JustOneMinute

Traditional Euro-Imperialism Day Open Thread

Setting sail for truth!

Sunday Morning Metaphor Madness

The literalists of "Occupy Wall Street" deliver an epic metaphor fail:

After "Arab Spring," liberal groups say it's time for "American Autumn"

By Stephanie Condon

A coalition of liberal organizations are planning to push for a liberal agenda and recruit progressive politicians at every level of government -- with or without President Obama.

Taking hold of the momentum generated by the "Occupy Wall Street" protests occurring across the country, the liberal leaders have drafted plans to implement what they call an "American Autumn" -- a realignment of American politics inspired by the pro-democracy protests in the Middle East dubbed the "Arab Spring."

My goodness - next these messaging geniuses will have Obama delivering a big speech at 7 PM and declaring "It's sunset in America".

Let's note that their Arab counterparts were not hung up on silly literalism.  Even though the Tahrir Square demonstrations took off on January 25, no one was so foolish as to dub this the "Arab Winter".  Spring is a season of hope and renewal (bear with me while I beat the obvious like a rented mule).  Autumn is football and turning leaves and the Yankees going out in five, but it is not normally associated with a better tomorrow; quite the contrary, actually, since the cold and death of winter is around the corner, not to mention the NHL season and the return of the NY Knicks.

Now, plenty of Obama's critics believe he and his many buds on the American left have been pining for an end to American exceptionalism since they donned their first Che t-shirt, so the notion of an "American Autumn" is probably quite dear to their hearts.  That puts "American Autumn" in the category of a Kinsley gaffe.  But this is not a message that will win the hearts and minds of the Great Unwashed.

Saturday Morning Drain-Circling

This is getting exciting, as the tempo picks up with both Solyndra and "Fast and Furious".

Eric Holder provides the smile du jour for this rhetorical surge:

Holder also lashed out at some of the more extreme charges being leveled by Republican lawmakers, such as a statement this week by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) that federal officials who approved the “gun-walking” technique should be charged as accessories to murder.

“Such irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms,” Holder wrote. “Those who serves in the ranks of law enforcement are our nation’s heroes and deserve our nation’s thanks, not the disrespect that is being heaped on them by those who seek political advantage.”

That would stand in contrast to the investigation of CIA professionals on the front lines in the war on terror who have been investigated for their role in the enhanced interrogation program.

The Times Goes Off Message

The NY Times throws its readers a curveball with an article denouncing unemployment benefits:

Some Unemployed Find Fault in Extension of Jobless Benefits

By SHAILA DEWAN

Dan Tolleson, a researcher and writer with a Ph.D. in politics, has been out of work since 2009, except for brief stints as a driver. Still, he opposes President Obama’s call for Congress to renew extensions on unemployment benefits.

“They’re going to end up spending more money on unemployment benefits, while less money is coming in on tax returns,” he said, suggesting that the government should focus on measures that might encourage businesses to hire. “Far better to relax some of these outrageous regulations.”

Make no mistake — Mr. Tolleson, 54, has collected unemployment checks, saying he had little choice. But his objection to a policy that would probably benefit him shows just how divisive the question has become of providing a bigger safety net to the long-term jobless, a common strategy in recessions.

Wow. And lest you wonder, Mr. Tolleson (Linked-In profile) has been a writer for some groups that strike me as somewhat right-wing (Constitution Party of Texas, Americans for Fair Taxation).  He has also been a Ron Paul backer, so he is not the normal go-to guy for a NY Times article on anything.

Normally the Times is a helpful baromater of progressive CW.  So why aren't they manning the barricades for extended unemployment benefits?

As The Circle Closes...

In 2008 the media swooned for the tabula rasa candidate.  Now they are in mid-swoon for the tabula rasa protest movement that stands for, well, whatever you want to believe it stands for.

So far the Occupy Wall Sreet crowd have been too shrewd to embarass or divide their coalition by actually presenting an agenda.  That can't last for fourteen months.  Eventually, they will tell America what they want and America will recoil.

Occupy This Blog!

I love the Occupy Wall Street comedy improv and am convinced it will be the final nail in the Democrat's metaphorical coffin come November 2012. 

As Occupy Wall Street gains attention the Last Energized Progressives become the face of the left, which can only spell doom for the Dems.  Remember, Democrats (other than safe-seat progressives like Nancy Pelosi) are constantly running away from their base, not towards it.  Who can forget John Kerry disguising himself as a rifle-toting sportsman, or Barack Obama "evolving" on gay marriage?  Protesting lefties will induce Vietnam-Woodstock flashbacks in our media and draw all sorts of attention to all sorts of issues that national Dems would rather ignore.

What issues might the protestors have in mind?  Every answer to that leads the Dems into a quagmire.  Right now the protestors have no demands or agenda, other than recreating a Vietnam-Woodstock-Tahrir vibe.  Will they eventually figure out their goals?  Heaven help the Democrats if they do. Or don't.

With no goals the protestors become the perfect metaphor for Obama, a Progressive Adrift.  But can they get behind just one sensible goal and rally themselves and the nation to their cause?  No way.  If they pick one hobbyhorse to ride, the protestors are implicitly rejecting twenty others.  For example, if they limit themselves to calling for more taxes on the rich, they are implicitly turning their back on gay marriage.  Can't have that!  But calling for taxes on the rich and a push for gay marriage risks abandonment of everyone on death row.  Can't have that!  But a push for taxes, gays, and death row inmates means that Gaia will be left to choke on greenhouse gasses.  Can't have that!

And very quickly the Occupy Wall Street movement will have adopted every stale idea the left has beaten into the ground over the last twenty years.  Which will have the virtue of being very appealing to Barack Obama, who hasn't had an original idea since he left college.  But most of America won't find this agenda any more appealing now than they did when they rejected Walter Mondale, the Duke, Al Gore, and John Kerry.

AND LEST I FORGET:  These are modern, college-age lefties - wait until they get on the subject of Palestine and Israel.  Hard to believe the MSM can keep a lid on that for fourteen months.

The Times Ignores Their Own Paul Krugman

My goodness - NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has a Nobel Prize for his work in international trade but the NY Times editors have totally tuned out his embrace of the Senate Democrats and their China-bashing currency bill.

Let's hear from the Princeton Populist first:

The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so many have behaved badly shouldn’t stop us from holding individual bad actors to account.

And that’s what Senate leaders will be doing this week, as they take up legislation that would threaten sanctions against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast. But respectable opinion has been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no exception.

And the respectable opinion of the Times editors:

The Wrong Way to Deal With China

China is undeniably manipulating its currency. Countries around the world, including the United States, are losing jobs because their manufacturing industries cannot compete with artificially cheap Chinese goods. For the good of the world economy, and its own long-term economic development, China should stop.

Still, a Senate bill, with strong bipartisan support, to punish countries that manipulate their currencies is a bad idea. It could do even more damage to the American economy if — as is all too likely — China decides to retaliate.

Krugman, a prophet without honor, has lost his own left-leaning editors with his latest dive into the Democrats tank.  And for old time's sake, let's recall that when President Bush was complaining about China's currency manipulation in 2003 Krugman was there to explain what a moron Bush was.  Hmm, maybe Bush was smarter than Krugman on the question of whether China was manipulating its currency?

Ah well, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

House Republicans Want Special Counsel For 'Fast And Furious'

What did Eric Holder know and when did he conveniently forget it?  Inquiring minds among the House Republicans want to know.  From Fox News:

EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

Bob Owens has more at PajamasMedia.  And in what amounts to a near-smoking gun, we are sure something is going on because (on deep background) the Administration is cracking open the "Blame Bush" defense, by way of their friends at the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other Republicans have been hammering the Obama Justice Department over the practice known as "letting guns walk." The congressional target has been Operation Fast and Furious, which was designed to track small-time gun buyers at several Phoenix-area gun shops up the chain to make cases against major weapons traffickers. In the process, federal agents lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation.

When Bush, a Republican, was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson, Ariz., used a similar enforcement tactic in a program it called Operation Wide Receiver. The fact that there were two such ATF investigations years apart in separate administrations raises the possibility that agents in still other cases may have allowed guns to "walk."

I am not normally a big fan of special counsel investigations, since they give everyone an excuse to lawyer up and clam up for a year or two.  On the other hand, perhaps the prospect of a special counsel (plus the opportunity to Blame Bush) will pique the interest of our gun-fearing media.

The LA Times has more on Wide Receiver:

Reporting from Washington—

Senior Justice Department officials were aware that ATF agents allowed firearms to be "walked" into Mexico, according to a series of emails last year in which they discussed two undercover operations on the Southwest border, including the failed Fast and Furious program.

In the emails that the department turned over to congressional investigators, Justice Department officials last October discussed both the Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix and a separate investigation from 2006 and 2007 called Operation Wide Receiver. In Wide Receiver, which took place in Tucson, firearms also were acquired by illegal straw purchasers and lost in Mexico, the emails say.

The term "gun walking" is central to the failure of Fast and Furious. Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them. But they lost track of more than 2,000 weapons, and the Mexican government says some of them have turned up at about 170 crime scenes there. Two were recovered at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's slaying in Arizona in December.

Bracing For Geo-Engineering

A group I have never heard of (but it's bipartisan!) recommends that climate worriers commence to think about the unthinkable:

With political action on curbing greenhouse gases stalled, a bipartisan panel of scientists, former government officials and national security experts is recommending that the government begin researching a radical fix: directly manipulating the Earth’s climate to lower the temperature.

Members said they hoped that such extreme engineering techniques, which include scattering particles in the air to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or stationing orbiting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight, would never be needed. But in its report, to be released on Tuesday, the panel said it is time to begin researching and testing such ideas in case “the climate system reaches a ‘tipping point’ and swift remedial action is required.”

The 18-member panel was convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a research organization based in Washington founded by four senators — Democrats and Republicans — to offer policy advice to the government.

Oh, please - plenty of greens scream abut the perils of greenhouse gases but oppose all nuclear power plants, so what are the odds that they will ever get behind this?

People who are really worried about global warming will think about geo-engineering.  The statists and corporatists who adopted global waring as their latest excuse to put the government in charge of everything will move on to the next Big Scare.

The Silence Was Deafening

Team Obama can't rally their small donors:

The Obama campaign, which has prided itself on robust engagement of its grassroots supporters, appears to have stumbled in an effort meant to enlist at least 20,000 small donors by the end of September.

A campaign website set up to track the grassroots fundraising competition reported just 11,518 donations through 12:47 p.m. on Sept. 30 — a surprising result given the intensive focus on the program by Obama’s campaign team.

Ouch.

The president himself had offered a phone call to the two individuals who gathered the most contributions as a top prize.

Second prize was a dinner with Barry and Michelle.  Third prize?  An invitation to the closing ceremony at Gitmo.

It's Krugman v. Krugman As Times Change

Krugman 2011, also known as Krugman with a Democrat as President, lambastes China and any of its defenders.  Now, China is manipulating their currency, and the undervalued yuan is costing the US jobs.  That is probably true, but it is fun to contrast this with Krugman 2003; back in the day, George Bush was making the case that the undervalued yuan was costing the US jobs, so we can easily guess which side Krugman was on. 

Here we go, Krugman 2011:

The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so many have behaved badly shouldn’t stop us from holding individual bad actors to account.

And that’s what Senate leaders will be doing this week, as they take up legislation that would threaten sanctions against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast. But respectable opinion has been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no exception.

Ask yourself: Why is it so hard to restore full employment? It’s true that the housing bubble has popped, and consumers are saving more than they did a few years ago. But once upon a time America was able to achieve full employment without a housing bubble and with savings rates even higher than we have now. What changed?

The answer is that we used to run much smaller trade deficits. A return to economic health would look much more achievable if we weren’t spending $500 billion more each year on imported goods and services than foreigners spent on our exports.

Ergo, we need a weaker dollar, and we need China to stop manipulating its currency:

That, above all, means China. And none of the arguments against holding China accountable can stand serious scrutiny.

Some observers question whether we really know that China’s currency is undervalued. But they’re kidding, right? The flip side of the manipulation that keeps China’s currency undervalued is the accumulation of dollar reserves — and those reserves now amount to a cool $3.2 trillion.

Let's flash back to Krugman 2003, when Krugman was bashing Bush for even suggesting that the yuan was manipulated and undervalued:

Instead, however, he's [Evil, stupid, President Bush.  And did I mention "Evil"?  And "Stupid"?] decided to plead with the Chinese for help [with our jobless recovery].

Admittedly, it didn't sound like pleading. It sounded as if he was being tough: ''We expect there to be a fair playing field when it comes to trade. . . . And we intend to keep the rules fair.'' Everyone understood this to be a reference to the yuan, China's supposedly undervalued currency, which some business groups claim is a major problem for American companies.

By the way, even if the Chinese did accede to U.S. demands to increase the value of the yuan, it wouldn't have much effect unless it was a huge revaluation. And China won't agree to a huge revaluation because its huge trade surplus with the U.S. is largely offset by trade deficits with other countries.

"Supposedly" undervalued?  China had significant dollar reserves in 2003; Krugman 2003 reversed course and made this very point a few paragraphs later:

Furthermore, purchases of Treasury bills by China's central bank are one of the main ways the U.S. finances its trade deficit. 

Nobody is quite sure what would happen if the Chinese suddenly switched to, say, euros -- a two-point jump in mortgage rates? -- but it's not an experiment anyone wants to try.

Huh?  If on net China's trade was balanced in 2003 (as per the Earnest Prof's initial assertion), then they couldn't have been a net purchaser of dollars based on their trade flows, now could they?  Or, if investment flows and repatriations account for the increase in Chinese reserves, then we need to make a suitable adjustment for the 2003 and 2011 figures before pointing to the trade numbers as "proof" of anything.  I strongly suspect that from 2003 to 2011 the magnitudes of flows may have changed, but not the directions.

Back to Krugman 2011:

Others warn of bad consequences if the Chinese stop buying United States bonds [See Krug 2003]. But our problem right now is precisely that too many people want to park their money in American debt instead of buying goods and services — which is why the interest rate on long-term U.S. bonds is only 2 percent.

So we should counter the Fed's latest Operation Twist by chasing away buyers of our long term debt, thereby driving up rates and... hmm.  Let's give this props for "Outside the Box" thinking.

Well, the Democrats are bashing China, so bashing China makes sense to the Princeton Populist, even if it was stupid when Bush did it.

 

Sunday Morning Open Thread

The sun rises on another glorious Yankee victory.

Via Glenn, Walter Russell Meade is excellent on the Al-Awlaki killing and notes the gap between the law enforcement and war-fighting conceptions of the war on terror:

Both Congressman Paul and Mr. Greenwald do, I think, have a legitimate beef with the President.  The President is clearly acting like a man who is fighting a war.  He is bringing down fiery death from the skies against any foe he can locate.  This is not the normal behavior of a Chief Magistrate faithfully executing the laws.  It is the behavior of a president locked in a bitter struggle against a dangerous foe.

President Obama cannot have it both ways.  If he is our chief law enforcement officer leading the investigation of a global criminal network known as Al-Qaeda, then his actions are subject to one set of restrictions and one kind of review.  Perhaps an Al-Awlaki can be killed resisting arrest, but the Greenwald-Paul questions about targeted killings make some sense if we are in the middle of a complex law enforcement operation against an organized crime entity comparable to the mafia or perhaps to a drug cartel.

But if the President is acting as Commander in Chief in a Congressionally authorized quasi-war (quasi because Al Qaeda is not a state), then his actions fall under another set of guidelines altogether.

The President has created some of the confusion in our debate.  Frequently during the campaign, sometimes even in office, he has spoken as if he is the head of a criminal investigation team.  When it comes to actual decisions, however, he acts like a military leader at war.  Greenwald and Paul appear to believe that he is a policeman and needs to start acting more like one; I believe he is a war leader and needs to start talking more like one.

As to the President creating confusion, Mr. Meade does not mention the non-war kinetic military action in Libya.  So I will.

And down the road, some of the issues could be resolved if Congress passed a structure similar to FISA, creating a court system empowered to review secret evidence and authorize drone killings.

The objections to FISA, as I recall them, are intellectual and practical.  As an intellectual matter, one might argue that FISA encroaches on a President's war-fighting responsibility since it limits his ability to gather intelligence.  Obviously, an Execution Court would face a similar objection.  But wouldn't if be fun to watch Obama veto such legislation as an encroachment on Executive authority while Dick Cheney nods?

As a practical matter, there has always been a concern that FISA courts will be slow to respond to wiretapping requests and changes in technology.  One hopes that the pace of assassination requests will be slow enough that this is not an issue for the Execution Courts.

My guess - Congress will prefer to keep their hands clean and sidestep this issue, and the Executive won't press for a limitation on its power. 

More 'Fast And Furious' Documents

Another Friday evening document dump from the White House on the 'Fast and Furious' gunwalker debacle in Arizona.  The doc dump was incomplete due to an exertion of executive privilege; here is CBS:

WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

Well, there is no unmistakeable description of the investigative tactics being employed.  However, on page 73 of the 102 page .pdf we notice this, from Special Agent Bill Newell of the Phoenix ATF office:

Also, not mentioned in these docs but VERY relevant to Mr. Brennan’s [I infer that to be counterterror advisor John Brennan] meeting next week is the fact that we and the USA were going to announce the indictment of a dozen “straw purchase” case addressing firearms trafficking by 30 individuals. We finally have the USAO here on board with going after “straw” purchasers and making a statement, publically especially, that we will take action against those folks. In reality we look at “straw” purchases as the lowest ring on the firearms trafficking ladder but in many investigations we need their cooperation in order to identify the real traffickers and middlemen. Having the USAO backing our “play” when we first interact with “straw” purchases adds tremendous leverage to our efforts to get the truth from them so we can work our way up the ladder.

That seems to be a clear statement that the US Attorney's office had not been interested in prosecuting the buyers at the bottom of the straw purchase food chain, and is certainly consistent with the allegation that straw buyers were kept under surveillance and allowed to stay in business.  Well, until leaving them on the streets became too embarrassing - e.g., in the "Avila Indictment", Jaime Avila was a known straw purchaser who was finally busted the day after guns purchased by him were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Read Their Lips...

The Times editors give us a peek into LibWorld with this article blasting Bank of America's new debit card fees:

The news on Thursday that Bank of America is imposing a $5 monthly fee on people who have the nerve to use their debit card to buy things probably should not have come as much of a shock.

...Still, the scale of its changes mean that most debit card shoppers who do not have Bank of America mortgages or more than $20,000 in account balances will need to pay that $5 monthly fee. It is a tax on pretty much every customer without a healthy salary or investment income, plus those who want to keep their savings elsewhere for whatever reason.

It's a tax?  The way my monthly subscription to the Times is a tax?  How are the destitute meant to stay current on world events (not to mention the sales at Saks) if the Times insists on imposing their regressive tax at the newstand?

Well, at least they write "it's a tax" as if that is a bad thing.  Baby steps.  I should also note that the theme of the article is that people could switch banks if "taxes" are too high for the level of service.  Obviously, many have switched news providers.

Saturday Morning

Away we go!