b) leaving iraq would constitute a catastrophic defeat in the broader war on terror. in other words, not only is the central white house/gop message failing to persuade, but fewer people buy it now since the propaganda campaign geared up in earnest, and significantly more people hold the opposite view. the white house and gop are losing the argument, if they haven't completely lost it already — suggesting that on iraq, their once-daunting ability to persuade, something that was jealously eyed by dems after the 2004 losses and has been hailed by the media for far too long since, has been reduced at this point to little more than smoldering wreckage.

liar

yes, i know — politicians lie, fib, equivocate, prevaricate, fabricate, dissemble, misinform and mislead like fish breathe water — not exactly breaking news.

but senate intelligence committee chair arlen specter seems to have told us a desperate ass-saving whopper that needs to be called out.

you'll recall my post "the not ready for prime time players", which highlights specter's cowardly proposal to grant amnesty to administration officials who may have broken federal law by engaging in the widespread warrantless wiretapping of american citizens. if blanket amnesty for the bush administration weren't craven enough, specter's proposal, if granted, would also make that amnesty retroactive to 1978, the year congress enacted the fisa statute, which created the fisa court, the only judicial body charged with reviewing federal warrant applications on matters of national security.

which means that every illegal espionage act for the past thirty years would be summarily disregarded with only a signature. so much for the party of accountability.

you'll also recall in the update to that post, that news of specter's call for amnesty seems to have been the result of a gross misreading of the proposed legislation by the washington post. it seemed that specter's bill wasn't quite as servile and loathsome as we've come to expect from the rubberstamping politburo we used to call congress. specter's immediate, vociferous and unequivocal prime-time denials seemed so genuine — or was it our desperate wish to believe that congress would not so eagerly castrate itself for a president whose approval ratings rival nixon's that made us so gullible?

glenn greenwald: i have now obtained (with the help of the aclu) a copy of specter's marked-up proposed legislation, which makes quite clear that specter simply was not telling the truth when he denied proposing amnesty to the administration. the bill in question was one which specter substituted last week in the judiciary committee for the prior legislation he proposed back in march (the reason the new version was not available online was because — according to the aclu — he introduced it only in the committee, but not yet on the senate floor). in sum, specter's legislation amends the provision of fisa which provides for criminal penalties, and then, astonishingly, makes those revisions retroactive all the way back to 1978 (when fisa was enacted). the effect and almost certainly the intent of those revisions is to immunize the president and anyone acting under his authority from criminal liability for violating fisa — just as the post and the aclu correctly reported, and just as specter falsely denied. ... currently, section 109(a) of fisa provides that "a person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally - (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute ..." that means that anyone who eavesdropping on americans without complying with the warrant requirements of the statute (fisa) is committing a felony. to amend this provision to include the phrase "or under the constitutional authority of the executive" after "authorized by statute," makes it legal to eavesdrop not only in compliance with fisa (i.e., by obtaining a warrant), but also under the "constitutional authority" of the president to engage in warrantless eavesdropping even if that warrantless eavesdropping is prohibited by fisa (which it is). ... section 801 of specter's proposed bill specifically provides that "nothing in this act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the president to gather foreign intelligence information or monitor the activities or communications of any person reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign enemy of the united states." that language tracks precisely the language used to define the parameters of the warrantless eavesdropping program, and it makes crystal clear that its intent is to declare legal the nsa program. and that provision is one of the provisions that has retroactive application back to 1978, which means the specter bill goes back in time — 28 years — and transforms fisa from a statute which has always regulated the president's eavesdropping power into one which places no limits on that eavesdropping power of any kind. ... what is extremely noteworthy — and worth emphasizing — is that arlen specter amended his legislation to include the most extremist provision imaginable (retroactive amnesty for criminal behavior), all in order to please the president's allies on the judiciary committee (led by sen. kyl) — who, as always, are marching to the dictates of the white house, which obviously is willing to accept new fisa legislation only if it provides them with immunity from criminal prosecution for their lawbreaking. but even more notable still is the fact that after engaging in this behavior, specter went on national television and dishonestly denied that he was doing that.... specter was so embarrassed by his amnesty provision once the post revealed it that he simply denied that his legislation contained it even though it so plainly does. specter's dishonesty aside, these shenanigans reveal what the white house is really after. their senatorial minions are going to support nsa legislation only if it contains full amnesty for the lawbreakers in the administration. the white house will then "reluctantly" agree to a newly revised fisa, and will have full immunity from criminal prosecution. specter will be the primary sponsor of this, and the media will drool over his "maverick" status and suggest that it's unreasonable to argue that specter is acting as the obedient white house shill that he always, in the end, becomes. if even the independent, rule-of-law-loving specter advocates amensty, then doesn't that show that it's reasonable? the white house insists that it has clear legal authority for warrantless eavesdropping, so why are retroactive amendments to fisa's criminal provisions necessary at all? and if we stand by and allow the republicans in congress to legislatively exonerate the president and his aides from breaking the law, it is hard to imagine what we won't stand by and tolerate. if the president can break the law and then use his party's control over the congress to grant him legislative immunity from the consequences of his criminal behavior, no hyperbole is required to say that the rule of law exists only as an illusion.

the not ready for prime time players

it's saturday night, so let's tune into the not-ready-for-prime-time players. but it's not the cast of nbc's saturday night live we'll be watching, though this season's replacements from washington d.c. — that tragicomic capital of calumny and calamity — should prove as entertaining as the originals, if nothing else. we should by now be used to nothing else.

as i forewarned in my post "elegy", the constitutional crisis facing the country can only be resolved by congress' resumption of its responsibilities to both its constituents and itself as a concrete bulwark against any encroachment on its powers and duties by either of the other two branches of government — in these circumstances, the encroachments of the bush administration against the nation's time-tested system of checks and balances.

as glenn greenwald argues with his characteristic clarity — and frustration — in his post "a new low — the senate seeks to 'pardon' the president for past lawbreaking", from which i excerpt liberally, the 109th congress, especially as represented by senate intelligence committee chair arlen specter, is not quite ready for prime time:

observing and commenting on the behavior of arlen specter is one of the most unpleasant obligations a person can have, but for anyone following the nsa eavesdropping scandal specifically, and the bush administration's abuses of executive power generally, it is a necessary evil. the principal reason that the bush administration has been able to impose its radical theories of lawbreaking on the country is because congress, with an unseemly eagerness, has permitted itself to be humiliated over and over by an administration which does not hide its contempt for the notion that congress has any role to play in limiting and checking the executive branch. and few people have more vividly illustrated that institutional debasement than arlen specter, who, along with pat roberts, has done more than anyone else to ensure that congress completely relinquishes its constitutional powers to the president. congressional abdication is so uniquely damaging because the founders assumed that congress would naturally and instinctively resist encroachments by the executive, and the resulting institutional tension — the inevitable struggle for power between the branches — is what would preserve governmental balance and prevent true abuses of power. but for the last five years, congress has done the opposite of what the founders envisioned. they have meekly submitted to the almost total elimination of their role in our government and have quietly accepted consolidation of their powers in the president. if the congress is unmoved by their constitutional responsibilities, then at least basic human dignity ought to compel them to object to the administration's contempt for the laws they pass. after all, the laws which the administration claims it can ignore and has been breaking are their laws. the senate passed fisa by a vote of 95-1, and the mccain torture ban by a vote of 90-9, and it is those laws which the president is proclaiming he will simply ignore. and yet not only have they not objected, they have endorsed and even celebrated the president's claimed power to ignore the laws passed by congress. and that failure, more than anything else, is what has brought us to the real constitutional crisis we face as a result of having a president who claims the power to operate outside of, and above, the law. a bill proposed yesterday by arlen specter to resolve the nsa scandal — literally his fifth or sixth proposed bill on this subject in the last few months — would drag the congress to a new low of debasement. according to the washington post, specter has introduced a bill "that would give president bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the national security agency." this proposal is the very opposite of everything specter has saying for the last several months: specter's approach modifies his earlier position that the nsa eavesdropping program, which targets international telephone calls and e-mails in which one party is suspected of links to terrorists, must be subject to supervision by the secret court set up under the foreign intelligence surveillance act (fisa). a law which makes it "an option" — rather than a requirement — for the government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping is about as meaningless of a law as can be imagined. but that complete change of heart by specter is not even nearly the most corrupt part of his proposed bill. for pure corruption and constitutional abdication, nothing could match this: another part of the specter bill would grant blanket amnesty to anyone who authorized warrantless surveillance under presidential authority, a provision that seems to ensure that no one would be held criminally liable if the current program is found illegal under present law. the idea that the president's allies in congress would enact legislation which expressly shields government officials, including the president, from criminal liability for past lawbreaking is so reprehensible that it is difficult to describe. ... what makes this proposed amnesty so particularly indefensible is that specter himself has spent the last two months loudly complaining about the fact that he — along with the rest of the country — has been denied any information about how this illegal, secret eavesdropping has been conducted. has that power been abused? has it been exercised for political, rather than national security, reasons? before one even considers shielding those responsible for this lawbreaking from liability, wouldn't one have to at least know the answer to those questions? ... specter receives substantial criticism because of the flamboyant way in which he engages in what can only be described as sado-masochistic rituals with the administration. he pretends to exercise independence only to get beaten into extreme submission, and then returns eagerly for more. it is as unpleasant to watch as it is damaging to our country. but specter's unique psychological dramas should not obscure the fact that it is the entire congress which has failed in its responsibilities to take a stand against this president's lawbreaking and abuses, and there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties. the reason the president has been allowed to exert precisely the type of unrestrained power which the founders sought, first and foremost, to avoid, is because the congress has allowed him to.

update:

to glenn's further consternation, it looks like the post may have only imagined the heinous amnesty proposal in specter's bill:

before i wrote the post, i searched for the actual text of specter's bill in order to read it myself, but could not find it (specter's website is one of the worst sites for any senator, as it is usually a month or more behind). as a result, my post ... was based upon the post's reporting about specter's bill, rather than my own reading of it. i have now had a chance to review the actual text of specter's bill and cannot find any basis for the post's claim that it contains an amensty [sic] provision for past violations of the law. ... there is simply nothing in it which supports the post's report.

glenn had good cause to be cautious — this wasn't the first time that the post bungled the reading of the ever-multiplying proposals spawning from the senate intelligence committee:

before i wrote the post on friday, i was very reluctant to post anything about specter's bill in reliance on the report of the washington post. that's because the post previously published a front-page article about another fisa-related bill, this one proposed by sen. michael dewine, which was completely inaccurate about what the bill actually provided — not with regard to minor details of the bill, but with regard to its fundamental provisions. this is what happened. on march 17, the post published a front-page article by charles babington regarding the proposed legislation introduced by dewine (co-sponsored by sens. snowe, hagel, and graham), which was offered by those senators as the "compromise" solution when the republicans on the senate intelligence committee refused to hold hearings to investigate the nsa warrantless eavesdropping program. the post article falsely depicted this gop bill as vesting oversight power in the congress to stop warrantless eavesdropping, even though the bill provided nothing of the kind. specifically, the post article claimed — erroneously — that the bill would allow the administration to engage in warrantless eavesdropping only if a newly formed senate intelligence subcommittee approves of the program's renewal every 45 days. in fact, the legislation provided nothing of the sort. it gave no power whatsoever to any senate committee to approve or disapprove of warrantless eavesdropping. contrary to the post's front-page claim, that legislation would have vested no power whatsoever in the congress (or the courts) to stop the warrantless eavesdropping. it merely required that the administration "brief" the subcommittee, but the subcommittee (along with everyone else) would be completely powerless under that bill to stop the administration from engaging in warrantless eavesdropping. on that day, i first read the post article about this proposed legislation, but then found the legislation itself and read it. it was very clear that the post was simply wrong in what it told its readers on its front page about this significant legislation — wrong about the legislation's fundamentals.

poll pall

virtually overnight the washington post has generated a poll showing twice as many supporters than objectors to bush's illegal nsa spying program, which only yesterday was revealed to have been accumulating records on "tens of millions of americans", contrary to the administration's repeated assurances. bush supporters are of course ecstatic at any news that can be wrung into kool-aid while bush critics seem to be reflexively retreating into their ready disenchantment with the apathetic hordes.

i was planning to post my own analysis of the poll, whose construction raises serious questions regarding the framing of issues, and which completely ignored the central issue of warrants, court orders and oversight, but glenn greenwald's "polling hysteria and the nsa program" nimbly beat me to the punch:

... when the nsa eavesdropping scandal was first disclosed, rasmussen reports quickly issued a blatantly flawed poll purporting to show that "sixty-four percent (64%) of americans believe the national security agency (nsa) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the united states." the question mentioned nothing about warrants. it mentioned nothing about fisa. and it specified that the government would be eavesdropping only on conversations "between terrorism suspects." the only surprise with the results was that only 64% favored that. One would think that virtually everyone would favor eavesdropping on terrorism suspects. nonetheless, since that was the first poll, it was held up by bush followers as proof that the nsa scandal was political suicide for democrats ... as the debate over the nsa scandal became more informed and more americans understood the issues at stake, virtually every poll thereafter showed that a majority or plurality of americans oppose warrantless eavesdropping and/or believe the president broke the law, and some even show that a plurality favors the censure resolution. opinions change when people stand up and explain why what the government is doing is wrong and dangerous, and americans respect politicians who are willing to do that even when — especially when — they are not guaranteed by the consulting class ahead of time that they will win. all other issues aside, there is nothing for bush opponents to lose here by pursuing this issue. nobody who has abandoned george bush is going to again become a supporter of his because he is keeping track of the telephone calls of every single american.... ... meanwhile, in the real world, ever since the nsa scandal was revealed, the president's approval rating has done nothing but plummet. that, of course, does not demonstrate a causal relationship, but it certainly proves that scandals of this type do not remotely help the president in any way. all of those frightened beltway democrats who were anonymously screeching that russ feingold's censure resolution played right into karl rove's omnipotent hands, that it destroyed the grand democratic plan, that it would allow the president to recover by forcing the debate back onto his turf — how wrong were they, as always?

i encourage you to read the entire post.

meanwhile, for a no-nonsense takedown of the poll's questions themselves, be sure to also check out former telephone pollster krazypuppy's "worst poll ever: americans do care" at daily kos.

it doesn't get any better than this

or in other words, it can only get worse.

and it will.

josh marshall: bright side for the white house: it can only get worse. [emphasis his] ... when you think about this coming election, and the stakes for the white house, you need to figure that that's all come about without any independent, let alone antagonistic or hostile, investigations into the key issues that have led to this souring view of the president. would the president look better after a new look at the iraq intel bamboozlement that wasn't controlled by sen. roberts? how about an investigation into the executive branch side of the abramoff scandal? what about a look into the plame affair? what about the folks in rumsfeld's office who knew about duke's corruption but looked the other way? [emphases mine]

the predicament faced by the white house is really quite amazing from a purely clinical aspect, though, like a cancer diagnosis, what it reveals at the same time is thoroughly horrifying.

this administration, chiefly characterized by its pathological stubbornness, has lashed itself to the wheel. bush is resolved to "stay the course", not only in iraq, but in all his policies and programs, none of which actually work for the majority of the electorate, if anyone besides halliburton and exxon. his predicament is that any attempt to change gears, in any meaningful sense, one that is not purely cosmetic and one that will benefit the country, also brings with it the greater risk of exposure of his malfeasance and maladministration, which leads to probes and trials, and we can't have any of that now, can we?

so things won't get any better than this. the country's problems will inevitably grow worse. and the worse those problems become, the worse dear leader looks. but so long as bush has his way, he will not change course. so he's screwed. and he's criminally lashed us to the wheel right with him, on his good ship titanic.

washington post: a variety of bush advisers suggested that the president is not interested in altering his major decisions or philosophy, but that he recognizes he needs to do a better job communicating in washington and beyond. "the president's message and vision are firmly in place and are not going to change," mckinnon said. "but it still helps to have a new messenger. it helps to wipe the slate clean."

the logic is inescapable: things will continue to get worse before they can possibly get better. as long as this administration remains in place, things will never get better.

history lessons

those who do not learn the lessons of history shall be doomed to rewrite it.

house columnist richard cohen, writing three years ago in the washington post on the appearance of then-secretary of state colin powell before the united nations to present evidence of saddam hussein's secret weapons program:

the evidence he presented to the united nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. only a fool — or possibly a frenchman — could conclude otherwise. ... but the case powell laid out regarding chemical and biological weapons was so strong — so convincing — it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank god for that. in effect, he was telling the french and the russians what could happen — what would happen — if the united nations did not do what it said it would and hold saddam hussein accountable for, in effect, being saddam hussein. ... if anyone had any doubt, powell proved that [iraq] has defied international law — not to mention international norms concerning human rights — and virtually dared the united nations to put up or shut up. there is no other hand. there is no choice. — "a winning hand for powell", february 6, 2003

cohen today, (re)writing on the third anniversary of the invasion:

colin powell, you may recall, soiled his stellar reputation with a united nations speech that is now just plain sad to read. almost none of it is true. ... whatever bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. bush wanted war. he just didn't want the war he got. — "bush wanted war", march 30, 2006

i guess cohen didn't want the war he got either. so what of his reputation? (all right, to be honest, it was never "stellar".)

it is of course always a good thing each day a war pundit joins the rest of us in the so-called "reality-based community". but the one thing that's so far missing from the record is proof of his mea culpa.

changing the storyline

abc news washington correspondent jake tapper discussing charges of media bias in the persistently bleak coverage of iraq with howard kurtz, host of cnn reliable sources, march 19 2006:

kurtz: jake tapper, in this morning's washington post, donald rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has an op-ed pieces which says, in part, "history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on web sites, or the latest sensational attack. history is a bigger picture." now, since you are just back from iraq, do you believe the journalists provided a distorted picture, or did it seem different to you when you got there than you might have expected? tapper: it's a very complicated question, obviously. what journalists, when, who, what are you talking about specifically? i think that there is a lot of violence still in iraq, and i think that if you listen to commanders on the ground and if you go to iraq, you'll see that that security situation is an incredibly important one. and as much as the pentagon may not want to talk about it or may want to talk about the positive, the parliament and the elections and the things that are being achieved, which are tangible achievements, the violence makes it very difficult to get past, you know, the daily boom. let me just — one quick story. we wanted to do a story about the freedom of the press in iraq, and we went to the set of a new iraqi sitcom that they're filming, because there's been — there's all this entertainment now, and it's one of the things that the ambassador there has trumpeted. kurtz: so what happened? tapper: we got there, and the guy who had set it up with us — we shot — we shot for a little while, and the guy who had helped us arrange it was assassinated the very morning while we were there on the set. and so our cameras were rolling while the director and the producer and the cast and crew found out that the guy that had green-lit the show and the guy that had set up our being there was killed. so no matter how hard we try to cover the positive, the violence has a way of rearing its head. kurtz: talk about changing your storyline.