Thursday, December 31, 2009
Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky Says
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
The Last 10 Miserable Years
Ten Miserable Years
Why it's going to so hard--and why it's so important--to put this decade behind us.
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Ten Miserable Years The Whipping Boy Church and State December 31, 2009 | 12:00 am
How Barack Obama Ended the Culture Wars--For Now
Dionne: Why Progressives Need to Stop Screaming and Start Organizing for the Next Health Care FightWASHINGTON -- Certain decades shape the country's political life for generations by leaving behind an era to embrace or, at least as often, to scorn.
The 1960s were definitely such a decade. The 1930s qualify, and so do the 1980s. But as important as all these periods have been, their significance may be dwarfed by the reckless and squandered decade that is, mercifully, ending.
I'm afraid that the past 10 years will be seen as a time when the United States badly lost its way by using our military power carelessly, misunderstanding the real challenges to our long-term security, and pursuing domestic policies that constrained our options for the future while needlessly threatening our prosperity.
I am aware that the previous paragraph is thoroughly controversial, and that befits any description of a politically consequential decade. Much of the contention surrounding Barack Obama's presidency is simply a continuation of our argument over the effects of George W. Bush's time in office.
That is why Obama, despite his fervent wishes, has been unable to usher in a new period of consensus. Bush's defenders know that Obama's election represented a popular reaction against the consequences of the 43rd president's time in office. Because Obama is both the anti-Bush and the leader of the post-Bush cleanup squad, his success would complete the rebuke. So the Bush camp -- Karl Rove's regular contributions to The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages are emblematic -- must stay on the attack.
Domestically, Obama inherited an economic catastrophe. Dealing with the wreckage required a large expenditure of public funds that increased a deficit already bloated by the previous president's decision to fight two wars and to cut taxes at the same time. Bush's defenders, preferring to focus attention away from this earlier period of irresponsibility, act as if the world began on Jan. 20, 2009, by way of saddling Obama with the blame for everything that now ails us. But the previous eight years cannot be wished away.
Our current president is more deliberate about the use of American power than his predecessor was, and determined to repair America's image with other nations. Obama is committed to fighting terrorism, but does not believe that a "war on terror" should define American foreign policy.
This leads directly to another essential argument over the meaning of the last decade: whether the proper response to the 9/11 attacks included not only the widely supported retaliation in Afghanistan but also the invasion of Iraq. Obama's view -- that the Iraq War wasted American power and dissipated good will toward us around the world -- is a direct reproach to the core assumptions of the Bush foreign policy.
So is Obama's refusal "to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests," as he put it in his recent West Point speech, as well as his insistence upon appreciating "the connection between our national security and our economy." This measured approach to the use of force is antithetical to a foreign policy based on "bring 'em on" and sweeping pledges to "defeat our enemies across the world."
But this makes it imperative for Obama to inspire trust in his capacity to thwart terrorism, and his administration's initial response to the Christmas Day airliner attack fell short. Republicans were shameless in politicizing the incident, knowing that rehabilitating Bush's approach to terrorism depends upon discrediting Obama's. The president can't afford to give them anything to work with, as he finally seemed to grasp on Tuesday.
It should not surprise us that the battle for the future will be shaped by struggles over the past. How often over the last 40 years have conservatives defended their policies in the name of rolling back "the excesses of the '60s"? For even longer, liberals were charged with being locked into "the New Deal approaches of the 1930s." Liberals, in turn, pointed proudly to both eras as times of unparalleled social advance.
As for the 1980s, they remain a positive reference point for conservatives even as progressives condemn the Age of Reagan for opening the way to the deregulatory excesses that led to the recent downturn.
Americans instinctively recoil at living too much in the past. Yet we have no choice but to reach a settlement about the meaning of the last 10 years. It is the only way we will successfully turn the next 10 into a decade of renewal.
Why it's going to so hard--and why it's so important--to put this decade behind us.
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Ten Miserable Years The Whipping Boy Church and State December 31, 2009 | 12:00 am
How Barack Obama Ended the Culture Wars--For Now
Dionne: Why Progressives Need to Stop Screaming and Start Organizing for the Next Health Care FightWASHINGTON -- Certain decades shape the country's political life for generations by leaving behind an era to embrace or, at least as often, to scorn.
The 1960s were definitely such a decade. The 1930s qualify, and so do the 1980s. But as important as all these periods have been, their significance may be dwarfed by the reckless and squandered decade that is, mercifully, ending.
I'm afraid that the past 10 years will be seen as a time when the United States badly lost its way by using our military power carelessly, misunderstanding the real challenges to our long-term security, and pursuing domestic policies that constrained our options for the future while needlessly threatening our prosperity.
I am aware that the previous paragraph is thoroughly controversial, and that befits any description of a politically consequential decade. Much of the contention surrounding Barack Obama's presidency is simply a continuation of our argument over the effects of George W. Bush's time in office.
That is why Obama, despite his fervent wishes, has been unable to usher in a new period of consensus. Bush's defenders know that Obama's election represented a popular reaction against the consequences of the 43rd president's time in office. Because Obama is both the anti-Bush and the leader of the post-Bush cleanup squad, his success would complete the rebuke. So the Bush camp -- Karl Rove's regular contributions to The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages are emblematic -- must stay on the attack.
Domestically, Obama inherited an economic catastrophe. Dealing with the wreckage required a large expenditure of public funds that increased a deficit already bloated by the previous president's decision to fight two wars and to cut taxes at the same time. Bush's defenders, preferring to focus attention away from this earlier period of irresponsibility, act as if the world began on Jan. 20, 2009, by way of saddling Obama with the blame for everything that now ails us. But the previous eight years cannot be wished away.
Our current president is more deliberate about the use of American power than his predecessor was, and determined to repair America's image with other nations. Obama is committed to fighting terrorism, but does not believe that a "war on terror" should define American foreign policy.
This leads directly to another essential argument over the meaning of the last decade: whether the proper response to the 9/11 attacks included not only the widely supported retaliation in Afghanistan but also the invasion of Iraq. Obama's view -- that the Iraq War wasted American power and dissipated good will toward us around the world -- is a direct reproach to the core assumptions of the Bush foreign policy.
So is Obama's refusal "to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests," as he put it in his recent West Point speech, as well as his insistence upon appreciating "the connection between our national security and our economy." This measured approach to the use of force is antithetical to a foreign policy based on "bring 'em on" and sweeping pledges to "defeat our enemies across the world."
But this makes it imperative for Obama to inspire trust in his capacity to thwart terrorism, and his administration's initial response to the Christmas Day airliner attack fell short. Republicans were shameless in politicizing the incident, knowing that rehabilitating Bush's approach to terrorism depends upon discrediting Obama's. The president can't afford to give them anything to work with, as he finally seemed to grasp on Tuesday.
It should not surprise us that the battle for the future will be shaped by struggles over the past. How often over the last 40 years have conservatives defended their policies in the name of rolling back "the excesses of the '60s"? For even longer, liberals were charged with being locked into "the New Deal approaches of the 1930s." Liberals, in turn, pointed proudly to both eras as times of unparalleled social advance.
As for the 1980s, they remain a positive reference point for conservatives even as progressives condemn the Age of Reagan for opening the way to the deregulatory excesses that led to the recent downturn.
Americans instinctively recoil at living too much in the past. Yet we have no choice but to reach a settlement about the meaning of the last 10 years. It is the only way we will successfully turn the next 10 into a decade of renewal.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Joe Klein on Health Care Reform
The Left's Idiocy on Health Reform
By Joe Klein Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos.
But there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation of these extremes — a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left.
(See the 5 things that the House and Senate have to iron out on health care.)
The prejudices of the tea partiers, birthers, deathers, Palinites and other assorted "real" Americans are well known; the historic conservative opposition to universal health care isn't news. The dyspepsia of the left blogosphere is less easily explained, though. It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq. There is still intense, unabated anger on the left because its opposition to the war was often ridiculed and almost always ignored in 2003. The anger at so-called moderates — actually, Democratic conservatives like Joe Lieberman — who supported the war is especially intense. This was the anger that fed the Howard Dean movement in 2004, and it sets the emotional parameters for other issues far more complicated than the war, like health care. Those who were wrong about Iraq can't be trusted on anything else.
Actually, both the left and right opponents of health care reform are drinking from the same watercooler. Activists on both sides — consulting their focus groups, no doubt — found that the message that most roused their troops was the same: a government takeover of health care. The tidbit in the plan that came closest to embodying that message was a worthy but relatively minor provision called the public option, which would offer something like Medicare as one of a menu of choices for several million Americans not receiving health insurance from their employers. For the right, this was socialism. For the left, it was a step toward stripping private insurers of their choke hold on the system. When the public option was killed — by Lieberman, of all people — the left saw Iraq redux and rebelled. Not only was there no public option, but people would also be mandated — forced! — to patronize the same insurance companies that exploit them now. There would be a windfall of 30 million new customers for the insurers and drug companies. What a sellout! Bloggers at sites like Daily Kos, the Huffington Post (including Arianna herself) and FireDogLake held a village bonfire. Dean materialized to help fan the flames.
(Read "Forcing Insurers to Spend Enough on Health Care.")
To be sure, the bill that emerged from the Senate has problems. But it is landmark social legislation that guarantees and subsidizes health care coverage for 30 million Americans who don't have it now. Yes, this means a lot of new customers for the insurance companies — but the insurers will face strict new regulations, and many of their new customers will be people they refused to cover in the past. Ultimately, it means an annual income redistribution of $200 billion to help the working poor pay for insurance, which is why Republicans oppose the bill. But Jacob Hacker, the leading promoter of the public option, favors it. Every Democratic Senator, including those like Ohio's Sherrod Brown who have impeccable liberal records, favors it.
By Joe Klein Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos.
But there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation of these extremes — a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left.
(See the 5 things that the House and Senate have to iron out on health care.)
The prejudices of the tea partiers, birthers, deathers, Palinites and other assorted "real" Americans are well known; the historic conservative opposition to universal health care isn't news. The dyspepsia of the left blogosphere is less easily explained, though. It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq. There is still intense, unabated anger on the left because its opposition to the war was often ridiculed and almost always ignored in 2003. The anger at so-called moderates — actually, Democratic conservatives like Joe Lieberman — who supported the war is especially intense. This was the anger that fed the Howard Dean movement in 2004, and it sets the emotional parameters for other issues far more complicated than the war, like health care. Those who were wrong about Iraq can't be trusted on anything else.
Actually, both the left and right opponents of health care reform are drinking from the same watercooler. Activists on both sides — consulting their focus groups, no doubt — found that the message that most roused their troops was the same: a government takeover of health care. The tidbit in the plan that came closest to embodying that message was a worthy but relatively minor provision called the public option, which would offer something like Medicare as one of a menu of choices for several million Americans not receiving health insurance from their employers. For the right, this was socialism. For the left, it was a step toward stripping private insurers of their choke hold on the system. When the public option was killed — by Lieberman, of all people — the left saw Iraq redux and rebelled. Not only was there no public option, but people would also be mandated — forced! — to patronize the same insurance companies that exploit them now. There would be a windfall of 30 million new customers for the insurers and drug companies. What a sellout! Bloggers at sites like Daily Kos, the Huffington Post (including Arianna herself) and FireDogLake held a village bonfire. Dean materialized to help fan the flames.
(Read "Forcing Insurers to Spend Enough on Health Care.")
To be sure, the bill that emerged from the Senate has problems. But it is landmark social legislation that guarantees and subsidizes health care coverage for 30 million Americans who don't have it now. Yes, this means a lot of new customers for the insurance companies — but the insurers will face strict new regulations, and many of their new customers will be people they refused to cover in the past. Ultimately, it means an annual income redistribution of $200 billion to help the working poor pay for insurance, which is why Republicans oppose the bill. But Jacob Hacker, the leading promoter of the public option, favors it. Every Democratic Senator, including those like Ohio's Sherrod Brown who have impeccable liberal records, favors it.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Malkin Award
From Andrew Sullivan
28 Dec 2009 06:23 pm
Dish Award Results 2009: Malkin Award Winner
By a mile, it's Glenn Beck, with 42 percent of the near 8,000 votes in this category. His award-winning statement:
“We call them progressives now, but back in Samuel Adams’ day, they used to call them tyrants. A little later, I think they were also called slave owners."
28 Dec 2009 06:23 pm
Dish Award Results 2009: Malkin Award Winner
By a mile, it's Glenn Beck, with 42 percent of the near 8,000 votes in this category. His award-winning statement:
“We call them progressives now, but back in Samuel Adams’ day, they used to call them tyrants. A little later, I think they were also called slave owners."
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Palin's Death Panels "Lie of the Year"
Death Panels Lie On Factcheck.Org's 'Whoppers Of 2009'
The non-partisan group, however, pinned most of the blame on longtime reform foe Betsy McCaughey.
"Death Panels" The "pulling the plug on grandma" falsehood really took off once former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin coined the term "Death Panel," but this falsehood got its first push from former New York lieutenant governor and health care overhaul opponent Betsy McCaughey.
She misrepresented a provision (since dropped) that merely called for Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions to help seniors make end-of-life care decisions, such as designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice or writing a living will. McCaughey twisted that into "a required counseling session" that would "tell them how to end their life sooner." Palin later wrote on her Facebook page that she doesn't want government bureaucrats to decide whether her parents or child with Down Syndrome are "worthy of health care." Who would? Certainly not legislators, who didn't call for the creation of any such "Death Panel" in the health care bills.
The non-partisan group, however, pinned most of the blame on longtime reform foe Betsy McCaughey.
"Death Panels" The "pulling the plug on grandma" falsehood really took off once former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin coined the term "Death Panel," but this falsehood got its first push from former New York lieutenant governor and health care overhaul opponent Betsy McCaughey.
She misrepresented a provision (since dropped) that merely called for Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling sessions to help seniors make end-of-life care decisions, such as designating a health care proxy, choosing a hospice or writing a living will. McCaughey twisted that into "a required counseling session" that would "tell them how to end their life sooner." Palin later wrote on her Facebook page that she doesn't want government bureaucrats to decide whether her parents or child with Down Syndrome are "worthy of health care." Who would? Certainly not legislators, who didn't call for the creation of any such "Death Panel" in the health care bills.
Friday, December 25, 2009
FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN
December 25
My Reader's Literary Mentor
A reader writes:
The tone of the "From The In-Tray II" emails reminds me of the great Ignatius J. Reilly character in A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Maybe the funniest book I've ever read. A few Ignatius gems...
"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”
and
"I am at this moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."
December 25
My Reader's Literary Mentor
A reader writes:
The tone of the "From The In-Tray II" emails reminds me of the great Ignatius J. Reilly character in A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Maybe the funniest book I've ever read. A few Ignatius gems...
"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”
and
"I am at this moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."
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