A Summer Classic: Moral Panic Over A Pier Shooting

Guest Blog Post by Professor Jonathan Simon

It is a reminder of how hard the past is to leave behind (especially when your leading politicians belong to it). By now the whole nation knows the basic facts: Francisco Sanchez, a 45- or 52-year-old Mexican national, shot and killed Kathryn Steinle, 32-year-old resident of a nearby suburb, in a chance encounter along San Francisco’s popular, and seemingly safe, waterfront Embarcadero Boulevard last week.

It had all the makings of what criminologists call a “moral panic” — an untoward event, small or large, that becomes a vehicle for vast social and political anxieties over race, class and national identity. A low-status villain — non-white, poor, non-citizen, long criminal record, multiple incarcerations — kills a high-status victim — white, middle class, citizen, mother of children, never been in trouble with the law.  It occurs where it should not, in a place associated with comfort and recreation. Events like this sometimes stay just local news, but given the right conditions, they can blow up into a policy storm of significant magnitude. Will this one?

It comes at a time when white anxiety over the growing Latino population in the United States has become a dominant obsession with the Republican party. Indeed, Republican politicians have found themselves in something of a dilemma over which to attack among two of their favorite targets: liberal cities like San Francisco or the Obama administration.

Since the dominant media narrative has focused on the decision of the San Francisco sheriff’s department to release Sanchez, after the marijuana possession warrant he was being held on was dismissed — without notifying ICE (the Immigration Control and Enforcement agency) as requested — Republicans and now Senator Diane Feinstein, have decided to focus their rage on the city’s sanctuary policy, which mandates non-cooperation with the aggressive detention and deportation policies of recent years. Feinstein wrote SF Mayor Ed Lee yesterday, excoriating the City and its sanctuary policy, and all but blaming them for the crime.

Familiar narrative

The story line is a familiar one to politicians of Feinstein’s generation, who rose to maturity and power addressing it. In Feinstein’s case, this was quite literal, as she became mayor of San Francisco in 1978 after the high-profile City Hall murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor and civil-rights leader Harvey Milk.

According to the logic that became common sense during the high crime eras of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, state and local justice systems were overwhelmed by crime and prone to ignoring criminal threats by dumping known threats on the streets. According to this thinking (which I described at length in my 2007 book Governing through Crime), only tough laws limiting judicial discretion, and federal mandates requiring that felons serve the vast majority of their sentences and protect Americans. The result: mass incarceration and mass deportation.

A closer look at the narrative surrounding the Sanchez case reveals it for the ideological construction it is. In fact, Sanchez epitomizes why the logic of exclusion and segregation that undergird our wars on crime and terror can never achieve public safety.

Start with the focus on San Francisco’s sheriff and the city’s sanctuary policy. It seem obvious and outrageous to Sen. Feinstein that Ms. Steinle would not have been killed that night but for the sheriff’s and city’s failure to incarcerate him until he could be deported.

But who was really the proximate cause of Mr. Sanchez’s presence in San Francisco? He didn’t start here, but instead in federal prison, where he was serving time for repeated unlawful entries to the United States.

Nothing in federal law required ICE to bring Sanchez to San Francisco to address a 20-year-old warrant for marijuana possession. Such charges are routinely dismissed in San Francisco and other cities, and the feds had apparently deported him five times during that period without feeling compelled to bring him to answer justice in San Francisco. Most likely the overworked ICE staff found the warrant and realized it would be easier to dump him on San Francisco then complete the paper work necessary to deport him promptly (or even generate the kind of immigration warrant rather than “hold” what would have prevented Sanchez’s release even under the sanctuary policy).

Dangerous felon?

A second phony element is the idea that Sanchez was obviously dangerous because of his seven felonies. In fact, as the media realized pretty early, all but one of these felonies were for drugs or illegal reentry, and only one was for assault (the least serious form of crime against the person, the equivalent of a fist fight).

If anything, Sanchez’s record is monument to how stretched the felony concept has become in our time. Seven felonies sure sound scary, until you actually look at them. There is nothing about his record that would have signaled to San Francisco sheriff’s deputies that Sanchez posed a serious threat. He appeared to be a not untypical inmate in the jail: poor, disorganized, a drug user without a stable family or work life, and probably some mental illness (indeed I suspect he has a chronic mental illness and decompensated for lack of proper treatment during his federal imprisonment).

The shooting of Kathryn Steinle appears to be a tragic escalation of Sanchez’s lifestyle. The weapon was apparently found on the beach (latest reports suggest it belonged to a federal agent). He admits to having been high on cannabis and sleeping pills. She was shot in the back, consistent with his “accident” defense. His most persistent deliberate pattern was apparently returning to the United States — not to prey on its citizens a la Donald Trump, but to support himself and perhaps to stay in contact with family here.

So what to conclude from the Sanchez case? Trying to protect ourselves from random violence by incarcerating and deporting people, on the basis of race and often-inflated criminal records, is deeply flawed (and far from the slam-dunk solution that Sen. Feinstein believes).

Lessons from criminology

The underlying theory here is that crime is a product of dangerous people. Lock up or deport the dangerous people and the problem is solved. But criminology now suggests that crime is situational, a product of people with chaotic lives, substance abuse, and chance encounters in environments that provide either accelerants or de-accelerants (think of the gun that Sanchez found).

There is no perfect solution, save for the ideal of fixing all our “broken toys” (and even unbroken ones break in the spur of the moment). Instead, careful mental-health screening of the jail population, and attentive post-release efforts to keep people with mental health needs and drug-abuse histories on the right medications and off the wrong ones, could do far better than incarceration for people like Sanchez (what about his previous imprisonments protected us?).

Nor, quite clearly, is deportation a solution. For two decades now, we’ve been aggressively deporting people we label “criminal aliens,” creating significant gang problems in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador (many of them, in fact, have recreated the same gang milieus they used to survive in the United States) without doing much to reduce crime here.

I suspect this moral panic will run its course without uprooting San Francisco’s sanctuary policy or placing Donald Trump in the White House. The general trend is away from harsh and exclusionary policies in both criminal justice and immigration.

Sadly, the punitive storm that has arisen around Francisco Sanchez and the killing of Kathryn Steinle is a reminder of how powerful the hold of crime-panic journalism, and hyperventilating crime-warrior politicians like Feinstein, remains on our public policy and how slow reform will probably be.

Jonathan Simon is a professor of law at UC Berkeley and Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Law & Society.  This article was originally posted at The Berkeley Blog

The Mainstream Media Has No Sense Of Direction: Hillary Clinton Must Go Left, Not Right

I feel like I'm flogging a dead donkey here, but it is crazy-making how the mainstream media continues to yearn for a Democratic candidate who magically will unite the left and right by appealing to ordinary Americans aka the White Working Class and Red State Democrats -- a candidate who will eschew the polarizing effect of embracing such progressive concerns as economic inequality suppression of voting rights, mass incarceration and immigration reform, not to mention reproductive and LGBT rights.  According to the conventional wisdom, Hillary's failure to hew to the right will be the singular cause of a dispirited electorate and increasing rancor and gridlock on Capital Hill.  Republicans, of course, bear no responsibility for their refusal to accept the legitimacy of any Democratic president since LBJ, their increasingly extremist (and unpopular) positions on these issues or their preternatural inability to govern responsibly.

An infuriating article on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times, heavily relied on the two most conservative Democrats in the Senate who expressed their dismay that Hillary is not wooing the voters in their bright red states -- North Dakota and West Virginia -- but has instead chosen to focus on states that she can actually win.  The article cautions that taking "liberal policy positions" might "fire up Democrats" but by foregoing "a broader strategy that could help lift the party with her" could mean "missing out on the kind of spirited conversation that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election" and leave her "if she wins, with the same difficulties Mr. Obama has faced in governing with a Republican-controlled Congress." 

This was followed by the insufferable David Brooks aka Moral Hazard's trolling about how destructive and divisive Hillary's campaign will be if she "dispens[es] with a broad persuasion campaign" that fails to attract the ever-elusive swing voter.  Ron Fournier, another favorite of the punditocracy, also weighed in that Hillary is taking the wrong path by pandering to the Democrats' "most devoted partisans" rather than appealing to the "broadest possible audience."  According to Fournier, the problem is that even if she wins, such "a polarizing, opportunistic candidate assumes the presidency with no standing to convert campaign promises into results."  Chuck Todd says basically the same thing, that campaigns that don't "engage in persuasion," but instead seek to come out ahead in in a polarized America "makes governing harder than it already was."

The underlying premise that liberal ideas are inherently divisive is simply wrong.  Recent polls show that Americans are shifting to the left on a variety of issues.  A campaign that focuses on the above-mentioned progressive themes and chastises Republican candidates for not believing in climate change, for wanting to deport the children of immigrants, for insisting that tax cuts for the wealthy are always the cure for what ails the economy and for seeking to disenfranchise voters, might alienate extremist Republicans but are hardly an anathema to swing and independent voters.

The problem isn't Democrats failing to reach for a middle ground.  It is that Republicans keep moving farther to the right.  Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute accurately describes Republicans as a "radical insurgency—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition."  Nancy Letourneau explains that "what makes governing harder . . . is that we have one political party that is catering to an ever-decreasing group of voters that completely rejects any form of compromise to their agenda."  As Christopher Ingraham reports, "political scientists have known for years that political polarization is largely a one-sided phenomenon: in recent decades the Republican Party has moved to the right much faster than Democrats have moved to the left."  He details data that measures political polarization showing "in the most recent Congress nearly 90 percent of Republican House members are not politically moderate. By contrast, 90 percent of Democratic members are moderates."

Nevertheless, the mainstream media continues to puzzle over where the polarization and gridlock originated.  Chuck Todd poses it as a chicken/egg question:  "What came first -- this red-blue campaign strategy we've seen since 2000, or America's political/geographical/ cultural polarization."

The notion that Republicans in Congress would cooperate with another President Clinton if only she would present a more inclusive approach to governance is insane.  They impeached her husband, for God's sake, a president who attempted -- much to the dismay of many a progressive -- to embrace inclusiveness and appeal to Republican concerns (e.g., welfare reform, stricter drug laws, DOMA).

Charles Pierce describes far better than I, "the great failure of our elite political media -- a complete disinclination to look at what is plainly right there in front of them. It is simply not considered good form among our political elites to note that one of our two political parties has lost its mind and that it has committed itself to wrecking our politics if it doesn't always get its way."

I've written before about reverse barometers.  The advice from David Brooks, Chuck Todd and Ron Fournier on how Hillary Clinton should run her campaign is useful only insofar as it shows that by doing the opposite she is really on to something.

Of Moderate Republican Candidates, Responsible Political Reporting, And Other Imaginary Things

The mainstream media's abdication of its duty to do actual reporting, its willful blindness to the extremist nature of the Republican Party in the interest of "objectivity," and its insistence on a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans, are things that, to quote Charles Pierce, make me want to "guzzle antifreeze."  Particularly as recent polling consistently shows Americans moving in a more liberal direction while Republicans in Congress are moving farther to the right, the insistence that the two parties are merely mirror images of each other with equally reasonable positions and equal measures of moderation with the occasional extremist outlier is mind-numbing, although that may be the antifreeze working. 

As Christopher Ingraham reports, "political scientists have known for years that political polarization is largely a one-sided phenomenon: in recent decades the Republican Party has moved to the right much faster than Democrats have moved to the left."  He details data that measures political polarization showing "in the most recent Congress nearly 90 percent of Republican House members are not politically moderate. By contrast, 90 percent of Democratic members are moderates." Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute describes Republicans as a "radical insurgency—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition."

This should not be in dispute.  To disavow science, refuse to accept the existence of human-made climate change and/or the need to take any action to mitigate its impact is not a moderate position.  To categorically reject a woman's right to choose to have an abortion is not a moderate position.  To dispute the right of same sex couples to marry is not a moderate position.  To oppose not only the raising of the federal minimum wage but maintaining any minimum wage whatsoever is not a moderate position. 

These are just some of the extreme right wing positions of virtually every candidate crowding into the clown car that is barreling towards the Republican National Convention.  There is no lunatic fringe on the right -- there are just lunatics.  Nevertheless, they are treated with dignity and respect and air time.  According to the mainstream media, it is Bernie Sanders who is the crazy one not to be taken seriously.  As Dylan Byers notes, Sanders' announcement of his intention to run was buried on page 21 of the Times, while every Republican candidate's launch received page 1 treatment.

However, Juan Cole points out, Bernie Sanders' positions on a host of issues, such as the wealth and wage gaps, campaign finance reform, reducing student debt, and combating global warming are shared by strong majorities of Americans.

As Charles Pierce puts it: "What is Bernie Sanders asking of the country as he begins his presidential campaign? A fairer economic system pried loose from the people who nearly wrecked it all [six] years ago. Legitimately progressive taxation. That the country acknowledge, with its money, that we all need bridges and roads and water systems. Honest elections. Recognition that environmental crises are national crises. Theodore Roosevelt could have run on those issues, and once did."

Sanders already has more support among Democrats than any Republican candidate has among its voters (although the most recent poll was taken before such stalwarts as George Pataki and Lindsey Graham jumped into the clown car).  Jason Easley reports that the latest Quinnipiac Poll shows five Republicans (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee) tied at the top of the Republican field with 10%, while Sanders is supported by 15% of Democrats.  Nevertheless, Sanders is treated far more dismissively than candidates such as Carly Fiorina (2%), Ted Cruz (6%), and Rand Paul (7%).

Easley is right that "the media is perpetuating the myth of a horse race election between Democrats and Republicans when the facts are that the Democratic Party has the two most popular candidates. One of those candidates is extraordinarily popular (Hillary Clinton) while the other is more in touch with the sentiment among average Americans (Bernie Sanders) than any candidate on the Republican side."

And so the media dismisses Bernie Sanders as a kook while treating real kooks like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz as serious contenders.  But whether Bernie Sanders has a realistic chance of winning the Democratic nomination is beside the point.  Sanders articulates important policy positions that should be taken far more seriously than those staked out by the purportedly legitimate Republican candidates.  The mainstream media needs to understand whose ideas are mainstream.

Intelligence Failure, Memory Loss And The Truth About Bush's War

"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"  -- Groucho Marx

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -- Karl Rove

We aren't talking ancient history.  We aren't debating the origins of the Peloponnesian War or the War of 1812 or even the Vietnam War.  We are talking about the Iraq War.  We were all there.  Well, we weren't all over there -- we were here, where we experienced first hand the shameful manipulation of our post-9/11 trauma by the Bush Administration, the craven capitulation of the loyal opposition and mainstream media, and the disastrous consequences.

The latest focus on the question to, and remarkably inept responses by, yet another Bush running for president as to whether, knowing what we know now -- presumably, invading a country that was not a threat to us after lying about its head of state's complicity in 9/11 and the possession of weapons of mass destruction; destroying that country infrastructure, destabilizing the region and increasing the influence of that country's neighbors; using torture and committing other human rights abuses; and causing the deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- he would have invaded Iraq as his brother did, ignores what was known then.  This conveniently lets those complicit in the debacle off the hook, and does little to inform us about the qualifications for presidency of Jeb Bush or his cohorts.

It is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom, thanks to the same vapid punditry that was so acquiescent back then, that the Bush Administration was the victim of poor intelligence -- that they were misled into war, not that they misled us into a war they wanted to launch all along.  But we know this is not true.  We can recall how they seized on whatever tiny shred of evidence no matter how unreliable to bolster the answers they wanted about WMDs and a Iraq-9/11 connection and ignored the vast majority of credible evidence that pointed to contrary conclusion?  Remember yellow cake, aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds?  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice manipulated the intelligence to sell a war to the public.

Another revisionist trope is that everyone believed the intelligence about WMD.  First, not everyone had the access to all of the intelligence that the Administration used and twisted for its purposes.  Further, most members of Congress who voted to authorize the war (including Hillary Clinton) failed, as Peter Beinart points out, to read the full classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- a report that convinced, for example, Senators Leahy and Graham to vote against the Iraq War resolution.  21 other Senators and 133 Representatives also just said "no."   And while some who voted "aye" may have done so because they believed the intelligence, most likely succumbed to coercive political pressure skillfully intensified by rhetoric out of the White House (e.g., you are "either with us or against us in the fight against terror.")

There was also some real journalism going on at the time -- from the reporters at Knight Ridder, for example -- who examined with skepticism the Bush Administrations' claims linking Saddam to 9/11 and WMDs.

As Matt Taibbi reminds us:  "It was obvious even back then, to anyone who made the faintest effort to look at the situation honestly, that the invasion was doomed, wrong, and a joke."

First you had to accept a fictional implied connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Then you had to buy that this heavily-sanctioned secular dictator (and confirmed enemy of Islamic radicals) would be a likely sponsor of radical Islamic terror. Then after that you had to accept that Saddam even had the capability of supplying terrorists with weapons that could hurt us (the Bush administration's analysts famously squinted so hard their faces turned inside out trying to see that one).  And then, after all that, you still had to buy that all of these factors together added up to a threat so imminent that it justified the immediate mass sacrifice of American and Iraqi lives.

But now we are having to witness a parade of the same hapless politicians, pundits and experts who told us they were certain that Saddam Hussein was hiding nuclear weapons and was involved with 9/11, that taking him out with shock and awe would be quick and painless -- for us --  that we would be greeted as liberators, and that the consequent reordering of the Middle East would bring peace and freedom.  They were completely wrong about everything but are nevertheless unapologetically back on the airwaves and they are back advising Jeb Bush and the other Republican candidates.  And if any of these candidates actually ascends to the White House, they would be back making and selling policy. 

Instead of being asked about what they would have done in Iraq given what we know now, perhaps candidates could be asked under what circumstances they would use military force to overthrow a sovereign nation or whether they would manipulate intelligence if they believed it would convince the public to support their policy goals or under what conditions they would authorize torture.

What we knew then and what we surely know now is that the Iraq fiasco did not stem from intelligence failures but was a direct result of the reckless pursuit of a discredited neoconservative political theory.  Unfortunately, none of the Republican candidates seems to have learned this or anything else that would allow them to avoid another unmitigated disaster when confronted with a national crisis.

Evolution Of The Republican Party Or Why Democrats Need To Tune In And Turn Out

What does it mean that your typical Republican does not believe in global warming or evolution, but does believe that Christianity should be established as this country's national religion? 

According to a recent Public Policy Polling national Republican poll:

• Only 25% of Republicans believe in global warming (another 10% are not sure) and 66% do not believe that global warming exists.
• A plurality of Republicans, 49%, do not believe in evolution (13% are unsure) and only 37% believe in the theory of evolution. 
• 57% of Republicans would support establishing Christianity as our "national religion" (with another 13% unsure), while only 30% oppose it.

(And, according to another recent poll, only 11% of Republicans believe that Obama loves America, a vast majority agreeing with Rudy Giuliani's ridiculous but insidious attack on the President.)

Are we doomed as a democracy, as a nation, when the majority of one of our two political parties has no faith in science or, apparently, in the Constitution (except for the Second Amendment); when that majority is not only more likely to believe in the Biblical prophesy of End Times than man-made climate change but wants to ensure that we all believe likewise?

With less than 60% of eligible voters turning out for the last presidential election, and barely a third voting in the last mid-term election, the key is making sure the rational half of the electorate tunes in and turns out.  

This is admittedly made more difficult in our post-Citizens United world where reasonable voices are drowned out by unlimited corporate spending.  It is also made more difficult because the mainstream media normalizes inane Republican positions on everything from national security and the environment to economics and civil rights by relentlessly seeking an illusory middle ground no matter how off the rails the right wing veers.  As the great Charles Pierce puts it, "the consistent inability to recognize the modern Republican party for the bag of nuts it has become is a true phenomenon in American journalism."

What is critical is for Democrats to rally around a cohesive and comprehensive message of economic inequality, wage stagnation and the decline of the middle class. 

A helpful template has just been provided by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings, who announced in an USA Today op-ed the launching of a "Middle Class Prosperity Project," which will examine how the nation's economic system has been "rigged against the middle class over the past several decades" and promote "policies to ensure that the best days of America's middle class are still ahead."

Such an approach should not only energize Democratic voters but might even appeal to the narrow swath Republicans who are able to find a foothold in reality. 

Obama's Crusade, High Horses And American Exceptionalism

The reaction to President Obama's observation that we shouldn't condemn an entire religion, in this case Islam, because of the barbaric acts done in its name is another reminder of how difficult it is to have a serious conversation about issues that have the potential to undermine our unwavering belief in American exceptionalism.

Obama stated a fairly obvious truth:  "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

The overheated response from the right, from Christian groups, and even from some mainstream pundits for what Ta-Nehisi Coates described "as relatively mild, and correct, point" should not have come as a surprise.  We don't really like to think about those burning crosses do we?  We don't like to think about slavery or Jim Crow or the institutional racism that continues to have a profound impact on our society.

We don't like to think about the decimation of the native population that succumbed to our Manifest Destiny.  We don't like to think about the internment of Americans of Japanese heritage or the deployment of not one, but two atomic bombs.  We don't like to think about the many popularly-elected governments we have overthrown in the name of freedom.  We don't like to think about our use of torture (we don't even like to use the word, preferring 'enhanced interrogation').

There have been critical moments in our country's history where it was imperative to face up to some of our more malevolent deeds, confront hard truths, point out where we have strayed from what America is supposed to stand for and deal honestly with the fall out.  All too often, we have punted. 

When Richard Nixon resigned, his successor Gerald Ford declared that "our long national nightmare is over."  A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon, apparently deciding that the nightmare was not over.  Ford did not wish to "prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed" and exercised his power "to firmly shut and seal this book."  And so, for the sake of less fitful sleep, we were denied a true reckoning of the many abuses of power committed by the Nixon Administration, all but guaranteeing that future high government officials would feel similarly unconstrained.  (See, e.g., Iran Contra Affair)

Say what you will about the inefficacy of Jimmy Carter's presidency but he did try to get us to be a bit more reflective.  His derisively (and inaccurately) dubbed "Malaise Speech" in July 1979, describing a "crisis of confidence" in America's future, was supposed to be a wake up call for the nation to pull together to ease the energy crisis.  Carter acknowledged the loss of faith in government stemming from "the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.," "the agony of Vietnam," and the "shock of Watergate."  He conceded that "these wounds are still very deep" and "have never been healed." Carter's idea was to reinvigorate Americans through our joint efforts at energy conservation and innovation:  "the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose." 

Americans soon opted instead for Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" and the promised end to our national nightmares.  Reagan disavowed Carter's pessimistic soul-searching for a rosy view of America as a "shining city on the hill."  The cure for Carter's "crisis of confidence" was  an invasion of the little island of Grenada to restore our military glory.  Reagan cloaked our unsavory policies in patriotic rhetoric.  The "contras" we armed and trained to overthrow the Nicaraguan government were "freedom fighters," "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers."  In Reagan's America there were no hungry children, ketchup was a vegetable and welfare queens drove Cadillacs. 

Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, gave the keynote address at the 1984 Republican National Convention, where she portrayed Democrats who criticized U.S. policy as disloyal, repeating the mantra, "they always blame America first." She closed by saying:  "The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause . . . With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace. And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House."

We did send Reagan back to the White House, and more than 30 years later, the same dynamic remains.  True patriots  are "proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves."  Then there is the pessimistic "Blame America First" crowd whose relentless questioning of the underpinnings of America's mythic greatness is a threat to that very greatness.

So when President Obama, referring to slavery, acknowledged that "the United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history" or suggested we may have "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon," he was hammered for apologizing for America.  When, after Trayvon Martin's murder, Obama explained that the "African American community is looking at this issue through  a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away," he was accused of fomenting racial divisions.  And, most recently at the National Prayer Breakfast, when he tried to provide some badly needed perspective on religious extremism, his remarks were characterized, for example, by former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore as "the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime" and by Catholic League President Bill Donohue as "insulting" and "pernicious."

The American psyche is not so fragile that it can't stand a bit of reflection and self-criticism.  We really aren't such a simpleminded people that we can't hold two conflicting concepts at the same time -- we can love our country and the many great things about it while recognizing its deep flaws.  It is therefore far past time to rid ourselves of Reagan's literal and figurative amnesia about America, to get off that high horse, and engage in meaningful conversations that raise troubling questions about our history and what it means for the future. 

The Shame of U.S. Journalism Is The Destruction of Iraq, Not Fake Helicopter Stories

By Christian Christensen

The news that NBC’s Brian Williams was not, in fact, on a helicopter in 2003 that came under fire from an Iraqi Rocket-Propelled Grenade (RPG) should come as a surprise to noone. Williams had repeated the lie on several occasions over the course of a decade until a veteran, who was on the actual helicopter that was attacked, had enough of Williams’ war porn and called the TV host out on Facebook. In a quite pathetic effort to cover his tracks, the anchor—who makes in excess of $10 million per year— claimed that his fairy tale was, in fact, "a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women" who had served in Iraq. Twelve years, it seems, is enough time for Williams to confuse being on a helicopter that came under fire from an RPG with being on a helicopter that did not.

 

Given that Williams works for NBC, his participation in the construction of a piece of fiction during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is apt. US network news, together with outlets such as CNN, aggressively cheer-led an invasion predicated on a massive falsehood: the Iraqi possession of WMD. What is jarring, however, is the fact that Williams’ sad attempt to inject himself into the fabric of the violence is getting more ink and airplay than the non-existence of WMD did back in the early-to-mid 2000s: a lie that provided the justification for a military action that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

 

From embedded journalists to ultra-militaristic news logos and music, U.S. television news media were more than willing to throw gas on the invasion fire. "Experts" in the studio were invariably ex-generals looking to pad their pensions, while anti-war activists (who spoke for sizable portions of the US and UK populations back in 2003) were avoided like the plague. After all, what news organization wants to be tarred with the “peace” brush when flag-waiving jingoism sells so incredibly well? The one-sidedness of coverage, particularly in the US, bordered on the morally criminal.

 

Despite some limited soul-searching by journalists a decade after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq about the abject failure of the U.S. news to engage, in a truly critical fashion, with the falsehoods peddled by the Bush administration, the current focus on an inane untruth told by one celebrity news anchor has overshadowed the bigger picture about the US media and Iraq. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

 

In the post-9/11, pre-invasion period, U.S. citizens proved to be spectacularly misinformed about the 9/11 attacks, Iraq, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and WMD. When the invasion began, many in the U.S. simply had no clue about what was going on. Was that all the fault of the US media? No, but it’s fair to say a pretty large chunk of the responsibility lay at their feet. Then, once the bombing and street fighting became banal and lost its attractiveness to audiences and advertisers, most U.S. media outlets simply abandoned an Iraq left to fend for itself in a vortex of violence, political instability and corruption. And, who wants to talk about that when you can write about Williams upping his War Zone Reporter street cred? But, if you do want to hear about violence in Iraq, you can rely on Fox News to suggest that this particular hell might also be a liberal conspiracy…

 

The number of Iraqi citizens who have died as a direct and indirect by-product of the U.S. invasion is enough to populate a mid-sized U.S. city, and thousands continue to die on a monthly basis in non-imaginary attacks.

 

Yet, here we are, over a decade later, still discussing celebrity fantasies. That isn’t just bad journalism, it’s an affront to all who lost their lives in a brutal and bloody deception. Williams is just sorry about the wrong thing.

 

Originally posted at Common Dreams.  Christian Christensen, American in Sweden, is Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrChristensen

Assaulting Democracy Instead of the Democrats May Be Too Radical For Prime Time

Dukakis' Assault on the White House

The lunatic wing of the lunatic party has taken over Washington, D.C. 

As Dan Froomkin puts it: "holding the entire government hostage while demanding the de facto repeal of a president's signature legislation and not even bothering to negotiate is by any reasonable standard an extreme political act." 

This may be historically unprecedented, but James Fallows warned us to be on the look out for false equivalence in the media:  "As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a 'standoff,' a 'showdown,' a 'failure of leadership,' a sign of 'partisan gridlock,' or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism and an inability to see or describe what is going on."  Because "this isn't 'gridlock.' It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too."

Unsurprisingly, the initial reporting failed Fallows' False Equivalence Test, and would lead one to believe that this was simply business as usual in the Beltway.  No one is at fault because both sides do it.  Republican lies are just one side of the "he said, she said" style of reporting.  Indeed, Chuck Todd, the posterchild for the traditional media, admitted it that he did not believe it was the media's job to correct the Republican lies -- its the President's job.

At first, the media appeared unable to tell the truth if it meant siding with one political party over the other or as Froomkin describes it, "the political media's aversion to doing anything that might be seen as taking sides — combined with its obsession with process — led them to actively obscure the truth in their coverage of the votes. If you did not already know what this was all about, reading the news would not help you understand."

Joshua Holland aptly described journalists as "frogs in the proverbial pot . . . slowly acclimat[ing] to these extreme, democracy-suffocating circumstances and now seem incapable of describing what’s they’re seeing. Framing everything as a standard-issue partisan fight is almost a professional imperative for many journalists."

So, Joe Nocera, from his perch at the New York Times, points out that, sure, the Republicans have Ted Cruz, but the Democrats used to have their own radicals, like Mike Dukakis.  How's that for false equivalence?  (Rick Perlstein takes on this maddening nonsense)

The consequence of years of this kind of failed journalism, as Froomkin points out, is more extremism: 

When the media coverage seeks down-the-middle neutrality despite one party's outlandish conduct, there are no political consequences for their actions. With no consequences for extremism, politicians who have succeeded using such conduct have an incentive to become even more extreme. The more extreme they get, the further the split-the-difference press has to veer from common sense in order to avoid taking sides. And so on.

The Democratic Party has usually been complicit in this dynamic by trying to appear reasonable and open to compromise no matter how obstructionist the other side is being.  But, with Obama and the Democrats remaining unified and refusing to cave to the craziness (at least for now), while the Republicans appear beholden to the wackiest in their party, there appear to be some cracks in the media's knee-jerk neutrality. (The fact that Wall Street is getting nervous helps too)

Even Thomas Friedman, wanker extraordinaire, who always seems to hope for some moderate leadership to bridge the divide between left and right -- has finally seen the light:  "What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give in to this hostage taking — not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake."

Editorial pages of newspapers around the country are taking note, blaming the Republican Party for shutting down the government, undermining democracy and threatening the health of the economy. 

The Washington Post, the establishment's establishment paper, a few days ago argued, in a both-sides do it editorial entitled "U.S. Congress’s dereliction of leadership on government shutdown" that "the grown-ups in the room will have to do their jobs, which in a democracy with divided government means compromising for the common good" has come around.  Now its: "House Republicans are failing Americans in their effort to kill Obamacare," calling Republican's actions "beyond the pale" and demanding that they "fulfill their basic duties to the American people or make way for legislators who will." 

What a difference a few days make.  The Republicans have launched an assault on Democracy not the Democratic Party.  Have they finally gone too far?

At Least Those Supreme Court Conservatives Aren't Influenced By The New York Times

Clarence and Virginia Thomas

After the theory that Chief Justice Roberts' vote to uphold ACA was caused by his epilepsy medication didn't fly, the latest conservative narrative making the rounds (thanks to a "scoop" by CBS's Jan Crawford) is that Roberts switched his vote, buckling to external political pressure, and then withstood a ferocious month-long campaign by Justice Kennedy to bring him back around. 

Who knows what truth there is to this story (or who inside the Court leaked it), but I was particularly struck by a remarkable nugget in Crawford's article which describes the conservative wing of the Court, in contrast to Chief Justice Roberts, as impervious to outside influences -- or at least liberal ones.  Thus, while Roberts "pays attention to media coverage," the conservatives, "such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They've explained that they don't want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal."

What the article left out are the right-wing influences on Justices Thomas, Scalia and Alito.  As I've previously written, these three justices have attended, headlined and spoken at political fund-raising events for right wing organizations.   In another piece, Activist Judges, I pointed out that Justice Alito attended a major fundraising event for the notorious right wing magazine American Spectator (notorious for smearing President Clinton with false stories as part of the "Arkansas Project," an effort to get Clinton impeached), and that Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have also attended secret political fundraisers.

And as stated here, Scalia and Thomas were featured guests at a retreat of wealthy Republicans and conservative leaders organized by Charles and David Koch, the brothers who finance right wing causes from the money they made from their energy conglomerate.  One of the Koch brothers pet causes had long been ending financial regulations on elections.  Indeed, according to Common Cause, they funded many of the groups who filed amicus briefs in the Citizens United case.  What is so unseemly about the appearances of Thomas and Scalia at the Koch Industries-sponsored event is that it occurred while Citizens United was pending before the Court.

And then, of course, there is the influence of Justice Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist and powerful lobbyist, who worked to repeal the health care law.  Thomas was employed by the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, between 2003 and 2007, and then set up a political consulting business, Liberty Central, which is described as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens" fighting against the left wing "tyranny" of President Obama and the Democrats.

Well, at least the conservative members of the Court are not influenced by the New York Times and other dreaded liberal media.

Connecting The Dots On Climate Change

Too Hot Not To Notice?

By Bill McKibben, cross-posted from Tom Dispatch

The Williams River was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on August 28, 2011. And yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where for 140 years a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.

The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011.  It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut more than a billion-dollar swath of destruction across the eastern United States.

I watched it on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical -- the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure -- and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.

And I’m not the only one.

New data released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they’re drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011.  As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Which is what we must do. As long as this remains one abstract problem in the long list of problems, we’ll never get to it.  There will always be something going on each day that’s more important, including, if you’re facing flood or drought, the immediate danger.

But in reality, climate change is actually the biggest thing that’s going on every single day.  If we could only see that pattern we’d have a fighting chance. It’s like one of those trompe l’oeil puzzles where you can only catch sight of the real picture by holding it a certain way. So this weekend we’ll be doing our best to hold our planet a certain way so that the most essential pattern is evident. At 350.org, we’re organizing a global day of action that’s all about dot-connecting; in fact, you can follow the action at climatedots.org.

Obama Plays The Republican "Macho" Game

As Peter Bergen reported in the Sunday Times, President Obama is "one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades."

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Nevertheless, the "American public and chattering classes continue to regard the president as a thinker, not an actor; a negotiator, not a fighter."  So, I understand why Obama believes that he needs to tout his national security chops.  And the one-year anniversary of bin Laden's death provides the perfect opportunity to do so.  This may be good politics, but it is nonetheless distasteful.

As Digby puts it:

I get why the Democrats are doing it. I'm sure it's extremely satisfying to land those punches on the right wing blowhards after all the years of taunting and jeering about liberal cowardice. To be able to say they killed the evil mastermind where the swaggering codpiece failed is probably too much of a temptation for them to pass up. I get it.

But I hate it. I hated it when the Republicans did it and I hate it now. I don't believe the most powerful nation on earth should be running its democracy via schoolyard power plays. This is how we ended up stuck in Vietnam and how we have found ourselves floundering about in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's why we can't stop spending trillions on useless weapons systems, why we "have" to continue to fund ridiculous programs like Star Wars and why everyone in the political establishment assumes that the only answer to budget problems is to cut the so-called "entitlements."

I know we live in a dangerous world. But this nation is extremely rich and extremely powerful and its most important assets are morality and mystique. I'm not going to argue about the morality of killing Osama bin laden, but it should be remembered that our unilateral wars,torture regimes and insistence on imperial prerogatives have already taken a toll on America's reputation for moral behavior.

As for mystique, well let's just say that schoolyard taunts and manly chest beating doesn't leave much to the imagination. I don't expect the macho worshiping conservatives to ever change this. It's fundamental to their very identity. I was hoping for something a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more mature from the so-called "reality-based community."

That said, Romney's response -- that he or any other President, even Jimmy Carter for Gawd's sake, would have done the same thing with regard to bin Laden -- was not only asinine but contravenes earlier remarks that he wouldn't focus on hunting down bin Laden and that candidate Obama was misguided in asserting that he would unilaterally go into Pakistan to get bin Laden.

And hey, shouldn't the media be all over Romney for criticizing our foreign policy successes?  Shouldn't they be asking why he hates America? 

As Greg Sargent points out:

Back in 2004 and 2006, when Republicans were showcasing George W. Bush’s war-on-terror routine as central to their case for reelection, and Dems were responding by attacking Republicans for politicizing national security and pointing to Bush’s failures, Dems were widely described as the ones taking the big political risk then, too.

We were told again and again during the 2004 and 2006 campaigns that Dems risked coming across as not rooting for American military success; there was little discussion of any danger for Republicans in playing up Bush’s “war president” routine. Now the situation, roughly, is reversed — and this time we’re talking about the Obama administration’s successful targeting of America’s number one global arch-enemy — yet again it’s Dems who are seen to be playing with political fire here.

This remains the Republican's game.  As Sargent concludes, "there’s still a strong built-in presumption of political dominance for Republicans on national security, and [] any gains Dems have made on the issue are not deeply felt by Beltway establishment types."

For better or worse, that's not going to prevent Obama from trying.

Occupy May Day

Eric Drooker

 By Sarah Van Gelder, cross-posted from Yes Magazine

If the mainstream media was confused about Occupy Wall Street in its early days in Zuccotti Park, they’re bound to be completely befuddled this May Day.

May Day already has a lot piled on it. In pre-Christian Europe, May Day was a time to dance, light bonfires, sing, and carry on in celebration of the changing seasons. May Day also marks the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket massacre, which occurred during a Chicago strike for the eight-hour work day. Also called International Workers’ Day, it’s a holiday in more than 80 countries.

And most recently, the U.S. immigrants right movement has used May 1st for massive street demonstrations and strikes aimed at reforming laws and policies that result in imprisonment, deportation, and discrimination against undocumented people.

This May Day, the Occupy movement is getting involved, calling it “The day without the 99 percent.” What will May Day look like with so many traditions riding on it?

May Day Collaborations—from Bike Caravan to Free University

The way plans are shaping up, in at least some locations around the United States, it could be big, festive, and importantly, include elements of all the May Day traditions. And it could be profoundly different than the big days of action we’ve seen in the past. In the weeks leading up to May Day, various movements have been collaborating. And people will not only be protesting, they’ll be liberating spaces for education, the arts, general assemblies, and teach-ins.

There will be marches, of course. Some permitted, planned, and predictable. Others will be spontaneous, possibly disruptive. In spite of all the police planning (and collaboration with Wall Street private security forces) law enforcement will be kept guessing.

There will be fairs, free food, teach-ins, music, bicycling, marches, and fiestas.

In New York, occupiers are leading up to May Day by organizing 99 pickets in support of workers around the city, from jazz musicians to taxi drivers to laundry workers. The LGBTQTSGNC (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Trans, Two-Spirit and Gender Non-Conforming) contingent will be out in force. They’ll be a “Guitarmy” marching from New York’s Bryant Park to Madison Square Park, with 1,000 guitars.

At Madison Square Park, there will be a Free University, organized by students fed up with tuition hikes and a student debt burden that’s now reached $1 trillion. Educators will bring classes to the park, there will be skill sharing and workshops.

At Bryant Park, they’ll be a “free” market—where everything is actually free— as well as public art and “opportunities for action.”

In Los Angeles, bike and car caravans will travel to the city center from the four cardinal directions. Along the way, there may be union strike action, and there will be “flash occupations,” free food, and direct action along the way, targeting the foreclosure crisis. Tuition hikes, income inequality, immigrant rights, police violence, the criminalizing of the homeless—the Los Angeles caravans each will focus on some combination of these topics.

In the San Francisco Bay area, nurses and social workers have declared a strike. Bridge and transportation workers and occupiers will attempt to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge. There will be “flying pickets” to shut down banks and business associations.

In Seattle, the group Hip Hop Occupiers to Decolonize is inviting artists, families, and the general public to a day of music, dance, live art, and speakers. There will also be marches of immigrants, occupiers, and workers.

Seattle occupiers will be serving free breakfasts to get the day off to a good start, something that can get you fined in Philadelphia, where the mayor has made it illegal to feed the hungry in city parks.
In Portland, occupiers plan to occupy a vacant home and hold a block party.

In Kalamazoo, Mich., they’ll be camped out on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America, and there’s a good chance they’ll be doing civil disobedience to stop the auction of public land for hydraulic fracking.

The list goes on and on, from small towns in Wyoming to the place where it all started, lower Manhattan.

This broad range of topics and tactics may bewilder mainstream pundits, but it reflects a transformation in activism as profound as anything that’s happened in social change over the past decades. People are moving out of their isolated interest groups and causes. They’re coming together in a shared analysis, demonstrating their agreement about sources of some of our biggest problems—the overwhelming power of Wall Street and big corporations and our society’s continuing struggle with exclusion of people based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, etc. And they’re developing shared ambitious goals and bold strategies that add up to real power and real possibility.

As often happens in the planning of a big event, some of the most important work began well before the actual day, with undocumented workers, union organizers, occupiers, and students coming together to plan events. They’re mixing it up across races, ages, backgrounds, and interests.

It’s a day without the 99 percent, say organizers. No work. No school. No housework. No shopping. No banking.

Even more than what people won’t be doing on May 1, though, the day is about showing up and protesting, but also building the world we want.

Stephen Colbert's Iconic Influence

I've written before about Stephen Colbert's subversive brilliance.  In 2006, at the height of George W. Bush's popularity, Colbert literally spoke truth to power at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.  Staying in character, he courageously and hilariously skewered the President and mocked the all-too-compliant national press.

And this preposterous election season he has demonstrated like no one else the destructive consequences of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision by creating his own Super PAC without much trouble.  During his very brief run for the presidency, he gave up control of the Super PAC, on the air, legally transferring it to his close friend and Comedy Central cohort, Jon Stewart, and renaming it "The Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super PAC."  Among other things, this bit of political theater demonstrated how the rules which prohibit coordination between the candidates and their Super PACS are so transparently ineffectual.

Last week, at the gala celebrating TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people, at which he was so honored as an "icon," he lit into David Koch, one of his co-nominees, as only Colbert can -- with biting irony laying bare the destructive influence of money in politics -- especially Koch Brothers money.

Of course, all of us should be honored to be listed on the TIME 100 alongside the two men who will be slugging it out in the fall:  President Obama, and the man who would defeat him, David Koch.
Give it up everybody.  David Koch.

Little known fact -- David, nice to see you again, sir.

Little known fact, David's brother Charles Koch is actually even more influential.  Charles pledged $40 million to defeat President Obama, David only $20 million.  That's kind of cheap, Dave.
Sure, he's all for buying the elections, but when the bill for democracy comes up, Dave's always in the men's room.  I'm sorry, I must have left Wisconsin in my other coat.

I was particularly excited to meet David Koch earlier tonight because I have a Super PAC, Colbert Super PAC, and I am -- thank you, thank you -- and I am happy to announce Mr. Koch has pledged $5 million to my Super PAC.  And the great thing is, thanks to federal election law, there's no way for you to ever know whether that's a joke.

By the way, if David Koch likes his waiter tonight, he will be your next congressman.

While the mainstream media focuses on the horse race -- who is ahead in the polls and whose rhetoric is scoring the most political points -- we have come to rely more and more on comedians like Colbert to bring to the fore meaningful issues that have real influence on our national well being.

Wankers And Thomas Friedman

The state of the world is what it is in large part because people in positions of great power think this absurd buffoon of man is a Very Serious Person.  -- Atrios

Beginning when I first became enamored of the blogosphere (before joining it in my own little way), Duncan Black aka Atrios -- and his hilariously vicious skewering of politics and the media-- was a daily must read.  His "Wanker of the Day" was particularly invaluable at capturing the absolute absurdity of supposedly very serious people being taken very seriously despite spewing absolute nonsense.

And now, to celebrate ten years of his blog, Eschaton, Atrios has counted down the ten Wankers of the Decade, a list that contains few surprises.  And it is certainly no surprise that Thomas Friedman would be crowned the One True Wanker of the Decade.

It was Atrios, of course, who coined the phrase "Friedman Unit" during the Iraq War, to mock Friedman's repeated assessment that the next six months of the war was going to be the critical period that would turn things around.  As Atrios says, "Tom Friedman is wrong about everything, and Tom Friedman don't care!"

More recently, as I've written, Friedman has taken to lamenting the lack of a true third party to magically provide a moderating force between left and right, blaming both parties for intransigence and discounting the utter unwillingness of one party -- the Republicans -- to govern, much less compromise.  (See, e.g., Party On, Tom.)  I

It is infuriating that Friedman continues to maintain such a prestigious perch on the op-ed page of the The New York Times (along with David Brooks, who I would have added to the list of All-Time Wankers, but I digress).

In any event and without further ado, I give you Atrios on the Wanker of the Decade:

Friedman possesses all of the qualities that make a pundit truly wankerific. He fetishizes a false "centrism" which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda is both incredibly popular in the country and lacking any support from our current politicians, when in fact the opposite is usually true. Washington worships at the altar of the agenda of false centrism, and people often hate it. Problems abroad, even ones which really have nothing to do with us, should be solved by war, and problems at home should be solved by increasing the suffering of poor and middle class people. Even though one political party is pretty much implementing, or trying to implement, 99.999999% of the Friedman agenda, what we really need is a third party catering precisely to this silent majority of Friedmanites.

Truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything. The important thing about an issue is whether it proves Tom Friedman fucking right, but if it doesn't we can just move on to the next big thing that will prove Tom Friedman fucking right. If you advocate for wars that go a bit bad, well, it's not your fault. If only Tom Friedman had been in charge everything would have been great.

Such wankers are impervious to criticism because they're always doing battle with straw critics. They never remember what they said last week, and assume you won't either.

Click here to read the whole piece.

Romney's Lies And Fake Outrage Won't Obscure His Anti-Women Policy Positions

Tom Tomorrow

Mitt Romney's campaign is suffering from a potentially debilitating gender gap, which is not at all surprising given his and his party's neanderthal positions on reproductive rights, health care, gender discrimination and a host of other issues.  So what do they do?

First, lie, and argue that it is Obama who is actually waging the war on women. 

Then when an opportunity presents itself, lie some more and gin up the faux outrage machine.

Hilary Rosen, a Democratic contributor to CNN -- with no connection to the Obama campaign -- inappropriately notes that Ann Romney “hasn’t worked a day in her life” as part of a larger point that while her husband is  propping her up as a compassionate defender of all women, "she's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we -- why do we worry about their future."

The Romneys and Republican Party are now in full outrage mode, falsely claiming that Rosen is an Obama operative, demanding apologies and using the statement to show that it is really the Obama and Democratic Party that disrespect women.

Do we need to counter this by trotting out all the bat-shit crazy stuff about women spewed by random Republicans?  Or how about just those who are official Romney advisors?

Think Progress has a handy list for starters:

• Donald Trump: The flamboyant reality show star is “a top Mitt Romney surrogate” according to Politico’s Mike Allen. Trump recorded robo-calls supporting Romney in primary states and he participated in “a ton of talk radio for Romney in Michigan, Arizona and Ohio.” Trump also has a long history of sexism, including telling the male contestants on his reality show to “rate the women” contestants on how sexually attractive they are. Calling TV personality Rosie O’Donnell a “big, fat pig” and an “animal,” after she criticized Trump. And, just this month, offering to expose his “very, very impress[ive]” penis to a top woman attorney. The top Romney surrogate, however, is also quite unfazed by criticism of his sexism. As he told Esquire in 1991, “it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of [expletive].”


• Bay Buchanan: Yesterday, in an attempt to overcome Romney’s weak poll numbers with women voters, the Romney campaign hosted Bay Buchanan on a press call as an official campaign surrogate. Bay, the sister of disgraced former TV pundit Pat Buchanan, has a long history of opposition to women’s rights. In a 2003 speech on the “four failures” of feminism, Bay Buchanan claimed that women are being “sold a bill of goods” when they pursue careers instead of having children, and she compared modern women to “alleycats” with respect to sex.


• Robert Bork: Former judge and failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork is the co-chair of Romney’s “Judicial Advisory Committee.” Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment and other discrimination against women, calling the idea that laws can require private companies to cease discriminating a “principle of unsurpassed ugliness.” More recently, the top Romney legal advisor mocked the very idea that gender discrimination even exists. In Bork’s words, “[i]t seems to me silly to say, ‘Gee, they’re discriminated against and we need to do something about it.’ They aren’t discriminated against anymore.”

Joan McCarter focuses on the real issue here: "what the Romney-Ryan budget would do to women who do know what it's like to struggle financially. "  As McCarter explains, the budget Romney has embraced would  "shred every bit of support women and their families need through every stage of life."

• At least $291 billion will disappear from WIC, nutrition assistance, Head Start, child care, job training, Pell Grants, and more programs that support struggling families.
• $134 billion from SNAP, or food stamps, will mean something like 8.2 billion meals not served, in a single year; food out of the mouths of children and the elderly, a disproportionate number of which are female.
• $2.4 trillion from Medicaid and other health services will mean mothers will have a harder time finding medical care for themselves and their children, and for their elderly parents, again which are disproportionately female.
• 56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are women, and the Romney-Ryan voucher plan will make them pay more and more each year out of their own pockets, to try to keep their medical care.

That is something to get outraged about.