Sex, politics, and media Part II -- Mo Dowd's narrative

Maureen Dowd definitely earns her keep in her Wednesday NYT op-ed column explicating L’Affaire Petraeus.  The piece marries her perfectly attuned tragicomic sensibility for probing the psyches and characters of fallen public figures caught in sex scandals with her reporter's skills and instincts for unpacking and revealing the behind-the-scenes dynamics of political intrigues. She lays out a more integrated and insightful narrative than anyone else has, making sense of how both the public behavior and the private behavior of the people involved stemmed from the same roots in their characters, social and professional ambitions and life situations.

One quibble is that in her retrospective Maureen leaves out the fact that Obama did can several military honchos in Afghanistan, Gens. McKiernan and McChrystal. He did assert himself as the civilian decider in those instances, so unless I'm missing something, it's not a simple case of Obama's passivity or weakness.  The sense I get is that Obama bowed to Petraeus on the Afghanistan surge when the issue between them was one of military assessment and judgment rather than one of personalities or job evaluation.

On the whole, Dowd depicts Obama's role in an understanding light and paints Petraeus as the grandiose egoist whose ambitiousness and self-inflation took him too close to the sun.  I had already forgotten how Petraeus lobbied in defiance of Obama, and I had never known that Petraeus was hosting hawkish conservatives over there.  He played with star fire and got his arse burned.  The nation looks to this liberal to be well rid of an egotistical and ultimately hypocritical man in the middle of too many plots.   

For the most part, the best justice happens when a person's own karma does him in. Romney did more to hurt himself in the campaign than anyone else, for example. That last Romney campaign ad about Jeep's moving jobs was just the last in series of moves that showed the kind of man he is.

So in the end -- I hope it ends soon -- Mo boils the story down to that oldest of stories about pride and falls.  Sounds right to me.  It surprises me that she would describe Obama's role as primarily the victim of his own inexperience and Petraeus's ego, as I've become used to her finding angles to make Obama look worse than she makes him out to be here.  I believe she has placed responsibility properly in her narrative of the affair.

Sex, politics and media

Latest that I'm hearing on MSNBC in my ear at this moment (literally so, as we now have marriage-saving TV headphones for my late-night viewing) is that the FBI agent who initiated the Broadwell-Petraeus investigation was motivated by strong political antagonism toward Obama. Not to mention by his own case of the hots -- he himself is being investigated for sexting bare-chested pix of himself to Jill Kelley, the recipient of the harassing e-mails from Broadwell that got this sleaze snowball rolling earlier this year.  Schmuck. 

Unfortunately, now a commercial break from the breaking news is telling me how Cialis could give one the power to do something manly about that tingle he gets when she does those quirky things that aroused him in the old days -- like when she hops on one foot trying to put her shoe on the other one.  Sorry, not sexy at all.

Earlier versions of these ads did at least have some connection with sexual reality.  Like my favorite of all: the wife, her tight li'l tuchus wrapped snugly in jeans, is perched halfway up a stepladder hoisting a paint roller, leaving that bootay precisely at the hubbie's eye level.  It was a hoot when the VO says, "You never know when the moment will arise".

Maybe not, but Nate Silver might compute that that eyeful had a pretty high probability of triggering such a moment.  That ad was cute, touched with winking humor; it made me happy that those who need biochemical boosters now have them.  The hippity-hop lady, not so much.  Oh, well.

Switch over to Jon Stewart.  He's showing clips of Fox News Channel and others in the "conservative entertainment complex" (the term invoked by David Frum in his brave if not altogether astute* Morning Joe diatribe) spinning the Petraeus affair into one conspiracy theory after another ("Something smells!").  Stewart exposes each in turn as ludicrous, patently false or just very stupid. 

Like the one about the White House holding onto this until after the election to protect the Democrats from scandal revelations ... 

Oopsie, how about the fact that rabid GOP Tea-Party Congressman Eric Cantor had the information in October?!  What up wit dat?  Cantor a Dem mole? 

Thanks to the impervious 'bama-hatin' stalwarts at FNC and right-wing talk radio, Stewart is surviving quite well the untragic loss of super-rich comedy targets like Romney and Trump (the latter being so broadly reviled that there's almost no puff left in his balloon to deflate). 

Stewart says that in the end that the Petraeus affair was, um, an affair.

Fortunately for all involved, the general's lady only wielded pointed, sharply worded e-mails, not a butcher knife!  

 

 

*  I admire David Frum's heartfelt indictment of what he called the "fleecing" of right-wing zealots by the likes of Fox, Clear Channel, Coulter, Gingrich, Palin, Limbaugh and the rest.  He resents his party's being overrun by delusional haters and exploitive media owners and their running dog talking heads.  He knew he would be attacked from the right, but he let it rip.  (Scarborough was contemptible in jumping aboard Frum's rant train, by the way -- Joe was denouncing Nate Silver as biased the week before he was denouncing the right-wing alternate reality.  Hack.) 

 

However, for all of his truly righteous contempt for the exploiters of hatred and extremism, Frum is still a semi-blind ideological conservative: he said that Romney would have made a great president!  Had the extremists not pushed Romney to nut-fringe positions in the primaries and afterwards, said Frum, he could have run as the pragmatist/problem-solver that he really is. 

 

So Frum is not revolted by the GOParty's being devoted to the welfare of plutocrats and greed-driven corporations that regard workers as liabilities. 

 

Romney would have made a horrific president.  Just as he was a horrific governor of his home state -- the one that just voted against him by 23 points -- and with SCOTUS's future in the balance, his legacy would have been a 20-year fiasco. 

 

 

Sheep may safely graze, thank us!

My good friend Dr. Sam Gould ("Jed" is his shepherd alter-ego) sent me this bucolic and wistful post-election message:

Dear Howie,

Out here is sheep country,

Me and the flock all voted for Romney/Ryan.

We can't understand how Obama won.

Jed

Sam's touching plight inspired me to reflect on our success in winning four more years for Obama and in avoiding a fate worse than shearing...

On the theme of sheep-shearing, David Frum on Morning Joe today said in effect that when Fox News is on TV, sheep may no longer graze without losing their coats as winter closes in, or maybe even becoming mutton.  Frum said that the "right-wing entertainment complex" has been selling lies to a gullible audience and reaping millions in profits.  He said that he has been speaking with groups of GOP base voters who consistently expressed counter-factual beliefs about all kinds of things.  For example, they all thought for sure that taxes had gone up under Obama. 

Frum comes from the conservative side, but he has an unusual attachment to intellectual honesty.  I mean unusual for righties, of course.  He has already got an e-book out, Why Romney Lost.  His urgency in getting it out so quickly is presumably driven by his hope to affect the course of the Repubican debate on where to go from here.  He knows that many in the GOP will blame the losses on too much moderation or on anything else but the need to rethink essential policy, and he knows that that denial is just digging in and doubling down on a false version of reality.  That version has great ovine appeal, but in 2012 even 62% of those white sheep no longer make for an American majority.    

Frum addresses the actual policy disconnect between the actual American electorate and the GOP. The others on the right want to blame Sandy, Christie and/or the primary process that drove the GOP to the extreme right.  

The fault, however, is neither in their stars nor in their process (nor in the storm), it is in them, that they are fighting to return the country to a white bread, white-male-dominated Mad Men society that in fact never existed. In the supposedly halcyon days of the 1950's, tax rates were far higher. But minorities did know their place, abortion was not legal, and the Bible was read before class every day, so why can't we just tweak the tax rates a bit and restore the Christian country that worked so very well for... um, y'know, for real Americans.

An acquaintance of mine who lives outside the country rebuked me for sending out the message "Hurray For Humanity!!!!" on Tuesday night in reaction to Obama's re-election. Said I was being too partisan, as if I were whooping for a goal at a soccer game. (This was not even a Romney supporter.)

Which goes to show that there are still people across the political spectrum who don't get what was at stake on Tuesday.  We who do get it, we celebrate that we got Obama in, a man who does demonstrate recognition of critical human realities like income inequality, global warming, and the need for everyone to have health care.  We also rejoice that we did not elect a vulture capitalist whose whole argument, as David Frum said this morning, was that we should repeal Obamacare, end Medicare and cut Medicaid by 1/3, all so that we could cut taxes for him and his rich friends.  And we know that in the process we did another mitzvah for humanity in resoundingly repudiating the fictional Fox/RNC alternate reality. 

This Ben Sargent piece puts a pithy toon to the words "Hurray For Humanity":        

November 9, 2012

The Repubican spinners are out there saying the re-election of a GOP House majority shows that Americans endorsed their obstructionism on raising revenues -- and presumably on everything else.

Which is utter nonsense, since the public approval of Congress is historically low.

But if it's nonsense, how's come they still own a substantial majority? It's called 2010, year of redistricting and gerrymandering, after the GOP had cleaned up in the mid-terms as Democrats failed to turn out and repealing Obamacare was the cause celebre.  Astonishingly, the redistricting worked so well for them that on Tuesday the GOP retained a majority of around 40 seats despite the fact that the Democratic candidates for House seats totaled about 550,000 more cumulative votes than their GOP opponents did!  You can check it out for yourself.

So it is hard to see how the House changes hands before 2020 (next census/redistricting) unless the GOP is perceived by a greater majority than at present as being indifferent to the will and welfare of 99% of the people.

 The bottom line is that we will have to put the pressure on from the grass roots to make Congress responsive to the will and welfare of the people.    

Uncle Michael (Moore) wants YOU!

If you know anyone who is so disaffected and dissatisfied with the changes Obama's election has yielded that he or she might abstain from this election, please forward this letter from Michael Moore, a guy who has certainly earned his cred as a fearless fighter for the middle class against the plutocracy.  His letter, originally posted on his Open Mike blog, was re-posted today on Reader Supported News.

I am particularly thinking of young people whose idealism may have been engaged then and is now uninspired.

Here's the main thing: the key to the country's overall wellness and quality of life for the middle class is education and empowerment of workers. If one has college debt, one has a deep investment in seeing that the playing field is not tilted in favor of the money people. Romney will stack the deck against the middle class -- especially those whose opportunities depend on turning their investment in education and/or skills training into decent quality-of-life-sustaining incomes -- and turn all systemic advantages to the wealthy. 

Not only is this a formula for screwing the 99% and destroying the country, it is morally wrong and it should pique one's idealism for this reason: human capital is more valuable than paper capital, but Romney and all plutocrats only value the paper. They regard people as office supplies or raw materials, an expense to be minimized, a drag on profit to be discarded when and if possible.

Obama has worked uphill all the way to expand rights and protections for women, sexual minorities, immigrants, consumers, and all people who would otherwise be without health insurance or subject to losing it for using it -- that means everyone. So it's not just voting to avoid Romney, it's voting FOR someone who has accomplished forward steps against mindless opposition in Congress.

So tell would-be abstainers to consider these concrete realities, drop the passive-aggressive petulance, grow up, and get the hell out and vote for Obama.

Letter to a Non-Voter

By Michael Moore, Open Mike Blog

05 November 12

get it - and I don't blame you. You're fed up and you could care less whether Tweedledee or Tweedledumber wins on Tuesday - because on Wednesday, your life will be the same, unchanged, regardless who is president. Your mortgage will still be underwater. You will still owe $50,000 on your student loan. Your son will still be in Afghanistan. Your daughter will still be working two jobs to make ends meet. And gas will still be at $4.

Four years ago you gave in and voted - and you voted for Obama. You wanted to believe he would go after the Wall Street crooks who crashed the economy - but instead the banks that were "too big to fail" four years ago are now even bigger and more dangerous. You thought there'd be universal health care - but the new law only went so far (with most of it not taking effect until 2014). You were tired of war and homeland security measures that violated our civil liberties - but we're still in Afghanistan, we're sending in drones to Pakistan and basic constitutional rights to privacy and fair trial have been ignored. And you thought you'd have a middle-class, good-paying job like your dad had - but you didn't know that Goldman Sachs was Obama's #1 private campaign donor in 2008, and well, he was beholden to corporate America in more ways we cared to think about.

So, I get it why you've had it with all these politicians and elections. In the end, it doesn't really seem to be our country any more. It's run by those who can buy the most politicians to do their bidding. Our schools are made a low priority and women are still having to fight for just the basic human rights we thought they already had.

So, it's hard for me to ask you for this very personal favor. It's ok if you say "no," but I'm hoping you don't.

I cannot believe it is possible that, after a group of rich plutocrats wrecked the economy, threw people out of work and stole our future, we may actually hand the keys to our country over to...a rich Republican plutocrat who made millions by throwing people out of work! This is insane, and despite all the legitimate criticisms of Obama, he is nothing like the tsunami of hate and corporate thievery that will take place if Mitt Romney is president. As bad as it feels now, it will only get worse. I need your help to stop this.

I can't promise you that your life will get better, easier under Barack Obama. I do think he cares and I know for sure that if the other guy is sitting in the Oval Office, I can guarantee you that not only will your life not get better, it will get much, much worse. Don't take my word for it. Just ask your parents what life was like before a 30-year pillage by the Republicans of the middle class. Your parents bought a house and eventually owned it outright. They weren't in debt. College was free. They bought a new car every 3 or 4 years. They took vacations and were home for dinner by 5 or 6 PM. They had a savings account in the bank. They didn't live in fear of not knowing if they'd even have a job next year.

That's all gone. I don't know if we can get it back, but I do know that Mr. Romney would love the chance to complete the final elimination of the middle class and the American Dream.

He must be stopped. Take 20 minutes on Tuesday and go vote. If you don't want to do it for your country, then do it for me! It's the only favor I'll ever ask of you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know that you care, and care deeply, about your future and your kids' future. You have every right to be cynical about all this. And you hold the power to stop the bastards who plan on squeezing every last dime out of you that they can. Take a stand. And make a statement to those who are hoping against hope that you'll stay home on Tuesday. Your presence at the polls is what they fear most.

Go scare the s**t out of them! For me.

Let's GOTV, kemosabe!

If you’re not a baby-boomer, you may need to be reminded that the man Tonto called “kemosabe” (kee-moe-sah-bee) was the Lone Ranger, and the Lone Ranger’s white steed was named Silver.  Like many liberals these last few months, I too have got big hopes for truth, justice and the American way riding on Silver – Mr. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog note.

The day before Election Day, Silver’s model for pooling state polling data and mixing all up in his own “secret sauce” of weightings and contextual variables has Obama’s projected results looking like this:

Chance of Winning            Electoral vote

         86.3%                         307.2

To place that in perspective, 538’s peak percentage win probability for President Obama just prior to the Denver debacle was 87.1%, and the dive that began on October 4^th bottomed out at 61.1% on October 12.  The dramatic footnote to that 61.1% trough was Silver’s noting that, according to his statistical model, any race in which the leading candidate’s probability was at or below 60% is considered for predictive practical purposes a “Toss-up”.   

This 86.3% probability is a hopeful indicator, but it means nothing and in fact could be harmful to Obama's re-election if it makes anyone think her or his vote doesn't matter. There are polls out that show Pennsylvania as a toss-up, which Nate -- with PA shown on his site with "97.9% chance of Obama win" -- would find dubious, but it's scary nevertheless.

Now, we focus on these polls because we are so acutely aware and concerned about the stakes of this election, and in our very well-grounded and reasonable anxiety we look for something reassuring, like a life raft to keep us psychically floating above the waters roiling with sharks of doubt and fear.

Still, getting excited about optimistic indicators does not mitigate at all that we are primarily excited and anxious about the real opportunities and consequences that are at stake.

At this point we damn well know what they are, so I drill down to just one: the next four years could see the appointment of several new Supreme Court justices. That would mean a legacy of decades that could bend the trajectory of American history toward further progress or toward the deeper entrenchment of plutocracy. Romney appointments would mean the reversal of 70 years of social-economic progress that has expanded rights for women, minorities, immigrants, workers and everyone who believes in the constructive and protective role of government.

The Court is teetering on the verge of a plutocratic rubber stamp majority, but the opportunity is also presented to install justices who will ensure a long-enduring majority for continuing American progress toward... JUSTICE.

That is to say, this is a historic election.

I'm stating the obvious and perhaps preaching to the choir; I encourage everyone else to nag your progressive friends and family too. The only way the 86.3% probability becomes 100% reality is by turning every potential Obama voter accounted for in these polls into a voter who has voted for Obama.

I take heart, but I ain't one bit cocky. I am scared to my bones at the chance that Romney’s 14.7% chance, his one shot in seven – bolstered by voter suppression and God-knows-what software voodoo -- could stick us with a R/R ticket to plutocracy**.

In an hour I ship out to go place "door-hangers" on people's front doors to remind them to get to the polls tomorrow. The primitive state of Pennsylvania has never had early voting, so we put it all on the line tomorrow.

I am hoping that Obama supporters in Eastern Pennsylvania, New York City and New Jersey will make the extra effort they may have to make to vote. Whatever the hell we have to do to cast our votes, let's DO IT!  Let’s Get Out The Vote!

** Robert Reich has a very clear-eyed ten-point description of "Romneyism" in Reader Supported News today. It is the operational definition of plutocratic values and governance.

Of blackmail and bogeymen

I knew that the Des Moines Register had endorsed Romney, but I confess I did not waste precious time reading the endorsement (feel free to Google it; I will not abet wasting anyone else's time).  So Paul Krugman's column today is my first time learning that the Iowa paper's implicit rationale for endorsing Romney boils down to the greater willingness of Congressional Democrats compared to their Repubican counterparts to work across party lines for the best interests of the country.  

As Krugman writes with his usual force and clarity, that is a stunning endorsement... of blackmail. 

Krugman -- and I -- certainly agree with the Register's editorial board that GOPers are the only ones in Congress who are willing to shoot the rest of us in the head if they don't get their way.   But we diverge from the board in our belief that it would be suicidal to take that as a rationale for choosing a GOP president.  If we reward a political party for blatantly, persistently, self-acknowledgedly acting in contempt of the best interests of the people, we are -- and I say this with the utmost delicacy and discretion -- f/_\<ed.

If you really want to show the politicians that you want them to cooperate, endorse -- and vote in -- the ones that you have described as the more likely to cooperate!   Vote out the ones who make an ideology of intransigence, who sign pledges to be loyal like so many hand-puppets to some jackass named "Grover" rather than to pledge themselves to do whatever it takes to build a better nation.

Obviously, the scary thing about a newspaper's endorsing the politics of Cosa-Nostra-inspired amorality is that it will legitimize that sort of thinking among those semi-comatose, disengaged, undecided voters who think that gridlock is a higher concern than values. 

All I can say to that is this: if you know anyone who is inclined to think that way, please send them a copy of Krugman's column.  Or better yet, this post!  (If Chuck Todd can do shameless plugs, who am I to blow against the wind?)

While you're at it, if those undecided friends or brothers-in-law regale you with a description of the new bogeyman PAC ad that shows Chinese people at a massive assembly where the speaker talks about the the Americans' debt having led to the once-great country's decline and to all the Americans now working for the Chinese, you can tell them:

     1) the Chinese want the U.S. economy to be strong so as to keep paying interest but more importantly to keep buying the stuff they sell; 

     2) more to the point, nations decline from outsourcing their productive enterprises and basing their own economies on useless and unproductive financial market gaming, on  packaging pieces of paper, and on creating a bifurcated society of a tiny uber-wealthy class and a massive 99% class of people struggling to survive; and

     3) the Repubicans are the lying hypocrites who invariably campaign as if they were deficit hawks but over the last ten presidential terms the GOP, not the Democrats, are always always always are the ones who create the bigger debt loads. 

This election is not about small government and debt reduction versus big-spending big government, it's about whom the government will serve, the rich people or all of the people.

p.s.

By the by, since we started with a Romney newspaper endorsement, let's put that in perspective.  The current count is 35 papers endorsing Obama to Romney's 29, with the cumulative circulation of the 35 at 9.1 million and the 29 at 5.1 million.  Just sayin'...

Sandy and global warming: Time to get serious!

In the quiet wake of the "superstorm", the post hoc question has become, propter hoc?  Was Sandy so nasty because of global warming?  Plenty of commentators, pundits, bloggers, academics and pretty much everyone with skin in the weather game -- that is, everyone -- have been speculating on the causal relationship between Sandy and global warming. 

Some, like Al Gore, George Lakoff, and Michael Bloomberg, have seen the linkage as obvious, beyond reasonable doubt in the context of indisputable factors such as: the multi-year pile-up of extreme weather events, the higher-than-"normal" water temperatures in the incubating regions of the open seas, the rise in sea level along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and the upper-atmosphere blocking pattern that forced Sandy to take an unprecedented right turn into South Jersey. [oopsie, pardon the correction: Sandy took a left turn into South Jersey; I'll plead inexperience -- it's my first time driving a hurricane.] 

Climate change scientists that are chiming in are much more circumspect in drawing the causal inference, as per their temperament and as per the nature of scientific discourse that is constrained by consensual, complex, technical evidentiary standards.  Despite their circumspection, for me it is critically important to represent the scientists' take, because all that I think I know about global warming is founded on my confidence in the enterprise of science as the source of human knowledge about the nature of reality.  Intellectual honesty -- ever the bane of progressives, along with the curse of empathy -- compels me to make sure that I take into full consideration the most objective assessments of the situation. 

Articles abound today on the Sandy-global warming connection.  One that struck me as a fair summary of the science is a Huffington Post piece today by Andrew Freedman of Climate Central.  He rounds up the input of various climate scientists on the probability and nature of the causal relationship between global warming and Sandy.  Freeman gathers and organizes researchers' comments along the lines of the likely contributing factors that I cited above.  After further review, these referees of climate science pronounce that in order to determine a direct causal linkage between global warming and Superstorm Sandy, those known contributing factors will have to be carefully sifted apart from the random vicissitudes of massive climatic activity.  To do that sifting to the satisfaction of scientific standards of certitude will require... wait for it: more research!   

And this is precisely where the George Lakoff piece on Sandy and global warming would intervene in the national conversation to say, "Enough!" 

Whether or not we can muster evidence to get a consensus of scientists to agree that Sandy's timing, size, intensity and course were directly caused by global warming, we damn well do know enough to know that man-made changes to the atmosphere are generating changes in our weather that are destructive to human life and human enterprise.  We don't need to prove that Sandy is the direct result of man-made climate change, because we have enough evidence to know that once-extraordinary events like Sandy have become ordinary due to what Lakoff terms "systemic causation" on the part of global warming.  

Rather than wait for more research to sift out direct causality, he asserts, we need to leverage the attention Sandy brings to the cataclysmic danger of global warming denial to get Americans to demand that our government -- as well as our private sector -- address the problem as the top priority for the nation and the planet.

Lakoff is a progressive Democratic author and blogger, but he is also by trade a scientist, even if he is not a climate scientist.  He is in fact the Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.  So, when he offers this construct of systemic causation, Lakoff's thinking is nested in and invested with the epistemological principles, processes and structures of evidence-based hypothesis-testing that undergirds scientific knowledge-building.  That is, he is not pulling this out of his rear end.

In his article, he explains in concrete terms how the construct of systemic causation applies and how it needs to be invoked to demand that politicians treat it with deadly seriousness:

"The precise details of Hurricane Sandy cannot be predicted in advance, any more than when, or whether, a smoker develops lung cancer, or sex without contraception yields an unwanted pregnancy, or a drunk driver has an accident. But systemic causation is nonetheless causal.

 

"Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming. Lacking a concept and language for systemic causation, climate scientists have made the dreadful communicative mistake of retreating to weasel words. Consider this quote from "Perception of climate change," by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

...we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

"The crucial words here are high degree of confidence, anomalies, consequence, likelihood, absence, and exceedingly small. Scientific weasel words! The power of the bald truth, namely causation, is lost."

Scientists must be committed above all to the pursuit of knowledge, and so they are not positioned to "take a side".  To do so is to risk one's standing in the scientific community.  Scientists can not make the case for political movement in response to evolving findings. 

Therefore, it is up to the rest if us to be determined advocates, and in urging us to do this I passionately agree with Lakoff's message.  

The evidence supports the reality of man-made global warming's systemic causation of once-aberrant, now frequent, horribly destructive  weather and weather-related events.  We already have all the scientific evidence we need to push for government to act.  We collectively willed our elected representatives as well as the corporations that rely on our business to protect us from cigarette smoke.  We can do this thing too, if we do it together, with passion and purpose.

p.s.  New York Governor Cuomo is on this, and he is a politician who agrees that it will take a collective demand from the people to bring the necessary political will and sufficient resources to bear on the problem.  After proposing that New York City be protected by three sets of surge barriers such as the ones in place in Europe that protect London, he said,

“I don’t think most people would agree with me at this point,” Mr. Cuomo said. “First, you have to convince the citizenry, then get the elected officials to move.”

 

Will Sandy's ferocity wake us up before we drown?

The NYT lead editorial from Monday, "Big Storm Requires Big Government," cites the evidence for the irreplaceable role of federal resources and management to respond to massive disasters like Sandy.  In making the case, the editorial examines the sickness of willful blindness beclouding the minds of America's right wingers. The key symptom is unshakable faith-based belief that it is always, per Romney's response in a GOP primary debate, "better to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states... And if you... send it back to the private sector, that’s even better."

That almost half of the country throws in their lot with the "you're-on-your-own" ideology of indifference -- and I hope and pray with all fervor that the "almost" is borne out by results in six days -- makes my stomach turn with literal, physical nausea. It's like the feeling I get if I am subjected to a video clip of a sadistic, savage beating of a homeless man.  The editorial writer characterizes the GOP as preferring blaming victims to helping them; Repubicans -- at least the elected ones -- would walk on by that man with contempt for his vulnerability.  

Beyond the obvious immediate advantages of federal emergency management over uncoordinated state-by-state efforts, there is the economic idiocy of having every state be responsible for duplicating the reserves and resources to provide effective emergency disaster response.  And better we should also cut out the expensive federal weather research and monitoring functions like NOAA and the National Storm Center.

Hey, Mr. Big-Gummint Man, you want to know what the weather is going to be? Look out the f&#<in' window!  It worked for the Founding Fathers, didn'it?

The Romney campaign ultimately had to deal with the absurdity of Romney's position when a global-warming-incubated reality storm broadsided it, swamped it and left it exposed like a fishing boat illegally parked on A.C.'s Atlantic Ave. NOW, they say, despite the states' being better positioned to do disaster relief, Romney would not abolish FEMA, as if he'd never said otherwise. 

If you buy that about-face BS, Al Sharpton has a bridge to sell you -- it takes people from Brooklyn to Manhattan when the streets are not covered by ocean or river. If W downgraded and underfunded FEMA, and ideological crusader-plutocrats like Eric Cantor are in place in the House beyond this year, there is no reasonable doubt that Romney will go further than W did in slashing funds and channelling them to private corporate allies.

Americans will either wake up to the massive dual threat of global warming and the radical right, or they/we will soon wake up to a shore line that makes New Jersey the first underwater state and New York City the world's next great SCUBA-diving destination. 

And just maybe the storm has splashed virtual cold water in the faces of some of those undecideds across the swing state electorates.  Quoth Nate Silver, "Mr. Obama made gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Tuesday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 77.4 percent." 

I am circumspect at ever drawing a silver lining from a disaster like this -- at least 50 people have died, and damage may rise above $50 billion, which is a ridiculously callous distillation of the cumulative human suffering and loss represented by all that damage.  One factor freeing me up to welcome the possibility that the storm's thumb is resting on Obama's side of the electoral scale is that there is human culpability here that needs to be accounted for in understanding what happened and in deciding for whom to vote.  Denial of global warming is now a clear and present danger to all humans, and, to borrow from Mitt F. Romney the very term he used to describe the expenditure of federal funds on emergency response, it is "immoral".   

The election is blowin' in the wind

OK, as of late Sunday night Nate Silver on his FiveThirtyEight blog had the numbers running like this:

1) Obama's probability of winning Electoral College: 74.6%

2) Number of Electoral votes Obama would win today: 296.6

3) Obama's probability of winning Ohio: 75%

PERSPECTIVE:

Nate's predictive model had Obama's winning probability at a pre-Denver peak of 87% and a post-Denver trough of 61.1% on October 12.  So at 74.6% Obama is halfway back up to where he was at the peak.  The persistent trend since October 12 has been an upward ziggie-zag, with two and-a-half weeks of cycles of two clicks up and one back.

However, leavening progressives’ levity is the closeness of the national popular vote, which Nate has pegged at 50.4% to 48.7% in Obama's favor. That is thin. And digging into the numbers, we see that even the Ohio projection of 75% stands on a an cross-poll average difference of 2 points.

Silver sifts these thin leads through the filter of his model, accounting for all the elements that have proven relevant over the historic span of intensely polled election campaigns. He says the stability of Obama's swing-state edges over a period of months, despite their small magnitude, undergirds their significance so as to make Obama's odds of winning at this point as strong as 3 out of 4.

Now, even one out of four is still scarily high.  The realization of that one-in-four chance would mean our turning away from the positive direction we’re headed now and turning toward a revival of "the policies that got us into this mess".  We know too well that Romney/Ryan would mean not merely a revival, their election would mean an intensification and acceleration, with consequences that would be horrific for 99% of us.

That is a point on which we do need to drill down – i.e., the concrete consequences of failing to re-elect President Obama.  That drill-down will be the focus of my next post, to come later on, as Sandy's eye passes to the south.  We're still holding our breath and hoping that losses from the storm will be on the light side.   

Speaking of which (and getting back to Nate Silver and polling), I may not need a weatherman to know the way the wind blows today in SE PA, but it was very helpful to have had one yesterday to prompt me to get off my tush and clear out my rain gutters that were overflowing with leaves and decomposed muck. (I am thankful that Ms. Sandy will have come and gone before we vote in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This will allow about a week for electricity to be restored where necessary; I hope that will be enough to avoid any disruptions in voting.)

So, pivoting back to the election, are we better off for our obsession with the polls and for having Weatherman Nate Silver there to stoke -- and satisfy -- the obsession ?  

To the extent that his sort of information has the delicately balanced dual effect of heightening both our motivation to make a personal difference and our belief in the prospect that our efforts will yield the outcome we want, then yes, Nate's numbers do serve a purpose beyond providing a twisted form of amusement for neurotic Nellies (like me).

Also, while I criticize the media pre-occupation with the horse race aspect of elections at the expense of deepening understanding of policy differences and their implications for the country's future direction, at least Silver models a more sophisticated, non-partisan framing of the horse race than the mainstream media.  The latter consider it their goal to make the race look as close and suspenseful as possible, and in lieu of objectivity they put a microphone in front of rabid partisans from each side and try not to be referees in the debate.  Even when they do "fact-checking" -- which they do in response to the public critiques of their erstwhile hands-off approach to partisan claims -- the practice still is to make sure to balance the debunking and treat each lie or exaggeration as being of equal weight and importance.

There are exceptions to the horse-race coverage, and I don't mean PBS or even NPR.  The most sophisticated discussion of policy that I've come across on television is Chris Hayes's weekend morning panel-style talk show "Up!" from 8am to 10am.  Melissa Harris Perry's show from 10am to noon is a close second.

Yes, they are liberals, but their practice is to have a person from the right on every panel. I always learn something from these shows and highly recommend them. I do love the evening MSNBC shows as well, and I do learn from them too, but in all honesty I acknowledge that Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell are more intent on making points and reporting facts that resonate with the progressive perspective. Hayes and Perry (a Tulane University political science professor) conduct graduate seminars.

EIGHT DAYS TO GO.

EIGHT DAYS TO GOTV!

WHO threw Israel under the bus?!

The segment of the American population that cares deeply about the security and well-being of Israel gets far more courting by the national candidates than our numbers alone would imply. I can't say I mind that, because if that were not the case it is likely that Israel would exist only in history books by now.

What I do mind is the petty bullflop and distortions that pass through the thin, sneering lips of the GOP* when their turn comes to make the pitch:  Repubicans are the true friends of Israel, while President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus -- and it's not even an Egged bus!   They vehemently rage that Obama did not visit Israel after his inauguration when he went to the Middle East on his putative "apology tour" (he had visited during the 2008 campaign, sans Jewish donor tag-alongs with billion-dollar egos to puff up, and also sans tarring Palestinian culture), and he eschewed a meet with Bibi in New York when they were both there to address the UN. Such a scandal!

Compared to a mere missile defense system (Iron Dome) and massive joint military exercises and record-high financial assistance, these perceived social slights are the real story of Obama and Israel.  Obama's so-called social snubs have GOP Jews' knickers forming deep-seated wedgies.

I don't think Romney is going to get traction with this, because in this segment he is not dealing as often with the low-information voters that are so prized by the Fox/RNC/GOP/Tea-Pee propaganda pushers. My best guess is that Romney may do a few points better than McCain for the same reasons that the race will be closer altogether -- first of all, Sarah Palin is not running; second, many people want to blame someone for their continuing economic challenges.  

When I imply that a well-informed pro-Israel voter will be immune to the hyperbolic verbal sniping at Obama, I am talking about the voter's familiarity with the kinds of historical facts that the former ten-year director of Mossad Ephraim Halevy lays out in his NYT op-ed that is pasted in full below. 

Turns out that this mythical meme of GOP-good-for-Israel is one more lie in a bookshelf of such lies that we've heard for decades.  For example, contrary to the myth, GOP presidents have consistently added far more to the national debt than Dems. Business has done better under Dems than Repubicans. Dems have been true to taking care of veterans while Repubicans fight against spending for veterans.

However, all this only goes to demonstrate at the end of the day that Repubicans are indeed better -- i.e., at bullsh*tting the American public.  So, with a tip o' the cap to Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers, I declare that this country will continue to be in deep trouble unless and until we Democrats can finally overcome... The Bullsh*t Gap.  (See George Lakoff for special tips on effective framing.)

Who threw Israel under the bus?

by Ephraim Halevy

ON Monday, in their final debate, Mitt Romney denounced President Obama for creating “tension” and “turmoil” with Israel and chided him for having “skipped Israel” during his travels in the Middle East. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Romney has repeatedly accused Mr. Obama of having “thrown allies like Israel under the bus.”

But history tells a different story. Indeed, whenever the United States has put serious, sustained pressure on Israel’s leaders — from the 1950s on — it has come from Republican presidents, not Democratic ones. This was particularly true under Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

Just one week before the Iraq war began in March 2003, Mr. Bush was still struggling to form a broad international coalition to oust Saddam Hussein. Unlike in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, decided to opt out, meaning that the United Nations could not provide formal legitimacy for a war against Mr. Hussein. Britain was almost alone in aligning itself with America, and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support was deemed crucial in Washington.

Just as the British Parliament was about to approve the joint venture, a group of Mr. Blair’s Labour Party colleagues threatened to revolt, demanding Israeli concessions to the Palestinians in exchange for their support for the Iraq invasion. This demand could have scuttled the war effort, and there was only one way that British support could be maintained: Mr. Bush would have to declare that the “road map” for Middle East peace, a proposal drafted early in his administration, was the formal policy of the United States.

Israel’s prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, had been vehemently opposed to the road map, which contained several “red lines” that he refused to accept, including a stipulation that the future status of Jerusalem would be determined by “a negotiated resolution” taking into account “the political and religious concerns of both sides.” This wording implied a possible end to Israel’s sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, which has been under Israeli control since 1967.

On March 13, 2003, senior Israeli officials were summarily informed that the United States would publicly adopt the draft road map as its policy. Washington made it clear to us that on the eve of a war, Israel was expected to refrain from criticizing the American policy and also to ensure that its sympathizers got the message.

The United States insisted that the road map be approved without any changes, saying Israel’s concerns would be addressed later. At a long and tense cabinet debate I attended in May 2003, Mr. Sharon reluctantly asked his ministers to accept Washington’s demand. Benjamin Netanyahu, then the finance minister, disagreed, and he abstained during the vote on the cabinet resolution, which eventually passed.

From that point on, the road map, including the language on Jerusalem, became the policy bible for America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. Not only was Israel strong-armed by a Republican president, but it was also compelled to simply acquiesce and swallow the bitterest of pills.

Three years later, the Bush administration again pressured Israel into supporting a policy that ran counter to its interests. In early 2006, the terrorist group Hamas ran candidates in the Palestinian legislative elections. Israel had been adamant that no leader could campaign with a gun in his belt; the Palestinian party Fatah opposed Hamas’s participation, too. But the White House would have none of this; it pushed Fatah to allow Hamas candidates to run, and pressured Israel into allowing voting for Hamas — even in parts of East Jerusalem.

After Hamas won a clear majority, Washington sought to train Fatah forces to crush it militarily in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas pre-empted this scheme by taking control of Gaza in 2007, and the Palestinians have been ideologically and territorially divided ever since.

Despite the Republican Party’s shrill campaign rhetoric on Israel, no Democratic president has ever strong-armed Israel on any key national security issue. In the 1956 Suez Crisis, it was a Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who joined the Soviet Union in forcing Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after a joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt.

In 1991, when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, the administration of the first President Bush urged Israel not to strike back so as to preserve the coalition of Arab states fighting Iraq. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir resisted his security chiefs’ recommendation to retaliate and bowed to American demands as his citizens reached for their gas masks.

After the war, Mr. Shamir agreed to go to Madrid for a Middle East peace conference set up by Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Fearful that Mr. Shamir would be intransigent at the negotiating table, the White House pressured him by withholding $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel, causing us serious economic problems. The eventual result was Mr. Shamir’s political downfall. The man who had saved Mr. Bush’s grand coalition against Saddam Hussein in 1991 was “thrown under the bus.”

In all of these instances, a Republican White House acted in a cold and determined manner, with no regard for Israel’s national pride, strategic interests or sensitivities. That’s food for thought in October 2012.

 

Efraim Halevy was the director of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002 and the national security adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, from October 2002 to June 2003. \

* Personal footnote on tenuously related topic of thin, sneering lips:

This morning I was juggling my attention among my getting-up routine, watching Morning Joe, listening to WIP sports talk radio, and flipping on and off the TODAY Show (for my health and beauty tips). As has been the case in the last few weeks with all the MSNBC contributors who are ex-GOP politicians, officials and operatives (e.g., Steve Schmidt [famed as stand-in for Woody Harrelson in the original version of HBO's Game Change] and Michael Steele [the previous Reince Preibus -- which sounds more like a minor intestinal conduit than a person, imho]), former R-FL Rep. Joe Scarborough has flipped the switch from pundit/host to full-blown campaign tool. Case in point this morning: they air a vid of Obama's Romnesia riff to a crowd of 11,000 cheering maniacs, in which Bar reels off the policy 180's and 360's the other guy has executed in the months-weeks-days past. Cut to Joe Scar-butt, his face looking like the breakfast sausage he'd had was not sitting at all well with him. After dramatic face and pause, he allows as to how "disappointed" he is that President Obama, after all the personal sacrifices he'd made to become President Obama, was reduced to making a speech like that.

Really? Well, after a speech from a TV talk show host like that one, I've got a nausea face for Joe Scar-schmo, and I've got three little words in response to a GOPer whose contempt and disdain appear outstripped only by his arrogance, stupidity and dearth of appreciation for the power and charm of humor:

You disappoint me!  

Update on Romney family's Ohio voting machines

In fact, MSNBC's Ed Schultz did address the reports referenced in this afternoon's post that the Romney family is closely connected with ownership of voting machines, some of which will be used in Ohio on November 6th.  Schultz brought it up while interviewing a strongly progressive Ohio State Senator, Nina Turner.   

Responding to Schultz's question about the report, Turner said she thought the Romney connection to the machines was tenuous and  circuitous, and to her mind it is not a worrisome threat.  She said she trusts the ability of the bipartisan board overseeing the machines to make sure the machines work properly.  

Given the still-unanswered questions about Ohio vote-counting in 2004, I thought that she sounded overly confident.  However, this African-American senator has been a fireball on the subject of voter suppression and the legal battle over early voting, so she's not naive about the Repubicans' intention to stage anything but a fair fight in November. 

Senator Turner is infinitely better versed in matters of election administration in Ohio than I am, that I know for certain.  At the same time, while I found her lack of unease reassuring, we can also be certain that there will be close monitoring to see that there are not once again the kind of extraordinary divergences between exit poll data and vote tabs in Ohio Ohio Ohio that were the hallmark of Florida Florida Florida.  

More than 100,000 people died in Iraq because of one questionable vote count in one state.  After that, I will not regret taking the risk of overstating a threat to the integrity of this coming election.  Whether I actually did so still remains to be seen.  Not that I hope for problems; I hope that we all have full confidence in the accuracy of the count come November 7th. 

In other words, the best outcome for democracy itself is that Obama wins Ohio so we can move forward as a nation that need not be haunted by this question!   

Guess who bought Ohio voting machines

So the debates are behind us, thank God.  We now humbly approach our collective opportunity to fulfill again the painstakingly forged democratic vision of the framers of the Constitution.  We know that we hold in a dynamic balance, as the framers did, the tension between pragmatism and utopianism.  This sacred quadrennial ritual is known to the great majority of us, the fortunate inheritors of American citizenship, as the Presidential election.  

Alternatively, this revered ritual is known to a small subset of us as prime time to steal the so-called election, to snatch away the choice to fill highest seat of power from the hands of the people, and to make the world safe once and for all for bottomless-pit plutocrats.  

What makes me inject such a cynical nasty note into the conversation the day after the people got to tune into Round Three of democracy in action?  It is an article summarizing investigative reports on just such activities published on the All Voices website; it has an eye-catching title: "Romney family buys voting machines through Bain Capital investment".

Holy Hannah, you say!  I know I do.  This is not a joke.  It is not from The Onion, and the article references other quite credible sources also reporting details of this incredibly disturbing, unfathomably contemptuous and far-over-the-line behavior. 

Here is a sampling of the report:

Tagg Romney, the son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt RomneyMitt Romney, has purchased electronic voting machines that will be used in the 2012 elections in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado.

"Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a "strategic investment" to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic," according to independent journalist Brad Friedman.
. . .

Truth out reports:
"Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House."

Both The Nation and New York Times confirm the connection between the Romney family, Solamere and the Bain Capital investment in the voting machine company, Hart Intercivic, whose board of directors serve H.I.G. Capital.
. . .

What it all says is that Mitt Romney, with the help of his family and Bain Capital connections, is more than willing to try to take the White House through illegitimate and highly unethical, if not specifically illegal means.
. . .

The nagging question is why, if Mr. Romney truly has the qualities that American voters want in their president, does he have to go to such great and questionable lengths to try to win the election.

That "nagging question" is a rhetorical one, of course.  It is a truism among those of us who do not live in the RNC/Fox News alternative universe that the GOP, its ship having been pirated by the Tea Party, Grover Norquist, theocrats, evangelicals, and other extreme-right elements, must, in order to attract votes, obfuscate their intention to steer the country over the edge of the flat earth they inhabit.  If they tell the truth, they expect to lose.  

Nevertheless, that might not be enough.  With so much at stake and -- fortunately for them -- so little concern for the petty rules that lesser men fret about, they must make sure the election isn't left in the hands of the little people.  The voters may see through Romney's late-in-the-game renunciations of hard-right policies concerning women's rights, and taxes, and safety net programs, and defense spending, ...   

So, we'll bar the voters and/or deter them from voting with ID laws and billboards and truth squads and purges. 

And if some get through anyway, baboom, we'll just buy the voting machines -- they can be so unreliable -- and "count the votes" creatively!

It's scary that I have seen not a whiff of this in print or on TV.  That had better change, and I'm hoping it will, at least on MSNBC, tonight -- assuming the story is true, of course.  While it is not out of "character", it still seems incredibly impolitic for them to have done this.  So I would not rule out the possibility that the report isn't completely true or that our inferences may be different from their intentions...

If it is true, though, and if it does come out in the media places where America's reality TV watchers fear not to go, it could turn off some of the still undecided voters that the exalted imperial Romneys would think it's okay to violate the law, to buy an illegal and unethical edge, and to thwart the will of the voters.

The far and away most important question this raises for me is whether there is a way of detecting any manipulation of the way the machines register and/or count up votes, should there be a federal investigation before, during or after the vote.

As a former poll official for four years, I have participated in the close-of-day printing out of results from our machines (electronic machines, votes cast by pressing the buttons next to the names, with detachable data cassettes) and the hand recording of results from the printouts on duplicate forms. One copy is posted at the polling place and the other is delivered by the judge of elections with the data cartridges to the designated collection point for the township.

Not all machines in different states work this same way in terms of how votes are input and how the results are taken out of the machine. Some still use optical scanning to input, I believe.  Some are all-electronic and communicate by a direct electronic link to central computers. I do not know whether each precinct also records and posts results when they use that type of equipment. It ought to be and probably is standard practice in all precincts across the country that the tallies in each precinct are made public at the precinct level.

So, if all that is accurate, a recount or investigation could revert back to the precinct level count, so any hanky-panky that would have a chance of flying under the radar of a careful recount would have to take place before the point in the process of aggregating precinct tallies.

All of which suggests that something would have to be programmed into the machine software that registered votes differently from the way they were cast by the voters and/or totalled them internally differently from the actual totals.  But it would have to be done sparingly, selectively so as not to be so out of whack with the precinct's registration numbers that it looked prima facie questionable. In my precinct, for example, the high ratio of Democrats to Repubicans means that a tally of less than 55-60% for Obama would look fishy.  On the other hand, one could in theory be more "liberal" with Romney-padding in strongly Repubican precincts.

Then the question would be, could this be done in such a way that a technically sophisticated investigator could look into the machine's code and not be able to find the smoking gun?

THAT -- not the slings and arrows, the being and the not being -- IS THE QUESTION!